Nuclear scientist Digby Macdonald said that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not the primary driver of global temperature changes.
In a recent episode of EpochTV’s Bay Area Innovators program, Macdonald said that temperature rises first, followed by CO2.
He pointed to the example of a carbonated drink and how a rise in temperature will cause the drink to release its CO2 faster, causing it to go flat.
“That’s the very reason why you put your beer in a refrigerator,” he said. “If you want the fizzy drink to be tangy … you put it in the refrigerator so the CO2 remains in the drink.”
Macdonald said one of the reasons for the change in climate is the Milankovitch cycle—the regular variations in the elliptical path the earth travels around the sun.
He said that cycle changes every 100,000 years and an ice age occurs when it’s the most elliptical because the earth is receiving a lot less solar radiation and heat.
This cycle, combined with the earth’s wobble and sunspot activity, are the drivers of climate, he said.
“There’s nothing that you and I can do about that,” Macdonald said. “That’s okay, because if we rely upon the historical record, we go through these maxima and minima.”
He said during the Roman period it was one of the maxima, in which temperatures were about two to four degrees higher than now, and there was a large advance in civilization.
The rest is here, but you get the point
Delusions of Adequacy 