[alancalverd]

I really don't understand anything about, but from a sort of Bayesian standpoint, why do you guys disagree with the world wide consensus on climate change - what is it that most climate scientists have gotten wrong and why?

(a) the physics of CO2-driven warming is nonsense

(b) ice core data (the only reliable historic record) shows that temperature fluctuations precede changes in the CO2 level

(c) there is no room for consensus in science: phlogiston, caloric, aether, geocentricity, and the impossibility of heavier-than-air flight are all matters of historic expert consensus, along with the 20th century statements of the US Academy of Science ("there is no conceivable military use for the airplane") and the British Academy ("five computers will suffice for the UK's needs"). Scientific progress is made by mavericks, not followers

(d) Geologically, we know for instance that East Anglia was a tropical swamp ldess than 500,000 years ago and probably supported hippos, rhinos and elephants at the same time as humans. The appearance of chimneys in European buildings was sudden, around 1200 AD. However you look at it, the climate, at least in the inhabited parts of the world, was a lot hotter before we started burning fossil fuel, even within recorded history.

But why the consensus? Because it pays the rent. You can't tax a non-problem, and most climate scaremongers are paid from tax revenues.

[JoeBrown]

But why the consensus? Because it pays the rent. You can't tax a non-problem, and most climate scaremongers are paid from tax revenues.

It's ironic that anyone would fuss about the amount of money spent on climate concerns.

Government spends about 5.3 trillion annualy on fossil fuel incentives.  100 billion on climate concerns amounts to less than 2% of that expenditure.  Climate studies and co² reduction don't pollute like fossil fuels.  So even if the "climate change" was a hoax, it pails in comparison to the alternative.

CO² increases change the ph balance in the oceans.  I kinda like sea food.  But when I see toxic runoff working its way into the ocean everywhere near me, I'm afraid to eat anything I might catch.  How about you?

[alancalverd]

Different problem. Toxic runoff consists of all sorts of stuff from artificial fertilisers to natural sewage and a bit of mining waste (in those countries where there is still a mining industry). Carbon dioxide is a gas, not a liquid, under ambient conditions.

And don't be too critical of raw sewage! Shellfish and several bony fish (particularly mullet - delicious!) like to hang around sewage outlets. The problem there is that human pathogens in poo are much more dangerous to your health than a bit of sulfuric acid from a mine, and fish will avoid most inorganic toxins.

Government expenditure on "climate concerns" (mostly, it seems, on ridiculous transport and security costs for pointless conferences) is not the point. By claiming some green credential, governments can impose massive taxes on fossil fuel, so the global warming swindle is perpetuated because a direct tax on food, health and all the other things that use fossil fuel, would be considered immoral. Some of the tax revenue filters back to the scaremongering industry: a very efficient use of your money to extract more.

[puppypower]

Hydrogen bonding, within water, has both polar and covalent bonding characteristics. The polar aspect of hydrogen bonding is based on charge attraction, with this type of hydrogen bonding trying to get as close as possible to lower the charge potential. The covalent aspect of hydrogen bonding is different.

A covalent bond is less about charge difference and more about the overlap of covalent bonding orbitals; wave functions. In the case of water, the covalent bonding aspect of hydrogen bonding, needs to expand to allow proper orbital and wave function overlap. This is why ice expands when it freezes. Water is sort of unique in terms of expanding when freezing, with Antimony the only other natural substance to do this. The binary of hydrogen bonding adds a wild card to water, with water showing over 70 anomalies with respect to normal materials.

These two possible bonding states of a hydrogen bond, impacts the physical properties of the local water. The polar aspect defines higher enthalpy (internal energy), higher entropy and less volume (contracts), while the covalent aspect defines lower enthalpy (internal energy), lower entropy and more volume (expands). This binary in the hydrogen bonding impacts the absorption spectrum which is shown above.

In the diagram below, a is polar and b is covalent, with the two states stable and separated by a small activation energy hill. The hydrogen bonds in water is a binary switch that can switch back and forth with only a slight energy change. The hydrogen bond never have to break, but adjust physical parameters with only a slight energy tweak.



The containment of CO2 in liquid water benefits by the more reactive polar hydrogen bonding (a), since the polar defines higher activity. CO2 forms only weak hydrogen bonds with water, therefore benefits by more potential in water. Anything that can shift the balance in the binary switch, can also shift how CO2 interacts with water. Life can control the switch or rather the switch has an impact on life.

In my last post, I used the more commonly used terms high density water (HDW) and low density water (LDW) to differentiate the polar and covalent hydrogen bonding. Liquid water does not exist as separate water molecules due to hydrogen bonding. Rather water will form clusters. The dynamic equilibrium between the two states of the binary, can cause clusters to collapse or expand, based on the ratio of polar to covalent bonding. CO2 in water has more room and better access to the hydrogen bonding when the clusters collapse; polar.

[img] http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/images/cluster_equilibrium_2.gif

Studies using magnetism and electric fields on water have shown this can shift the binary.

Due to the partial covalence of water's hydrogen bonding, electrons are not held by individual molecules but are easily distributed amongst water clusters giving rise to coherent regions [1691] capable of interacting with local electric [1692] and magnetic fields and electromagnetic radiation

Theoretically, movement in the magnetic field can change the absorption spectrum of local water so pockets of warmer or cooler water can form, due to a change in the binary absorption spectrum. This shift can also impact CO2 by making it easier to harder to be stay absorbed.

[Craig W. Thomson]

False. Mars has less surface area than the Earth, plus, it's about 50% farther from the Sun than we are, plus it has a thinner atmosphere that holds less heat. That's why it's colder.

The partial pressure of CO2 on Mars is about 6 millibar. On Earth it is about 0.4 millibar. Correcting for the lower gravity of Mars means that the Martian atmosphere contains 37.5 times as much carbon dioxide per unit area as ours. Being twice as far from the sun means that it receives one quarter of the solar power input, so if CO2 is the principal determinant of surface termperature it should be hotter then Earth, not colder.

False. You're conveniently forgetting that the atmosphere of Mars is about 100 times thinner than ours. If you took everything out of Earth's atmosphere but the carbon dioxide, then added 100 times more carbon dioxide, that would NOT be enough to keep the planet warm.

[Craig W. Thomson]

But why the consensus? Because it pays the rent. You can't tax a non-problem, and most climate scaremongers are paid from tax revenues.

False. I don't know how many times I have to say this. When they say, "97% of climate scientists agree," that means not just liberal Democrat scientists in the U.S. The IPCC is comprised of scientists from all countries including Russia (not a liberal democracy) and China (not a liberal democracy) and countries of all political stripes.

On a more personal note, if you can't figure out the relationship between applying combustion to 100 million years worth of fossil fuels and a rise in global temperatures, you might as well join the Flat Earth Society.

Furthermore, scientists operate using what we call the "Scientific Method." That method was adopted to get the politics, religion and personal feelings out of science. You're basically calling all these people liars, hundreds of thousands of people, accusing them of ignoring the scientific method, the very foundation of their occupation. Maybe you're projecting your own lack of integrity on others ??

Do you work for an oil company ??

If I ignore facts and make stupid arguments, can I be a Global Moderator too ??

Here's another quick point. You and I can't agree, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Everyone in this forum and at physforum.com spends every single day telling everyone else that they are completely wrong about absolutely everything. Think about that. Now, you really expect me to believe that hundreds of thousands of scientists of different ethnicities, nationalities and political beliefs in countries all around the world are able to agree 97% on ANYTHING AT ALL, let alone work together to advance an agenda

Give me a break. That alone rules out the idea that climate change is a hoax.

[Craig W. Thomson]

Sorry, Craig, but not even the IPCC can repeal the laws of physics.

You're the one trying to repeal the laws of physics, Alan. Mass/energy conversion does what it does despite your protests. Trees convert energy to mass. That's called "photosynthesis." Apply combustion to 100 million years worth of fossil fuels in 150 years, and you're going to get a rise in temperatures when all that stored solar energy is released.

You really need to let go of your confirmation biases and accept facts here. Combustion of fossil fuels produces heat, CO2 and entropy. Actions don't occur without reactions. That's physics. That's reality. Deal with it.

[chiralSPO]

Sorry, Craig, but not even the IPCC can repeal the laws of physics.

You're the one trying to repeal the laws of physics, Alan. Mass/energy conversion does what it does despite your protests. Trees convert energy to mass. That's called "photosynthesis." Apply combustion to 100 million years worth of fossil fuels in 150 years, and you're going to get a rise in temperatures when all that stored solar energy is released.

You really need to let go of your confirmation biases and accept facts here. Combustion of fossil fuels produces heat, CO2 and entropy. Actions don't occur without reactions. That's physics. That's reality. Deal with it.

Craig, I agree with you that the greenhouse effect is a real, significant and anthropomorphic force, but I don't think arguments such as these ↑ are very helpful.

A) Please try to be more polite. We are all here for scientific discussion and debate, so when the debate happens it should be done using the same language we use when we discuss. It is so easy for flame wars to erupt from ad hominem attacks because of the online medium (I caution ALL of the participants in this discussion to avoid snarking, even moderators such as myself)


B) Claiming trees convert energy into mass by photosynthesis is at best misleading. The increase in apparent mass of a tree due to the stored chemical energy is insignificant compared to the mass of biomass required to form that biomass. Trees get almost all of their mass from matter inputs such as CO₂ and H₂O, which they convert into sugars (C₆H₁₀O₅)_n, storing about 17.35 kJ per gram. If a tree has stored 500 kg worth of energy as cellulose, that works out to about 86.7 GJ. Using E = mc², I calculate that it adds just over 965 micrograms of mass.

C) Similarly, the heat being released by combustion is insignificant compared to the effect of the CO₂. We currently use energy at less than 20 TW globally. If we assume that all of it ends up as heat, and compare that to the heat the Earth receives from the sun 176000 TW globally, plus the heat from the decay of radioactive isotopes in the core (about 44 TW, also insignificant), then anthropogenic combustion adds about 0.01% to the energy coming in. And since radiative loss scales with T⁴, and ambient surface temperatures are typically between 250 and 350 K, this additive increase in energy flux will have no significant force on the temperature.

However, increasing the insulation of the atmosphere by increasing the retention of IR radiation can decrease the rate of radiative cooling by several % for a given T, so increases of several degrees can be produced.

D) I will agree with you as far as the money goes. Alan, I can't think of anyone making money from scaremongering, at least nothing close to the money that is generated for fossil fuel producers. If we want to think that this discussion is biased due to monetary concerns I don't think that it is is side asking for regulations is the place to look... Governments and/or industries need money to perform services. Just as you pay to have your sewage treated or your garbage hauled off, you need to pay to mitigate the harms cause by using fossil fuels.

I am libertarian in many ways, but I think that taxes or fines on negative externalities (harming commonly owned resources, like the atmosphere) make perfect sense to combat "Tragedies of the Commons." A "carbon tax" makes a lot of sense to me.

[Craig W. Thomson]

Craig, I agree with you that the greenhouse effect is a real, significant and anthropomorphic force, but I don't think arguments such as these ↑ are very helpful.

A) Please try to be more polite. We are all here for scientific discussion and debate, so when the debate happens it should be done using the same language we use when we discuss. It is so easy for flame wars to erupt from ad hominem attacks because of the online medium (I caution ALL of the participants in this discussion to avoid snarking, even moderators such as myself)

B) Claiming trees convert energy into mass by photosynthesis is at best misleading. The increase in apparent mass of a tree due to the stored chemical energy is insignificant compared to the mass of biomass required to form that biomass. Trees get almost all of their mass from matter inputs such as CO₂ and H₂O, which they convert into sugars (C₆H₁₀O₅)_n, storing about 17.35 kJ per gram. If a tree has stored 500 kg worth of energy as cellulose, that works out to about 86.7 GJ. Using E = mc², I calculate that it adds just over 965 micrograms of mass.

C) Similarly, the heat being released by combustion is insignificant compared to the effect of the CO₂. We currently use energy at less than 20 TW globally. If we assume that all of it ends up as heat, and compare that to the heat the Earth receives from the sun 176000 TW globally, plus the heat from the decay of radioactive isotopes in the core (about 44 TW, also insignificant), then anthropogenic combustion adds about 0.01% to the energy coming in. And since radiative loss scales with T⁴, and ambient surface temperatures are typically between 250 and 350 K, this additive increase in energy flux will have no significant force on the temperature.

However, increasing the insulation of the atmosphere by increasing the retention of IR radiation can decrease the rate of radiative cooling by several % for a given T, so increases of several degrees can be produced.

D) I will agree with you as far as the money goes. Alan, I can't think of anyone making money from scaremongering, at least nothing close to the money that is generated for fossil fuel producers. If we want to think that this discussion is biased due to monetary concerns I don't think that it is is side asking for regulations is the place to look... Governments and/or industries need money to perform services. Just as you pay to have your sewage treated or your garbage hauled off, you need to pay to mitigate the harms cause by using fossil fuels.

I am libertarian in many ways, but I think that taxes or fines on negative externalities (harming commonly owned resources, like the atmosphere) make perfect sense to combat "Tragedies of the Commons." A "carbon tax" makes a lot of sense to me.

A) Sorry. I've grown increasingly frustrated and impatient over the years. I just turned 47. In 1988, I read Jeremy Rifkin's "Entropy: Into the Greenhouse World" for the first time. I became an avid environmentalist. I studied science specifically to understand this issue better. I have watched the predictions in his book come true, everything falling like a line of dominoes. This is not the time for politeness. It is time for Flat Earth climate change skeptics to wake up and smell the coffee, whether or not they prefer instant or fresh ground.

B) I'm not trying to be misleading. I'm trying to strip down the process to its bare essentials. People get too caught up in side arguments, like how much carbon dioxide is too much, how many snowballs there are in Washington D.C., etc. You can believe me, or you can not believe me, but I will tell you in no uncertain terms, I understand this issue in great detail. I know a lot about the minutiae, like that fresh water freezes at a higher temperature than salt water, so no, Antartica is not "expanding," it's still melting, that's just a temporary freshwater ice shelf pointing to a larger problem. The minutiae are what give people things to argue about. The minutiae are the trees, I want people to see the forest. The simplest explanation and best generalization of climate change that even a layman can understand is that solar energy is stored in plants by photosynthesis, and when you apply combustion to 100 million years worth of stored solar energy in the form of fossil fuels, that produces a lot of heat, plus a lot of extra carbon dioxide that helps prevent some of that extra heat from escaping into space. In the simplest scientific terms possible, photosynthesis is a process whereby energy from the sun is stored in molecules, and combustion releases that energy. The mass/energy conversion is going the opposite direction in both cases. In photosynthesis, the photon's energy becomes "binding energy," which is what holds those high energy fuel molecules together, and yes, when a photon is absorbed by an atom in a molecule, the atom and molecule containing it increase in mass by the tiniest fraction. Energy is literally converted to mass in that case. When combustion releases the energy in a fossil fuel, the opposite reaction occurs. The photons are released, and the molecules they held together break apart, again, as per mass/energy conversion, but in the other direction. I'm not trying to be misleading. I'm trying to simplify things rather than get bogged down in arguments about trees when the forest is what's most important.

C) All I can really say about that is that the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has not risen above 320 ppm for at least 800,000 years, according to this chart:

https://robertscribbler.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/ice-core-co2-record-800000-years.jpg

In about 50 years, the blink of an eye on a geological time scale, carbon dioxide has risen to about 400 ppm, about 20% higher than it has been in 800,000 years. Changes like that are what I would consider "unprecedented," and even when the CO2 fluctuates by 20%, that is supposed to take thousands or tens of thousands of years, not 50. Now, considering how temperatures move in lockstep with carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere in that chart, is it any surprise that the "hottest year on record" has become a recurring news story lately?

D) I agree with you about all this. I would like to add a point addressed to alancalverd. Apparently, he has either forgotten about or is not aware of the fact that the biggest oil producers in the US receive tens of billions of tax breaks and subsidies from the government every single year. That whoops the tar out of the amount of grant money scientists get to study climate change.

[Craig W. Thomson]

Was February yesterday?  Na, week or two ago, it's also the 1st time in ~23 million years CO² concentration in the atmosphere has been as high as 400ppm.

Coincidentally this past February is also the warmest month on record.  Correlation or coincidence?  Me thinks the jury is still hung.

Thanks for your comment. However, CO2 actually surpassed that mark before.

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/co2-400-ppm-global-record-18965

Here's what the Mauna Loa data look like since recordkeeping began:

http://blog.ucsusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/mlo_full_record.png

As you can see, the earth basically takes one "breath" per year. The forests act as a sort of lungs for the planet. During the growing season, forests inhale, then exhale in the winter. So, carbon dioxide content goes up and down a little bit each year, giving a peak and a trough of a few parts per million. The problem is, the overall curve is on an upswing. What you are correctly reporting as "we reached 400 ppm" this February is actually just the beginning of another peak that will actually take us PAST the 400 ppm mark.

If the exponential curve indicated by the graph of that information continues unchecked, in a few years, CO2 won't drop below the 400 ppm mark at all. Here's a closeup of the end of that chart to include more recent information broken down by month:

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_trend_mlo.png

[puppypower]

Nobody is denying the CO2 is going up. However, the expected temperature increase is being over estimated by all the computers models. There is something wrong with their assumptions since the actual temperature rise is 100-1200% lower than the models are predicting.

If all models are too high by 100-1200% either we have over estimated the impact of CO2 on global temperature, or we have ignored moderating variables, such as water.

A warmer earth means more water in the atmosphere, since the amount of water that can dissolve in the air goes ups with temperature. More water in the air; clouds, means more reflection of solar energy back into space. If we ignore the water, we under estimate the reflection of solar heat. Water is the great moderator.

Relative to water and hydrogen bonding, which should be looked into more, kosmotropes and chaotropes are materials dissolved in water, which cause order or disorder, respectively, in water. For example, sodium cations are kosmotropic while potassium cations are chaotropic. Cells preferred concentrate the sodium outside inducing more ordered water outside, while concentrating potassium inside to induce more disorder in the water, inside the cell. This is needed to make it easier for enzymes. Enzymes tend to induce low density water on their surfaces. The potassium helps to disrupt the water caging. 

Kosmotropes and chaotropes ions can shift the high and low density equilibrium of the water and therefore the absorption spectrum. In the table below, the green chaotropic ions are attracted to low density water, while the red kosmotropic ions avoid low density water. If we shift the ionic balance, you can shift the hydrogen bonding binary of water.

[JoeBrown]

Thanks for your comment. However, CO2 actually surpassed that mark before.

DOH,

Didn't realize my search returned an article from a year ago.  I heard in the news that February 2016 was the warmest month on record.  Following, January's record breaking and a few months late last year....

Saw the correlation I sought, instead of paying attention to the date on the article in question I leaped to insert my foot, anatomically inappropriately

The string of record breaking warm months correlating to an persistently increasing CO² content, makes it hard to not want to SHOUT at the deniers.

Tried to delete my post before it was forever enshrined in Cyberspace, alas, I was too slow   Fortunate or not the correlation still stands  []

[alancalverd]

Correlation is not proof of causation.

There is a very strong correlation between the number of breaths a person has taken, and the probability of the next breath being his last. Breathing does not cause death.

Temperature is increasing, CO2 is increasing. Observed correlation. Now let's test for causation.

If you look at the physics of infrared absorption and actually put in some numbers, it's obvious that CO2 is not the cause. If you don't understand physics you can build a model of past data and predict what will happen next, and as puppypower points out, if that model uses CO2 as the causative input, you consistently get the wrong answer. Or you can look carefully at historic data and note the 500 - 800 year lag between temperature and CO2. Or you can look at recent data and ask why CO2 levels are highest in summer, when humans are burning less fuel of all types.

It beats me why people cling to the wreckage of a dead hypothesis in the hope that by sacrificing virgins or fossil fuels, they will save the world from a disaster. Climate change is inevitable and from a human perspective, probably disastrous if we carry on living on coastal margins and reproducing beyond a sustainable level. We already have a taste of the political shambles caused by a tiny economic migration. When the population of Bangladesh finds the country uninhabitable, we will see a humanitarian disaster way beyond the wildest hopes of biblical prophets, and taxing petrol won't stop it.

It's time to abandon the CO2 religion and do some science.

[alancalverd]

False. You're conveniently forgetting that the atmosphere of Mars is about 100 times thinner than ours. If you took everything out of Earth's atmosphere but the carbon dioxide, then added 100 times more carbon dioxide, that would NOT be enough to keep the planet warm.

I didn't "forget" it. I began with it. You'd be well advised to revise Dalton's Law of partial pressures.

[alancalverd]

Trees convert energy to mass. That's called "photosynthesis."

No. Tress convert mass of carbon dioxide and water to mass of tree, and use solar energy to do so. Photosynthesis does not involve significant relativistic mass change, any more than the insects eating the tree (converting it back to CO2 and H2O, in order to extract chemical energy).

[alancalverd]

The IPCC is comprised of scientists from all countries including Russia (not a liberal democracy) and China (not a liberal democracy) and countries of all political stripes.

But it is primarily intergovernmental, i.e. driven by politics, and only seeks and publishes opinions with which the Panel itself agrees - apart from the footnote statement of incompetence I mentioned earlier.

[JoeBrown]

Correlation is not proof of causation.

There is a very strong correlation between the number of breaths a person has taken, and the probability of the next breath being his last. Breathing does not cause death.

Temperature is increasing, CO2 is increasing. Observed correlation. Now let's test for causation.

If you look at the physics of infrared absorption and actually put in some numbers, it's obvious that CO2 is not the cause. If you don't understand physics you can build a model of past data and predict what will happen next, and as puppypower points out, if that model uses CO2 as the causative input, you consistently get the wrong answer. Or you can look carefully at historic data and note the 500 - 800 year lag between temperature and CO2. Or you can look at recent data and ask why CO2 levels are highest in summer, when humans are burning less fuel of all types.

Correlation is not causation.  It provides indicators to causation.  Humans are pretty good at figuring that out, one of the reasons we think we rule at the top of the food chain.  Also "science" relies heavily on such principles.

The sun is the predominant cause of global warming.  That's been the case for at least a billion years.  We don't know what exactly has caused past cycles of change.  We may have reasonable and/or educated guesses, but ultimately they're still guesses, because human kind has a very limited recorded history, by way of comparison.  We've analyzed geologic evidence and recognize a pattern in cooling and warming of the Earth which has a correlation to CO² atmospheric content.  Again correlation is not causation. We get that!

However, there's no evidence of a phenomena where fossils burn increases daily, until recent history like the present phenomena.  We know this phenomena has not occurred in prehistoric times (based on geological evidence), so there is little we can correlate it to.  We don't know the ultimate outcome of this behavior, other than it may/will likely influence the climate.  The degree and magnitude are a little sketchy because the Earth is a lively planet.

Some of us have a concern, human activity is persistently increasing the rate of pumping CO² (currently about 5 billion metric tons annually (5 GT)) of CO² into the atmosphere every year.  This is increasing the atmospheric concentration of CO².  Human activity has been increasing the amount YOY for about 200 years. 

We *might* be able to see a correlation and identify the cause.  The projected effect is that the Earth will warm, due to increased atmospheric CO² content, because CO² slows heat from exiting the atmosphere compared to nitrogen (the bulk of our atmosphere nitrogen, then oxygen, argon, water vapor and finally CO²).

The CO² concentration is pretty minuscule, but it's increasing. Seems it only takes tiny amount of increase to make 1 degree difference.  That's not correlation being causation.  It's causation indicating correlation.

[Craig W. Thomson]

There is a very strong correlation between the number of breaths a person has taken, and the probability of the next breath being his last. Breathing does not cause death.

That's a stupid analogy. Here's a better one.

Pull your car into the garage and leave it running. Now, close the garage door and roll down your windows.

You will notice the temperature and composition of the atmosphere in your garage changing. Now, breathing is most definitely going to be the cause of death.

You had better open the garage door now. That's where my good analogy gets weak. You can open the garage door and let in some fresh air. Our atmosphere does not have a garage door to open. We are stuck with the atmosphere we have, and it's high time we start taking better care of it.

Again, if your position is that applying combustion to 100 million years worth of fossil fuels does not change the temperature and composition of the atmosphere, you have no business posting in a science forum.

You said, "It's time to abandon the CO2 religion and do some science."

You might as well be telling me that for every action, there is NOT an equal and opposite reaction. Scientists have been studying carbon dioxide molecules for a long time. They know what the properties of a CO2 molecule are, and they know what extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does. Right now, you're not just arguing with me, you're arguing with thousands of scientists with PhD's that agree with me.

[Craig W. Thomson]

No. Tress convert mass of carbon dioxide and water to mass of tree, and use solar energy to do so. Photosynthesis does not involve significant relativistic mass change, any more than the insects eating the tree (converting it back to CO2 and H2O, in order to extract chemical energy).

FALSE. That's not mass/energy conversion. It is the photon that provides the extra mass. In the center of a chlorophyll molecule, there's a magnesium atom. It captures photons and the plant uses them to build high energy molecules. When that happens, the photon is converted to mass. I didn't say it's a significant amount of mass. Anyone who understands the equation E = mc^2 knows that the speed of light squared and reciprocated means a tiny amount of mass comes from the energy of one photon. I never said it was "significant" relativistic mass. I know better. But it is still mass/energy conversion. Same goes for a termite eating a tree, just reversed. Those complex, high energy molecules enter a digestive system and get broken down. The heat energy of the photons food contains is what keeps your body temperature nice and toasty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_energy#Mass-energy_relation

[Craig W. Thomson]

Nobody is denying the CO2 is going up. However, the expected temperature increase is being over estimated by all the computers models. There is something wrong with their assumptions since the actual temperature rise is 100-1200% lower than the models are predicting.

If all models are too high by 100-1200% either we have over estimated the impact of CO2 on global temperature, or we have ignored moderating variables, such as water.

The ocean is part of the problem. It absorbs CO2, but we're not sure how much. So far, the ocean has been absorbing lots of the extra CO2, but we're not sure how saturated it is getting. Also, the oceans circulate pretty slowly and contain so much water that we're not sure how long it takes to get saturated all the way to the bottom. We've been lucky so far, but if and when the ocean is not able to absorb more CO2, all the rest is going to start staying in the atmosphere and rate of increase will accelerate. That would be a really bad thing.