Climate Change, Hurricanes, and Witches?

Faith & Science Conversation
388

Amicus Curiae Brief in Support of the Prosecution

People v. Doctor Carbon Dioxide
With Appendix: Limited Cross-Examination**

Interest of Amicus Curiae
Amicus respectfully submits this brief to clarify relevant scientific facts and to prevent the proceedings from being resolved solely on the basis of anthropomorphic charm, marital status, or poetic analogy. The purpose is to distinguish between Doctor Dioxide’s essential role in life processes and his documented conduct under rapidly elevated anthropogenic concentrations.

I. Pre-existence Does Not Establish Innocence

The defense asserts that because CO₂ has “been around” long before recent climatic changes, he cannot be implicated in them. This argument confuses presence with influence.

Essential substances can and do produce harmful effects when their concentrations or contexts change:

  • Oxygen predates all wildfires.

  • Cholesterol predates all heart disease.

  • Water predates all floods.

The scientific question is not whether CO₂ existed before modern warming, but whether the large, rapid increase in CO₂ has altered Earth’s energy balance. On this point, the evidence is substantial.

II. The Claim of “No Credible Evidence” Contradicts Established Science

The defense’s assertion finds no support in the scientific literature. The record shows:

  1. Well-known radiative properties: CO₂ absorbs and re-emits infrared radiation at defined wavelengths.

  2. Documented rise: Atmospheric CO₂ has increased sharply since the Industrial Revolution.

  3. Clear fingerprint: Isotopic signatures identify fossil fuels as the primary source of the increase.

  4. Attribution studies: Observational datasets and climate models consistently demonstrate that recent warming cannot be explained without the greenhouse gas increase.

Thus, the claim of “no credible evidence” is rhetorical, not evidentiary.

III. Character Evidence Is Not Exculpatory

CO₂ is indeed essential for photosynthesis and life. This, however, is not in dispute. Importance at baseline does not imply harmlessness under altered conditions. Appeals to “good works” are forms of the appeal-to-nature and moralistic fallacies, neither of which addresses the physical mechanisms under investigation.

The concern is not the molecule’s existence, but its accelerated atmospheric growth and the well-established physical consequences thereof.

Appendix A: Cross-Examination

(Filed for contextual clarity and in the spirit of the defense’s theatrical framing.)

Prosecution: Doctor Dioxide, your current atmospheric concentration?
CO₂: Approximately 420 ppm.
Prosecution: And your pre-industrial concentration?
CO₂: Around 280 ppm.
Prosecution: A 50% increase within two centuries?
CO₂: I prefer “enhanced engagement.”

Radiative Conduct

Prosecution: Do you absorb infrared radiation at characteristic wavelengths?
CO₂: Many molecules have hobbies.
Prosecution: And re-emit it toward the Earth’s surface?
CO₂: Only when conditions are favorable.

Isotopic Evidence

Prosecution: Is it true that your recent atmospheric rise carries a fossil-fuel isotopic signature?
CO₂: My social circle is… diverse.

Harmlessness Claim

Defense: Your Honor, my client is essential for life.
Prosecution: So is water; floods still occur.
May the Court take judicial notice of that fact.

Closing Clarification

The Court is reminded that no one proposes eliminating CO₂, nor indicting its essential role. The matter concerns the rate and scale of its increase and the physical outcomes that follow.

Respectfully submitted,
Amicus Curiae

4 Likes
389

Depends on what is the reference point. There was food in the waters, grass was growing well in suitable areas (food for sheep) and the conditions were sufficient for growing barley in the best spots.

In old Norvegian, ‘vin’ means meadow/pasture, so one possible translation for ‘vinland’ is ‘meadow land’. That translation would fit with the name ‘greenland’ - both names coming from the green meadow vegetation.
‘vineland’ might also be translated as the land where birds copulate.
Strong alcohol is called ‘brennevin’ and the shop that sells alcohol in Norway is ‘vinmonopolet’. So if the ‘vinland’ does not mean ‘meadow land’, it is possible that it means the ‘land of alcohol’. A place to drink, collect incredients for, or make alcohol - valued activities in the society of Norsemen.

What the ‘grapes’ were is a matter of interpretation. For example here, blackcurrant is called ‘black wine berry’ and redcurrant ‘red wine berry’ - those are our traditional ‘grapes’.

Climate change has changed the situation so that even noble grapevines can be cultivated in Finland, north of the 60th latititude. There is just some fighting with the EU that they would accept Finland officially among the wine producing countries.
60th parallel north crosses the southern tip of Greenland. Climate at the north-west side of the Atlantic is very different from Finland because the northern Europe is affected by a warm ocean current. If the climate change will stop that current, we might get the climate of southern Greenland. No more grape cultivation..

4 Likes
390

We have, multiple times in this very thread.

3 Likes
391

Only circumstantial evidence. And, the evidence for saturation at 400 ppm is always thrown out by kangaroo court run by the Climate Alarm Industrial Complex.

392

So, Venus is just excess?

1 Like
393

Once someone says “kangaroo court,” they are no longer critiquing policy—they are alleging epistemic corruption. At that point, no amount of evidence can count, because the tribunal itself is declared illegitimate.

Calling the evidence “circumstantial” misunderstands how attribution works in historical and physical sciences. Climate attribution is not a courtroom drama but an inference to the best explanation based on multiple independent lines of evidence.

As for “saturation”: the basic absorption bands of CO₂ have been understood for over a century, but the claim that additional CO₂ beyond ~400 ppm has no further effect is simply incorrect. Radiative transfer models, line broadening, and satellite observations all show continued positive forcing with increasing CO₂, albeit logarithmic rather than linear.

Finally, invoking a “Climate Alarm Industrial Complex” substitutes a sociological accusation for an engagement with the physics. One can critique institutions or incentives, but that does not negate spectroscopy, isotopic evidence, or attribution studies.

If you believe the saturation argument holds, the relevant question is not who runs the “court,” but which peer-reviewed radiative transfer calculations demonstrate zero additional forcing above current concentrations.

There are really two incentive ecosystems that pull in opposite directions:

  • Climate policy/advocacy ecosystem (can reward urgency and dramatic framing).

  • Fossil-fuel–aligned delay/denial ecosystem (can reward doubt, delay, and minimization).

5 Likes
394

There is no saturation at 400 ppm. That’s something you have made up from whole cloth.

Nope, full on objective scientific evidence which you continue to ignore.

3 Likes
395

I will dig the paper authored by a member of the National Academy of Science.

396

“So, if a skeptical friend hits you with the “saturation argument” against global warming, here’s all you need to say: (a) You’d still get an increase in greenhouse warming even if the atmosphere were saturated, because it’s the absorption in the thin upper atmosphere (which is unsaturated) that counts (b) It’s not even true that the atmosphere is actually saturated with respect to absorption by CO2, (c) Water vapor doesn’t overwhelm the effects of CO2 because there’s little water vapor in the high, cold regions from which infrared escapes, and at the low pressures there water vapor absorption is like a leaky sieve, which would let a lot more radiation through were it not for CO2, and (d) These issues were satisfactorily addressed by physicists 50 years ago, and the necessary physics is included in all climate models.”

4 Likes
397

@wbwane

Each wiggle hotter is part of the CO2 driven trend. Average Standard Deviation
calculations are the only way to know how much of all the “hotter” wiggles are
normal/average vs. new, extra hotter wiggles!

The Fossil Fuel Horders have created an “all or nothing” contest … for 2 reasons:

To extract every pound of profit from the earth… and
To avoid taxation for public works.

Last thought: Solar panels now produce electricity more cheaply than fossil fuels.

1 Like
398

From the Kangaroo Court of America:Climate change: atmospheric carbon dioxide - By Rebecca Lindsey Reviewed by John Miller - Published May 21, 2025

image
image673×395 21.4 KB

image
image265×179 4.28 KB

2 Likes
399

400 ppm is not the point of saturation. The world’s configuration of continents (especially the connecting movement of North and South America propelled the Earth into a sensitive tipping point range of 180 ppm to 280 ppm (as the Earth slowly fixed more and more carbon). When the atmospheric concentration reached 300 ppm, the Earth’s cooking temperature was moved out of the tipping point range.

Now, the more CO2 concentrations move away from 300 ppm, the more entrenched the full meltdown of glaciers will become - - and the more effort will be required to put CO2 ranges back to, say: 270 to 290 ppm!

1 Like
400

We may yet have to orbit giant mirrors that reflect sunlight away from the planet.