“When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.” ~ Seneca the Younger.  Lucius Annaeus Seneca (a.k.a. Seneca the Younger, 4 BC–65 AD)

This quote applies perfectly to those attempting to derive reality based on vague and uncertain theories about gas bubbles in ice and tree rings: ships’ captains attempting to coordinate the knee jerks of their disillusioned oarsmen so as to make headway rather than have their ship spinning in circles.   

In long term ice core records where the statistical smoothing period is 1000 years or more, cross correlation studies leave no doubt that temperature change leads CO₂ change, and not the reverse, although there is a long time lag between the two changes.  

Based on ice core data, anthropogenic global warming (AGW) proponents such as Pieter Tan manage to publish work including this below of a somewhat flat line of CO₂ concentration around 280 ppm beginning from around 1000 years ago up to the pre-industrial era. 

There are of course data such as the graph immediately above which contradict the hypothesis based on ice core samples that atmospheric CO2 concentration was stable prior to the industrial revolution. But this contradicts the narrative of orthodox climatology so it is rarely or never discussed.

The first graph above is nonsense and non-science.  Yet the myth of a stable pre-industrial global CO2 concentration infamously lives on in climatology. It is not possible to compare or connect the data as shown above, that is to connect ice core CO2 data (which is sampled and measured in ppmv from wet samples) with NOAA Mauna Loa data (which is sampled and measured in micromoles of CO2 per mole of freeze dried air i.e. ppm.) Full stop. 

The ice core laboratories have no records of the water vapor content of their samples and variability over a thousands years.  The amount of water vapor (1% or usually more) directly affects the volumetric analysis (ppmv) of trace gases like CO2.  The change in CO2 concentration due solely to change in water vapor content is more than the annual variation in CO2, as will be shown below. 

The NOAA Global Monitoring Labs such as Mauna Loa freeze dry their air samples before measuring to remove all water vapor and water droplets.  They also have no record of how much water was removed or the sample to sample variability in water content.  Removing quantities of 1% to 4% of water vapor from the NOAA air samples results in a very large increase of CO2, that is a very large increase in micromoles of CO2 per mole of dried air.  The total number of moles of all air molecules in the dried air sample (i.e., the denominator in micromoles of CO2 per mole of dried air) has been greatly reduced by removal of the moles of water vapor, with the result that the numerator of the ratio, which is micromoles of CO2, is greatly increased as a proportion of total moles in the sample.  In 2020 NOAA Mauna Loa measured the difference between a wet air sample and a freeze dried air sample. 

In practice, if Mauna Loa and the other NOAA labs used volumetric units like ppmv and did not remove the water from the air samples, then the variability in their data would be so large that accurate and precise routine net CO2 measurements would not be possible; the number of calibrations required would be impractical. This is but one reason the NOAA labs use a molar fraction measurement (micromoles of CO2 per mole of dry air, which is precisely ppm) instead of a volume measurement such as micrograms CO2 per liter of air (or ppmv), or moles of CO2 per liter of air (which is also ppmv); ppm and ppmv are not equivalent units and in this case cannot be converted with reasonable certainty.

Here is high school arithmetic and data from NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory on Mauna Loa.  No expensive computer models.  No statistics.  No estimates.  No assumptions.  Just data and arithmetic. 

414 ppm is 414 molecules of CO2 and 999,586 other air molecules.

Measured average net CO2 in air for 2020 was 414.24 ppm.* 

Measured average net CO2 in air for 2019 was  411.66 ppm.*

414.24 minus 411.66 = 2.58 ppm

Thus, increase in CO2 for 2020 was 2.58 ppm, that’s 0.000258% of air. The net CO2 increase due to all sources & sinks, human and natural, for year 2020 was 2.58 ppm or 0.000258%.  (That’s 2.58 ppm divided by 1,000,000 ppm = 0.00000258. Multiplied by 100 = 0.000258%)

Thus, increase for 2020 in net human CO2 cannot exceed 2.58. And 2.58/414 = 0.0062 = 0.62%. The 2020 annual increase in total net CO2 due to sources was 0.62%. The human component of the annual increase did not exceed 0.62%.

So, 0.000258% of atmosphere is the maximum possible net human CO2 increase for 2020. That annual increase from 2019 to 2020 (i.e., 2.58 ppm), includes the increase in CO2 due to all CO2 sources, natural and human, minus all CO2 sinks, natural and human, for 2020.  This trivial amount is what all the climate fear is about and what climate alarmist want the public to spend trillions of dollars each year to reduce. By the way, we do not know the net human CO2 increase for any year; it is not measured and probably cannot be measured with scientific accuracy and precision, but it is only estimated.

As mentioned, in 2020 NOAA Mauna Loa measured the difference the amount of gases in a wet air sample and in a freeze-dried air sample.  (Shown in the table below from their website.) The dried air sample contained 413 ppm CO2 and the wet sample contained 400.6 ppm CO2.  The dried air sample contained 12.4 ppm more CO2 than the wet sample.  The annual average increase in CO2 for 2020 over 2019 was only 2.58 ppm.  Thus, for this one sample at one single humidity condition the difference between a dry versus a wet air sample was 480% larger than the average annual increase in CO2 for that year.  ((12.4 ppm/2.58 ppm)*100 = ~480%)

When there is such a large difference between wet and dry sample methods, and since the humidity records were not kept and are not available, then it is not practical but incompetent to adjust or calibrate ppm and ppmv, and not practical but incompetent to connect CO2 ppmv data from wet ice cores to ppm data from dried air samples at NOAA GML laboratories.  In other words, the well-worn claim that CO2 has grown from a pre-industrial level of 280 ppmv to 420 ppm today is incorrect. As physics Professor Richard Feynman famously said, “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.” This principle is the bedrock of the scientific method—reality trumps narrative every time.  It is wrong to extrapolate a CO2 growth rate from an assumed pre-industrial CO2 level based on ice core measurements to today’s measured CO2 levels.  The following graphic illustrates in another way the incorrect comparison.

In conclusion, climate alarmists not only have the cause-effect sequence reversed – that is, temperature change leads CO₂ change, and not the reverse, but their method of connecting ice core measurements with NOAA measurement, well both are “wrong” as Feynman would say. 

*Tans, P. CO2 annual means 1959 -2020. NOAA and Scripps. Global Monitoring Laboratory. File Creation: Fri Mar 5 08:40:06 2021. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/