CO2: The Greatest
Scientific
Scandal of Our Time
by Zbigniew Jaworowski, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc., March 2007
Read pdf paper of this strong critique of the
IPCC from EIR Science 16 March 2007. (Note typo error near top of
page 50 . After 'The Near Future', the "..2 million years.."
should be 1 million.
Foreword
by
Professor Hartmut Frank to a 1994 paper by Dr Zbigniew
Jaworowski in the journal Environmental Science and
Pollution Research. Download 146KB pdf file
1997
paper by Dr Zbigniew Jaworowski setting out errors in measurements of
gas trapped in ancient ice cores. Download
pdf paper 1.4 MB
Statement
written for the Hearing before the US Senate Committee on
Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Climate Change: Incorrect information on
pre-industrial CO2
March 19, 2004
Statement of Prof. Zbigniew Jaworowski
Chairman, Scientific Council of Central Laboratory for
Radiological Protection
Warsaw, Poland
I am a Professor at the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection
(CLOR) in Warsaw, Poland, a governmental institution, involved in
environmental studies. CLOR has a “Special Liaison” relationship with
the US National Council on Radiological Protection and Measurements
(NCRP). In the past, for about ten years, CLOR closely cooperated with
the US Environmental Protection Agency, in research on the
influence of industry and nuclear explosions on pollution of the global
environment and population. I published about 280 scientific papers,
among them about 20 on climatic problems. I am the representative of
Poland in the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of
Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), and in 1980 – 1982 I was the chairman of
this Committee.
For the past 40 years I was involved in glacier studies, using snow and
ice as a matrix for reconstruction of history of man-made pollution of
the global atmosphere. A part of these studies was related to the
climatic issues. Ice core records of CO2 have been widely used as a
proof that, due to man’s activity the current atmospheric level of CO2
is about 25% higher than in the pre-industrial period. These records
became the basic input parameters in the models of the global carbon
cycle and a cornerstone of the man-made climatic warming hypothesis.
These records do not represent the atmospheric reality, as I will try
to demonstrate in my statement.
Relevant Background
In order to study the history of industrial pollution of the global
atmosphere, between 1972 and 1980, I organized 11 glacier expeditions,
which measured natural and man-made pollutants in contemporary and
ancient precipitation, preserved in 17 glaciers in Arctic, Antarctic,
Alaska, Norway, the Alps, the Himalayas, the Ruwenzori Mountains in
Uganda, the Peruvian Andes and in Tatra Mountains in Poland. I also
measured long-term changes of dust in the troposphere and stratosphere,
and the lead content in humans living in Europe and elsewhere during
the past 5000 years. In 1968 I published the first paper on lead
content in glacier ice[1]. Later I demonstrated that in pre-industrial
period the total flux of lead into the global atmosphere was higher
than in the 20th century, that the atmospheric content of lead is
dominated by natural sources, and that the lead level in humans in
Medieval Ages was 10 to 100 times higher than in the 20th century. In
the 1990s I was working in the Norwegian Polar Research Institute in
Oslo, and in the Japanese National Institute of Polar Research in
Tokyo. In this period I studied the effects of climatic change on polar
regions, and the reliability of glacier studies for estimation of CO2
concentration in the ancient atmosphere.
FALSE LOW PRE-INDUSTRIAL CO2 IN THE ATMOSPHERE
Determinations of CO2 in polar ice cores are commonly used for
estimations of the pre-industrial CO2 atmospheric levels. Perusal of
these determinations convinced me that glaciological studies are not
able to provide a reliable reconstruction of CO2 concentrations in the
ancient atmosphere. This is because the ice cores do not fulfill the
essential closed system criteria. One of them is a lack of liquid water
in ice, which could dramatically change the chemical composition the
air bubbles trapped between the ice crystals. This criterion, is not
met, as even the coldest Antarctic ice (down to –73oC) contains liquid
water[2]. More than 20 physico-chemical processes, mostly related to
the presence of liquid water, contribute to the alteration of the
original chemical composition of the air inclusions in polar ice[3].
One of these processes is formation of gas hydrates or clathrates. In
the highly compressed deep ice all air bubbles disappear, as under the
influence of pressure the gases change into the solid clathrates, which
are tiny crystals formed by interaction of gas with water molecules.
Drilling decompresses cores excavated from deep ice, and contaminates
them with the drilling fluid filling the borehole. Decompression leads
to dense horizontal cracking of cores, by a well known sheeting
process. After decompression of the ice cores, the solid
clathrates decompose into a gas form, exploding in the process as if
they were microscopic grenades. In the bubble-free ice the explosions
form a new gas cavities and new cracks[4]. Through these cracks, and
cracks formed by sheeting, a part of gas escapes first into the
drilling liquid which fills the borehole, and then at the surface to
the atmospheric air. Particular gases, CO2, O2 and N2 trapped in the
deep cold ice start to form clathrates, and leave the air bubbles, at
different pressures and depth. At the ice temperature of –15oC
dissociation pressure for N2 is about 100 bars, for O2 75 bars, and for
CO2 5 bars. Formation of CO2 clathrates starts in the ice sheets at
about 200 meter depth, and that of O2 and N2 at 600 to 1000 meters.
This leads to depletion of CO2 in the gas trapped in the ice sheets.
This is why the records of CO2 concentration in the gas inclusions from
deep polar ice show the values lower than in the contemporary
atmosphere, even for the epochs when the global surface temperature was
higher than now.
Figures 1A and 1B
 The data from shallow ice
cores, such as those from Siple, Antarctica[5, 6], are widely used as a
proof of man-made increase of CO2 content in the global atmosphere,
notably by IPCC[7]. These data show a clear inverse correlation between
the decreasing CO2 concentrations, and the load-pressure increasing
with depth (Figure 1 A). The problem with Siple data (and with
other shallow cores) is that the CO2 concentration found in
pre-industrial ice from a depth of 68 meters (i.e. above the depth of
clathrate formation) was “too high”. This ice was deposited in 1890 AD,
and the CO2 concentration was 328 ppmv, not about 290 ppmv, as needed
by man-made warming hypothesis. The CO2 atmospheric concentration of
about 328 ppmv was measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii as later as in
1973[8], i.e. 83 years after the ice was deposited at Siple.
|
 An ad hoc assumption, not
supported by any factual evidence[3, 9], solved the problem: the
average age of air was arbitrary decreed to be exactly 83 years younger
than the ice in which it was trapped. The “corrected” ice data were
then smoothly aligned with the Mauna Loa record (Figure 1 B),
and reproduced in countless publications as a famous “Siple curve”.
Only thirteen years later, in 1993, glaciologists attempted to
prove experimentally the “age assumption”[10], but they failed[9].
|
|
Figure 2
The notion of low pre-industrial CO2
atmospheric level, based on such poor knowledge, became a widely
accepted Holy Grail of climate warming models. The modelers ignored the
evidence from direct measurements of CO2 in atmospheric air indicating
that in 19th century its average concentration was 335 ppmv[11] (Figure
2). In Figure 2 encircled values show a biased selection of data
used to demonstrate that in 19th century atmosphere the CO2 level was
292 ppmv[12]. A study of stomatal frequency in fossil leaves from
Holocene lake deposits in Denmark, showing that 9400 years ago CO2
atmospheric level was 333 ppmv, and 9600 years ago 348 ppmv, falsify
the concept of stabilized and low CO2 air concentration until the
advent of industrial revolution [13].
Improper manipulation of data, and arbitrary rejection of readings that
do not fit the pre-conceived idea on man-made global warming is common
in many glaciological studies of greenhouse gases. In peer reviewed
publications I exposed this misuse of science [3, 9]. Unfortunately,
such misuse is not limited to individual publications, but also appears
in documents of national and international organizations. For example
IPCC not only based its reports on a falsified “Siple curve”, but also
in its 2001 report[14] used as a flagship the “hockey curve” of
temperature, showing that there was no Medieval Warming, and no Little
Ice Age, and that the 20th century was unusually warm. The curve was
credulously accepted after Mann et al. paper published in NATURE
magazine[15]. In a crushing criticism, two independent groups of
scientists from disciplines other than climatology [16, 17] (i.e. not
supported from the annual pool of many billion “climatic” dollars),
convincingly blamed the Mann et al. paper for the improper manipulation
and arbitrary rejections of data. The question arises, how such
methodically poor paper, contradicting hundreds of excellent studies
that demonstrated existence of global range Medieval Warming and Little
Ice Age, could pass peer review for NATURE? And how could it pass the
reviewing process at the IPCC? The apparent scientific weaknesses
of IPCC and its lack of impartiality, was diagnosed and criticized in
the early 1990s in NATURE editorials [18, 19]. The disease, seems
to be persistent.
Conclusion
The basis of most of the IPCC conclusions on anthropogenic causes and
on projections of climatic change is the assumption of low level of CO2
in the pre-industrial atmosphere. This assumption, based on
glaciological studies, is false. Therefore IPCC projections should not
be used for national and global economic planning. The climatically
inefficient and economically disastrous Kyoto Protocol, based on IPCC
projections, was correctly defined by President George W. Bush as
“fatally flawed”. This criticism was recently followed by the President
of Russia Vladimir V. Putin. I hope that their rational views might
save the world from enormous damage that could be induced by
implementing recommendations based on distorted science.
References
1. Jaworowski, Z., Stable lead in fossil ice and
bones. Nature, 1968. 217: p. 152-153.
2. Mulvaney, R., E.W. Wolff, and K. Oates, Sulpfuric
acid at grain goundaries in Antarctic ice. Nature, 1988. 331(247-249).
3. Jaworowski, Z., T.V. Segalstad, and N. Ono, Do
glaciers tell a true atmospheric CO2 story? The Science of the Total
Environment, 1992. 114: p. 227-284.
4. Shoji, H. and C.C. Langway Jr., Volume relaxation
of air inclusions in a fresh ice core. Journal of Physical Chemistry,
1983. 87: p. 4111-4114.
5. Neftel, A., et al., Evidence from polar ice cores
for the increase in atmospheric CO2 in the past two centuries. Nature,
1985. 315: p. 45-47.
6. Friedli, H., et al., Ice core record of the
13C/12C ratio of atmospheric CO2 in the past two centuries. Nature,
1986. 324: p. 237-238.
7. IPCC, Climate Change - The IPCC Scientific
Assessment. ed. J.T. Houghton et al. 1990, Cambridge University Press:
Cambridge, pp. 364.
8. Boden, T.A., P. Kanciruk, and M.P. Farrel, TRENDS
'90 - A Compendium of Data on Global Change. 1990, Oak Ridge National
Laboratory: Oak Ridge, Tennssee, pp. 257.
9. Jaworowski, Z., Ancient atmosphere - validity of
ice records. Environ. Sci. & Pollut. Res., 1994. 1(3): p. 161-171.
10. Schwander, J., et al., The age of the air in the
firn and the ice at Summit, Greenland. J. Geophys. Res., 1993. 98(D2):
p. 2831-2838.
11. Slocum, G., Has the amount of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere changed significantly since the beginning of the
twentieth century? Month. Weather Rev., 1955(October): p. 225-231.
12. Callendar, G.S., On the amount of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere. Tellus, 1958. 10: p. 243-248.
13. Wagner, F., et al., Century-scale shifts in Early
Holocene atmospheric CO2 concentration. Science, 1999. 284: p.
1971-1973.
14. IPCC, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis.,
ed. J.T. Houton et al. 2001, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.
892.
15. Mann, M.E., R.S. Bradley, and M.K. Hughes,
Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six
centuries. Nature, 1998. 392: p. 779-787.
16. Soon, W., et al., Reconstructing Climatic and
Environmental Changes of the past 1000 years: A Reappraisal. Energy
& Environment, 2003. 14: p. 233-296.
17. McIntyre, S. and R. McKitrick, Corrections to the
Mann et al. (1998) proxy data base and Northern hemispheric average
temperature series. Energy & Environment, 2003. 14(6): p. 751-771.
18. Editorial, A., IPCC's ritual on global warming.
Nature, 1994. 371: p. 269.
19. Maddox, J., Making global warming public
property. Nature, 1991. 349: p. 189.
