Carbon Sense newsletter
Submitted by climaterealists on Wed, 23/09/2009 - 21:41
1. It’s Time to Ditch the Emissions Trading Scheme.
By Viv Forbes
It is time for Australian politicians to ditch the Emissions Trading Scheme and dismantle the expensive Global Warming Empire they have created.
The scientific case has collapsed and the political coalition has evaporated, but still the major political parties continue to serve vested interests and fish for Green preferences.
The case for action on global warming is essentially this: “Man’s emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing dangerous global warming”. This scare has been disproved in triplicate.
Firstly, both long term and short term temperature records show that CO2 does not control temperature. This destroys the whole basis for the global warming hysteria.
Secondly, recent temperature records show that, despite constantly increasing aerial CO2, world temperature is falling, not rising alarmingly.
Thirdly, it is clear that global cooling is a far bigger threat to all life on earth than global warming – there are many benefits of a warmer world with plenty of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
The global political support is also collapsing, although few politicians will yet admit it.
It has suffered three major political reverses.
Firstly, the US Senate is not going to pass their Ration-N-Tax Scheme this year, probably not next year, maybe never.
Secondly, there is scant political support for capping carbon dioxide in Eurasia or South of the Equator. There are many countries lined up looking for billions of dollars in carbon credit handouts, but none want to cap or tax their own emissions.
For example, China has announced that it doubts the science and the economics of caps (but it is keen to build heaps of windmills and solar panels for anyone silly enough to buy them).
India will burn more coal, and will not accept caps, and Russia is only interested in selling carbon credits.
Finally, even in Europe, the citadel of global warming, public support is evaporating.
The British public is “tired, bored and resentful” of the hysteria and cost of the low carbon vision.
And two thirds of French voters oppose their new carbon tax (even though they have a huge nuclear power industry).
Both Australian political parties cite “pressure for certainty from big business” as the main justification for rushing into the Ration-N-Tax Scheme.
The sad fact is that a majority of big businesses look to benefit from the whole new tax-subsidise-and-trade empire that will be created. Banks, commodity traders, lawyers, accountants, regulators, academics, solar, wind and gas entrepreneurs, and the carbon sequestration lobby are all planning to profit from trading hot air certificates. They also see opportunities to profit from increasing energy prices or they need special subsidies and tax breaks to justify some foolish gambles they have taken in the alternate energy business.
And the hidden agenda of both major political parties is to gain or retain power by courting green preferences.
These are all grubby reasons for saddling ordinary Australians with a scheme that will increase the costs for everything, particularly electricity, food and travel, as well as destroying real jobs and slashing the value of their superannuation funds.
2. Carbon Dioxide is NOT a Pollutant.
The alarmists first tried to scare us with “Global Warming”. But the climate would not co-operate and earth started to cool. So they changed the scare headline to “Climate Change”. This allowed every flood, drought, storm and heat wave to be pointed to as evidence (but the media helpfully looks the other way when yet another of Al Gore’s global warming rallies gets hit by a snow storm).
But opinion polls are now showing that people are sick of hearing about “Climate Change” and are certainly not going to pay a carbon tax on that account. So a new rally cry was needed. The spin doctors and their astrologers were consulted and they advised “Most people are concerned about POLLUTION”.
So “Pollution” is the new hot button that will be pushed relentlessly in the days ahead. (If “Pollution” starts to falter, “Energy” is their next hot button – “clean energy”, “energy conservation” or “energy independence” – who can oppose such worthy aims?)
Penny Wong was ahead of the pack in deviously labelling her version of the Ration-N-Tax Scheme as “The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme”.
There is not one iota of truth in this title. It is not about “carbon”, it is not about “pollution” and it is unlikely to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Our atmosphere contains the four gases on which all life depends: nitrogen, oxygen, water vapour and carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is the rarest, and the most crucial – “Life is a Carbon Equation”. Current levels of CO2 are lower than in most of earth’s past eras, and not far above the crucial 200 ppm level at which most plant growth ceases and most animal life starves.
No sensible person could reasonably describe any of the atmospheric gases as a pollutant or a poison. Anything on earth can be dangerous in excess, or can be used unsafely – try living in pure nitrogen, pure oxygen, pure water or pure carbon dioxide and you will not survive.
William Happer, Professor of Physics at Princeton University made a submission to the US Senate on “Climate Change” in February 2009. Part of his submission covered the role of carbon dioxide in the environment. It is a comprehensive and very readable submission. Here is his perspective on carbon dioxide:
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Carbon Dioxide is not a Pollutant
“I keep hearing about the “pollutant CO2,” or about “poisoning the atmosphere” with CO2, or about minimizing our “carbon footprint.”
“CO2 is not a pollutant and it is not a poison and we should not corrupt the English language by depriving “pollutant” and “poison” of their original meaning.
“Our exhaled breath contains about 4% CO2. That is 40,000 parts per million, or about 100 times the current atmospheric concentration. CO2 is absolutely essential for life on earth. Commercial greenhouse operators often use CO2 as a fertilizer to improve the health and growth rate of their plants. Plants, and our own primate ancestors evolved when the levels of atmospheric CO2 were about 1000 ppm, a level that we will probably not reach by burning fossil fuels, and far above our current level of about 380 ppm. We try to keep CO2 levels in our US Navy submarines no higher than 8,000 parts per million, about 20 time current atmospheric levels. Few adverse effects are observed at even higher levels.”
Professor William Happer,
Princeton University,
25 February 2009 |
Professor Happer also notes that part of the reason for the green revolution of the twentieth century was increased CO2 in the atmosphere (and the increased warmth that caused the degassing of CO2 from the oceans). In the unlikely event that humans were able to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere, the results would be grim – reduced food production.
To read the full submission see:
3. Burning Fossil Fuels will not affect the climate
A numerate Canadian Geophysicist, Norm Kalmanovitch, has done a bit of figuring on the carbon dioxide produced by human use of carbon fuels, largely using IPCC’s own figures. The calculations below are based on Norm’s work:
The table below from the IPCC 2001 Third Assessment Report shows the annual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the 1990’s to be 11,700 million metric tonnes of CO2 per year.
Global Natural and Anthropogenic Sources and Absorption of greenhouse gases in the 1990's
Gas Natural Human-made Total Absorption Annual increase of gas
in the
Atmosphere
carbon dioxide
(million metric tons of gas) 770,000 23,100 793,100 781,400 11,700
methane
(million metric tons of gas) 239 359 598 576 22
nitrous oxide
(million metric tons of gas) 9.5 6.9 16.4 12.6 3.8
Energy Information Administration
Office of Integrated Analysis and Forecasting
U.S. Department of Energy
Source: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis
Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press
Throughout the 1990’s global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels were increasing on average by about 500 million metric tonnes of CO2 per year. This figure was calculated using the statistics on fossil fuel consumption from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2009.
Therefore only 500 of the 11,700 million metric tonnes of annual increase in atmospheric CO2 can be from fossil fuels.
500/11,700 = 0.0427 or 4.27%.
This means that 95.73% of the increase in carbon dioxide came from natural sources.
The content of CO2 in the atmosphere is measured regularly in Hawaii. These measurements show that over that period, the increase in atmospheric CO2 was about 2.0 ppmv/year (parts per million by volume).
Since 95.73% of this is due to naturally sourced CO2, nature must be responsible for 95.73% of 2.0 ppmv/year or 1.9 ppmv/year, leaving 0.1 ppm of the increase to burning fossil fuels.
Therefore, even if we managed to stop all increases in the use of carbon fuels,
we will merely eliminate this 0.1 ppmv/year increase and the atmospheric concentration of CO2 will still increase by 1.9 ppmv/year.
Thus if the IPCC models are correct and increases in CO2 concentration cause increases in global temperatures, the Earth will continue to warm at catastrophic rates regardless of what we do to reduce emissions.
But if we do put a fixed cap on emissions from carbon fuels, it is far more likely that many of the world’s population will freeze and starve in the dark.
This is Norm’s conclusion:
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Reality Check for the IPCC – Warming is not caused by humans.
“First of all, these calculations demonstrate that CO2 emissions from fossil fuels are not the primary source for the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration. In fact fossil fuel CO2 emissions account for less than 5% of the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
“Second and most importantly, the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration, regardless of source, is not causing an increase in global temperature as demonstrated by the past eight years of cooling with steadily increasing CO2 concentration and the ever increasing CO2 emissions from fossil fuels.
“This flies in the face of IPCC statements that the Earth is warming and this warming is caused by humans.”
Norm Kalmanovitch,
September 2009 |
4. Green Groups set up a war room”.
US warmists, determined to force Obama’s Ration-N-Tax Scheme through a hostile Senate, have set up a “climate war room funded by more than 60 labor, business, faith, agriculture and environmental groups”. This control room will funnel ad money and slogans to grass roots operations in over 20 states. Unless we spark up, the regiments in green are going to snuff out the lights for all of us.
5. The Great Copenhagen Liar’s Conference.
In December this year, thousands of employees of the Climate Change Industry will burn tonnes of carbon fuel on travel and convert tonnes of champagne, canapés and caviar to carbon dioxide, all in the name of the lie that the earth is in a global warming crisis.
An American observer, Alan Caruba, pours a little truth with a touch of humour and a pinch of vitriol onto this conference, and concludes:
“Like the witches in Macbeth, for years the IPCC
has been stirring a cauldron of lies about global warming
and the world’s media, intoxicated by the fumes rising from the pot, have never ceased from telling us that the Earth is warming
when it is not.”
“The Copenhagen Conference is, like global warming, a hoax”
To read his full article see: http://carbon-sense.com/2009/09/21/copenhagen-liars/
Viv Forbes
MS 23 Rosewood Qld 4340 Australia
0754 640 533
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“Carbon Sense” is a newsletter produced by the Carbon Sense Coalition, an Australian based organisation which opposes waste of resources, opposes pollution, and promotes the rational and sustainable use of carbon energy and carbon food. For more information visit our web site at www.carbon-sense.com . Literary, financial or other contributions to help our cause are welcomed.
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