The Grim Prospect of a Net-Zero World

‘Man must dig or die’ was a motif of Lang Hancock, a visionary Australian pioneer, pastoralist, prospector, pilot, producer, philosopher and philanthropist. His daughter, Gina Rinehart,  blessed with every one of those attributes, has gone so much further than even her father could have envisaged, after she recovered the wreckage of the family companies incurred during Hancock’s somewhat reckless final years. The human factor is as important as science in accessing and utilising virtually infinite resources available in a minerals-and-energy-rich planet.

Every Australian owes a debt of gratitude for the work of Lang Hancock and Gina Rinehart, especially in developing the iron ore industry in north-west Australia and the resultant wealth that has flowed through the entire economy. It could have been more, but  political opportunists thwarted  their prodigious efforts to open up new areas rich in minerals and energy, particularly the Galilee Basin in central Queensland.

As public opinion shapes political policies,  the slow-motion train wreck of the disastrous and ill-conceived net-zero policies have become a global issue. Hence, these diktats must be challenged in the public/political arena as a matter of top priority if we are ever to see a return to common sense.

All life on Earth depends on carbon dioxide, which has been subject to a most amazingly effective smear campaign over what is now several generations. Even today propagandists and the media present the trace gas as the sooty, particulate-laden smoke belched from old-style smokestacks lacking the scrubbers now used in the chimneys of current generation coal-fired power stations. Schools inculcate fear of the Carbon Monster and a notional carbon footprint’ is now a ruling factor in a legislative nightmare determined to enforce compliance with what is essentially a fairy tale.

The motif, ‘Man must dig or die’, has never been more needed to be understood than now. The very act of mining the primary fuel that sustains us is under threat by modern-day ill-informed Luddites.[1]

In Queensland, legislation is planned to shuty down the essential coal-mining industry within a decade. This is economic suicide, madness on an industrial scale. Ever since coal was harnessed to feed the iron horses of industry that released humanity from the slavery of subsistence living, coal has been under attack — especially from those whose jobs have been temporarily displaced. One man driving a truck or a dragline can now do the work of 20,000  navvies [2] – and those same labouers now enjoy more job options with better working conditions.

While plant, animal and other life flourished with atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over six times those that exist today (and the planet didn’t overheat), over succeeding millennia, carbon dioxide levels have sunk to a historic low. This issue is the real matter of concern, but it is something we can do something positive about.

CO2 is depleted from the atmosphere in several ways:

First, by the lungs of the Planet, the oceans, breathing in and out the trace gases. As described by Henry’s Law, this is temperature- and pressure-dependent. As the oceans get colder and hotter, they breathe carbon dioxide in and out, but they can hold their breath for extended periods, such as Ice Ages, and when surface plants are deprived of carbon dioxide, they die.

Second,  through the one-way Urey Carbon Reaction that converts atmospheric carbon dioxide into solid components of the Earth’s crust such as limestones, marble, corals.[3] This contributes to the Expanding Earth argument that challenges the Continental Drift Theory.[4] The science is far from settled.

Third, by life in all its forms that depend on carbon dioxide as a nutrient. Plants breathe it in, and by the miracle of photosynthesis, convert it into accumulations of solar energy, the giant batteries known as fossil fuels. Millions of years of this process has resulted in unimaginable quantities of coal deposits that are available for humanity to use, and in the process of extracting the stored energy, recycle this precious trace gas back into the atmosphere for plants to re-use.

The hippopotamus in the bathtub of energy is coal, and quantities stored and available for recycling their contained precious CO2 back into the atmosphere have been underestimated by a huge and still unmeasurable factor. The discredited Limits to Growth by the Club of Rome published 50 years ago gave its most optimistic forecast of remaining coal reserves at that time (1972) as 150 years at exponential predicted rates of usage. But exploration drilling budgets only cover enough drilling to prove reserves to cover a reasonable return on investment in a project. Aggregated statistics can be misleading.

The deepest drill hole ever achieved before the drill bits could not withstand the heat was the Kola Superdeep Borehole in north-west Russia, with a depth of 12,262 metres. No metals exploration borehole is anywhere near that depth, but the continental crust averages 35 kilometres thick, and coal deposits have been found below 5 kilometres in seams up to 90 metres thick – outside current mining ability to recover, but the energy can be extracted, and CO2 released back into the atmosphere if needed, using other techniques.

There is an excellent case for mining and utilising more coal, and for allowing carbon dioxide to flow freely into the fields and forests. Dr Patrick Moore, co-founder but no longer a member of Greenpeace, puts a cogent case for increased CO2 levels.[5] Approaching the issue from a different viewpoint, Professor William Happer of Princeton University affirms unequivocally that there is no climate emergency and demonstrates that carbon dioxide levels can be double present levels with almost no difference to their greenhouse heat exchange contribution.[6] Although the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide to date has been relatively small, NASA has already detected a notable rise in plant growth and greening of the Planet.

That human emissions (recycling) of carbon dioxide have virtually net zero effect on global temperatures has been demonstrated in many scientific papers. A recent study by Ian L.K. McNaughton, a scientist from Sydney[7] examined raw data from two sites, Sydney and near London, and concluded:

From examination of the trends of CO2 concentration, population growth and temperature, this paper concludes that, although there is a visible relationship between population growth and increases in the concentration of atmospheric CO2, there is little or no visible relationship between increases in CO2 concentration and temperature for the two sites examined, and by inference, for the total earth.[8]

In the scramble for net zero, it seems to have been forgotten that the Urey Carbon Reaction is continuing to work irrevocably towards removing precious carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Human recycling of carbon dioxide can only help mitigate this effect. The immediate answer to so many economic and consequent social problems is to stop ‘renewables’ subsidies, open our coalmines, fire up our boilers and surround the power stations with forests and crops to better manage this essential gas.

Our coal-fired power grid has been sabotaged by the creeping disease of subsidised solar panels and wind turbines. We now reap the whirlwind, all in blind pursuit of an unachievable and counterproductive net-zero. Skyrocketing power costs are the result of progressively and unnecessarily duplicating a once-reliable, low-cost grid while carbon cowboys play games in the futures market and make personal fortunes through prematurely closing down power stations to suit speculation in sub-standard, unreliable, wind-and-solar rich-lister toys that will shortly be landfill. We do not need any more government inquiries to smokescreen increased costs-of-living.

Glad-handing politicians are still peddling fear of the imaginary carbon monster as is exemplified by the latest brochure from our  Federal (Greens) Member:

We seem to be lurching between heatwaves and floods, while cyclones hit up north. A stark reminder that we need to stop new coal and gas if we’re going to have a safe future for all of us.

This is an outrageous claim that must be challenged in the courts if our political system fails us. At a recent national conference in Canberra, two prominent economists were promoting a ‘carbon’ levy to purportedly raise hundreds of billions of dollars to supercharge Australia’s green exports industry and reduce global emissions, quos deus vult perdere prius dementat – who the gods would destroy they first make crazy.

As Lang Hancock often observed, ‘The tax on nothing is nothing’ and ‘Man must dig or die’.

John McRobert is a civil engineer with over 60 years of experience in the design, construction and maintenance of major infrastructure, and the study of extreme natural events on manufactured structures. He founded CopyRight Publishing in 1987 to facilitate informed debate, publishing over 200 books, including seminal volumes by geologists and engineers on major Earth seismic events.

Gabriël A. Moens AM is an emeritus professor of law at the University of Queensland and served as pro vice-chancellor and dean at Murdoch University. He is the co-author of The Unlucky Country, Locke Press, 2024.

[1] ‘Luddite’ is now a blanket term used to describe people who dislike new technology, but its origins date back to an early 19th-century labour movement that railed against the ways that mechanised manufacturers and their unskilled labourers undermined the skilled craftsmen of the day.

[2] John Mc Robert, Your Future in Your Hands – Total Tax Reform, CopyRight Publishing, at https://www.copyright.net.au/1/home/your-future-in-your-hands-total-tax-reform.

[3] Louise H, Kellogg, Donald L. Turcotte, Harsha Lukavarapu, ‘On the Role of the Urey Reaction in Extracting Carbon Fom the Earth’s Atmosphere and Adding to the Continental Crust’, 1 November 2019, at <https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspas.2019.00062/full>.

[4]James Maxlow, Beyond Plate Tectonics: Unsettling Settled Science, 2018 at : <https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Beyond_Plate_Tectonics/L5IIEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0>

 [5]At <https://youtu.be/TjlmFr4FMvI>

[6] At <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA1zUW4uOSw>

[7] His experience includes: Senior Scientist, United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, Winfrith, Dorset, UK;

Measurement of cosmic rays in the Antarctic; Management of computing facilities at the Australian Aeronautical Research Establishment, ASIO, and other IT facilities in Local, State and Federal Government areas.

[8] Ian L.K. McNaughton, Temperature Measurements versus Population Growth & Carbon Dioxide Concentrations, December 2023.