Haakon
has an accommodating arse
In The Australian today;
LET’S NOT POLLUTE MINDS WITH CARBON FEARS
Talk of an
emergency is
ignorant, populist
scaremongering
IAN PLIMER
As soon as the words carbon footprint,
emissions, pollution, and
decarbonisation, climate emergency,
extreme weather, unprecedented
and extinction are used,
I know I am being conned by ignorant
activists, populist
scaremongering, vote-chasing
politicians and rent seekers.
Pollution by plastics, sulphur
and nitrogen gases, particulates
and chemicals occurs in developing
countries. That’s real pollution.
The major pollution in
advanced economies is the polluting
of minds about the role of carbon
dioxide. There are no carbon
emissions. If there were, we could
not see because most carbon is
black. Such terms are deliberately
misleading, as are many claims.
But then again, we should be
used to this after the hysteria
about the Great Barrier Reef
bleaching that has really been occurring
for hundreds of years,
fraudulent changing of past
weather records, the ignoring of
data that shows Pacific islands
and the Maldives are growing
rather than being inundated, and
unsubstantiated claims polar ice
is melting. By ignoring history
and geology, any claim of unusual
weather can be made sensational.
We’ve had reefs on planet
Earth for 3500 million years.
They came and went many times.
The big killer of reefs was because
sea level dropped and water temperature
decreased. In the past,
reefs thrived when water was
warmer and there was an elevated
carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere.
Reef material is calcium
carbonate, which contains
44 per cent carbon dioxide. Reefs
need carbon dioxide; it’s their
basic food.
We are not living in a period of
catastrophic climate change. The
past tells us it’s business as usual.
It has never been shown that
human emissions of carbon dioxide
drive global warming.
Climate models have been
around 30 years. They have all
failed. Balloon and satellite measurements
show a disconnect from
climate model predictions. If they
have failed across the past 30
years when we can compare models
with measurements, there is
little chance that the climate projections
across the next 50 years
will be more successful. Modellers
assume carbon dioxide drives climate
change. It does not. The role
of the sun and clouds was not considered
important by modellers.
They are the major drivers for the
climate on our planet.
We emit a trace atmospheric
gas called carbon dioxide at a time
in planetary history of low atmospheric
carbon dioxide. The geological
history of the planet shows
major planetary climate changes
have never been driven by a trace
gas. Just because we are alive
today does not mean we change
major planetary systems that operated
for billions of years. Earth’s
climate dances to rhythms every
day, every season and on far larger
lunar, ocean, solar, orbital, galactic
and tectonic cycles. Climate
change is normal and continual.
When cycles overlap, climate
change can be rapid and large.
Sporadic events such as supernovas
and volcanic eruptions can
also change climate.
The main greenhouse gas is
water vapour. It is the only gas in
air that can evaporate, humidify
and condense into clouds that
precipitate rain, hail and snow.
These processes involve a transfer
of energy, and water vapour
makes the atmosphere behave
like a giant airconditioner. Carbon
dioxide is a non-condensable
atmospheric gas like nitrogen and
oxygen. Water vapour in air varies
depending on temperature
and location from five times the
atmospheric carbon dioxide content
in deserts to more than 100
times in the tropics. Water is 12
times more effective than carbon
dioxide with respect to all incoming
and outgoing radiation.
Earth is unevenly heated. Our
spinning oblate globe is influenced
by two fluids of different
composition and behaviour moving
chaotically against each other
over the irregular solid surface of
the planet. Oceans hold most of
the planet’s surface heat, not the
atmosphere. Processes that occur
during sunlight do not occur at
night due to the prime driver of
our planet’s surface temperature:
the sun.
Carbon dioxide is plant food. It
is neither a pollutant nor a toxin.
Without carbon dioxide, all life on
Earth would die. Plants convert
carbon dioxide, water and sunlight
during photosynthesis into
sugars, cellulose, fruit, vegetables
and grains, which animal life uses
as food. Marine organisms also
take up and use carbon dioxide.
Plants need almost three times
today’s carbon dioxide content of
the atmosphere to thrive. For decades
horticulturalists have
pumped carbon dioxide into
glasshouses to increase yields.
The fossil record shows that a
thriving and diversification of
plant and animal life occurs every
time the atmosphere had a very
high carbon dioxide content. In
the past, warming has never been
a threat to life on Earth. Why
should it be now? When there is a
low atmospheric carbon dioxide
content, especially during very
cold times, life struggles.
For the past 500 million years,
the atmospheric carbon dioxide
content has been decreasing and
if we halved today’s atmospheric
carbon dioxide content, all life
would die. This carbon dioxide
has been removed into the oceans
and is sequestered into coral,
shells, limey sediments and muds
and on the land into coals, muds,
soils and vegetation.
Air contains 0.04 per cent carbon
dioxide. We add carbon compounds
to our bodies from food and drinks and exhale carbon dioxide.
The human breath contains
at least 4 per cent carbon
dioxide. Our bodies contain carbon
compounds. If we were so
passionately concerned about our
carbon footprint, then the best
thing to do is to expire.
In our lifetime, there has been
no correlation between carbon dioxide
emissions and temperature.
On a larger scale, the ice caps
show that after a natural orbitally
driven warming, atmospheric carbon
dioxide content increases
800 years later. Rather than
atmospheric carbon dioxide driving
temperature, it is the opposite.
Geology shows us again there is
no correlation between atmospheric
carbon dioxide and temperature.
Each of the six major
past ice ages began when the atmospheric
carbon dioxide content
was far higher than at
present. The thought that a slight
increase in atmospheric carbon
dioxide will lead to unstoppable
global warming is demonstrably
wrong.
In the past decade China has
increased its carbon dioxide emissions
by 53 per cent, 12 times Australia’s
total carbon dioxide
output of 1.3 per cent of the global
total. The grasslands, forests,
farms and continental shelves of
Australia adsorb far more carbon
dioxide than we emit. The attack
on emissions of the gas of life is an
irrational attack on industry, our
modern way of life, freedoms and
prosperity. It has nothing to do
with the environment.
Emeritus professor Ian Plimer’s
latest book is The Climate Change
Delusion and the Great Electricity
Ripoff (Connor Court).