The Science of CO2: Debunking the Saturation Myth

Is the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide saturated? Is CO2 already absorbing all the infrared (heat) energy that it can? Does this mean CO2 can’t cause global warming or climate change? This argument was first proposed by Knut Ångström over a century ago and it continues to be used by science deniers and so called climate ‘skeptics’ today. In this video we investigate the history and science behind it, explain why it is wrong and debunk William Happer in the process. Watch on to find out more!

Videos debunking Happer’s other claims:

Further Reading on the ‘saturation argument’:

Further reading on the Greenhouse Effect/Infrared radiation:

On the History of Greenhouse Theory:

Landmark Climate Studies which refuted Angstrom:

Modern Studies linking present warming to CO2:

Happer's own estimates of greenhouse warming from doubling CO2 (which contradict his claims of saturation):

A meta-analysis of hundreds of studies calculating the warming expected from doubling CO2:

Media Credits:
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[ericruijten]

Ok. Why did Ängstrøm found a saturation at any level of CO2, because most probably he used glass. Glass is a enormous absorber of infrared.
You focus alike anyone only on the infrarode absorbance. Earth is made up of silica. When you heat air, that is possible without CO2. On a hot summer day you see the vibrating air go up. That is more than your 0.04% CO2. Apart from a possible intra molecular vibration, Co2 is also enjoying the wild inter molecular vibration. It is alike you have 8000 disco-goers jumping up and down. Amongst them the reincarnations of Michael Jackson, Tom Jones and Elvis. Because apart from jumping alike an idiot, they can also move their pelvis, do you think they can influence the whole mass of 8000?!? Really?! Water has also IR absorbence. However is does so much more. It creates clouds. Spoiler alert, the sun's heat can't reach earth if there are clouds. So the weather is cooler. But also often not too cold, because the clouds also keep the warmth on earth. Oh good Lord, thank you for the water.
I never saw a CO2 cloud, by the way, did you?

[richarddobreny]

Increased CO2 causes global greening. Ask any greenhouse operator. There were a couple of Irish physicists that proved that infrared absorbed by CO2 is immediately released. Their paper seems to have been buried. Troposphere measurements have not shown heating. Water vapour is the greatest greenhouse gas and it overlaps absorption

[jamesdond]

Try to get a government grant on this subject if you don't support the idea that CO2 levels are bad for the environment. The divide on this issue is between those on the government grants and those who have been rejected by grant makers. Follow the money...

[giorgiocooper]

Maybe it would be smarter to debunk the “climate crises” myths !

[pcwalter]

Give a guy a mic, camera and Youtube channel and he immediately becomes an expert...

[roblouw]

I think both you and Prof Happer have possibly got it wrong. Near the earth's surface, CO2 molecules absorb infrared radiation in particular frequency bands. The 14 to 16 micron band is the most important band. As you have said, near the earth's surface, the opacity of CO2 is nearly 100% in the 14 to 16 micron range. What you have omitted to say is that due to the process of thermalisation, the air near the earth's surface heats up (its molecular kinetic energy increases) and expands. This causes fast rising convection currents. The thermalisation process is reversible and hence it continues all the way up through the atmosphere with CO2 both absorbing and emitting photons. Excited CO2 molecules radiate in all directions and the higher you go, the less the concentration of CO2 per cubic meter becomes. Thus the higher you go the greater the probability that an infrared photon can escape to space. Those photons which are radiated back towards earth cannot reach the ground because the opacity of CO2 increases as you near the ground. Logic suggests that convection actually plays a very significant role in the earth to space heat transfer process. Generally, scan mention is made of this process. Please correct me if I am wrong.

[samshicks]

Dr. Happer is correct. Here is the scientific explanation. The CO2 spectrum is opaque where it is the most effective at low altitudes in the 14.5-16 um wavelength. This is where the barn is pained red with multiple coats at pre-industrial level CO2 concentrations. Although absorption in the 14 um band occurs at 10 kilometers due to increasing CO2 concentrations which has the effect of widening the absorption band due to bending mode quantum states, the air at this altitude is such low density and as such has no effect on the adiabatic lapse rate and any heat absorbed at these altitudes is free to radiate to space. This explains why rising CO2 levels since the industrial revolution have had no appreciable effect on the average global temperatures.

[joeyjojoshabbado]

So the infra red wavelengths impeded by co2 are all ready saturated and William is correct that increasing co2 will only have a negligible effect here on.

[joeyjojoshabbado]

You look like someone Elton john orders when he’s feeling a bit peckish

[iamfromthegov]

the world economic forum controls the narrative

[logofreetv]

The first two minutes of this video are enough to seriously diminish the credibility of this channel's creator. COVID was more than enough to prove medical information and scientific research can be seriously corrupted by money and thus means the oft-repeated 'you need to publish peer-reviewed studies' etc. retort is now more widely known as a very weak argument.

[MyThingsRedux]

In a 2019 paper Happer takes into account the different concentrations and layers of the upper atmosphere. Your video didn’t mention that. Moreover, I had not heard anything about the CO2 effect being saturated in any of my 37 years on the planet and daily climate change stories, until I found Happer. I assumed doubling CO2 would double the warming effect. The fact that it increases it by only 1% blew my mind. The entire public has been gravely misled. Happer’s work should be publicised more, and that’s what I’m going to do. You post-script the vid mentioning generic logical fallacies but spend the video employing them, undermining Happer as “not a climate scientist”, when the first “climate change degree” began in only 2018! There is no real qualification “climate scientist”. Your facile tone and manner accords with your facile content. Downvoted!

[damiencronin]

Happer says CO2 can only absorb IR radiation at certain wavelengths alot of which is absorbed by H2O anyway. Once those wavelengths have been absorbed theres none left. He also explains that the heat gradient is WHY the greenhouse effect ( far from not understanding its existence) is there and if u reverse it CO2 works the other way around. eg Antarctic winter. You seem to treat all "heat" the same when its wavelength that matters for each different molecule.

[wrath]

You talk about the absorbtion of heat by CO2, do you mean Planck energy in the form of photons? Your animation shows the photons being re-emitted. How long is the CO2 molecule in the unstable state whilst it holds this energy? Does the nature of the photon change when it is re-emitted? Clearly it must as work has been done making the molecule flex. How often is the photon energy converted into kinetic energy through contact with the vastly greater number of Oxygen and Nitrogen that surround each CO2 molecule? The interaction with CO2 is a quantum effect and therefore the energy of photons that it interacts with is limited. If the photon energy is changing with each interaction, how long before it is no longer of the correct energy? As Dr Hopper is involved with CO2 lasers might he not have a very sound understanding of the way CO2 interacts with photons? Are you saying that if I measure the photon energy that CO2 interacts with at the surface, I will detect the same value as I ascend towards Space? Is the warming caused only by the delay in the photons leaving?

[stephenwalton]

Interesting counter argument. I do note that.1 As with just about anyone else you do not mention water vapour, a gas conc 25 to 50 times more than CO2 in the atmosphere and a more powerful absorber of infra red. 2 If plant have adapted to lower CO2 levels, why is the earth greening and why does its increase to 1000ppm in greenhouses increase yields? 3. Where does accounting for black body radiation appear in your argument.4 As a geologist you will know we have had ice ages when CO2 levels were much higher. 5 Failure to increase CO2 levels would have eventually resulted in them falling to a critical 150ppm level, resulting in plant death and extinction of all life in a couple of million years time.
However, always good to hear arguments like yours as it tests the basis of what the unbrainwashed believe to be correct.

[yngve]

But, the troposphere is not warming! Thanks for wasting our time tonight!

[nyali]

What you have presented here is your opinion. Please make a detailed video about the exact math of co2 Ir absorption and correlated climate change (exact). We can safely assume that CO2 levels will reach 450 in a few years, could you please calculate for us the exact sea level rise for instance? I am eager to see such a calculation.
Did I get it correct, that you were calming that the upper atmosphere is warming due to higher CO2 ppm? trapping more heat as you have claimed.. Can we have some data on it? After all we have more than doubled CO2 ppm since pre industrial.
I agree with you, science shouldn't be about opinions, it should be about calculations which can explain all historical events and can predict the future. Please show us those working models.
Lastly Happer didn't publish any climate papers as he is a physicist, his comments were merely about co2. I assume you can easily show us calculations, or models which would dismiss his claims...

[bp]

Within the first couple of minutes he says 'the scientific consensus' and then he says science is not based on opinion. Consensus is opinion, not evidence

[DANGJOS]

@All About Climate Nice video! I'm so glad you addressed this topic because it's one of the more ostensibly convincing ones. Also, the end of the video is so important; people use those arguments all the time.

If I may, I think a few things might make your arguments more convincing. One would be showing some of the satellite measurements that directly measure how much radiation is leaving the atmosphere.
Another might be addressing the common argument that water's absorption band overlaps with carbon dioxide's such that carbon dioxide's infrared absorption is obsolete.

[jiraiyagoketsu]

So, what is the Plank blackbody temperature that radiates 15um IR? Plug that value into a Wien's Law calculator to find out. -80C. So if I understand my physics correctly, a photon emitted by a -80 blackbody cannot warm anything else higher than -80C. A CO2 molecule that absorbed a photon of 15um (heat as described in the video) will give off that energy in two ways - Conduction to another molecule, or emission of another photon. Conduction, will statistically divide the energy absorbed by the CO2 molecule by two, converting to kinetic energy, and re-emission will return statistically 50% back to the earth, and 50% to space.