Presuming that CMB photons are described by the deconfining phase of an SU(2) Yang-Mills theory with the critical temperature for the deconfining-preconfining phase transition matching the present CMB temperature T 0 ∼ 2.725 K (SU(2) CMB ), we investigate how CMB temperature T connects with the cosmological scale factor a in a Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker Universe. Owing to a violation of conformal scaling at late times, the tension between the (instantaneous) redshift of reionisation from CMB observation (z re ∼ 11) and quasar spectra (z re ∼ 6) is repealed. Also, we find that the redshift of CMB decoupling moves from z dec ∼ 1100 to z dec ∼ 1775 which questions CDM cosmology at high redshifts. Adapting this model to the conventional physics of three flavours of massless cosmic neutrinos, we demonstrate inconsistency with the value N eff ∼ 3.36 extracted from Planck data. Interactions between cosmic neutrinos and the CMB implies a common temperature T of (no longer separately conserved) CMB and neutrino fluids. N eff ∼ 3.36 then entails a universal, temperature induced cosmic neutrino mass m ν = ξ T with ξ = 3.973. Our above results on z re and z dec , derived from SU(2) CMB alone, are essentially unaffected when including such a neutrino sector.