This is a huge and a very complex subject. The literature surrounding climate change is enormous, diffuse and profoundly contradictory. The reason; climate scientists have not exactly been lily white in their recording and reporting of information. A considerable amount of data has been distorted or altered to give them the results they desire.
My approach to this subject is factual and as accurate as my research has allowed in several years of study. The last forty years have seen massive multinational scientific studies costing millions of dollars. The scientific backing for the Global Warming scare comes from climate science, not politicians. Climate science is a weak science. The atmosphere is chaotic and difficult to define with scientific theories. Many of these studies attempt to predict the future of the climate and to quantify the effects of change on the world’s populations. The effects of Carbon Dioxide are speculative and influenced by ideological biases of the various scientists. This then produces strong elements attempting to enforce uniformity of opinion. The climate scientific community now say there is ‘consensus’ among scientists supporting anthropological climate change. This is a nonsense. In science there is no such thing. Either the scientific evidence proves the hypothesis or it doesn’t. The opinion of the scientists is irrelevant without factual and repeatable evidence.
The major factor in the Earth’s climate is the sun. Our climate is driven by the receipt and redistribution of solar energy. Without this there would be no life on Earth.
In the last few decades, we have been authoritatively told and pressured to accept that the Earth is heating up to a degree higher than it should, and will continue to do so, because of polluting emissions of Carbon Dioxide. Well, some of us are not ready to accept that. Before acceding to any form of global climate alarmism, we want to know why, how much and how relevant the warming could be.
Many politicians, journalists, scientists and green activists claim to know all the answers. The media and politicians in particular are pushing the theory – “it is caused by mankind and our irresponsible activities in discharging Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere, thus forming a Greenhouse Gas, which will cause the Earth’s temperature to rise and lead to all manner of worldly disasters.” This massive “Fixation” on CO2 is now beyond all reasonable common sense. The alarmist lobby have totally disregarded all the vast natural forces that actually do drive climate.
Moreover, to alarm us further, the scientists claim “That the science is settled, and there is nothing further to be done.” Well, anyone with a knowledgeable background knows this is a nonsense, when Hard data evidence and Historical scientific ice core results all show the ‘science is far from settled.’
The study of global climate fluctuations over millions of years shows there are other massive forces controlling global climate and that the role of man-made CO2 emissions is so incredibly minute as to be almost negligible. The true reality is, “There is no climate emergency” there never has been and to say CO2 is a pollutant is fraudulent in the extreme. Pollution kills and no one wants pollution of the atmosphere, waterways or land.
By contrast, carbon dioxide is plant food and the life blood of the plant kingdom. CO2 underpins all life on Earth. All plants require CO2 for photosynthesis and especially photosynthetic micro-organisms, which are the pillars supporting all life on Earth.
Contrary to what is popularly claimed “that we must reduce our ‘carbon’ footprint and stop climate change;’ we again are misinformed. Carbon is a chemical element on the Periodic Table of Elements and forms many substances from graphite to diamonds. Carbon is Not a gas and certainly not a Greenhouse gas, so the Carbon Footprint claim is just another falsehood picked up be the politicians as a desirable turn of phrase. In fact carbon particulate matter and dust in the atmosphere from volcanos causes global cooling.
Carbon dioxide is an extremely minor greenhouse gas, so small, that it’s deemed a trace gas and is measured in parts per million. Today levels vary around the World from 390 ppm to 410ppm, with an average of 400ppm, representing just 0.04%. of total atmospheric gases. So where is the scientific evidence that CO2 is the problem? – it is simply not there. And the scientists provide false evidence to justify their case. The Pie Graph below is frequently shown to scare the public as to how much CO2 there is in the atmosphere. However the Major Greenhouse Gas is not there !!!!!
So you might ask, what is the major greenhouse gas in the atmosphere? It happens to be Water Vapour, yes, 97% of all greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is water vapour. Something the climate scientists and politicians have conveniently ignored and left out of any discussion, as it destroys their CO2 arguments. The correct graph below highlights the significance of Water Vapour and its huge dominance in the atmosphere.
But it gets worse for these climate scientists – of the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, we find that the bulk of the 400ppm is put up by Nature and Natural Earth processes. Natures contribution to the 400ppm is 97%. (or 388ppm). Mankind’s contribution is just 3% or 12ppm. Thats All!! When the scientists speak of the 400ppm they don’t mention that only 12ppm is from human emissions. So for our politicians and media to say we must stop our emissions to save the planet, the question becomes well how can that work if its only 12ppm? If we stopped all our emissions today, it will not make a blind bit of difference as nature will still go on putting up 97% of all carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
To blame mankind’s 12ppm of CO2 for any warming or climate change effect is non- sensical. The Climate Alarmists insult our intelligence in trying to have us believe otherwise.
After hundreds of billions of dollars expenditure, there is still no empirical validated evidence of human-induced global warming and the forecasts have not followed the pre-ordained catastrophist script.
Global Warming evolved into Climate Change, when temperatures flatten off after 1998. Then when the Climate catastrophists could not win over public opinion, they changed the mantra to extreme weather. Now that their magic bullet misfired they insist that extreme weather events are our fault and that angry Nature is punishing us for using the fossil fuel that gave us all our high standard of living and the greatest advances in civilisation ever.
So the tower graph below shows clearly the large amount of CO2 put up be Nature and the small amount by mankind.
Past climate changes, ice sheets changes, and catastrophes are written in stone. Planet Earth is dynamic. It is continually changing and evolving and always will. Changes are often abrupt, like within years and not decades or centuries as first thought. Climate changes are both random and cyclical and are driven by the Earth’s position in the galaxy, the Sun, the wobbles in the Earth’s orbit, Ocean currents,(like the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation), Cosmic rays, Volcanos, Water Vapour, Cloud Cover, the Moon, El Nino and La Nina Oscillations, Ice, Dust, Plate tectonics, the 100,000 year ice age, the 12-15,000 year interglacial, the Bond events, the Heinrich events, and the Dansgaard-Oeschger Cycles, which are a wide-reaching abrupt climate change.
So lets face the next reality – Climate change is unstoppable, yes, absolutely unstoppable by any human intervention.
Life on Earth is always changing and adapting.
Currently we are in an interglacial period, a warming phase between glacial periods, and it is not surprising the temperature has risen as it is only 170 years since we came out of the ‘Little Ice Age’. During this period the Thames River frequently froze over and Londoners had “Frost Fairs” on the river. The last time this happened was 1820. Then warming slowly began and by 1850 the Little Ice Age was deemed to be at an end.
The total World temperature from 1850 to 2020 has risen just 0.8°C. An amazingly stable situation. The green lobby want the US Govt to spend $1.2 Trillion to prevent a temperature rise of just 1.5ºC in the next 30 years, – How in reality, can that be justified, when there is no proof, that mankind is the problem or even CO2 for that matter.
As well as Climate always changing. Sea levels have always changed. Continents have shifted their position and the Earth’s magnetic polarity has flipped several times. Extinctions of life are normal. But the changes we observe today are LESS than those of the past.
Remember that all the predictions by Climate Scientists on future climate change, are based on Computer Modelling, nothing more, and the data feed into them is often unreliable, has been distorted or collected in prejudiced environments, and there is evidence of outright falsification of data so their results are spurious and highly suspect.
1998 has been the warmest year on Earth since 1934 (the hottest year of the 20th century) and for the last 22 years the temperature has levelled off with some years warmer and others colder.– NONE of the Climate Scientists predicted this and not one of the computer models got it right. Computer predictions cannot accurately predict a decade in advance let alone 50 or 100 years ahead. (The elephant cartoon below was published in 2016 – re the 17 years).
The media regularly show photographs of “smoke” stacks puffing out supposed polluting emissions of CO2. However (as shown below) it is steam – water vapour.
CO2 is a tasteless, odourless, colourless gas, “you can’t see it”.
Geologic evidence tells us that levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have been far higher than they are now. Five Hundred million years ago CO2 levels were around 7000ppmv. They have fluctuated and steadily declined ever since. In the last 500 million years, only once have CO2 levels been as low as they are now. With high CO2 levels, there was no runaway green-house catastrophe or acid oceans, there was no global burn out, disintegration of the Earth, or end of the World scenario; but plants did grow, forests grew and life flourished. Atmospheric CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas and is only capable of trapping a narrow band of infra-red radiation, and the efficiency of the CO2 trap is essentially insensitive to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
So there is no green-house sheathing of CO2 around the Earth, and heat is lost into space all the time particularly in the Northern Pacific where scientists, Denis Avery and Fred Singer have found a ‘vent hole in the atmosphere’ continually releasing vast amounts of energy into space.
Early life thrived in a CO2 rich atmosphere. The incredibly vast Bacteria Kingdom rule the World and, together with water, are a key driver of the carbon cycle.
Over the last 85 years there has been a slight increase in CO2 levels from 325ppm to 400ppm, WHY? Because we now know from Ice core studies that when the Earth’s temperature rises, A rise in CO2 levels follow, it is not the other way round. This rise has seen increased crop and grain yields, huge advances in civilisation and life on Earth has never been so good for the human species.
We ought to be very thankful that the trend has not gone the other way, for we have been skating close to the wind – if CO2 levels dropped to 200ppm or below it is predicted that plants will not grow and life on Earth as we know it will perish. Alternatively trials with plants have shown that the optimal CO2 concentration for photosynthesis is around 800ppm.
We have looked at where CO2 sits in relation to other greenhouse gases, now I want to show where it sits against all gases in the atmosphere.
The tiny “DOT” in the red circle in the lower right hand corner represents the entire amount of CO2 in the atmosphere – both Natural emissions and the small human emissions.
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Methane (CH4) is another greenhouse gas that the politicians ands scientists like to bander about. It is produced in Nature and by mankind. Natural emissions come from wetland swamps, peat bogs, the Oceans, and marshes. Also from Termites, Ruminants, Forest fires, plants, and ice trapped permafrost. In the oceans methane is produced from seafloor hydrates. Emissions by mankind come from livestock, organic matter decay, biomass burning, paddy fields, and fossil fuel emissions.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that very quickly oxidises in air to H2O and CO2.Its content in the atmosphere is so small compared with CO2 that it is measured in parts per ‘Billion’, and once it oxidises it ceases to be a potent greenhouse gas. It is rapidly broken down by its chemical action with (Hydroxyl radicle), Hydroxide ion (OH`). The breakdown of methane is by two mechanisms – shown below:
- CH4 + OH` = CH3 + H2O(water)
- CH4 + 2O2 = CO2 + 2H2O
Blaming our dairy herds for belching “volumes” of methane into atmosphere is a misnomer. The effect of this small amount and its rapid breakdown in the atmosphere make it so insignificant that it can be entirely disregarded specially when compared with the amount from the Oceans.
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What other mechanisms influence climate.?
At this point we pay tribute to a gentleman who made a substantial contribution to our knowledge of climate. Milutin Milankovitch a Serbian engineer and mathematician.
He identified three aspects of the Earth’s Orbit, each of which have an impact on global climate.
A 100,000 year cycle due to the fact that the Earth’s orbit around the Sun is not circular but elliptical and irregular, taking us further away from the sun in some orbits and closer in others.
And a 22,000 year cycle arising from the way the Earth wobbles on its spin axis.
A 41,000 year cycle caused by shifts in the tilt of the Earth’s spin axis. These vagaries in the Earth’s orbit are now known as the Milankovitch Cycles.
There is also the known Solar Cycles of 11years, the Magnetic of 22, The Wheeler of 172, The Suess of 210 years duration, where the sun goes through quiet periods with no sun-spot activity to active periods with multiple sun-spot and magnetic activity. These periods of greater and lesser intensity have a profound effect on our climate.
These changes in Solar energy also have an effect on Cosmic Radiation. The Earth receives a veritable flux of galactic cosmic rays causing cloud formation. An energetic Sun blasts away cosmic radiation, there is less low-level cloud, and the planet reflects less energy back into space and the surface of the Earth warms. A weak Sun allows cosmic radiation to form low-level clouds which reflect energy back into space and the surface of Earth cools.
Clouds are in effect the engine of climate. Clouds reflect some 60% of the Suns radiation. It is estimated that an increase of 2-3% in the Earth’s cloud cover would send us into the next ice age. A change of just 1% in cloudiness of the Planet would account for all of the 20th and 21st Century warming. However, unbelievably the Climate Scientists computer models do not factor in clouds.
More recent data shows there has been a significant increase in the intensity of Cosmic Rays reaching Earth as the sun becomes quiescent.
This sun photo was taken by Noeline Lownes in 2016, showing a very quiescent sun, with no sunspot activity, similar to what we saw during the depth of the Little Ice Age Maunder Minimum.(1645-1710)
Another factor that has a significant affect on our climate is the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt.
The Oceans are not still bodies of water.
The World’s oceans are in constant motion both from winds that generate waves and currents and from the pull of gravity that creates tides. The conveyor belt transfers warm water from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic as a shallow current and returns cold water from the Atlantic to the Pacific as a deep current. By the time the warm surface current reaches the Mid-Atlantic it turns into the well known Gulf Stream. As it reaches Europe evaporation occurs releasing heat to the atmosphere and the ocean water cools.
As the water becomes colder, it increases in salinity and becomes dense, sinking thousands of meters below the surface. The heat released moderates the weather of Western Europe and it
enjoys temperatures around 20 degrees warmer than Manitoba in Canada which is on the same latitude.
Should climatic events occur that shut down the Gulf Stream, then colder flowing Arctic water released from melting ice sheets would seriously impact Europe’s weather. In 2005 British researches noticed the net flow of the Gulf Stream had decreased by 30% since 1957.
A sure sign of the Stream’s reduction and a change in the North Atlantic Oscillation.
Another factor affecting the climate is volcanic action.
A Volcano in one single eruption can spew more CO2 into the atmosphere than Man puts up in 20 years, yet the Natural World deals with it and corrects the imbalance. Some will remember the volcanic eruption of Mt Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991. It spewed out more CO2 into the atmosphere than the entire human race has emitted in all its years on Earth!!! It is also believed that the mighty eruption of Krakatoa (1883) put up a similar amount. Along with CO2, volcanos spew out huge amounts of volcanic ash and dust which circulate around the Globe and block the suns energy thus reducing the Earth’s temperature. Some North Canterbury farmers remember Pinatubo well for the heavy snows of the 1992 winter. Closer to home the Ruapehu eruption in 1995 delivered a significant amount of CO2 to the atmosphere.
In 1988 the World Meteorological Organisation and the United Nations Environmental Programme established ‘The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’ commonly known as the IPCC.
Over the last 29 years the IPCC has given a number of Assessment Reports – Each has been a voluminous document in technical language and colourful baffling graphs. Data manipulation in this field was done by Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes. In 1998 Mann published his alarming work to shock the World’s governments into action. This lead to various global summits on climate change and the formation of the Kyoto Protocol, the Copenhagen Accord, the Paris Agreement, and currently the Glasgow COP26.
Work by two Canadians, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, showed the fraud in Mann’s work.
The first graph shows Michael Mann’s famous hockey stick graph to highlight the supposed hike in temperatures since 1000AD – In doing so he completely obliterated the Medieval Warming Period to show that the late twentieth century warming was unprecedented. The second graph shows the correct data with the MWP being 1.5 – 2.5 degrees warmer than now. This fraud highlighted the extremes these alarmists would go to in falsifying data, and the IPCC are still smarting over it and rightly so – it was a deliberate attempt to mislead the public and more particularly politicians.
Unfortunately it did have some impact and raised the question that we should know more about what is going on in our atmosphere. Now the scientists have a golden goose, and requests for funding have diverted staggering amounts of public funds into the so-called science of Climate Change. Since the inception of the Kyoto Protocol some 30 Billion dollars has been spent to avert a speculated 0.5°C temperature rise by 2050. So far this has not made a scrap of difference to our climate.
One of the key assertions in Global Warming claims; Is that man has caused CO2 to increase by approx. 35% over the last 150 years. This assertion is a nonsense. The huge release of CO2 from the cooling of molten rocks in the Chilean and Icelandic Volcanos of 2010 & 2011 is completely unmeasured. The release of CO2 from bacteria in the first four kilometres of the Earth’s crust is unknown, the release of CO2 from the uplift of mountain ranges, such as the Karakorams, is unknown, and the release of CO2 from submarine volcanos is entirely unknown. Remember that over 85% of the Earth’s active volcanos are in the Oceans and none of the CO2 released from them is factored into the Computer Models run by the IPCC.
It has been known for hundreds of years that Nature holds many secrets, and no-one has suggested that we have found them all, quite the contrary. For instance we know what happens in El Nino events but we don’t know what causes them. Nor do we know why the Earth’s glacial-interglacial cycles changed from 41,000 to 100,000 years?
With Climate Change there is only two certainties, One, the World’s Climate will change. The second, The Earth will go into another ice-age. Some scientists consider we are already going there; Climatologist Dr Richard Keen, University of Colorado, “Earth has cooled since 1998 in defiance of the predictions of the IPCC, the global temperature for 2007 was the coldest in a decade and the coldest of the century so far.” Dr David Gee, Professor of Geology at Uppsala University, Sweden has said “For how many years must the Sun’s intensity cool before we begin to understand that the Planet is heading into a cooling phase.” The wild swings we are getting between colder winters and hotter summers is clear evidence of an erratic changing climate.
Each time there is a climatic disaster, the media and environmental bodies jump on the band wagon and claim it is a result of Human induced Global Warming. We are all blamed for it and the scientists and politicians say we must take steps to stop it and declare things like Climate Emergencies. There is simply no evidence to link carbon dioxide with these climate events. It is Scare Mongering at its worst. – Remember that as the Earth cools, we experience far greater Climatic volatility & storm frequency than in any warming period. There is plenty of evidence for this as was witnessed in the late fourteenth Century when we went into the Little Ice Age. Just 670 years ago.
The sun is currently taking us into the next minimum period as we see from the Sun Cycle Chart:
On top of this, the release of recent Southern Hemisphere evidence confirms this new direction. Kenneth Richard’s announcement “That a New Study Finds East & West Antarctica have PROFOUNDLY COOLED since 1979. From 1979 – 2018 East Antarctica cooled by Minus 2.8ºC and West Antarctica cooled by Minus 1.68ºC”. The fact that Antarctica’s temperature has dropped so much, in such a relatively short time is telling us where the Earth’s climate is going and how quickly. The only area to show a slight warming is the Antarctic Peninsular close to South America.
The South Pole this winter (2021) had its lowest temperatures ever. The temperature averaged Minus -61°C, with a lowest reading in the -70°C. the lowest temperature recorded in the World is -89°C at the Russian Station, Vostok, in the Antarctic, in 1983.
So what other changes are we seeing – Currently the Antarctic Ice cap is growing. Over the last 4 years it grew to the tune of 45 Billion tons of ice and snow each year. This is measured by the European Satellite that orbits the Earth, Pole to Pole. The Southern Ocean sea ice cover has grown by 9-10% over the last two decades and last winter extended over a 1000 miles out, more than doubling the size of the Antarctic Continent. In so doing massive amounts of solar energy were reflected by the ice back into space, reducing the warming of the Southern Ocean.
The break off of glaciers and ice shelves from the continent is a normal process with variations from year to year depending on the build up of ice and snow. So in the next few years it is going to be reasonable for us to see more icebergs breaking off the Antarctic Continent.
We have also seen the fluctuating position of the Antarctic Convergence bringing colder water and icebergs further north.
What does all this mean – in essence it is too early for any definitive prediction to be accurate – but the data we have so far confirms the new Minimum.
BUT these secrets of Nature, that I have already mentioned, guarantee that computer models of the Climate Scientists will NOT be correct. Global warming adherents such as James Hansen, who has cooked the books, and Al Gore tell us the science is settled. Scientific Knowledge is doubling every seven years and it is impossible for anything to be settled.
The IPCC is a dinosaur and like the dinosaurs it needs to become extinct, so that real scientists and policy makers can do a better job.
Political reaction to human-induced global warming based on incomplete science can only be extraordinarily costly, will distort energy policy as its already done with un-necessary Carbon Taxes, and will make the poor even poorer. Most of the scientists know they are on a gravy train and they are not about to let it go. For they have distorted data and fabricated results to suit their predictions. One of the worst examples is the famous Climate Gate scandal, where the hacked release of emails and information from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England, showed the astounding corruption and manipulation of climate data.
We should also be weary of those “Political Saviours” who unbelievably, do not understand the science of climate change but claim to know how to fix it, – by a raft of restrictions and laws reducing our freedoms and way of life. – simply they don’t
So to argue that human emissions of CO2 are causing global warming requires all the known mechanisms of Natural Global Warming to be ignored and summarily dismissed. In essence if you truly believe that mankind is driving climate change and that we can somehow stop it; Then you need to be in therapy or taking stronger medicine. To argue that we humans can change climate change, by focussing on CO2 is naïve in the extreme. In fact it is utterly arrogant of insignificant mankind to think we can stop climate change against the gigantically powerful forces of nature.
So, even after what I have said – if you still believe governments can change climate. Let me say this: When governments can change the galactic path of the sun, the amount of solar energy from the sun, the cycles of the Earths orbit, the influence of cosmic rays, the behaviour of bacteria and plate tectonics, shut down volcanos, then, and only then, should you believe governments can change climate.
So let’s not forget that the real problems of true air, sea and terrestrial pollution. They cannot be ignored and should be addressed. We need to care and nurture our Capital Resources both Marine and Terrestrial for the future of mankind. But in the case of the Non Problem of Human induced climate change through CO2 we need to have the courage to very thoughtfully do nothing, but learn to adapt to the Natural Processes that drive climate change as man has done for thousands of years, and we must do again.
The World now has an unprecedented population level of 8 Billion, so any natural disaster will have greater impact on mankind with greater losses and destruction than ever before.
Unfortunately right now we are woefully attacking it down the wrong path. The direction we need, is to accept that the climate will change, and work to prepare for these changes as they occur. For example in New Orleans, USA, instead of curbing emissions they need to build better dykes or Levies. We need to upskill and equip our rescue services, our fire services, our air rescue and medical services, our disaster relief and humanitarian services. Remember there has never been a century where we haven’t had natural disasters: – floods, snow storms, fires, earthquakes, droughts, Tornados, Hurricanes, and the like. The history books are full of them.
In science it does not matter who you are, or the strength of your position, or the ingenuity of your scientific experiments; if your basic hypothesis is wrong then it will all be for naught. The current science of Climate Change is the best funded, politically-driven, pseudo-scientific scam, in history and represents far more of a threat to the World in terms of lost freedoms, economic collapse, corrupted education, stunted progress, and a sure way of making the poor even poorer. It is ludicrous that so many of the climate scientists should still be trying to manipulate data to validate a flawed hypothesis – but its amazing what the power of monetary gain will induce.
That’s right turn the graph upside down and you have the perfect result.
As the prolific writer Melanie Phillips sums up:
All around us, the cultural and political institutions of the west are repudiating reason and evidence, in the service of numerous ideologies which permit no challenge whatever to their driving idea and its control over peoples’ lives. Our supposed age of reason is based on science. To understand how reason is currently being destroyed, look no further than the astounding terrible corruption of science by the politicised ideology of anthropogenic global warming.
After the scandal of Climate Gate, the East Anglia Climate Research Unit (England) was so embarrassed there was a scramble to cover up their work and wipe out emails.
This Global warming hysteria will eventually subside, like so many earlier “End of the World” scenarios that never materialised, leaving a strange legacy for our future generations to ponder.
Concluding comment: The volcanic eruption in Tonga was massive.
The eruption of the Tongan volcano in the Pacific on Friday the 14th January was likely the biggest recorded anywhere on the planet in more than 30 years, according to expert volcanologist, Shane Cronin.
The emissions are in the order of over 3.2 million tons of CO2 in the 10 days since the eruption began. This equates to over 116.0 million tons per annum if emissions continue at the same level.
This by way of comparison is more than NZ has ever put up. This level totally makes farcical any measures by NZ to attempt control or reduction of emissions.
In fact it highlights that it is Nature and Natural Processes that control climate, not Mankind. For our stupidity in thinking we can stop or alter climate change, it poses the interesting thought that if Nature had a face it would be laughing at us right now!!!