I have waited until the “Global Warming Doubts” email chain (that started on Feb 26th) has died down, then will give you scientists all the facts. As with any email-chain, please start at the bottom (oldest) and work your way to the top.
If anyone wishes to read a (very gripping) detailed interview, just publishedd this last month on thebestschools.org about Will Happer (whose life, family, even his grandchildren have been threatened by Email-Hate people), please spend some time reading this:
Will Happer, Prof. Emeritus at Princeton, has been one of my Mentors and very close colleagues since the death of my oldest son Doug, who had been my Mentor on this topic until his untimely death. That’s when I first started to “take up the torch” and carry on my son’s legacy.
DwN
From: William Happer [mailto:happer@Princeton.EDU]
Sent: Monday, February 29, 2016 2:54 PM
To: SP; Daniel W Nebert
Subject: RE: Global Warming Doubts
Dear SP,
You state my views correctly in the first paragraph of your response. One minor comment on the third paragraph is that CO2 levels increased from very low values , believed to be between 180 and 220 ppm during the last glacial maximum about 20,000 years ago, to about 280 ppm in pre-industrial times, comparable to the increase as we have had over the industrial age. It is pretty clear that the warming caused the change in CO2 levels, not vice versa, because temperature changes up or down almost always precede CO2 changes up or down. But the message is the CO2 levels are rarely stable for long. You might want to read the attached paper [see Ward-Carbon-Starvation], one of many, devoted to the low CO2 levels of glacial times. Don’t forget that the warming effects of CO2 go as the logarithm of its concentration, so it gets harder and harder to make any difference, the more CO2 you add.
For longer time periods, you might want to look at the second (ref) paper by the late Bob Berner of Yale University [Berner]. He and his colleagues show that, since the Cambrian, 550 million years ago, CO2 levels have generally been thousands of ppm, not the few hundred we have been experiencing over the past ten million years or so. There was a similar “CO2 famine” at the end of the Carboniferous, around 300 million years ago.
Best wishes,
Will
From: SP
Sent: Monday, February 29, 2016 3:54 PM
To: Daniel W Nebert; William Happer
Subject: RE: Global Warming Doubts
Hi Dan,
might be best to agree to disagree. Your distinguished friend Dr. Happer appears to believe that CO2 is indeed going up, due to humans, and he agrees it has a greenhouse effect, but he thinks that is beneficial (e.g. increasing plant growth), and the greenhouse effect is several fold less than generally claimed.
On the other hand, you seem to think that natural variations can account for everything we see. And, alas, I find myself with the majority of scientists, thinking that the ten billion tons of CO2 that people emit each year are probably mainly responsible for the observed 20% increase in atmospheric CO2 levels taking place in the past few decades (compared to the previous million years or so), and that this is almost certainly contributing to global warming, which could turn out bad. [SP]
From: William Happer
Sent: Sunday, February 28, 2016 6:10 PM
To: Daniel W Nebert; SP)
Subject: RE: Global Warming Doubts
Dear SP and RB
Attached are two white papers [WP1, WP2, ref] that outline why more CO2 will be good for the world. An ideal level would be several thousand ppm, similar to those that have prevailed over most of the Proterozoic. Dan, Professor Potter and Ralph can find more about my credentials to discuss climate at this link:
http://www.thebestschools.org/special/karoly-happer-dialogue-global-warming/william-happer-interview