Why are all CO2 observations from experts in the 1800's ignored?

Answer 1

Chemical observations by thousands of science experts from the 1800's through the early 1900's derived our average CO2 values to be between 330 and 470 ppm. (see link below for peer reviewed paper stating 90,000 such cases). They show highs in certain years of over 440 ppm as early as 1880 and 1940.

Today we have alternative methods to determine CO2 levels that simply were unavailable then. They show a rise, for the past several decades, of CO2 up to 391 ppm (during summer months) in some areas. This indicates that CO2 levels have risen for the past several years.

To create an issue such as man induced global warming, we must have a trigger mechanism. Carbon Dioxide is a very large byproduct of the modern era. To make a valid case, historically measured levels would need to be ignored.

If we use these same methods to determine CO2 levels today, we would agree that world averages were 390 ppm or so. There is no other valid explanation to ignore this data.

AnswerThere were occasional, snapshot observations of carbon dioxide levels taken earlier in the nineteenth century, some giving readings well above present levels and even well over 500 ppm, but these were all taken in or close to highly polluting urban areas such as central Paris, and were influenced by local factors and wind directions. No serious climate scientist could use these observations to estimate global concentrations of carbon dioxide, especially in the face of more reliable data.

The late Ernst Beck, a Biology teacher at the Merian technical grammar school in Freiburg and co-founder of the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE) set out to read meaning into the CO2 measurements taken early in the nineteenth century. Climate experts consider his work to contain major flaws, such that the conclusions are completely wrong. Ralph Keeling, a Professor and the Principal Investigator for the Atmospheric Oxygen Research Group at SIO, calls Beck's paper pseudo-science and says it contains serious conceptual oversights that would have been spotted by any reasonably qualified reviewer. Thus, there actually was a well-intentioned attempt to consider those early CO2 readings from the 1800s, but these were readings of heavily polluted air and never had relevance to global warming and climate change.

The first serious research conducted on the effect of changes in CO2 levels was in 1896, when Arrhenius completed a laborious numerical computation which suggested that cutting the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by half could lower the temperature in Europe some 4-5°C (roughly 7-9°F) - that is, to an ice age level. Arrhenius made a calculation for doubling the CO2 in the atmosphere, and estimated it would raise the Earth's temperature some 5-6°C (averaged over all zones of latitude). His calculations did not take into account the effect of the oceans in ameliorating the effect of rising carbon dioxide levels, and in any case Arrhenius and other researchers were only interested in explaining the Ice Ages. No one seriously believed that global warming was coming. After much criticism, the work of Arrhenius was ignored by the scientific community.

Subsequent work has shown that the temperature rise up to 1940 was, as his critics thought, mainly caused by some kind of natural cyclical effect, not by the still relatively low CO2 emissions. It was not until the 1970s that scientists began to take the possibility of global warming seriously and began to accept at least the principles of Arrhenius' research.