John Coleman

Three Way Catalytic Converter

1. Reduction of nitrogen oxides to nitrogen and oxygen: 2NO_x → xO₂ + N₂
2. Oxidation of carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide: 2CO + O₂ → 2CO₂
3. Oxidation of unburnt hydrocarbons (HC) to carbon dioxide and water: C_xH_2x+2 + 2xO₂ → xCO₂ + 2_xH₂O

Two Way Catalytic Converter

1. Oxidation of carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide: 2CO + O₂ → 2CO₂
2. Oxidation of unburnt hydrocarbons (unburnt and partially-burnt fuel) to carbon dioxide and water: C_xH_2x+2 + 2xO₂ → xCO₂ + 2_xH₂O

CATALYTIC CONVERTERS MAKE CO₂ BY OXIDIZING UNBURNT HYDROCARBONS AND CARBON MONOXIDE AND CONVERTING THEM TO CO₂ and H₂O.

But an environmental movement had been established and its funding and very existence depended on having a continuing crisis issue.  So the research papers from Scripps came at just the right moment.  And, with them came the birth of an issue; man-made global warming from the carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

Right, got it. Thanks!

Revelle and Keeling used this new alarmism to keep their funding growing. Other researchers with environmental motivations and a hunger for funding saw this developing and climbed aboard as well. The research grants began to flow and alarming hypothesis began to show up everywhere.

Again, red herrings and strawman arguments. Coleman thinks that if he can keep your eyes on the political argument, you will be distracted enough from the science, and if his emotional appeals work, you will believe his opinion, and ignore the science.

The Keeling curve showed a steady rise in CO2 in atmosphere during the period since oil and coal were discovered and used by man. As of today, carbon dioxide has increased from 215 to 385 parts per million. But, despite the increases, it is still only a trace gas in the atmosphere.  While the increase is real, the percentage of the atmosphere that is CO2 remains tiny, about 41 hundredths of one percent.

First, his pre-industrial CO₂ number is wrong. It’s not 215ppm CO₂. The real number is around 280ppm CO₂.

Second he is missing the point. CO₂ ‘is’ a “tiny fraction” of the atmosphere, without which Earth would be a giant frozen ball in space supporting no life at all.

Third, CO₂ at “41 hundredths of one percent”. CO₂ is estimated to be around .038% of the atmosphere, but his point is to attempt to show you that it’s such a small amount that it can’t possibly be a big deal. In reality, without that tiny fraction of CO₂ life as we know it would not be possible on Earth.

It is specifically because it is a “tiny fraction” that humans were so easily able to alter its influence on the global climate… because it doesn’t take that much to increase climate forcing. Facts out of context are meaningless.

Several hypothesis emerged in the 70s and 80s about how this tiny atmospheric component of CO2 might cause a significant warming.  But they remained unproven.  Years have passed and the scientists kept reaching out for evidence of the warming and proof of their theories.  And, the money and environmental claims kept on building up.

What remains unproven? It’s now 30-40 years later and we know with solid confidence that humans have altered the climate system. What does a 40 year old question, that has already been answered have to do with today? Coleman could just as easily be telling you the Earth is flat with the same amount of relevance.

What We Don’t Know

https://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/what-we-know

Back in the 1960s, this global warming research came to the attention of a Canadian born United Nation’s bureaucrat named Maurice Strong.  He was looking for issues he could use to fulfill his dream of one-world government. Strong organized a World Earth Day event in Stockholm, Sweden in 1970.  From this he developed a committee of scientists, environmentalists and political operatives from the UN to continue a series of meeting.

Emotional appeal as distraction, Red Herring argument.

Strong developed the concept that the UN could demand payments from the advanced nations for the climatic damage from their burning of fossil fuels to benefit the underdeveloped nations, a sort of CO2 tax that would be the funding for his one-world government.  But, he needed more scientific evidence to support his primary thesis.  So Strong championed the establishment of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  This was not a pure climate study scientific organization, as we have been led to believe.  It was an organization of one-world government UN bureaucrats, environmental activists and environmentalist scientists who craved the UN funding so they could produce the science they needed to stop the burning of fossil fuels.  Over the last 25 years they have been very effective.  Hundreds of scientific papers, four major international meetings and reams of news stories about climatic Armageddon later, the UN IPCC has made its points to the satisfaction of most and even shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.

Emotional appeal as distraction, Red Herring argument. The IPCC is one of the most conservative, vetted assessments of climate science in the entire world.

At the same time, that Maurice Strong was busy at the UN, things were getting a bit out of hand for the man who is now called the grandfather of global warming, Roger Revelle.  He had been very politically active in the late 1950’s as he worked to have the University of California locate a San Diego campus adjacent to Scripps Institute in La Jolla.  He won that major war, but lost an all important battle afterward when he was passed over in the selection of the first Chancellor of the new campus.

He left Scripps finally in 1963 and moved to Harvard University to establish a Center for Population Studies.  It was there that Revelle inspired one of his students to become a major global warming activist.  This student would say later, “It felt like such a privilege to be able to hear about the readouts from some of those measurements in a group of no more than a dozen undergraduates.  Here was this teacher presenting something not years old but fresh out of the lab, with profound implications for our future!”  The student described him as “a wonderful, visionary professor” who was “one of the first people in the academic community to sound the alarm on global warming,” That student was Al Gore.  He thought of Dr. Revelle as his mentor and referred to him frequently, relaying his experiences as a student in his book Earth in the Balance, published in 1992.

So there it is, Roger Revelle was indeed the grandfather of global warming.  His work had laid the foundation for the UN IPCC, provided the anti-fossil fuel ammunition to the environmental movement and sent Al Gore on his road to his books, his move, his Nobel Peace Prize and a hundred million dollars from the carbon credits business.

Emotional appeal as distraction, Red Herring argument.

What happened next is amazing.

The global warming frenzy was becoming the cause celeb of the media. After all the media is mostly liberal, loves Al Gore, loves to warn us of impending disasters and tell us “the sky is falling, the sky is falling”. The politicians and the environmentalist loved it, too.

This is a funny argument. The amount of media, left and right, hovers and waivers around 50% liberal, and 50% conservative, but 100% commercial. They market to their base because that is how they make money. Once again, Emotional appeal as distraction, Red Herring argument.

But the tide was turning with Roger Revelle. He was forced out at Harvard at 65 and returned to California and a semi retirement position at UCSD. There he had time to rethink Carbon Dioxide and the greenhouse effect. The man who had inspired Al Gore and given the UN the basic research it needed to launch its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was having second thoughts. In 1988 he wrote two cautionary letters to members of Congress. He wrote, “My own personal belief is that we should wait another 10 or 20 years to really be convinced that the greenhouse effect is going to be important for human beings, in both positive and negative ways.”

Did Revelle say this? Based on his views and recommended actions for Global Warming, it is doubtful. But that was 20 years ago, and Coleman may be taking it out of context? But Coleman does not cite the source, or link the letter?

If the letter does exist and the quote is correct and in context, then it doesn’t matter. If it is correct and out of context then it doesn’t matter. If it is incorrect, then it doesn’t matter. Coleman is relying on 20 year old arguments to claim current scientific understanding is wrong… that is simply absurd.

It’s been 20 years, we know this global warming event is human caused and now we need to work on mitigation.

He added, “…we should be careful not to arouse too much alarm until the rate and amount of warming becomes clearer.”

(See Carolyn Revelle, What My Father Really Said.)

This argument is like waiting until after Christopher Columbus sails across the Atlantic to prove the Earth is round; and then saying we should not fund a Christopher Columbus voyage, because there is not enough evidence to prove the world is round. We should not waste taxpayer money on such unproven endeavors.

The irony of the conception above is compelling as it is based on the myth promulgated by Washington Irving’s publication of ‘The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus’, which established and popularized a fictional account regarding the Earth is flat. The idea that even ‘that’ story is a myth is even more appropriate, as it exemplifies fiction used by denialists to prove that the science of human caused global warming is not real. Using myths to disprove science, what a concept!

It has been 20 years since Roger Revelle wrote (may have written) those words. We now know that CO₂ and other human caused greenhouse gases are not only driving climate but have significantly altered the natural cycle of climate on Earth.

And in 1991 Revelle teamed up with Chauncey Starr, founding director of the Electric Power Research Institute and Fred Singer, the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, to write an article for Cosmos magazine. They urged more research and begged scientists and governments not to move too fast to curb greenhouse CO2 emissions because the true impact of carbon dioxide was not at all certain and curbing the use of fossil fuels could have a huge negative impact on the economy and jobs and our standard of living. I have discussed this collaboration with Dr. Singer. He assures me that Revelle was considerably more certain than he was at the time that carbon dioxide was not a problem.

Revelle begged scientists and governments not to move too fast?