Dec
Celebrate Carbon Dioxide - CO2 is the Gas of Life
In this article, I blow the whistle on the anti-carbon dioxide narrative, and beliefs within the environmental movement and the general population worldwide. This is a bonus piece relating to my previous articles focusing on climate change that can be found on this blog. Some people may find what I say hard to believe because it defies the narrative of consensus about carbon dioxide (CO2) and energy but seeing something from another person's perspective helps us to view things in a different light and opens the door to gaining a greater understanding of a topic. The way we look at the world changes everything. The reality of the situation is far from the grim picture painted by climate activist groups such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil. The gaps between public perceptions and reality on environmental issues are quite extraordinary. Hear the words carbon dioxide and fossil fuels, and doom and gloom come to mind. But here, I'll be flipping the way people perceive both.
CO2, The “Control Knob” Of Climate?
Once you wrap your head around what is primarily driving the climate and fluctuations in global temperatures, causing the Roman Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, you begin to view CO2 in a different light. As stated in previous articles on this blog CO2 levels are an effect, not a cause of changes in climate and temperatures. Climate "scientists" and "experts" want us to believe that a trace gas which makes up just 0.04% of the atmosphere (of which 95% comes from natural sources, not human activity) has more of an effect on the temperature of the planet than changes in solar intensity, variations in the orbit of the Earth, cloud cover, volcanic eruptions, and other factors. It is worth reiterating that human emissions account for just under 5% of CO2 in the atmosphere (0.002%). Humans’ emissions and activities have caused around 100% of the warming observed since 1950, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC). Yet, a new study suggests that 65% to 96.5% of the CO2 concentration increase since 1958 is natural.
You can put the "CO2 is the 'Control Knob' of Climate" argument to bed just by looking at history. During the Medieval Warm Period, when it was at least as warm as today, the CO2 level was much lower than it is currently (280 ppm). The Ice Age that peaked 450 million years ago occurred when CO2 was about 4000 ppm. More recently, the 1930's were often warmer than today when CO2 was much lower (300 ppm). There is very little correlation between global temperature and atmospheric CO2, and they are often completely out of sync with each other over long-time spans. Millions of years of ocean sediment records and the results from 800,000 of years’ worth of Antarctic ice cores show CO2 is not controlling Earth's temperature. CO2 does not change the climate. I do not deny CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but it has a minuscule effect on climate compared to the Sun's influence on the Earth's climate.
The Elephant In The Room (Atmosphere)
The 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano eruption massively impacted the atmosphere, increasing water vapor in the stratosphere by 10% worldwide. Water vapor is Earth's most abundant greenhouse gas, and this eruption could fuel global warming. Water vapour is by far the most important contributor to the greenhouse effect, but all the warming is attributed to human emissions of CO2. Volcanos also inject significant amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. There is increased seismic and volcanic activity during a Grand Solar Minimum (GSM) so we should expect more eruptions in the coming years. I have already seen the "experts" saying volcanic eruptions are becoming more frequent due to human-caused climate change. The simple formula is “human-caused climate change = eruptions, earthquakes” but only simpletons believe everything they're told. Volcanic activity around the world is releasing huge amounts of water vapour and CO2 into the atmosphere, but "experts" scrupulously avoid linking those atmospheric impacts with the weather or climate change.
CO2 Our Saviour
Human CO2 emissions are the salvation of life on Earth, not its demise. If you think about it, human beings have contributed to life of Earth by raising the atmosphere's CO2 content. The CO2 level was dangerously low before the industrial age at 280 ppm (at around 250 ppm plant growth stops and they essentially suffocate when CO2 falls below 150ppm) and we have helped drive it up to 421 ppm. It was the marine calcifying species that reduced CO2 to dangerously low levels. It is incredible to think that during the last glaciation (approx. 20,000 years ago) CO2 sank to 180 ppm, a level perilously close to wiping out plant life. Where would we have been without the burning of fossil fuels, returning CO2 to the atmosphere previously trapped in sediments? Without the return of CO2 to the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuel, plants would be nearly ’starving’. CO2 is a net benefit to life on Earth and is hugely beneficial for plants and animals. CO2 is a fertilizer. Human emissions of CO2 from using fossil fuels and making cement have contributed to the increase in crop yield during the past two centuries. There has been a 20% increase in the food available to people worldwide since the Industrial Revolution, including more food for people in drought-stricken areas. A clear benefit of increasing CO2 from 280 ppm to about 421 ppm. A warm summer plus higher CO2 just fuelled the largest corn harvest in the history of the United States. Does that sound like a 'climate crisis' to you? The Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric CO2. A higher CO2 level aids plant growth and this is exactly why growers routinely supplement their greenhouse atmosphere with added CO2 (1200 ppm, 300% more that the Earth’s present level of CO2). CO2 is the giver of life, but people in power and many climate activists have decided it's the destroyer of life, a pollutant. This view has no basis both in science and reality. CO2 is not a pollutant or a doomsday molecule, but the gas of life.
CO2 Level Is Too High?
Advocates of the climate-apocalypse narrative fail to acknowledge the CO2 levels in the atmosphere before the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm. 421 ppm appears high compared to this benchmark level, but CO2 levels have been at 1000 ppm, 2000 ppm, 4000 ppm and higher in the past. 421 ppm is actually very low when looking at the history of the Earth. They keep telling us that CO2 is 50% higher than pre-industrial levels and human civilization is responsible. Well, human civilization should pat itself on the back because we have inadvertently helped life on Earth. We have put back some of the CO2 that declined so drastically over half a billion years. Many CO2-obsessed activists see humans as the enemies of nature, but we have helped the Earth considerably by adding more CO2 to the atmosphere.
Trust The Science!
UN secretary general, António Guterres, said in July 2023 that we must limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (C) to "avoid the very worst of climate change". The 1.5 figure comes from the Paris Agreement in 2015, but here’s the kicker: the 1.5 goal isn’t based on any scientific calculation. It doesn’t represent a specific planetary threshold or ecological tipping point. The 1.5-degree temperature target is a pseudoscientific number. This isn't science at all. John Kerry stated in May 2022 that "the 1.5 degrees (target) was not something somebody pulled out of the sky or did as a matter of politics or ideology. The 1.5 degrees is based on science." The reality is the current 1.5-degree temperature target, and the previous 2-degree target were plucked out of thin air and have no scientific basis. The 1.5C target was clearly much more grounded in political aspirations. This is why we are now seeing more academic papers asking how this target became the point of reference for climate action. Make no mistake, the climate agenda is awash with junk science, fake statistics, and dodgy computer models. Much of the climate doomsdayism we are constantly bombarded with isn't based on science.
The Era of Global Boiling?
UN secretary general, António Guterres, said in July 2023 that the era of global warming has ended and “the era of global boiling has arrived”. Given that the world is getting warmer according to the "experts", how can it also be colder? Apparently, it's global warming and humanity’s CO2 excretions that is causing colder temperatures around the globe. Millions of Australians in 2023 experienced the coldest Easter Sunday for 80 years and millions of Californians experienced record snowfall and freezing temperatures. Finland experienced the coldest June on record. India’s capital of New Delhi recorded the third coldest May morning since 1901. Temperatures in parts of China just hit their lowest levels since records began. China's president Xi Jinping called for an "all-out" emergency response to the cold snap. 60% of Europe was covered in snow in December 2023 for the first time since 2010. In Munich, Germany, a recent storm dropped nearly a foot and a half of snow, setting a December record. Private jets in Munich en route to a global warming conference in Dubai literally froze on the runway! Don't you just love the way freezing temperatures tend to coincide with global-warming alarmist conferences? Europe is currently having its best start to a ski season in recent memory. Record cold temperatures have been recorded on every continent in 2023 but the media don't like to mention this because it doesn't fit in with the ‘Earth is boiling’ narrative.
The "experts" rarely mention the historic low solar activity we’ve been experiencing, and its effect on the jet stream and the Earth's magnetic field, because they are not following science, but a politically and financially motivated agenda. The impact of the GSM on Earth’s climate will be one of violent swings between extremes (intense bursts of heat and intense bursts of cold). Overall, the Earth’s temperature trends colder during a GSM. Climate "experts" agree that human activity is the primary driver of climate change and the burning of fossil fuels over the past 150 years has drastically increased the presence of atmospheric greenhouse gases, most notably CO2. I wholeheartedly disagree with the first point (e.g. human activity is the primary driver of climate change) but let's take the second point at face value (e.g. the burning of fossil fuels over the past 150 years has drastically increased the presence of atmospheric CO2). The industrial revolution and the pumping of CO2 into the air is seen in a negative light but I want to give a different perspective.
Black Gold
Early in the Earth's journey the CO2 level was around 7000 ppm due to volcanic activity, etc. Plants evolved and thrived in this CO2 rich environment. Plants pulled enormous amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere to form plant matter, and when these plants died and decayed, they formed peat, which over millions of years transformed into coal. The vast coal deposits formed during the Carboniferous period have powered industrial development since the 18th century. Coal surely must be one of the greatest gifts to humanity, providing warmth in cold seasons, electricity, economic growth, etc. It's 100% organic and was produced by life with solar energy. When burned coal returns CO2 and H2O back to the environment, where they came from in the first place. 100% recycled. The CO2 and H2O emitted during combustion are the primary foods for all life. You could argue coal is one of the “greenest” sources of energy.
Why not invest in a range of technologies to burn coal more efficiently and cleanly (modern pollution controls) rather than spending a fortune covering the countryside in wind turbines that are expensive, less efficient, kill wildlife, generate pollution (by mining of rare-earth metals for the magnets in the turbines), and require tonnes of materials (a two-megawatt wind turbine weighs about 250 tonnes and requires a huge concrete foundation)? The development of ‘clean’ renewables isn't possible without the black stuff. All the solar panels at my home were made in China using coal! Humanity owes CO2 and fossil fuels a big thank you. Yet, many climate activists want to replace 'reliables' with 'unrealiables' (e.g. wind and solar). Both are dependent on weather we can't control! Wind and solar are not sustainable or renewable (the majority end up in landfills). They are useless on their own. This is why fossil fuels will continue to have a major role in energy production. Just ask the president of the People's Republic of China or India. Just ask president of the latest UN Climate Conference (COP28), Sultan Al Jaber, who said his firm will keep investing in oil, a day after overseeing a global deal to "transition away" from fossil fuels. Just ask the Rockefeller family that holds major oil and gas industry investments despite their work to promote the green energy agenda. No other technology other than nuclear can displace the high use of fossil fuels. Do I have to spell out what would happen if governments banned fossil fuels. As the president of COP28 said there is 'no science' behind phasing out fossil fuels and the policy will take the world 'back to caves'! By the way, COP28 had the largest carbon footprint in the event’s history! How crazy is it that we just witnessed kings, princes, politicians, diplomats, campaigners, financiers, and business leaders fly in their private jets to one of the world's great oil capitals to discuss ways to fight climate change. If there was a real climate crisis, wouldn't you conduct the climate conference on Zoom or similar? 70,000 people flying to Dubai to talk climate change is madness.
Just Stop Lunacy
Why do climate activists vilify fossil fuels? They provide the foundation for food production, housing, health care, transportation, communications, water purification, and sanitation systems. Fossil fuel improved our quality of life more than anything else in history. I suggest those who oppose fossil fuels because of CO2 emissions have been indoctrinated with baseless fears. The British environmental activist group Just Stop Oil show incredible disrespect towards fossil fuels. How exactly are they keeping warm this winter? Their comfortable lifestyles and virtually all the products they use are entirely dependent upon fossil fuels. Many of these activists are unaware who is funding their group (including Aileen Getty, oil heiress, and Hillary Clinton, who rakes in money from fossil fuel interests), and all of them have no idea they are part of a globalist agenda.
I collected some eggs and gathered ingredients from the garden to make last night's dinner. Why aren't all those so concerned about CO2 emissions, waste, and food sustainability doing this? Environmentalism begins at home and your values guide your actions. Eco-warriors should not preach environmentalism or conservation while defacing objects with orange paint and eating chemically sprayed avocados from Guatemala. "Do as I Say, Not as I Do" appears to be their motto. Throwing tomato soup over Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London or gluing themselves to other famous artworks are acts of vandalism. Fossil-fuel obsessed activists have recently destroyed public Christmas tree displays in seven German cities to raise awareness about climate change. "A beautiful Christmas tree - the planning, the cost, the hard work. Now heading for landfill," noted one social media user. Just Stop Oil activists are being badly affected but not by the climate. If they and other activist groups are so concerned about fossil fuel emissions, why do they rarely talk about the environmental costs of wars or the US military’s devastating carbon footprint?
Embrace Any Warmth
The 16th century Little Ice Age was horrific. We should be thankful for the warming that began in the 17th century and continues to the present day. Those that had to endure the worst cold in generations must be looking down at people worrying about global warming in disbelief. Birds froze to death; livestock and wild animals starved; fruit trees perished of frost. “The cold was so extreme and the freeze so great and bitter, that nothing seemed like it in the memory of man,” recalls Pierre de l’Estoile, the diarist. When temperatures drop, crops fail, disease and death become widespread and society degenerates into a survival mode. Decades-long propaganda and hysteria surrounding global warming is the problem.
According to a continuous study conducted by the NASA's Goddard institute, the Earth's average global temperature has risen by 0.8C since 1880. This is unlikely to be an accurate measurement but even if it is, it doesn't mean much. There is no reason to believe that a warmer climate would be anything but beneficial for humans and most other species. For example, a warmer world with higher CO2 concentrations will have a positive impact on the production of crops. What do people want, miserable cold? Temperatures dropping low enough in London to cause the River Thames to completely freeze over again? It is 210 years ago since the last "frost fair" - when an elephant was marched across the frozen river alongside Blackfriars Bridge. The frost fairs took place during the Little Ice Age, roughly between 1300-1850.
The notion that warming is killing the planet is pure tripe. History and human biology argue for warmth, not cold. Civilizations flourished when temperatures were higher. An example of this is the Vikings who developed a thriving civilization in Scandinavia and grew food in Greenland during the Medieval Warm Period. The golden age of classical Roman civilization occurred during a warm period. Cold is responsible for far more deaths than hot weather worldwide. The idea that 1.5C warming is a “crisis” is climate propaganda, and directing public policy toward reducing the global temperature is futile. Nothing the United Nations have ever said about climate change has turned out to be true. They have been pushing climate doomsdayism since 1972. How the UN secretary general, António Guterres, can say the era of global warming has ended and “the era of global boiling has arrived” with a straight face is admirable. He was experiencing the coldest November in the past 40 years while in the Antarctic but was whipping up global warming alarmism before COP28 by claiming "the ice is melting". I have lost count how many times I've heard King Charles say we have ** months left to save the world. He's like a stuck record with made-up emotional stories of impending climate Armageddon. He said we had less than 100 months to act in 2009! And to say "the Earth does not belong to us; we belong to the Earth" is a bold statement considering the King of England owns one-sixth of the Earth's land surface! I will refrain from going down this rabbit hole again, but I assure you all this climate doomsdayism is just hot air. We are still in an Interglacial Period of the Pleistocene Ice Age with huge ice caps on both poles, but they have managed to convince millions of people that the Earth is getting too hot. The South Pole records average winter temperatures of -61C. But roughly 90 million years ago, the fossils suggest, Antarctica was as warm as Italy and covered by a green expanse of rainforest. That's what you call an exceptionally warm climate!
The Inconvenient Truth
Through increasing CO2, humans have done this magnificent home of ours a massive favour, ensuring the survival of life. CO2 and fossil fuels are essential to life on earth, particularly human life. Even if I accept, we (humans) are the sole cause of the rise from 280 ppm to 421 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, I still say this is a net positive for the reasons outlined in this article. CO2 should be seen as the most important molecule for the existence of life on Earth. Fossil fuels should be seen as the largest storage battery of direct solar energy on Earth. There is no climate crisis caused by human emissions of CO2 and global warming is a non-problem. It’s very far from gloom and doom.
Anyone who believes I'm a “climate denier” or a "shill for the fossil fuel industry" is exposing their own ignorance. I acknowledge the climate does change and has done so for 4.5 billion years. Global warming is a natural phenomenon which heats the globe in cycles – much like how Ice Ages have cooled Earth throughout history. We know that the Earth has had at least five major ice ages, and we are still technically in one. I recognise the fossil fuel industry's bad behaviour and there is much to dislike such as the way mega-corporations trample on the environment and pollute waterways. However, the inconvenient truth for climate activists is that fossil fuels are indispensable. Modern life doesn’t work without them. The UK would be in deep trouble if there was a 100% transition to renewable energy (e.g. wind and solar). My home is run on 100% renewable energy, but this is an entirely different proposition to powering modern civilization. Some analysts suggest renewables were never meant to power modern civilization and a transition to 100% renewable energy would turn modern industrial societies back into agrarian ones. They also suggest that advocates of eliminating fossil fuels are arguing that we kill off half the world's population. The removal of fossil fuels would essentially amount to a genocide.
The complete phasing-out of fossil fuels is not realistic, and one country that understands this is China. The intermittent nature of renewable energy and the immaturity of key technologies like energy storage means the country must continue to rely on fossil fuels to safeguard economic growth. China has the world’s largest coal power fleet and approved another 106 gigawatts worth of new coal plants just last year – the equivalent of two a week. China is the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels and wind turbines so is this one of the reasons why they are backing global calls to triple renewable capacity by 2030? China emits 30x more CO2 than the UK so why is the latter spending trillions to reach net zero, a policy which requires drastic restrictions on almost every aspect of people’s lives? The net zero policy is pointless because the UK is only responsible for around 1% of global CO2 emissions. But as I've said in my previous related article the climate change agenda has nothing to do with environmental concerns. Climate policy is not environmental policy. It’s the intended consequences of this agenda and the so-called solutions that should worry people, not the perceived threat of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change and the “the era of global boiling."
Insightful Quotes
"Thinking that we can minimize severe weather through using atmospheric carbon dioxide as a control knob is a fairy tale." - Judith A. Curry, an American climatologist and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology
"It is ‘absurd’ to assume that the small contribution of CO2 is the determining factor for temperature changes in the complex three-dimensional climate." - Professor Richard Lindzen, an American atmospheric physicist
"What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous, planet-destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world – that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison." - Richard Lindzen, a Harvard-educated American atmospheric physicist
"The so-called 1.5°C target, which has no scientific basis but is merely a political ploy. I say this for the following reasons: There is no direct or simple link between greenhouse gas emissions and the Earth’s temperature. The IPCC has shown this clearly in all its six reports. The main reason is that we do not know climate sensitivity (the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature) well enough." - Professor Lennart Bengtsson, a Swedish meteorologist
"The 2 deg C limit is talked about by a lot within Europe. It is never defined though what it means. Is it 2 deg C for globe or for Europe? Also when is/was the base against which 2 deg C is calculated from? I know you don’t know the answer, but I don’t either! I think it is plucked out of thin air." - Phil Jones, a former director of the Climatic Research Unit and a professor in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia
"Nearly every facet of modern developed economies requires petroleum products and natural gas to function and provide the comfortable lifestyles that citizens of developed countries have come to expect. These resources are necessary for agriculture, heavy industry, transportation by all modes – road, rail, air, or ship – and a great number of the products that we take for granted. They're ingrained in almost everything." - Institute for Energy Research (IER)
"The popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people. Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience. In turn, the pseudoscience has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of other unrelated ills. It has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies, and environmentalists. In my opinion, there is no real climate crisis. There is, however, a very real problem with providing a decent standard of living to the world’s large population and an associated energy crisis. The latter is being unnecessarily exacerbated by what, in my opinion, is incorrect climate science." - Dr. John Clauser, 2022 Nobel Prize-winning scientist
"The Earth has existed for maybe 4.5 billion years, and now the alarmists will have us believe that because of the small rise in temperature for roughly 150 years (which, by the way, I believe you cannot really measure) we are doomed unless we stop using fossil fuels. We are now forced to use corn-based ethanol in our gas, subsidized windmills, and solar cells for energy; meanwhile, maybe a billion people worldwide starve and have no access to electricity. You and I breathe out at least thirty tons of CO2 in a normal life span, but nevertheless the Environmental Protection Agency decided to classify rising carbon-dioxide emissions as a hazard to human health." - Dr. Ivar Giaever, Nobel Laureate in physics
"Looking back over millennia, today the Earth is colder, and has a lower level of atmospheric CO2 than during nearly all the history of modern life. The idea that it would be catastrophic if CO2 were to increase and average global temperature were to rise a few degrees is preposterous." - Patrick Moore, a Canadian environmentalist who previously served as president of Greenpeace Canada and director of Greenpeace International
"Actually it is the top environmentalist intellectuals who lack climate wisdom. Because they are unwilling to think in an unbiased way about the benefits and risks of fossil fuels according to a human standard of value, they are blinded to the fact that the fossil fuel industry is the reason they’re alive and not helpless at the mercy of that wind in the middle of some such plain." - Alexander Joseph Epstein, an American author
"To reduce modern climate change to one variable, CO2, or a small proportion of one variable - human-induced CO2 - is not science. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly. Yet when astronomers have the temerity to show that climate is driven by solar activities rather than CO2 emissions, they are dismissed as dinosaurs undertaking the methods of old-fashioned science." - Ian Rutherford Plimer, an Australian geologist and professor emeritus at the University of Melbourne
"CO2 has been unfairly demonized because it is actually plant food in its atmospheric form, and it is the consequence of generating carbon-based energy, which unquestionably improves lives around the world." - John Christy, a climatologist and professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the director of the Earth System Science Center
"Converting the Earth into a desert of solar panels and wind generators will still not provide enough energy. Although it might make the planet unlivable enough so no energy would be required." - Malgosia Askanas, a senior research and development associate at Aurora Biophysics Research Institute
"The reason winter is cold, is because of a lack of solar energy. The Sun is low in the sky, days are short, and it is cloudy much of the time. Yet climate alarmists want people to be dependent on solar energy for their survival." - Tony Heller
"If all fossil fuel were to go POOF! tomorrow, the result would be a cataclysmic social upheaval, with food riots, warlords, shutdowns, breakdown of social order, water shortages, and outbreaks of bloodshed and disease." - Margaret Atwood, a poet, novelist, story writer, essayist, and environmental activist
"There is hardly an activity that a person can think about that does not intrinsically involve energy, most of which is currently provided by fossil fuels." - Lee R. Raymond
"Science demonstrates that there is no climate related risk caused by fossil fuels and CO2 and no climate emergency." - Dr. William Happer, professor emeritus of physics at Princeton University
"There is no fingerprint that proves that CO2 has a large effect on climate." - Nir Joseph Shaviv, an Israeli-American physics professor
"Organisms don't think of CO2 as a poison. Plants and organisms that make shells, coral, think of it as a building block." - Janine Benyus
"There is no global warming problem, there isn't going to be a global warming problem. Sit back and enjoy the sunshine." - Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
"If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." - Dr. Wayne Dyer
"Oil and coal are organic, .... people don’t see that." - Roger Daltrey
"We should not demonise oil and gas in the medium term." - Elon Musk
Published in December 2023
Mark Brockman
Added 21st September 2024
Finally some common sense! Thank you for providing this information!