Readers’ Letters: Carbon dioxide, climate driver?

As a student of both climate science and history, I read, with interest, the excellent letter by Colin Southgate (News Views, November 1).

He was quite right to point out that climate has varied over the recent past even though carbon dioxide [CO2] levels were fairly stable.

He stated that therefore other factors must have driven the climatic changes.

This is a summary from a paper entitled The Little Ice Age: “The conception that our climate was stable until the onset of industrialization is simply wrong.

The cause of the abrupt changes in this period is mainly the interaction between Sun, Earth and the Jovian planets, as well as large eruptions of volcanoes. CO2 played no role.

In fact there is a negative correlation between the trends in temperature and CO2 concentration over the last 4k years.

This period has only natural causes and since the position of the planets is deterministic, it is very probable that we will have another little ice age in 500 yrs.”

In fact, in the last few years many real scientists, in different parts of the world, have provided empirical evidence that CO2 is not a climate driver and never has been.

They have found that with present levels [0.04%] C02 is saturated. This means that all the available IR [heat] radiation, at wavelengths that CO2 can absorb, is absorbed.

Therefore, adding more CO2 to the air cannot add any more significant heat. In fact it has been found to be saturated even below a concentration of 0.01%.

This means that if CO2 levels were doubled from its present level, it could not possibly affect climate. The climate is changing but the cause does not seem to be increasing CO2 levels.

If interested the reader may care to look at “CO2 back-radiation sensitivity studies under laboratory and field conditions by Ernst Hammel et al” Also, for an explanation of saturation log in to: https:/www.cuttingthroughthenoise.net/swarzchild

— M. PATCHETT, via email.