Why CO2 Isn’t Pollution.

Links to information mentioned in this video:
Scientific Facts on CO2:

Lecture by Professor William Happer PHD on Carbon Dioxide:

Time Stamps

0:00 Intro and friendly chat.
2:30 Opening remarks on CO2.
6:05 Gases in our atmosphere by %.
10:16 Why people are worried about CO2.
13:21 The benefits of CO2.
23:50 Why we won’t cook to death.
27:00 Warm weather is better.
31:05 Ice melt and sea levels.
35:40 Politicians and follow the money.
39:00 End

Air pollution definition:

“the presence in or introduction into the air of a substance which has harmful or poisonous effects…”

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Reg.

[madrx]

This is why you're a bike mechanic.

[peglor]

Increased CO2 does mean plants grow bigger, but the nutrient levels in these plants declines. Part of this is due to highly intensive farming, combined with farms being paid by mass rather than by quality for most of the crops they grow, but my understanding is that even plants grown in less stressed environments are still less nutritious. The reason is that CO2 is used by plants to make sugars/carbohydrates. More CO2 means more energy in the plants (Good for making biofuels and fuelling endurance cyclists), but it means that more has to be eaten to get the same vitamin and mineral levels as a century ago.

The average temperature increase does not mean everywhere sees just that temperature change. It also ignores the real danger of shifts in climate, where it runs into a positive feedback loop - one example is methane (A 25 times stronger, but more short lived greenhouse gas than CO2) stored in polar ice. As more of this melts, more methane is released, the atmosphere warms more, releasing more methane again to warm more, and so on, leading to a massive amplification of the warming initially caused by CO2. Methane is natural gas incidentally - one counterintuitive thing you see is oil rigs flaring their methane - literally burning methane that comes up with the oil in the well in a huge flame on top of the rig rather than spending the money to store and ship it as it's too small a fraction of the well to be profit making. As bad as it looks, this flaring is more environmentally friendly than just leaking methane out because it turns the methane to CO2 and water which have less effect than the methane would.

The other big worry about climate change is the disruption of ocean and air currents around the planet. One particularly pertinent example, given you're from the UK is the disruption of the warm ocean current circulating from the Gulf of Mexico to the North Atlantic. If this is disrupted, expect the UK to have winters more like Newfoundland (Which is the same latitude with no the warming current) than the current cold temperate maritime climate.

Also, a global change of 0.5 degrees, applied to the planet's oceans, means plenty of thermal expansion, so even if ice wasn't melting off the polar landmasses, sea levels will rise just due to this effect anyway. There are whole island systems in the Pacific particularly which are likely to be uninhabitable in the coming years due to this rise - they're already losing land to the ocean, and some of them are only a meter or two above sea level as it is. There's a possibility that the stronger storms will mean the high parts of these islands will get higher, but this is at the expense of the lower parts. As for ground levels rising when ice loads are removed, that's definitely true, but most of the areas where people live aren't under a thick ice sheet, so this is no help to the levels of the land that matters to humans.

Also keep in mind that the sea is absorbing a huge percentage of the CO2 released to the atmosphere, so what we're measuring in the atmosphere is a small fraction of what's actually been released. Water gets more acidic as it absorbs more CO2, which is the cause of the bleaching of coral reefs, and there's a limit to how much the sea can continue to absorb, so atmospheric levels will climb massively more quickly if this limit is reached (Over longer time periods, this carbon dioxide is converted to carbonate compounds in rock, but this isn't happening quickly enough to deal with the rate CO2 is being released).

Unfortunately scientists don't know anything like enough about the sea to make definite predictions on this, so we'll find out when we hit it and at that point it'll be way too late. Also keep in mind that about 1% of the excess energy from greenhouse gases is held in the atmosphere, 90% is in the oceans, so the 0.5 degree warming you talk about is the effect of 1% of the excess energy being held due to CO2 (And other greenhouse gas) emissions.

In terms of the historical CO2 levels being higher, you're absolutely correct, but that was happening over timescales of millions of years, not over a century or two, so nature had time to adapt to this. Also the planet wasn't supporting billions of people with access to extremely powerful weapons - climate change won't kill the planet, but it's not going to be a nice place to live once we miss a few harvests over a significant part of the planet and countries start to get hungry. The planet will carry on regardless of the changes to the climate, but humanity, especially in it's current highly interconnected state, will not.

[adamalpinecycling]

Oh, silly me! There I was, reading up on studies about the impact of anthropogenic climate change from scientific experts in journals and such, and all along I should've been listening to some random bloke on a bike in Brunei. 
Interesting location though. I'm sure it's purely a coincidence that the guy who has the special insight as to why all the scientists are wrong about carbon happens to live in a place whose economy is almost entirely supported by exports of crude oil and natural gas. You've won me over. I'm trading my EV in for an SUV. Great job! lol

[DennisNowland]

All the scientists are wrong and you are right? Well, one way or another it smacks of conspiracy to me.

[genericgoogleaccount]

The main problem with this argument is your lack of credibility. You have listed one source in the description, which clearly has a pretty high level of bias. It's not reasonable to claim that extensive research done over years is incorrect according to a single source of questionable credibility. Even assuming that everything you said is correct, what you have in this video is not enough evidence to prove anything. Proof requires not just entensive research, but either primary testing and data collection or data from a reliable, proven source. I do not believe the C02 Coalition Website to be a credible source. In the C02 Coalition under the "get the facts" section there are numerous resources that support your claims, however there is no source for this information and for all I know they could have just pulled it out of their ass. This really damages the credibility of your argument because the source of all of your information is either unproven or uncited. It's unreasonable for you to provide a giant bibliography full of peer-reviewed reliable sources but keep in mind that the research and evidence you are claiming to be incorrect does have this. You're allowed to have your opinion but I know which one I'm going to believe.

[morrisizing]

Co2 absorbs and emits IR radiation which causes it to vibrate. The CO2 molecules can transfer the energy it gained from the absorbed IR photon to another molecule, adding speed to that molecule's motion. Since the temperature of a gas is a measure of the speed of the molecules in the gas, the faster motion of a molecule that eventually results from the IR photon that was absorbed by a CO2 molecule raises the temperature of the gases in the atmosphere. This is physics. A warmer planet = higher sea-levels and the issues this causes. Parts of the world rely on glacial melt water for irrigation etc e.g parts of India and China. None of this has anything to do with plants use of Co2 (they also require increases in other nutrients for sustainable growth).

[maze]

I agree that calling the rise in CO2 and subsequently temperature "the end of the world" makes no sense. The planet does not care and, as you mentioned, life has adapted in the past and will do so in the future. I actually like the term climate change because it is just that, no more and no less.
While I think most of your facts are right (except for the ocean not rising, because it simply is measurably rising), in my opinion your interpretation of them fails to consider scale in time and space and that major shifts in global climate historically have led to the previously dominant species and a majority of the accompanying biosphere to go extinct. As we humans are currently the dominant species, I personally could do without that. So maybe call it not the end of the world, but the end of the world humans evolved for.
Here comes into play what I mean with scale in time and space: the problem with our current warming period is that it is happening more than 100 times faster than any previous one. Meaning climate zones will geographically shift faster than natural evolution will be able to keep up with. Generalist plants and animals or better adapted species (or invasive species, if you like) would have an easier time adjusting to the changes and would supersede specialists leading to a loss in biodiversity that could have unpredictable effects.
All that being said, I still think we are technologically advanced enough to counter the most grievous fallout of that with targeted planting, breeding and in a few decades maybe even some cheeky gene manipulations here or there. The real problem I see is that people will also have to adapt. Even if extreme weather events do not increase in number (and I personally think they will, since more warmth means more energy means more volatility in the global weather system) they will occur in different places, where they previously did not occur. This means most likely in places where humans historically have settled, because there were specifically no such occurrence. Furthermore, where what type of food can be grown will change. I live in central Europe. For us it’s great and maybe we’ll be able to grow more citrus fruits in the future. But there are regions in this world where it will become impossible to grow any food.
Again, I think we could technologically overcome all of this, but now we get to the elephant in the room. All these effects hit the world’s underdeveloped regions the hardest. They do not have the means to mitigate the effects themselves. Obviously, this will lead to large population migrations. And to get back to your fear of large-scale nuclear war, I think there is no better spark to ignite that particular powder keg than an uncontrolled mass migration of billions of people.
So I think at least slowing down climate change by reducing CO2 emissions to a manageable amount, while simultaneously preparing for the shift in biosphere, especially in underdeveloped regions, is the best thing we can do. Which is pretty simple, since we only need to unite all nations behind a common purpose. Turns out CO2 really isn’t the problem, but just us puny little humans again.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

PS: I really like “riding and rambling” style videos, keep ‘em coming.

[ESHEW]

Road biker...checks out. This is "science" like road biking is "fun"

[epichiphopsquirrel]

This is just a gross repetition of pro-oil talking points. Both co2 coalition and Happer are know sources of oil propaganda, funding bs studies in a similar way the tobacco industry did for so long. Disgraceful for any cyclist to fall for this absolute malarky

[berndborte]

I'll go through your chapters one-by-one and respond to them in separate comment.

Yes, there is only ~0.04% CO2 in the atmosphere. But small numbers may also have a huge impact. Actually there is already enough CO2 in the air, that a ray of light originating from the ground will be guaranteed to pass through a CO2 molecule on it's way out of the atmosphere.

Think about it like fog. When it's foggy, there is just a very small amount of water vapor in the air. You can look through a single layer of water droplets easily, but in 100 meters you can barely distinguish anything.

Now, consider that the "CO2-fog" is 20 km thick only to leave the troposphere!

[krzysiu]

We’ll just move a bit inland when the sea rises?
What about all the people living on low lying islands?
What’s the name of the physicist who is so superior to climate scientists?

[cyclingfastest]

At 1500ppm CO2 in a room, fatigue will appear. At about 100.000ppm you'll die, if you stay there for longer. 400ppm is the natural air. So go and breath long enough some CO2 cartridges. I don't mind if you wanna try it?! 😂

[Jdonnellan]

Love your videos, just one little thing, when you talk about concentration maybe your not fully understanding what parts per million means, percentage is just parts per hundred. So one is equivalent to the other if you know what I mean. So when someone says parts per million of 421 that means the percentage is 0.0421, at really low concentrations it’s a much easier way to say it and that’s the only reason why it’s used. To illustrate it a bit better;
421 parts per million
42.1 parts per hundred thousand
4.21 parts per ten thousand
0.421 parts per one thousand
0.0421 parts per hundred (percentage)

[jbkltc]

you are just wrong. sorry to say but you, as you have yourself no expertise in this field (which is totally ok), have been influenced by some misinformation campaign.
If you keep posting stuff like that, you'll loose me as a follower as i won't deal with this bs.

[stevenaaus]

Haha.. Totally ignorant of the science of the greenhouse effect. Nice ride video.

[sabamacx]

At what ppm does CO2 start to cause cognitive impairment? At current rate of air CO2 ppm increase, at which year does cognitive impairment start to manifest globally?

[hereticalinfidelical]

Oh what a shocker. All credibility lost in one video.
Its not about opinion, its science. You are very badly informed.

[Wol]

“Pollution is the introduction of harmful materials into the environment.”
Simple really.
If you disagree with the overwhelming consilience re. global warming please give reasons. If you disagree with the definition of pollution that’s your opinion.
It should be perfectly obvious that something can be at the same time good and bad. Water is essential to life but will drown you just the same. CO2 is essential for plant life but also causes warming which in time may extinguish plant life if it can’t evolve quickly enough.
Simple.

[sarahtoustra]

I agree with 99.99% of everything in this video. The remaining 0.01% being the yellow bar tape 😂

[joshsouthan]

Just watched generally agree apart from the bit about ice squashing rocks . Have to fact check your numbers .