r/climatechange • u/srmcmahon • 5d ago

"retired plant scientist" claim

This was in a letter to the editor locally:

"There is no real evidence that global warming is due to atmospheric CO2. Controlled experiments indicate that the addition of CO2 in air up to 10,000 ppm have little or no effect on warming under atmospheric conditions."

Entire letter is here: https://www.inforum.com/opinion/letters/letter-co2-and-global-warming

I was going to write a comment. I think he might be talking about experiments where they added CO2 to experimental plant plots (but don't remember the mechanics). "Under atmospheric conditions"--means exactly what?

Can you help me out here? I have not figured out how to phrase a search that brings me to what he is referring to.

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u/Additional_Ninja_999 5d ago

"Retired plant scientist" believes that he is better qualified than the entire IPCC to evaluate climate modelling (not his field). Nice!

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u/Stunning_Yoghurt1172 5d ago

This comment has all the hallmarks of 2023 and before when denialists wanted to show that CO2 in the atmosphere can't warm anything. The error in their ways with this understanding is they do not understand the physics of greenhouse gases (all of them) in the atmosphere. First, you need the sun. This heats the earth. When the earth is cooling down, infrared radiation from the earth wants to escape to space because the earth does not want to stay hot. The CO2 in the atmosphere absorbs the infrared from the earth as do the other greenhouse gases. These gases shakedown and reemit the absorbed energy. This energy goes in all directions and some of it returns to earth while some goes to space. This is an essential mechanism by which Earth keeps humans warm enough for life. But when we stupid humans add too much CO2 to the atmosphere we end up with a greater probability of heat being returned to Earth and an undesirable overheating of the earth. It is the number of CO2 molecules that control this process along with the absorbed heat by the earth from the sun. This was understood in the late 1800s

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u/EnoughStatus7632 4d ago

And that's why I will forever call it the Greenhouse Effect.