The saturation effect, the nonlinear, logarithmic relationship between greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing and increases in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), is an important scientific point for the climate debate. Diminishing returns is not as well known as it should be because of a media blackout on its negative implications for CO2 mitigation (reduction) efforts.
The log relationship means that the warming from a doubling of CO2 is not repeated at a tripling but at a quadrupling. This diminishes the fear of future increases that are in severe diminishing returns. This is an optimistic point to not sweat CO2 buildup this century or even next. And if global greening is applauded, the opposite of worry is reasonable.
An Example
I asked Randal Utech to do the math on the diminishment of CO2 forcing today (420 parts per million) versus in the late 1980s (at 350 ppm) when the climate debate took off.…
“The case of Guillermo Yeatts for subsoil privatization should eclipse ‘climate change’ as the number one policy initiative of the 21st century. This friend of private property, free markets, the rule of law, and civil society, a successful entrepreneur in his own right, a thinker and doer, has set up an excellent opportunity for a new political era in his beloved Argentina.”
Give me liberty, not corruption and poverty! The recent election of Javier Milei of La Libertad Avanza (Liberty Advances) in Argentina was a resounding vote for freedom and prosperity. And don’t let the mainstream media marginalize him (“frequent conservative provocateur” … “far-right libertarian rants” ….). He has a grand opportunity to enact a national “social justice” that could be a model for many other nations in Latin and South America and in other regions of the world.…
“Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years…. the future of human civilization is at stake.”
“Scientists have warned that there is now a 75 percent chance that within five years the entire [North Pole] ice cap will completely disappear during the summer months.”
He said it. And he was wrong. Al ‘Doom-and-Gloom’ Gore, the great climate exaggerator, has been at it since James Hansen’s testimony 35-years ago, his Washington Post op-ed in 1989 (yesterday’s post), and his book Earth in the Balance (1992). And yet this man is the Godfather of COP28 this week in Dubai, the link from the past to the present. John Kerry may do Al’s bidding, but Al himself is depressed over the prospects of the two-week CO2-rich confab.…