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Sunday 9 September 2012

Every little helps

Yggdrasil, the World Ash (Norse) - from Wikipedia

Global warming, climate change, climate disruption, climate leprosy – whatever the latest name might be, is nothing more than moral blackmail by a bunch of misogynist freaks.

There is one simple angle to the apocalyptic climate message. Everything else is froth and misdirection. Rising global temperatures, Arctic sea ice, glaciers, hurricanes and all the other guff are irrelevant to the core issue.

Carbon dioxide is the basic planetary plant nutrient. Without it we’d all die.

That’s it – that’s all the science you really need. It doesn’t really matter if global temperatures are trending up, down or sideways. There is no starting point from which to plot temperature trends anyway, but that’s not it.

Carbon dioxide can’t make the climate unstable with respect to temperature, otherwise it would have done so hundreds of millions of years ago.

The misogynist freaks who tell us otherwise are in the business of political control, not science, not the environment, not trees and cuddly animals, not saving the planet and certainly not human aspirations.

Carbon dioxide is plant food and the current atmospheric concentration is rather low compared to previous eras. According to Wikipedia, which follows the alarmist line, pre-industrial CO2 was 280ppm. Current CO2 is about 392ppm – a rise of 112ppm. The minimum level for plant growth is about 150ppm although it varies between species. If the pre-industrial CO2 had gone down by 112ppm, then a genuine climate catastrophe may well have occurred.

Fortunately the situation began to improve well before the huge rise in global population. Not only that, but the trend is still upwards, so if our luck holds out the next few generations will see major benefits. It’s almost as if we reached a CO2 boundary in a very complex process and are now drifting back towards some longer term state.

The immediate cause of the rise in CO2 is probably a result of equilibrium changes between oceans and atmosphere, but nobody really knows for sure. There may be a human contribution, but it seems unlikely to be significant. We’ve just been lucky I suppose. Climate scientists don’t know the cause, so they invent alarming reasons dictated by their political masters in the UN.

Even so, rising CO2 is good news, although we could do with more. It’s good for agriculture, good for forestry, good for poor people, good for world food production, good for you, good for me, good for future generations.

Forget the politics – rising CO2 is a genuine good news story.

So don’t cycle to work unless you have too or unless it’s quicker. Drive, because we need that CO2. It may be that our CO2 isn’t making much difference to the atmosphere, in fact it probably isn’t, but don’t let that put you off.

Every little helps.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, the Sahara shows no sign of reaching Marseille and it's not exactly toasty outside this morning, maybe later.

I do recommend a read of James Meek's article in the LRB 13th Sept on 'How we Happened to Sell Off Our Electricity', a really good run down on how the tossers (Labour tossers and Tory tossers) got us into the present mess.

In short, British amateurs lost against French, German and Chinese professionals, ably assisted by the City.

Meek points out that UK taxpayers are being sold like herds of sheep to the French government (aka EDF) to be bled white, not for nothing are French tax collectors called 'Fermiers'.

In the days of Empire we could afford amateurs, now we need professionals and they will take 10 to 20 years to train. Reshuffling the tossers will not help.

Sam Vega said...

A couple of quick questions, if I may.

1) How can they measure pre-industrial CO2 concentrations, especially as they couldn't measure temperatures accurately?

2) Why misogynist?

A K Haart said...

Roger - that's my impression too. EDF will try to screw us over nuclear power which we should be able to install ourselves.

Sam - pre-industrial CO2 can be measured via little bubbles of air trapped in ice cores. I'm very sceptical for all kinds of reasons.

Misogynist isn't a well chosen word really, but to me the key scientific players seem to be extraordinarily arrogant men in the Chris Huhne mould.