2022-12-10
Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil have been in the news for various reasons, but I fear that their efforts are misdirected. If they really want to make a difference then they should protest in New Delhi Beijing and Shanghai - or Berlin - where the governments that really are burning ever increasing quantities of polluting fuels such as coal are resident.
Is CO2 a pollutant?
With no CO2 in our atmosphere we could grow no crops - and those many net zero campaigners who want us to stop eating meat thus obviously also want us to stop eating - full stop.
In fact, more CO2 means more crops and offers the potential for more farmland of all kinds to feed the hungry.
CO2 is no more a pollutant than oxygen. In fact it is oxygen, with a carbon atom attached.
And those that are concerned should know that the current fraction of our atmosphere that is accounted for by CO2 is given in this table. Please check it out!
This percentage could be doubled and CO2 would still account for less than 0.1% of our atmosphere.
That's less than 1 part in a thousand, and the lion's share of it is naturally occurring.
We could have 20 times as much CO2 and it would still be less than 1%!
Our world hasn't survived untold millions of years without embodying self-correcting mechanisms, and one of those is the relationship between CO2 and vegetation - more CO2 means more vegetation algae and all things green - which in turn means more CO2 removed from the atmosphere and the oceans.
In the Devonian period of prehistory CO2 is thought to have reached 3.5% but fell after the development of green vegetation (coincidence does not prove causation - nor does it deny it).
At the end of the last ice age CO2 is thought to have fallen as low as 0.015%, rising to around 0.027% prior to the industrial revolution. That is not much above the minimum level thought required to support plant life (between 0.015 - 0.02% - this question is complex but it possibly represents the minimum for plant life as we know it). On that basis we had a narrow escape when the level started climbing again. One might (frivolously) think that the British with the industrial revolution may have unknowingly saved the world from starvation ...
Yes there is a balance to be struck but we are nowhere close to tipping it over in favour of runaway CO2 - and the world's corrective mechanisms will surely do the balancing job without the need for us to interfere - if we allow it.
If we want to green the world's deserts, then with so little CO2 remaining in the atmosphere, where is the additional CO2 to support the extra green growth going to come from?
The obvious answer is from the CO2 that was sequestered from the atmosphere by ancient plant life and laid down in the ground's carbon sinks as coal, oil, and natural gas ... and by happy coincidence humanity has already made a start on this!
It could also come from volcanic eruptions, or from warming of the oceans (gases are less soluble in warm water - in fact, historically atmospheric CO2 has risen after warming begins, due to the time taken for the oceans to warm and release their gases). Or it could come from fermentation as plant matter decomposes naturally and the human race bakes more bread and brews ever more beer and alcohol ... but these latter are not known to be about to increase their production by any sufficiently great amount.
Meanwhile the Great and the Good are claiming to plant trees to offset their carbon emissions whilst they jet around telling us to stop flying and motoring, but is this sensible?
I would suggest that yes, planting more greenery is very sensible but the motivation is misguided. We should be focusing this effort on reclaiming the world's deserts by planting vegetation of all kinds around their borders to attract more rainfall, thus turning wasteland into parks and farmland - much as Colonel Gaddafi was doing in Libya before NATO decided he had gone far enough.
(By the way, the biggest greenhouse gas by far is (drum roll please!) water. Atmospheric water is variable but between 0 and 4% - say 2% overall - of the atmosphere, and nobody to my knowledge is talking about reducing our water emissions)
More at:
Lord Monckton (1 hr 27 - recommended) (Lord Monckton Foundation)
And lastly ... nothing to do with "climate change" but everything to do with life on this earth:
Dell Bigtree interviews Dr Zach Bush
