Why didn’t atmospheric CO2 increase during World War II?
From Principia-Scientific.org:
New study of previously overlooked U.S. government records from World War Two of data of human emissions of industrial (war-time) carbon dioxide (CO2) casts further doubt on the ‘greenhouse gas’ theory promoted by climate alarmists.
Independent research by Seldon B. Graham Jr. analysed the known and vastly-increased output of industrial CO2 emissions during World War Two, as obtained via the U.S. Energy Information Administration (“EIA”) to determine its impacts on climate. By comparing the data with the known levels of CO2 in the atmosphere it is shown there was neither any increase on global temperatures nor (surprisingly) any increase in measured atmospheric CO2 levels.
These findings are at odds with claims routinely made by alarmist academic climate experts who say more human emissions equals more ‘dangerous’ heart-trapping gases in the atmosphere leading to higher global temperatures.
That is what the mainstream theory of a supposed ‘enhanced’ greenhouse gas effect (GHE) due to raised emissions of industrial CO2 tells us. But no such outcome is detected for the entire wartime decade, according to NASA…
I’m by no means an alarmist — I think the climate theology is flawed; however, there are some rather large (and inaccurate) assumptions made in this offered proof. Most glaringly, it focuses solely on US based generation of carbon sources, versus global, and inaccurately assumes a full consumption as one would expect in peacetime.
While US fossil fuel production and consumption was increasing it was in part due to a shift in production from other sources. In just the Pacific, part of Japan’s expansion into the islands north of Australia were to capture the oil production there to feed their home-island war industries. The impact is that in 1941 there would have been shift of that oil to Japan with the US making up the slack domestically.
While this implies an increase in use, one also needs to consider the amount of fossil fuel supply lost and not burned — a lot of fuel/oil went unconsumed when ships sank (I digress, but scientific study of where that oil went would have been politically inconvenient when trying to extort vast sums from BP due to the spill in the Gulf). As a result, quantifying the increase in fossil fuel supply globally is complicated as is burn rate since not all of it was consumed. An additional complicating factor is that additional carbon fuel sources (wood) were consumed and generating CO2, for example in the firebombing raids on Japan.
I like the suggestions for illustrating the AGW flaws by regression prior to 1950; however, in this particular case it feels like the argument against the current hypothesis falls on the same flaws as the AGW arguments rooted in cherry-picked data.
Now hang on – they must have been looking at the “raw” data and not the more accurate, more reliable (in terms of supporting the AGW theory) “adjusted” data. That would explain it, no? 😉
“Why didn’t atmospheric CO2 increase during WW2?” We didn’t have Obama, Al Gore, Michael Mann or computers.
The last thing anyone could accuse me, of supporting the warmist cause.
The relationship between CO₂ and warming is, CO₂ rises as a factor of Temperature increases, note: not the other way around – as the warmunistas would have (make) us believe.
Having said that, I am of the firm opinion that, quoting statistics and making a mountain out of annual variations, ie – movements, density and mass of the sea ice in the Arctic cannot only be considered as an indicators of nothing in particular (warming or cooling).
On the above study : ‘Independent research by Seldon B. Graham Jr.’ it is such a short time scale, any conclusions reached surely are valueless, albeit it is, an interesting supposition.
If the data is available for the period of the 20s and 30s then it should be given careful scrutiny for “greenhouse gas” emissions.
There was a very large swing in industrial output from the late 20s peak through the deep trough of the Great Depression that only came back above the averages with the increases in war production.
Given the magnitude of the swing in industrial output there should be a clear and demonstrable swing in the “greenhouse gas” levels if the theory of anthropomorphic global warming has even a shred of validity.