Pointless Carbon Tax

Currently the world is in the grip of one those phenomena known as the Madness of Crowds.

Global warming and climate change have become dominant features in the way we run our lives, and in the bizarre actions of governments.

People are still threatening us with the old line that Global Warming will have devastating effects. On May 3^rd 2012 the US Defense Secretary said: ‘Climate change has a dramatic effect on national security. Rising sea levels, severe droughts, the melting of the polar caps, the more frequent and devastating natural disasters all raise demand for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.’ More recently CSIRO repeated its claims of dangerous rise of sea levels.

Is there any truth at all in this? 

The Climate Alarm is based on the assertions that 

1. The world is getting warmer and 
    
2. The global warming is caused by human-produced CO2  (AGW). 

All the rest – rising sea level, melting ice sheets, drowning polar bears, etc. – are additional alarms based on the assumption of global warming. 

Warming has ceased!

In a press release of April 2, 2012, by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, it was announced that new UK Met Office global temperature data show that

there has been no global warming in the past 15 years – a timescale that challenges current models of global warming. The graph shows the global annual average temperature since 1997. No statistically significant trend can be discerned from the data. The only statistically acceptable conclusion to be drawn from the data is that between 1997 and 2011 temperature has remained constant, with a global temperature of 14.44 +/- 0.16 deg C (2 standard deviations.)

Land based data are somewhat unreliable, but the hottest recent year was 1998. 1936 was the warmest year of the twentieth century. In fact the temperature varies regularly. The Earth’s warming from 1915 to 1940 was just about as strong as the “scary” 1975 to 1998 warming in both scope and duration—and occurred too early to be blamed on human-emitted CO₂. The cooling from 1940 to 1975 defied the Greenhouse Theory, occurring during the first big surge of man-made greenhouse emissions. 

Satellite data suggest a global temperature essentially unchanged in 30 years. Sea ice also shows no change in during this period, though every annual retreat is regarded by alarmists as proof of AGW. 

Ocean temperatures are more important than land temperatures because the ocean holds much more heat than atmosphere. Since 2004 the Argo observation system of 3000 buoys has been measuring the sea temperature. The machines go down as far as two kilometres and surface every ten days to send out their data, which show a cooling trend. Because we have data to great depths we know there is nowhere for the heat to be hiding. The global warming hypothesis requires a rise in temperature. The observed cooling trend shows it is not happening, so the hypothesis should be rejected. .

The greenhouse effect is real, but trivial. Water is the major greenhouse gas, about four to ten times more effective than CO₂. We cannot give an absolute number because the amount of water vapour in the air varies a great deal. CO₂ is minor (0.03%), and methane even less (0.001%) and very variable with no detectable effect on climate. 

So how does the IPCC get a runaway greenhouse effect? They apply an enormous amount of compounding water vapour feedback to a small amount of heating from CO₂. At their worst, the IPCC models take one degree of heating and turn it into 6.4 degrees. Emphasis on the greenhouse effect stresses only radiation and leads to neglect of other factors, especially convection which uses lots of energy. 

Carbon dioxide is the alleged cause of global warming, and the fundamental reason for a carbon tax and calls to “cut the carbon footprint”. It is an invisible gas, and quite different from carbon. The ultimate source of CO₂ is volcanic eruption; the sink is limestone, where most of the world’s CO₂ is stored. The CO₂ content of the atmosphere has been much greater in the geological past, without catastrophe. 

The amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere is a mere 0.03% and is indeed increasing, but the increase started long before 1945 when AGW is supposed to start. 

The ocean is a huge sink and holds much more CO₂ than the atmosphere. There is an equilibrium between the CO₂ in the ocean and that in the atmosphere, and if we were somehow able to remove it from the atmosphere the ocean will give out more to restore the equilibrium. Hence sequestering of CO₂ is pointless, although many countries (including Australia) are attempting it at great expense. 

Cold seas hold more CO₂ than warm seas. Climate alarmists want to cool the world (by preventing global warming), so their policy would add more CO₂ to the ocean, which would increase their second problem of alleged ocean acidification. Climate alarmists claim is that human production of CO₂ will cause the oceans to become “acid”. The ocean is alkaline, with a pH of about 8.2, and has never been acid in all Earth history, indicated by the preservation of marine limestones. Increasing CO₂ might make the ocean less alkaline but never acid. 

Photosynthesis is the basis of life. Plants use H₂O and CO₂ and sunlight to synthesise sugar and other organic molecules, and animals are dependent on plants to provide their energy. If CO₂ gets too low, plant growth shuts down, and the more we take carbon dioxide above that minimum critical level, the safer life on this planet will be. On land and in the sea, living organisms thrive on increased CO₂. The climate alarmists usually try to take the high moral ground when they claim that reducing CO₂ will Save the Planet, but the more carbon dioxide you put into the atmosphere, the more you are Helping All Living Things on the Planet and of course that makes you a better person. 

Yet governments now tell us that CO₂ is a pollutant! When global warming failed to occur and people were getting bored, the US Environment Protection Agency ruled this life-enhancing trace-gas CO₂ was a pollutant. There is absolutely no evidence for this. For much life on the planet we are in a CO₂ –poor environment. 

Green (and government) propaganda invariably shows chimneys emitting black clouds, and cooling towers belching white clouds. These are soot and water (distilled, pure water!), but the subliminal message is that this is pollution. Remember CO₂ is invisible. The propaganda is pure lies, and stooping to such a level suggests the alarmists cannot make a case with true science. 

Many think political decisions concerning climate are based on scientific predictions. This is not the case: what the politicians get are projections based on models. What is the difference, and why is it never made clear? 

Models depend on what you put in (data), the program, and conclusions drawn from the output. 

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change uses adjusted data for the input, mostly from the discredited UK East Anglia Climate Research Unit, and their computer models and codes remain secret – not a scientific procedure. 

They do not give predictions of the future, but only computer projections. Furthermore they do not take responsibility for the alarm they generate. 

Australia’s CSIRO, for example, has legal disclaimers for their scary predictions: 

This report relates to climate change scenarios based on computer modelling. Models involve simplifications of the real processes that are not fully understood.

Accordingly, no responsibility is accepted by the CSIRO for the accuracy of forecasts or predictions inferred from this report or for any person’s interpretations, deductions, conclusions or actions in reliance on this report. 

Any allegedly scientific document that needs a legal disclaimer is clearly not science. Should the CSIRO be giving advice for which it takes no responsibility? 

Australian government ministers (and their advisers) claim that their decisions are based on a scientific consensus but especially the advice of the IPCC and CSIRO. Yet both of these organisations deny making predictions, and refuse to be responsible for their computer’s projections. Computers are still not clever enough to take responsibility, so presumably it is the government, through lack of due diligence, that is responsible for the expensive and ineffective actions it is now implementing to “combat” the alleged “human-induced dangerous Global Warming”.