Carbon dioxide is not a poison but the world’s best friend
Prof. David Bellamy’s speech to the Climate Change Conference, Cambridgeshire, 19th March 2011
Back in the 1980’s when the latest scare about an impending ice age caught the imagination of pop science and the headline driven press I was teaching ecology at Durham University. However safe in the knowledge that there have been many ice ages, little ice ages, interglacials and interstadials some of the latter degrees warmer than today I was in no hurry to make predictions or apply for a post in Australia. We discussed it in a rational way during seminars.
Prof. David Bellamy
Like the fluctuations of any interstadial, the ‘end of the world’ arguments soon swung the other way and the fear of carbon-induced warming was born on the computer models of the IPCC.
More powerful and faster computers along with the development of the internet, sped the reaction time of both the programmers and the press. So much so that the prediction of models and the predilections of the press for bad news began to usurp the precautionary principles that used to be the cornerstones of peer reviewed science.
About this time I was invited to visit The Hadley Centre for Climate Research and Prediction in Exeter. After a four-hour session and a nice working lunch I was asked if I would help put over their point of view to the general public. I agreed that I would do my best to digest all the power points I had been given and call them back. My answer was a polite no and so I got caught up in the ongoing argument and the totally unscientific fracas that was developing around so called global warming heretics.
Spiced with all the venom of celebrity status I soon began to feel the heat of the machine of vilification already focussed on anyone who questioned the catastrophe dogma spun from the computer predictions that flowed from IPCC and centred on carbon as the bad guy. For a while I retreated behind the fact that what was happening ‘beggared belief’ and given time would die of natural causes. However the bandwagon of doom, gloom and vilification rolled on turning into a tumbril of their own making.
The first real ray of hope was a statement from Mike Hulme Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research University UEA on BBC news November 4, 2006 key points of which were:
“I have found myself increasingly chastised by climate change campaigners when my public statements and lectures on climate change have not satisfied environmental drama and exaggerated rhetoric. Why is it not just campaigners, but politicians and scientists too who are openly confusing the language of fear, terror and disaster with the physical reality of climate change, actively ignoring the careful hedging which surrounds science’s predictions?”
These singular revelations from this highly qualified horses mouth makes it clear that the politicians, campaigners and loose-cannon scientists engaged in relentless fearmongering over global warming are ignoring science and are out of touch with reality.
So why, one must ask, has the Hadley Centre not cautioned Houghton, May, King, Blair, Cameron, Stern, and Gore by pointing out (using Hulme’s own words) “that their fixation on catastrophe could be in danger of tipping society onto a negative, depressive and reactionary trajectory”.
Fortunately for science Hulme could not or would not be silenced, for some two months later just days before the publication of IPCC 4 he opened up another can of worms by saying on BBC Radio 4 that this massive tome:
“… is not going to talk about tipping points; it’s not going to talk about 5m rises in sea level; it’s not going to talk about the next ice age because the Gulf Stream collapses; and it’s going to have none of the economics of the Stern Review.”
Not much left you may say, but the truth is that for every gaggle of peer reviewed papers that have spawned the banner headlines over the years it is possible to find other peer reviewed papers that contradict the scaremongering. When they are brought to the attention of the media, like most copy that brings good news they end up on the cutting room floor.
Where does this put the consensus that the IPCC hides behind every time it is caught promoting hype that argues that carbon dioxide is a weapon of imminent mass destruction. Now you have it straight as a dye from a team of real experts gathered from all over the world to put the other side of the argument.
Now the truth is out my only real worry is what will happen to those many money making ‘houses of cards’ that are based on the vilification of carbon. The good news is that as they are made of carbon themselves, they can be recycled.
Take heart all those consenting climate modelers there is still a lot of work for your giant computers to get stuck into. Take a few gigabytes out of Newton’s laws of physics and get cracking solving the real problems that face over 6.4 billion human beings as they move into an uncertain energy hungry future.
Using your computers you can help orchestrate the processes by which a mixture of science based civil, social and ecological engineering can ameliorate the effects of the worst or seize the opportunities of the best of natural climate change. That was the conclusion of G8 2005 at the Gleneagles Golf Course, itself a hot spot of local biodiversity if you care to think about it now the heat is off.
Since that a floodgate of all floodgates have done a power of bad for the image of science.
So is anthropogenic CO2 causing global warming?
Carbon Dioxide is one of a cocktail of greenhouse gases that make up the earth’s atmosphere. If there were no greenhouse gasses, temperature on the earth would be approx. 0 degree F. CO2 is a trace element in the atmosphere and currently accounts for 385 parts per million (ppm).
The British Meteorological offices own records show that for the last 15 years there has statistically been no global warming (1998 was actually the warmest year in the last century but this is discounted as it was El Nino).
The evidence that man made CO2 will cause significant rise in the world’s temperature as claimed by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), appears pitifully weak and relies on the correlation between rising levels of CO2 and rising temperatures between 1975-1995. During this period, temperature rose by 0.16 degrees C per decade, i.e. just over 34 degrees C for the warming period; since that time temperature has plateaued.
Some climate scientists have however built computer models round this warming assuming that it would continue into the future. The best evidence to show that the IPCC’s projections are very unlikely to be fulfilled is by looking back at historical temperature records where we can find two other periods where we had a mean warming rate of 34 degrees C in roughly 20-30 year periods. One was from 1860-80 and the second was from 1910-40.
A further problem with the warmist theories comes with the evidence that the warming effect of CO2 is strongly logarithmic. The first 20 ppm of CO2 added, effectively causes a temperature increase of 2 degrees C with rapidly decreasing effect on temperature after that. This logarithmic effect is believed by the majority of scientists.
A Hungarian scientist Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi has published a peer reviewed paper which shows that from both the atmospheric recordings and by theory that the greenhouse effect is saturated and extra CO2 will not affect the earth’s temperature. He has concluded that the greenhouse effect is now a constant and equals 33 of available heat from the sun and other sources. This work has been backed up by a growing team of the world’s experts. Who have concluded that there may be some warming from additional CO2 but that it would be minimal. Indeed their findings indicate that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 would result in a maximum of 1 degree C increase in world temperature.
Whether you believe the greenhouse effect is a constant or that the heating effect of CO2 is strongly logarithmic, you will conclude that CO2 is unlikely to have any material effect on our climate.
What other evidence do we have to suggest that the climate models are unlikely to be reliable
1. Since 1995, world temperatures have actually plateaued despite a continued increase in CO2 emissions.
2. In 2005, NASA launched a satellite known as the Aqua satellite. One of the purposes of this satellite was to test two assumptions which all climate models rely on:
i) That there will be a warming in the troposphere above the equator (This is the signature of the greenhouse effect);
ii) In laymen’s terms, an increase in CO2 in the troposphere would be accompanied by an increase in water vapour (the most potent greenhouse gas of all).
The Aqua satellite found no warming in the troposphere above the Equator and no increase in water vapour accompanying the increased CO2.
Acidification of our oceans
During the Earth’s history, the PH of the oceans has been remarkably stable at around 8. This includes the period over 450m years ago when the first organisms were leaving the ocean for dry land. The vast majority of all life was in the oceans and the level of CO2 in the atmosphere during this period was over 4,000 ppm.
i) Why do the oceans stay alkaline?
The world has always had sub sea volcanic activity. Very hot basaltic magma reacts with sea water to produce a strongly alkaline solution (Profession Ian Plimer).
ii) There are huge quantities of calcium carbonate in the oceans (shells, coral, etc.). These would soon neutralise any acidification. Some rivers of the world have become acid through pollution but the sea away from the river mouth is always alkaline.
iii) Matt Ridley has recently written a number of papers showing the threat from ocean acidification has been greatly exaggerated.
What other effects does an increase in CO2 have on life
Increase in CO2 results in faster growth of all green plants. Market gardeners artificially increase the level of CO2 in their greenhouses to 1,000 ppm as this significantly increases growth.
Fossil fuels
Fossil fuels are predominantly carbon. This carbon all came from the atmosphere and became locked away in the earth during the carboniferous period. Pre the carboniferous period, there was over 4,000 ppm. This has been down as low as 270 ppm and is now about 385 ppm. These figures would indicate there is still very large deposits of carbon based energy product to be found.
Correlation between temperature and CO2
There is a correlation between temperature and CO2 but it has been established, beyond doubt, that CO2 levels follow temperature and the reason for this are well understood. Al Gore’s film, The Inconvenient Truth, misled millions of people.
Future temperature of the planet
Planet Earth will inevitably cool. There is a far greater danger of us entering another Ice Age than the planet getting significantly warmer. It should also be noted that all the periods of greatest prosperity in the world have been in warmer periods.
Are temperatures today higher than ever as per the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph?
The ‘hockey stick’ graph which was originally published by the IPCC and showed temperatures to be hotter now than ever before has been comprehensively denounced by the scientific community. It was drawn up by a scientist, Michael Mann, who had a number of associates and relied on Dendrochronology of a certain species of pine tree to make this claim.
Dendrochronology is known to be far less accurate than ice core samples and recent studies have shown that tree rings are more affected by cosmic radiation than temperature. Michael Mann and his associates – known as the ‘hockey team’ are discredited.
In recent history, we have had two periods that are significantly warmer than today. One was during the Roman period when there were vineyards in Northumberland and more recently there was a warm medieval period. For the warm medieval period, there is additional proof, over and above ice core samples. In the peat of the southern uplands you can today find the roots of broad leaf trees. Estimates indicate that it would have to be 3 degrees warmer than today for those trees to have grown at the height and latitude of the southern uplands.
If Al Gore and his gang of accolite model makers had based his hockey stick would be still be going down as it still is.
Role of the Sun
A relatively small group of scientists have always believed that our climate is largely controlled by the sun. An Australian scientist, David Archibald, has researched sun spot activity and compared it with the climate enjoyed by the Earth.
He has found a remarkable correlation going back 300 years. He published a book Solar Cycle 24 in 2008 which predicted the world would go into a significantly cooler period similar to the Dalton minimum (early 19th century). There is to date nothing to suggest that he may not be right.
So why I must ask bother about carbon and carbon footprints?
Carbon dioxide is not a poison, we drink it in beer and other fizzy drinks it makes our bread rise and without it there would be no photosynthesis which would means very little food for us let alone animals.
Every time you fly in a jumbo jet you learn more about Newtons Law of Cooling. As the plane takes off the outside temperature goes down and as you land the temperature goes up again.
As all the potential heat that reaches this lonely planet comes from the sun only the sun can the temperature of earth not the concentration the greenhouse gasses.
The temperature of the interstellar void is about zero absolute so cold that all chemical reactions come to a standstill and heat is being lost to space all the time.
The time has surely come to take a deep breath, use up the oxygen it contains and then face up to the fact that the main problem facing the world is not the credit crunch, nor the carbon crunch but the biodiversity crunch. The real catastrophe that is threatening both humankind and the biodiversity of the Earth upon which we all depend is the erosion the structured soil at an ever faster rate. We are in fact we are skinning the living earth alive. Right at this moment the trees of the Amazon are under attack on a massive scale to grow Soya beans to produce milk and meat for home use and export. A mere 17,000 years ago much of the Amazon was savannas supporting Great Sloth’s and Sabre Toothed Tigers which the local people did their best to hunt. They didn’t know that the last (or was it) glaciation was coming to an end and their hunting grounds were getting much more rain.
Please remember in the past 10,000 years despite swings in temperature all the world’s civilizations have developed. All of them have prospered in the warm times and foundered in cold times. Thank God (or Richard Dawkins) for natural global warming.
Please note that the concept of man made global warming has been dropped by the warmers. They now talk about climate change, which is something completely natural and is happening all the time.
Thousands of experiments have been carried out around the world demonstrating the fact that many plants grow faster in higher C02 concentrations. What is more if we wanted to double the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere we would have to burn all the known reserves of natural gas, all the known reserves of oil and we would need the clout of Arthur Scargill to dig up one third of the worlds reserves of coal. And then the temperature would go up by around one degree Celsius. Perhaps it is something we should be doing on purpose because already crops and even forests are growing faster.
Do you remember the days (around 40 years ago) when the Sahel Desert made headlines in all mainstream broadsheets? The reason was that local people were dying in their thousands because of a terrible drought. Other parts of the Sahara were being affected but not so catastrophically. Later the New Scientist reported that large tracts of desert were being covered with trees and the locals started farming again. One main reason was that as atmospheric carbon dioxide continued to rise the plants could keep their stomatal, breathing pores closed for longer while still taking in enough carbon dioxide to grow. While shut the pores would loose less water and so plants and even trees could grow again in those areas.
Thousands of experiments have been carried out around the world demonstrating the fact that many plants grow faster in higher C02 concentrations. That is why more and more of the world is being covered with polythene greenhouses which are enriched with carbon dioxide as economic horticulture practice.
Wake up, Carbon is not a poison, indeed it is The world’s best friend.
Little wonder there is good news signalling the imminent demise of the dreams of the Global Warmers and the so called Wind Farmers.
This statement was in the The Globe and Mail IN, Toronto, 26 January 2011: “Europe Pulling the Plug On Green Energy Subsidies”.
To rub it in, on the next day, the 27th Jan. 2011 it was announced that the “EU Carbon Trading Shut Down Indefinitely”.
And in America there are even cries to stop financing the IPCC.
We can now only guess where the carbon traders will put their pension funds now their “green” hedge funds are being grubbed up.
Printed in The Washington Post November 2nd:
“The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consulafft, at Bergen, Norway. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard of temperatures in the Arctic zone.
Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes.
Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the Gulf Stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared.
Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds. Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.”
Sorry, I neglected to mention that this report was from November 2, 1922 – 88 YEARS AGO!
My case rests, carbon dioxide is not a poison but the world’s best friend.
Even at 78 years of age when I take a walk or a run my temperature goes up followed by the amount of carbon dioxide I exhale. The same is true for the vast number of the ice cores that have been studied, up goes the temperature followed by the amount of carbon dioxide – Never the other way round.
Take heart Earth’s climate has remained within the limits tolerated by life, for several billion years. During this time the planet has experienced unimaginable volcanic events which liberated huge amounts of CO2, we have collided with extraterrestrial objects which triggered either increase or decrease of temperature and even the energy flow from the sun has altered over such a span of geological time.
And yet here we are! Life remains. The global temperature is well within life’s limits – indeed the present-day is cooler than much of previous geological time.
yogaesoteric
January 19, 2020