by Ed Berry, PhD
On September 7, 2018, I introduced the Climate Equivalence Principle (CEP) at the climate conference in Porto, Portugal. Above is my Slide #10.
CEP says that because we cannot distinguish between human and natural-derived carbon atoms or CO2 molecules, they are identical and flow through the carbon cycle at the same rates.
CEP falsifies the claim that human CO2 stays in the air longer than natural CO2 because that claim needs an impossible Magic Demon to separate human CO2 from natural CO2. CEP overturns all climate laws because all climate laws ASSUME human CO2 stays in the air longer than natural CO2.
CEP overturns the Endangerment Finding legally and is President Trump’s best way to defend his climate policies because CEP is a principle that cannot be overturned.
The recent DOE climate report cannot defend President Trump’s climate policies because it incorrectly assumes CEP is false, and this scientific error opens the door for Trump’s adversaries to defeat him in court.
Richard Courtney, UK climate reviewer, wrote that my use of CEP is the only true breakthrough in climate science since 1980.
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Ed,
Here is an argument that I get from another physicist who believes that Atmospheric CO2 is not yet saturated. This is what he says.
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No — atmospheric CO₂ is not saturated, and adding more CO₂ continues to warm the planet, though with diminishing incremental efficiency. This is one of the most common misconceptions in climate physics, and the authoritative sources make the situation very clear.
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I think that this is contra what Happer, Clauser, Wijngaarden, myself (Heinz Lycklama. PhD in Nuclear Physics) and Ed Berry? believe. Most physicists in the CO2 Coalition also believe like I do.
How would you respond to this other physicist?
Thanks.
Heinz
Dear Heinz,
We are talking about different subjects. To distinguish these subjects, I define the three core assumptions of the IPCC and all parties that assume human CO2 causes climate change.
These assumptions are:
1. Human CO2 emissions cause all the CO2 increase above 280 ppm.
2. This human-caused CO2 increase causes all global warming.
3. This human-caused global warming causes bad stuff to happen.
In this post, I am talking about Assumption (1). You are talking about Assumption (2). That is where the discussion of saturation exists.
Regarding Assumption (2), my position is that CO2 alone causes more heat to be trapped and more warming. BUT this warming effect is “saturated.” This means the CO2 level now is high enough that additional CO2 will have only a minor effect on warming.
Personally, I take Assumption (2) further. I believe the atmosphere adjusts water vapor and clouds in a way that compensates for any changes in the CO2 level. You can find more discussion of this subject on this website under Assumption (2). I would rather continue the discussion of Assumption (2) on the posts on that subject rather than here, which is about Assumption (1).
Ed, here is this physicist’ complete response. Let me know if you have a contrary explanation from anyone on CO2 saturation. His response is composed using AI.
Thanks.
Heinz
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Sorry, Heinz, but my other duties require me to speed up my replies with the help of AI, which replies to you as follows. What Angstrom and you write about saturation is pure nonsense, as is your claim that you are in the majority. You wish. Please stop bothering me with your pseudoscience.
No — atmospheric CO₂ is not saturated, and adding more CO₂ continues to warm the planet, though with diminishing incremental efficiency.
This is one of the most common misconceptions in climate physics, and the authoritative sources make the situation very clear.
🌡️ 1. The scientific consensus: CO₂ is not saturated
The Royal Society states unambiguously:
Adding more CO₂ will continue to increase surface temperatures.
The center of the 15 µm absorption band is saturated, but the wings and weaker bands are not.
Additional CO₂ absorbs more infrared energy in those unsaturated regions, causing further warming.
This is the mainstream physics accepted across atmospheric science.
🌈 2. Why “saturation” is a misunderstanding
The confusion dates back to early 20th‑century arguments (Ångström, etc.) that the main CO₂ band was already opaque. Modern spectroscopy shows:
The core of the 15 µm CO₂ band is saturated.
But the wings of the band continue to absorb more as CO₂ increases.
CO₂ also has many weaker absorption lines that are far from saturated.
This is why the greenhouse effect increases logarithmically with CO₂ concentration — not linearly, and not zero.
📡 3. Claims that CO₂ is “99% saturated” are not supported by mainstream physics
Some sources argue that CO₂ is already “fully saturated” and that additional CO₂ has “virtually no impact.”
These claims come from a small group of contrarian physicists and are not accepted by the scientific community.
The Royal Society, NASA, and every major atmospheric physics text contradict this interpretation.
📈 4. What actually happens as CO₂ increases
The radiative forcing from CO₂ follows:
[ \Delta F \propto \ln\left(\frac{C}{C_0}\right) ]
This logarithmic relationship means:
Each doubling of CO₂ adds roughly the same amount of warming.
The effect weakens per molecule, but never reaches zero.
There is no saturation point within any plausible future concentration.
This is exactly what satellite and surface measurements confirm.
🎯 Bottom line
No, atmospheric CO₂ is not saturated.
The central absorption band is saturated, but the wings and weaker bands are not — and these continue to absorb more infrared radiation as CO₂ rises.
The result is continued warming, consistent with laboratory spectroscopy, satellite observations, and modern climate models.
Dear Heinz,
My comment on your previous comment applies to your comment here.
This is a beautiful, simple, sound scientific explanation of the sinister man-made climate change dogma by people who want to conquer humanity and destroy the modern world.
We know people and organizations who wrongfully criticize Ed Berry’s science. They do the same for other well-meaning, qualified scientists and engineers. Those people and organizations are doing bad things like the climate change alarmists themselves.
We support Dr. Ed Berry and repost some of his articles.
The website: allaboutenergy.net is shutting down. It is being rebuilt at https://johnshanahan.substack.com/.
Substack.com is an easy to use and less expensive newsletter and website platform.
Great article, Ed—truly.
But right out of the gate you hit folks with “Climate Equivalence Principle” and it lands about as well as a skunk at a lawn party.
Most regular people hear “falsify the claim” and their eyes glaze over quicker than butter on a hot biscuit. They don’t speak lawyer or PhD; they speak plain English.
How about we just say it straight: “Natural CO2 and man-made CO2 are chemically the exact same thing—no difference you can spot, no difference in how fast they move through the air, plants, and oceans.”
Compare that to your original: “CEP says because we cannot distinguish between human and natural carbon atoms or CO2 molecules, they are identical and they flow through the carbon cycle at the same rates.”
Which one can a hardworking dad in overalls read once and actually get?
I know you’re a PhD physicist and this language feels natural to you—like breathing. But the folks you say you want to reach? They’re not sitting in a seminar; they’re trying to figure this out between shifts or while the kids are yelling.
You talk about making this accessible to regular people—bless your heart, why not start the article that way? Right now it’s an impenetrable wall of text that’d make a mule give up and go home.
And that “falsify the claim” bit? Just say “prove ’em wrong.” Simple as that. The science underneath is rock-solid; no need to dress it up in Sunday clothes nobody owns.
I’ve followed your work a long time and I admire it. I teach technical stuff to kids who barely know which end of a pencil to chew. Two rules I live by: spark their interest first, and break every big word down to something they already see every day—like explaining how ocean waves bounce off a piling before I ever say “propagation.”
If Einstein could explain relativity so a six-year-old could nod along, we can sure explain CO2 without sending folks running for the dictionary.
Keep up the good fight—just let the regular people in the door first.
I wholeheartedly agree. Except, apparently, normal people don’t read. I hear they scroll. So the words don’t matter. Pictures do. Videos would be even better. Maybe Grok could create a compelling mini-vid.
Dear Bonum,
Thank you indeed for your excellent comments on my wording.
Ed,
Do you really believe that a generation of physicists and climate scientists would mistakenly think that what you call “human carbon” and “natural carbon” behave differently as you claim? Nonsense. You continue to show that you do not understand the science you unsucessfully attempt to refute. You are the one that distinguishes between types of carbon. Everyone else just talks about “carbon”. Yes, you can find some who call the additional atmospheric carbon in the industrial age “anthropogenic carbon”. because we are responsible for putting it there. And yes, there is a difference between residence time and adjustment time which you have repeatedly shown that you either don’t understand or pretend not to understand.
So show me a serious mainstream paper that claims “human carbon” and “natural carbon” behave differently. You can’t. If you are confused about what a particular paper is saying, I will try to help you understand.
You might want to reread the article. No where does Ed claim that Human carbon and Natural carbon behave differently. In fact, here is Ed’s quote: “CEP says because we cannot distinguish between human and natural carbon atoms or CO2 molecules, they are identical and they flow through the carbon cycle at the same rates.”
Dear David,
I am happy to entertain our readers with your comments, but please engage your brain before you wiggle your fingers.
As Don R correctly points out, the IPCC, the CO2 Coalition, and the DOE climate report all ASSUME human carbon flows out of the atmosphere much slower than natural carbon. I will show quotes to support this fact later, but I am surprised that you are not aware of this fact.
Indeed, I “distinguish” between human and natural carbon when I describe the carbon cycle, but “distinguish” does not mean that I assume they behave differently. I specifically say they behave the same.
Is it that you cannot understand physics or that you cannot understand English?
Ed,
Go ahead and show me some quotes about anthropogenic carbon staying in the atmosphere longer. We only have a semantics problem. What your quotes will all mean is that the INCREASE (which is human caused) does not go away at a rate determined by the one way flows, because the natural exchanges are mostly balanced. Perfectly balanced natural exchanges would not change the carbon levels at all. Of course in the current era, natural absorption processes exceed natural emission processes (that is, the measured Net Global Uptake is positive) and natural processes are LOWERING atmospheric CO2 levels from what they would be without the natural exchanges.
You should study the difference between Residence Time and Adjustment Time, though there is some flawed writing on this.
Do you see how it is possible to talk about these things rationally without confusing yourself by treating “human” and “natural” carbon separately?
How can you claim that “because the natural exchanges are mostly balanced. “?
CO2 levels have varied tremendously over the earths lifespan.
What upset that ‘natural balance’, I cannot accept that nature has natural balance when climate varies so much from ice ages to warm periods?
Iain,
Yes, CO2 levels have varied a lot without help from humans. This link should get you to a graph of the last 800,000 years: https://www.climate.gov/media/16929
Studying the past is important. To understand the past CO2 variations, learn about Milankovitch cycles, and appreciate that warming oceans release CO2. I think you will agree, however, that the spike on the far right of the graph indicates that the present situation is different. Just because past changes were “natural” does not imply that present changes are.
For the present era, say the last 75 years, the slight annual imbalance of natural processes is a MEASURED quantity. It is the difference between annual human emissions and annual growth in atmospheric carbon, and is appropriately called Net Global Uptake. It has consistently been positive, meaning more carbon has been removed from the atmosphere by natural processes than they have put there. It has typically been about 55% of human emissions. Despite the fact that Nature is removing carbon from the atmosphere, the quantity remaining there is growing because of the ~45% of human emissions that are not removed.
As you correctly note, in the distant past when humans were irrelevent, a positive Net Global Uptake would imply atmospheric carbon was decreasing, and sometimes Net Global Uptake was negative when atmospheric carbon was growing.
David,
As I pointed out in another of Ed’s posts, there is very likely an increase in non-fossil fuel emissions simply due to the ten-fold increase in human population since the days of allegedly constant 280 ppm CO2 concentration. Articles indicating evidence to support this have been appearing in the literature lately. Before you demand a detailed accounting, let me also remind you that it is even more difficult, if not impossible, to prove the converse that natural inputs and outputs have remained the same for centuries or that natural exchanges are still mostly balanced as you claim. In addition, your simple math model of [deltaCO2 = Human emissions + Natural emissions – Total absorptions] is not physically meaningful in view of Dr Ed’s CEP, despite your attempts to invoke an isotopic exchange (iso-flux based) mechanism, aka “disequilibrium isotope fluxes.” Have you developed your qualitative arguments into a physically realistic model that fits the data yet? Without it, you are just exasperating the semantics problem.
Jim (and Ed)
You still don’t seem to understand that standard climate science makes no assumption about the stabillity of natural processes exchanging carbon between the atmosphere and land/sea reservoirs, nor about how precisely natural emissions and natural absorption are balanced. The MEASURED imbalance, called Net Global Uptake, has been positive for the last century, and has been increasing. That means that natural processes have removed more carbon from the atmosphere than they have added over the last century, proving that our emissions are the source of the rise.
Your summary of standard climate science’s (not mine) “simple math model” is not quite correct. You should repace “CO2” with carbon, as carbon is the conserved quantity. For example atmospheric CO2 removed by vegetation may return to the atmosphere as methane.
I have been unsuccessful in helping you understand Ed’s misconception about the insignificance of “human carbon” (or fossil fuel carbon) levels by making an analogy with disequilibrium isotopic fluxes, and treating “human carbon” as an isotope. But I won’t beat on that drum any more, since I can’t even get you to acknowledge that carbon conservation is “physically meaningful”.
Have fun with your spread sheets.
Hi David,
The thing called Net Global Uptake is a distracting and useless definition. It leads people astray. I don’t care if it is positive or negative.
The whole idea that “natural processes have removed more carbon from the atmosphere than they have added over the last century” proves nothing about the effect of human CO2 emissions on the CO2 increase above 280 ppm.
For your information, since you have not read any of my papers with any comprehension, all my calculations are in carbon mass. The only time I talk about CO2 is when I feel a need to help the public understand what my carbon calculations mean about CO2.
For modelling purposes, the proper way to calculate the effect of human carbon is to track human carbon atoms in their own partition of carbon atoms. This is what I do. To not do that is to not do proper physics.
(Hey, look. Now I can reply to my reply, and so can you.)
David,
“Standard climate science” is a construct which AI defines as “establishes that Earth is warming due to human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, primarily burning fossil fuels.” This opinion assumes the unproven H1 and H2 hypotheses and is based on so-called consensus science which is not really science. And I think I understand why you and the consensus want to avoid investigating the details of carbon exchange processes. If you want to hide laundering drug money, the best way to do it is just MEASURE the imbalance (profit/loss) and ignore reporting the transaction details.
The fact that natural processes remove more carbon than they add does not prove that emissions are the ONLY source of the rise of CO2. Your simple math argument ignores facts that the IPCC recognizes, namely that natural (non-fossil fuel) sources have increased about 40% in the industrial age to a point where they are twenty times more than fossil fuel sources. This ignorance apparently forces you to propose lame alternatives such as resurrecting CO2 as methane. Have you even looked into that as a realistic amount of carbon missing from your non-existent physically-plausible model? Your Net Global Uptake hypothesis is poised to be heaped on the trash bin of discarded consensus science such as the geocentric model, spontaneous generation, and bloodletting.
Dr. Ed has no misconception. It is you that continues to promote disequilibrium isotopic fluxes as a way of laundering the natural emissions which are washing out the impact of fossil fuel carbon. All you have to do, to convince me otherwise, is provide a physically meaningful model that includes all the facts and any necessary reasonable assumptions.
Just as an aside, apart from your comments, the new version of WordPress is a piece of junk. It won’t let me include a simple picture, like above, without adding a minimize control. Worse, it won’t allow me, the administrator, to reply to any of your comments.
There are other problems as well that you don’t see. For example, in the admin section, it puts an unworkable AI button smack on top of a control button I need to press to do some admin tasks.
I sent WordPress a message asking how to get rid of the damn AI button. The response was a few pages of instructions that I cannot follow. Anyway, I will reply to David, especially once WordPress gives me control of my own website.
I thank all of you, even David, for your interest in our conversations.
Hey, I got the Image and Reply features working again. Must be the good weather in NW Montana today.