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Posted on 07/31/2025 7:27:34 AM PDT by ModelBreaker
Some Thoughts on Our DOE Report Regarding CO2 Impacts on the U.S. Climate July 31st, 2025 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
PREFACE: What follows are my own opinions, not seen by my four co-authors of the Dept. of Energy report just released, entitled A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate. Starting sometime tomorrow, the comment docket at DOE will be open for anyone to post comments regarding the contents of that report. We authors will read all comments, and for those which are substantiative and serious, we will respond in a serious manner. Where we have made mistakes in the report, we will correct them. That is the formal process for adjudicating these issues. Regarding the informal process, tomorrow I expect we will agree on how to handle media requests to respond to objections from the few “climate alarmist” scientists that journalists usually turn to for such comments. To those journalists I would say: read our report, as journalists used to do; you might be surprised to learn a lot of the published science does not support what the public has been led (by you) to believe.
Yes, Increasing CO2 Causes a Warming Tendency in the Climate System… So What?
In my experience, much of the public has splintered into tribal positions on climate change: We either believe increasing CO2 (mainly from fossil fuel burning) has no effect, or we believe it is causing an existential crisis. There are a smaller number of individuals somewhere in the center (climate independents?)
But there is a lot of room between those two extremes for the truth to reside. Among other things, our report presents the evidence supporting the view that (1) long-term warming has been weaker than expected; (2) it’s not even known how much of that warming is due to human greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; (3) there are good reasons to believe the warming and increasing CO2 effects on agriculture have so far been more beneficial than harmful to humanity; (4) there have been no long-term changes in severe weather events than can be tied to human GHG emissions; and (5) the few dozen climate models now being used to inform policymakers regarding energy policy are not fit for purpose.
Those models, even after decades of improvement, still produce up to a factor of 3 disagreement between those with the least warming and most warming (and ALL producing more summertime warming in the critically-important U.S. Corn Belt than has been observed). How can models that are advertised to be based upon “basic physical principles” cause such a wide range of responses to increasing CO2?
And there are many more than those 5 elements contained in our report; those are just my favorites as I sit here thinking at 4:30 a.m.
One of the things we did not delve into was costs versus benefits of energy policies. Clearly, the politically popular switch to energy sources from only wind and solar involves large tradeoffs. If it were not so, there would already be a rapid transition underway from fossil fuels to wind and solar. Yes, those “renewable” sources are growing, and becoming less expensive. Yet, global energy demand is growing apace. But there are practical problems which make ideas such as “Net Zero emissions” essentially impossible to achieve. Maybe that will change in the distant future, who knows? I personally don’t really care where our energy comes from as long as it is abundant, available where it is needed, and is cost-effective. But I won’t buy an EV until it can transport me 920 miles in 14 hours during winter.
But I digress. Yes, recent warming is likely mostly due to increasing CO2 in the atmosphere. But is this necessarily a bad thing, in the net? Cold weather kills far more people than hot weather. Increasing CO2 is causing global greening and contributing to increased agricultural yields. These are things that need to be part of the national conversation, and things our Report begins to address.
Virtually everyone on Earth endures huge changes in weather throughout the year, with as much as 130 deg. F swings in temperature. Can we really not adapt to 2 or 3 degrees more in the yearly average?
Sure, if we can “fix” the “problem” without sending some of us back to the Stone Age, then do it. But the public has been grossly misled about what that would entail in terms of human suffering, and they have been grossly misled about how much climate change has actually occurred. Read the report.
Why Would Climate Science Be Biased Toward a Specific Outcome?
I’m old enough to remember when climate change meant the global cooling resulting from particulate pollution in the atmosphere. And there was a lot of that pollution as late as the 1970s. In the 1960s during my family’s car trips between Iowa and Pennsylvania, every pass through Gary, Indiana was dreaded. You could see maybe one or two blocks away, because there was so much industrial pollution. I could not understand how anyone could live in those conditions.
Then the EPA was formed in 1970. Messes were cleaned up, on land, in the air, and in our waterways. We came to believe any environmental problem could be fixed.
Then we had the ozone depletion scare. With the Montreal Protocol signed in 1987 the countries of the world agreed to gradually phase out production of chlorinated compounds that are believed to cause destruction of the protective ozone layer in the stratosphere.
Finally came the Big Kahuna of manmade pollution: Carbon Dioxide, and fears of global warming. By the late 1980s the U.N. formed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to evaluate the science of greenhouse gases and how they affect the climate system. Large amounts of federal funds went into this new area of science.
In the early 1990s I visited Robert (Bob) Watson at the White House who was Al Gore’s science advisor on environmental matters. Bob, a stratospheric chemist, was instrumental in getting the 1987 Montreal Protocol established. In that meeting, Bob remarked on the formation of the IPCC something to the effect of, “We are now regulating ozone-depleting chemicals, and carbon dioxide is next”.
I was astounded that the policy goal had already been formulated, and now all we needed to do was to fund enough science to support that goal. That was how I interpreted his statement.
In the early years the IPCC was relatively unbiased in its assessments, and conclusions were tentative. All scientists, whether climate alarmists or skeptics, were allowed to participate. But as the years went by, those with skeptical viewpoints (e.g. John Christy) were no longer invited to participate as lead authors of IPCC report chapters.
Other scientists simply chose to stop participating because their science was being misrepresented (e.g. Chris Landsea from the National Hurricane Center, who thought the hurricane data did not support any human influences.)
Today, global warming is big business. According to Grok, since 1990 the U.S. Government has spent $120-$160 Billion on climate change research. As one of the NASA instrument lead scientists on “Mission to Planet Earth”, I was also a beneficiary of that funding, and most of my funding over the years has come from climate-related appropriations.
So, why is climate science biased? First, when we decided that essentially 100% of research funding would come from the government, we put politicians (and thus policy goals) either directly or indirectly in charge of that funding. Second, Congress only funds problems to be studied… not non-problems. As President Eisenhower warned us in his 1961 farewell address, these forces could lead to a situation where “public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite”.
That has now happened. We now have a marching army of scientists (myself included) whose careers depend upon that climate funding, and possibly trillions of dollars in renewable energy infrastructure in the private sector. If the climate change threat were to disappear, so would the government grants and regulations and private investments.
As they say, follow the money.
I used to say there are two kinds of scientists in the world: male and female. (Now I’m probably not even allowed to say that). My point was that scientists are regular people. They have their own opinions and worldviews. I went into a science field because I thought science had answers. How naive of me. I should have been an engineer, instead. In the field of climate science (and many other sciences) two researchers can look at the same data and come to totally opposite conclusions. Your data can be perfect, but what the data mean in terms of cause and effect is often not obvious.
We proved this in the context of climate feedbacks (positive feedbacks amplify climate warming, negative feedbacks reduce it) back in 2011 in this paper. We showed that natural variations in clouds, if not accounted for, can make the climate system seem very sensitive (lots of warming) when in fact it is insensitive (little warming).
The morning that (peer-reviewed) paper appeared in the journal Remote Sensing, the journal editor apologized for letting it be published and was (we believe) forced to resign. Who forced him? From the Climategate emails it was revealed by one of the “gatekeepers” of climate publications, “[name redacted by me] and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”.
That same morning I was called by a particle physicist who heard all of this news and said something to the effect of, “What’s wrong with you climate guys? We have people who believe in string theory and those who don’t, but we still work together”. We both laughed over the divisive nature of climate science compared to other sciences.
Which tells you there is more than science — and even more than money — involved in the disagreement. Every environmental scientist I have ever met believes Nature is fragile. That is not a scientific view, but it is a view that colors how they interpret data.
Also, everyone would like to work on something that can make a difference in the world. And what higher calling could there be than to Save the Earth™?
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Oh no! [ Insert “Mr. Bill” picture ] ... industrial activity causes global warming. Did somebody get the memo out to China?
Some scientists cough cough..have put co2 in a tiny little box....separate from the workings of the Universe itself....and only subject to the “inventions” by man. The entire concept is absurd...
/
AKA
Secular humanist messiah complex psychosis .
They all think the are saviors
( Pride, the first and foundational sin )
That's what happens when one rejects the true Messiah
Jesus Christ.
One becomes their own god
( The 1st lie, “ you shall be as gods ")
False premise. CO2 is reactionary, an effect, not a driver. Discredits the rest.
Atmospheric CO2 is a RESULT of climate, not a CAUSE of climate change. Warmer climate, more plants; more plants, more CO2.
Dr. Spencer is one of the few climate scientists who isn’t owned by the deep state.
[[Yes, Increasing CO2 Causes a Warming Tendency in the Climate System… So What? ]]
Bzzt- Wrong- Warming periods cause rises in CO2- hundreds of years LATER- Ice core samples prove that warming happens first, then CO2 levels rise- the exact opposite of what the hoaxers claim!
Exactly-
Scientists trace atmospheric rise in CO2 during deglaciation to deep Pacific Ocean
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Long before humans started injecting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal, the level of atmospheric CO2rose significantly as the Earth came out of its last ice age. Many scientists have long suspected that the source of that carbon was from the deep sea.
But researchers haven’t been able to document just how the carbon made it out of the ocean and into the atmosphere. It has remained one of the most important mysteries of science.
A new study, published today in the journal Nature Geoscience, provides some of the most compelling evidence for how it happened – a “flushing” of the deep Pacific Ocean caused by the acceleration of water circulation patterns that begin around Antarctica.
The concern, researchers say, is that it could happen again, potentially magnifying and accelerating human-caused climate change.
“The Pacific Ocean is big and you can store a lot of stuff down there – it’s kind of like Grandma’s root cellar – stuff accumulates there and sometimes doesn’t get cleaned out,” said Alan Mix, an Oregon State University oceanographer and co-author on the study. “We’ve known that CO2 in the atmosphere went up and down in the past, we know that it was part of big climate changes, and we thought it came out of the deep ocean.
“But it has not been clear how the carbon actually got out of the ocean to cause the CO2 rise.”
Lead author Jianghui Du, a doctoral student in oceanography at Oregon State, said there is a circulation pattern in the Pacific that begins with water around Antarctica sinking and moving northward at great depth a few miles below the surface. It continues all the way to Alaska, where it rises, turns back southward, and flows back to Antarctica where it mixes back up to the sea surface.
It takes a long time for the water’s round trip journey in the abyss – almost 1,000 years, Du said. Along with the rest of the OSU team, Du found that flow slowed down during glacial maximums but sped up during deglaciation, as the Earth warmed. This faster flow flushed the carbon from the deep Pacific Ocean – “cleaning out Grandma’s root cellar” – and brought the CO2 to the surface near Antarctica. There it was released into the atmosphere.
“It happened roughly in two steps during the last deglaciation – an initial phase from 18,000 to 15,000 years ago, when CO2 rose by about 50 parts per million, and a second pulse later added another 30 parts per million,” Du said.
That total is just a bit less than the amount CO2 has risen since the industrial revolution. So the ocean can be a powerful source of carbon.
In other words- the earth warmed, and a 1000 years later the CO2 rose- showing again that climate drives CO2- CO2 does NOT drive the climate
Yes, resting too heavily on that, not qualifying it, does discredit all of the rest. Any sane debater knows that. Only someone who considers themselves to be spouting holy writ does not.
There is ample data that CO2 causes warming. But, within the earth’s system the impact levels off at 400ppm. Plus, if you push the level up to 1200ppm the food crops go bananas. Double, triple harvests. This has been tested in greenhouses.
New blockbuster paper finds man-made CO2 is not the driver of global warming
“The highlights of the paper are:
► The overall global temperature change sequence of events appears to be from 1) the ocean surface to 2) the land surface to 3) the lower troposphere.
► Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging about 11–12 months behind changes in global sea surface temperature.
► Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging 9.5-10 months behind changes in global air surface temperature.
► Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging about 9 months behind changes in global lower troposphere temperature.
► Changes in ocean temperatures appear to explain a substantial part of the observed changes in atmospheric CO2 since January 1980.
► CO2 released from use of fossil fuels have little influence on the observed changes in the amount of atmospheric CO2, and changes in atmospheric CO2 are not tracking changes in human emissions.”
[[2) Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.]]
Seems man’s total contribution over the many decades has been just 0.00022%, not the 0.00137% I’ve been stating- seems I was way off- Soooo, can someone please explain how just 0.00022% of our atmosphere can capture enough heat and back radiate it in large enough quantities to cause global climate change?
[[4) After World War II, there was a huge surge in recorded CO2 emissions but global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.]]
[[10) A large body of scientific research suggests that the sun is responsible for the greater share of climate change during the past hundred years.]]
[[11) Politicians and activiists claim rising sea levels are a direct cause of global warming but sea levels rates have been increasing steadily since the last ice age 10,000 ago]]
‘overwhelming scientitifc consensus’? Think again!
[[19) A petition by scientists trying to tell the world that the political and media portrayal of global warming is false was put forward in the Heidelberg Appeal in 1992. Today, more than 4,000 signatories, including 72 Nobel Prize winners, from 106 countries have signed it.]]
[[23) It is myth that receding glaciers are proof of global warming as glaciers have been receding and growing cyclically for many centuries]]
[[26) The IPCC threat of climate change to the world’s species does not make sense as wild species are at least one million years old, which means they have all been through hundreds of climate cycles]]
[[30) The slight increase in temperature which has been observed since 1900 is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term natural climate cycles]]
100 reasons why climate change is natural
I don’t know if it was totally planned from the start, or just fell into place, but the results of government declared climate crises has been more government control, less individual freedoms and more costly energy for everyone.
This is the main reason I oppose it. The government (elite individuals at the top of the food chain) wants the power...
What won’t it do (lie, cheat, steal) to keep on acquiring power over the people?
Given that our climate system is nonlinear and dynamic, and given the sheer volume of water vapor in the atmosphere, orders of magnitude more than carbon dioxide, plus the wide variability of water vapor in the atmosphere from 0.4% to 5%, you would think that water vapor would be the key factor in climate change.
Aerosols are a factor in cloud formation, too, in addition to cyclic Sun activity.
It is time to shift focus from carbon dioxide to water vapor and other factors in climate change. We have accomplished next to nothing except spending a lot of research dollars on the obsession with carbon dioxide.
The whole world seems bent on self-destruction chasing a false premise that we are all going to die if we do not control a trace gas that is needed for plant life.
Yep- in my profile page- i have articles discussing that ver thing- Man’s CO2 is nowhere near what it would take to blanket the earth in a thick enough layer to trap heat and heat the planet- we produce so little that it’s ridiculous to claim it is causing climate change- Sadly, the alarmist’s lies have become mainstream while the truth is buried away
“ Atmospheric CO2 is a RESULT of climate, not a CAUSE of climate change. Warmer climate, more plants; more plants, more CO2.” No… more plants absorb more CO2 and the give off the O2 that we breathe.
“ A new study, published today in the journal Nature Geoscience, provides some of the most compelling evidence for how it happened – a “flushing” of the deep Pacific Ocean caused by the acceleration of water circulation patterns that begin around Antarctica.” As cold water sinks from the melting glacier, the warmer water below, which absorbs gases better, is displaced and rises to the surface where it cools and thus can release the gases it has absorbed.
wouldn’t more plants mean more oxygen and less CO2? plants feed off of CO2 so more CO2 means more plants, but more plants would mean less CO2.
can’t we settle this?
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