Climate change – no panic!

Carbon dioxide CO₂ is a “greenhouse gas” – just like other greenhouse gases, methane CH₄, nitrous oxide N₂O, sulphur hexafluoride SF₆, water vapour H₂O. Our earth owes life to them, because without these gases in the atmosphere, the average global temperature would have been -18 degrees Celsius instead of +15 degrees Celsius today. After water vapour, CO₂ is considered the most important temperature-affecting gas and – besides CH₄ – the only one that can be significantly influenced by humans. Dr Ernst Pauli, for example, has illustrated in his article “Background to the problem of global warming”¹ how the “greenhouse” physically works. Of course, our atmosphere is not a closed “greenhouse”; this is just an analogy which should not be taken too literally. The question is not whether these gases make a warming effect, but what effect? Which part of it is anthropogenic (=man-made), i.e. influenceable? What other influences on temperature development with what effects are there? And how exactly is our knowledge about their causes? These questions are not answered comprehensively here, but they should be discussed in order to objectify the debate.

Where do we get our knowledge from? How reliable is it?

Data on temperatures and gas proportions in the atmosphere vary considerably from one epoch to another. For about 70 years there have been monitoring observatories all around the globe which provide us with comprehensive and accurate data about the present as we haven’t had in any other epoch in earth’s history. More simple temperature measurements date back to the 19^th century. Before that, we had not just historical reports, paintings and documents, but especially tree rings, which give us information about temperature fluctuations uninterrupted until about 12,000 years ago. For the last half a million years we have relied on ice cores, in which the air composition of past times is trapped, even further back also on geological stratifications. These data sources are described in more detail in Dr E. Pauli’s article “Background to the problem of global warming”.
When looking at data of earlier times one must consider that they are not comparable with the accuracy of today’s data. In the case of ice cores, they may contain impurities. They only allow statements within certain range and, above all, they do not form such a global network as today’s data. No ice cores can be extracted near the equator ... Anyone who claims with certainty that there has never been such a steep rise in temperature as today or there has never been such a CO₂ content in the air, principally deserves our mistrust.
In fact, despite the caution required when using older data, we know that, especially at the end of the ice ages, there were significantly larger temperature fluctuations than today. For example, at the end of the last ice age 12,000 years ago, there has been a temperature rise estimated at 10 degrees in one century.² Even if it had been two centuries (data uncertainty!), against this “hockey stick” temperature rise, our present rise has at best the magnitude of a soup ladle rise.

CO₂ and temperature – Correlation? Causality?

According to various sources, the link between CO₂ increase and subsequent temperature rise is not as clear as the climate mainstream claims. Overall, the curves are parallel and linear, but not in detail. In order to show the “politically correct” linearity, statistics have already been changed to show the public the “correct” picture.³ Although the CO₂ concentration of the atmosphere has increased very linearly since 1950, temperatures have moved up and down in larger movements. There must (also) be other influences. Moreover, there are observations over long periods of time that the CO₂ increase follows the temperature rise in the longer term, and not the other way round! A time lag of several hundred years is observed,⁴ which, among other things, is associated with the storage capacity of the oceans. Cooler water absorbs CO₂, warmer water releases it again. The temperature inertia of the seas may cause that slowly warming seas release CO₂ only after a few hundred years of storage. From that point of view the cause of warming cannot be explained by CO₂. Currently the seas still absorb CO₂. They are still cool enough! These coherences are not fully understood yet, but at least there are doubts to which extent a CO₂ increase causes the rise in temperature – or (even?) follows it!
The last 140 years in which CO₂ and temperature have increased rapidly are often cited. During this time, CO₂ has actually increased continuously. At the same time, the temperature has risen by 1.5 degrees if you look at the large average, but actually very discontinuous over time.³ In 1883 there was an immense volcanic eruption in Indonesia (Krakatau), which caused a global drop of temperature. This is a nice starting point if you want to prove a sharp increase without naming the causes! In fact, from the certainly “preindustrial” 12^th century until today, the temperature has hardly risen.

Other causes?

The CO₂ content in the atmosphere has risen from 0.028 per cent in pre-industrial times to just over 0.04 per cent today; according to various estimates, around 1-4 per cent of this is anthropogenic (caused by humans). So, we know that every 200,000th to a maximum of 50,000^th air molecule is a human-caused CO₂ molecule. So much about the order of magnitude we are talking about or, unfortunately, most of the time do not talk about.
Klaus-Eckart Puls⁵ states that there is scientific agreement in the basic documents of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the warming effect of CO₂ molecules is not a constant property but decreases with the quantity of molecules in the atmosphere. An extensive “saturation” is already given from 200 ppm, after which the long-wave radiation effect, i.e. the warming effect, rapidly decreases. This effect is therefore hardly any different with today’s concentration than it is from the pre-industrial concentration. According to another source5 this is confirmed in principle, but somewhat put into perspective. However, whether or how these findings are taken into account in simulation calculations, we do not know.
In any case, the IPCC had to look for another factor to explain the current climate harmfulness of CO₂ and found it in water vapour. If the concentration increases - according to laboratory tests and simulation models - the radiation effect of the CO₂ molecules also works with higher concentrations. But: The “necessary” increase in water vapour in the atmosphere does, “unfortunately”, not take place. This is proven by extensive worldwide measurement data, which can be found in IPCC documents themselves and also in documents of the Max Planck Institutes.⁶ However, this shortcoming does not appear in the IPCC’s political recommendations. Nevertheless, the thesis of a further rise in temperature with a further rise in CO₂ emissions lacks misses an important (but suppressed) argument.
Other researchers point for the temperature development to the influence of the sun, which is by no means a constant quantity. There is not only the well-known eleven-year sunspot cycle, which leads to more or less regular weather fluctuations. There are also larger cycles to be measured in centuries and millennia.⁷ This is due to long-term “regular irregularities” in the Earth’s orbit around the sun; these are the Milankovitch cycles quoted by Dr E. Pauli. They partly explain the ice ages, of which there were a good half a dozen in the last million years, each with warm periods in between.
Thereby, the solar activity preceded the temperature and CO₂ rise. These astronomical influences have stronger effects than the atmospheric molecule compositions in the parts-per-thousand range. But anyone who today points to the sun and its fluctuations in connection with the climate debate, quickly finds himself discriminated in the scientific world.⁸
In fact, it has to be said that the gradually rising CO₂ curve in the last century cannot be the whole and perhaps not even the most important explanation for the relatively moderate temperature increase of the last 100 years. One thing is for certain: the interaction of greenhouse gases (not only CO₂), cloud formation, storage capacities of the oceans, solar influences etc. are not yet sufficiently understood.

Propagandistic “fake news”

The climate alarmists, who in the form of the exponent Greta Thunberg expressly demand more panic, tell us different quite stories. The Greenpeace homepage, for example, reads literally: “Over millions of years, the Earth’s climate has been in equilibrium. Now it threatens to tip due to human intervention.”⁹ Ok. Greenpeace seems to be on a pre-industrial stage of knowledge here, when people still believed in a world created as unchangeable. Don’t these activists know that in the course of the last million years there have been glaciers with a thickness of several kilometres and sometimes warmer times than today, for example in Hamburg, where Greenpeace has its headquarters? If that was a “climate equilibrium”, then the current fluctuations cannot even be seen under the microscope. This is where the true deniers of climate change emerge, namely a climate change that has always taken place independently of humans.
This publicly spread stupidity is unfortunately a kind of general “knowledge” among those who proclaim the climate emergency: The stable nature is disturbed by man – this is the omnipresent chorus. In fact, this is not just lack of knowledge, but active ignorance. People who are concerned about this “politically correct” announcement are consistently harassed and discriminated against all over the country.

This publicly spread stupidity is unfortunately a kind of general “knowledge” among those who proclaim the climate emergency: The stable nature is disturbed by man – this is the omnipresent chorus. In fact, this is not just lack of knowledge, but active ignorance. People who are concerned about this “politically correct” announcement are consistently harassed and discriminated against all over the country.
Why is this? Without deepening this further, only so much: the demand for a policy against climate emergency is naturally a cross-border issue. Measures cannot be limited nationally, but must be developed at least on a continental scale, if not globally. This requires central political empowerments, which should not take national borders and sovereignty into consideration. Is it a coincidence that the same CO₂ protagonists also operate this programme at other political levels? You don’t necessarily have to try a Rudolf Bahro, who already 40 years ago – when the CO₂ emergency was not yet on the agenda – demanded a green dictator. It is enough to look at today’s political mainstream, led by the Greens and the Left, but now followed by most political camps, to see the parallels. The disintegration of national sovereignties towards the construction of an EU¹⁰, being anything but democratically organised, is today just as much a matter of course as the CO₂ propaganda. The opponents of the centralisation mainstream are also discriminated against everywhere, mostly with the same slogans. The fascist mace is always ready at hand.
The EU’s centralisation policy certainly has other goals than honest climate activists might wish; but the “populist” (?!) slogan “Away with borders” creates a broad consensus, especially among large sections of the youth. A “narrative” is launched with which one can identify if one wants to “do something” (or demands others to do something). And one hardly notices, which anti-democratic tendencies one paves the way for. At the same time, political, geographical and historical education in schools was massively reduced or replaced by projects. That, too, is part of the theme.