The CO2 Lie

Investor’s Business Daily | Jan. 5, 2010

A new study shows that Earth’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide from all sources, including man, has remained unchanged for 160 years. As it turns out, there may be no carbon to offset.

A major tenet of the global warming religion, straight from the Book of Gore, has been that the ability of the earth to handle increasing CO2 emissions is finite and that once the “tipping point” is reached, the earth will warm uncontrollably. Well, another climate domino has fallen — the myth that man-made CO2 is leading to climate catastrophe.

This “settled science” has been upended by an unsettling (for warm-mongers) new study out of the University of Bristol in England. Unlike the Climate-gate charlatans at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, Wolfgang Knorr of Bristol’s Earth Sciences Department followed the data where it led instead of trying to manipulate it to “hide the decline” in global temperatures the earth has experienced in the last decade.

The new study, published in the online journal Geophysical Research Letters, does not deny that increasing amounts of CO2 have been generated as the world has industrialized, eradicated disease, produced agricultural abundance and improved man’s standard of living. It does show that only 45% of man’s emissions, not 100% as warmers claim, stays in the atmosphere, and that includes the carbon emissions of the private jets that flew to Copenhagen last month and the limos that drove the occupants around.

The rest is absorbed by nature, and that percentage hasn’t changed since 1850. Knorr arrived at that figure by relying solely on measurements and statistical data, including historical records extracted from Antarctic ice. He did not rely, as the CRU did, on badly written computer models with built-in fudge factors to direct the data to a foregone conclusion.

Another result of this study, reports Anthony Watts at WattsUpWithThat.com, is that emissions from deforestation, caused in large part by the clearing of forest land to grow allegedly planet-saving biofuels, may have been grossly overestimated. This finding agrees with results published in November in the journal Nature Geoscience by a team led by Guido van der Werf from VU University in Amsterdam. It reanalyzed deforestation data and concluded that resulting emissions have been overestimated by a factor of two.

We have tried to help document this growing disparity between observable data and apocalyptic computer models that cannot even predict the past. This post-Climate-gate study provides another nail in the coffin of cap-and-trade and shows why the Environmental Protection Agency should not be allowed to destroy the U.S. economy by absurdly regulating carbon dioxide, the basis for all life on earth, as a pollutant.

Reputable scientists have concluded that earth’s climate is the result of an infinite number of variables and processes that are not completely understood. There are more things in heaven and on earth than are dreamed of in their computer models. Cyclical ocean currents, solar cycles, even cosmic rays have been documented as affecting earth’s atmosphere and weather.

As Weather Channel founder and eminent meteorologist John Coleman notes, “The sun has gone quiet with fewer and fewer sun spots, and the global temperatures have gone into decline. Earth has cooled for almost 10 straight years. So, I ask Al Gore, where’s the global warming?” More and more Americans are asking the same question as the earth is under an Arctic siege.

Temperatures in Iowa are 30 degrees below normal. In South Burlington, Vt., 33 inches of snow fell — an all-time record for a storm. Three deaths due to cold were reported in Memphis, Tenn., as Miami experienced the coldest temperatures in, uh, a decade. AccuWeather.com chief meteorologist and expert forecaster Joe Bastardi says this could be the worst winter in 25 years.

As more scientists reveal inconvenient truths, we too ask: Where’s the warming, Al Gore?

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