Here I sit enjoying a long warm summer in Pretoria in South Africa.
Some nights I go home, and in the dark I jump in into my swimming pool and lazily float around looking up at the millions of stars shining brightly in a cloudless sky.
I then get out and go inside and switch on the TV to watch the news and I see the results of massive snowfalls in parts of the U.S. and Europe. Regularly, on TV, one sees some person, with sombre face, talking about severe weather events, climate change, and global warming and often they try to explain that the deep snow is somehow linked to climate change.
It is not. There is no evidence of increased severe weather events anywhere in the world. Statistically, the world weather is doing what it has always done. What really amazes me is when one sees a TV reporter interviewing some old-timer and it goes like this: “Hello, your farm is covered waist deep in snow; is this bad for you!” “Farmer: “Yes it is, it is killing my animals.” Reporter: “Do you think this is due to climate change?” “Oh yes,” says the farmer. “I am sure it is.”
Then the reporter says: “Have you ever seen it this bad before?” The farmer replies: “Well not for a long time; this is as bad as the 1972 snowfall, but not as bad as the 1966 fall.” Nobody then points out that if there was a 1972 snowfall as bad, and one in 1966 which was worse, and then you cannot possibly attribute the current one to climate change. This fundamental piece of logic is never followed up by the reporters.
Even the IPCC, which is not known for having balanced views, or even scientific views, has recently admitted that there has been no global warming for the past 16 years. That is worth repeating; no global warming 16 years!
So, for the past 16 years all the claims of observed warming during that period — claims of hottest years on record, and so on — have just not been true. Meantime, the CO2 content of the atmosphere has continued to increase to the 400 ppm mark, where it now stands.
So again by elementary logic this would seem to indicate, very strongly, that increasing CO2 is not causing any significant global warming. So CO2 is also not causing increased extreme weather events. Actually the increased CO2 is causing no effect observable to average citizens.
Oh, wait a minute, there is an observable effect: The government “panic-effect” which is seen all over the world. Many governments are panicking that CO2 is a problem, so they feel that they had better do something. So they do. They put an additional tax on new car prices to ‘pay’ for the CO2 coming out of the exhaust; air travel is carbon-taxed; and so it goes. The average citizens certainly do experience these effects … right in their pockets.
If one believes that increasing CO2 is a real problem, then such a belief can lead to very silly conclusions and actions.
If enough people believe that ghosts are spreading across the country, on a nationwide path of destruction, then a government will set up a department to combat ghost effects; the Department of Ghost Effects. The department will draw up ghost control legislation; will conduct potential ghost damage studies; and will introduce ghost multiplier taxes, and so on.
There will be ghost avoidance lessons in schools, and the silliness will spread.
One of the really silly results of an extreme fear of CO2 is the plan to execute “carbon capture.” This entails various schemes to capture CO2 and then to store it away somewhere.
In South Africa there is a project to investigate burying CO2 in deep underground geological storage areas. This is just plain crazy.
Now some U.S. professors have “warned” that this plan could induce earthquakes. This opinion is pitched as a horrific outcome, something to be scared of. Oh, Dear, they say: What if the deadly CO2 escapes during an earthquake?
Reading their comments somewhat carefully it becomes evident that the supposed “earthquakes” are nothing more than almost imperceptible cracks or movement, and that the horrific outcome is nothing more than that the CO2 could leak out and end up back in the air where it was taken from in the first place.
Carbon capture and storage is a waste of time and money. There is no CO2 problem needing a panic response. There is probably negligible anthropogenic CO2 effect on any perceived climate change, and if there is some, it will be so small as to be totally dwarfed by the natural forces of Mother Nature.
It appears strongly as if all the observed global warming and cooling, for thousands of years, can be explained by cosmic rays from outer space interacting with the magnetic field effects of the magnetic fields of the Sun and the Earth. The observed effects fit the physics of the magnetic field theory well; it does not fit a CO2 theory.
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In the row over whether climate change is causing the current floods and storms, the sceptics are the ones who are sticking to the consensus, as set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — you know, the body that the alarm-mongers are always telling us to obey. And it is the sceptics who have been arguing for years for resilience and adaptation, rather than decarbonisation. While the green lobby has prioritised decarbonisation, sceptics have persistently advocated government spending on adaptation, so as to grab the benefits of climate change but avoid the harm, and be ready for cooling as well if the sun goes into a funk. –Matt Ridley, The Times, 17 February 2014
Extreme weather events being taken as signs for the coming end unless sinful ways are repented is as old as civilization. Today’s climate panic is merely just the latest relapse to a very old mental disorder that has afflicted mankind for thousands of years. The only antidote is reason and knowledge. –Pierre Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, 17 February 2014
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Photo at top shows frozen waves in Lake Huron off Mackinac Island, Michigan.
You know, if this won’t demonstrate the absolute idiocy of the Chicken Little Climate crowd, nothing will.
There is a feature of carbon capture and storage that should scare people. In 1986 carbon dioxide vented from Lake Nyos in the Cameroon and killed by asphyxiation 1700 people and thousands of head of cattle. The earthquake (if feasible from CCS) would vent the stored CO-2 and create mayhem. It is ironic, EPA in saving our people from non-existent problems comes up with solutions more dangerous than original problems. Another example is mercury pollution. EPA wants to eliminate the negligible amount of mercury from burning coal and wants homeowners to reduce electricity use by substituting compact fluorescent light bulbs for incandescent light bulbs. CFLs contain 4 milligrams of mercury and putting them in homes where they can break makes a non-existent mercury problem from burning coal into a real problem in homes.
James H. Rust, Professor
I expect the sequestering of CO2 in the earth would have much the same result as sequestering it in the digestive system by consumption of carbonated drinks: sooner or later, braaaaaaaaaaaack.
I recommend being cautious about underground CO2 storage. The Lake Nyos disaster was entirely natural, but also really deadly. Injecting CO2 into an oil field to enhance oil recovery is unlikely to cause a problem unless original formation pressure is exceeded or unless the formation is carbonate. Injecting CO2 into a wet limestone or dolomite formation could be a huge mistake because the carbonic acid will dissolve the rock (particularly under low salt conditions). The small amount of CO2 dissolved in rain that became ground water formed huge cave systems such as Mammoth Cave and Carlsbad Caverns. Injecting CO2 at 1,000 PSI or more into carbonate rock can cause far more rapid rock dissolution. Here is a link to both experimental success (at least for now) and failure:
http://panacea-co2.org/tstsites.cshtml
I see no reason to spend money capturing CO2. I’d rather have the benefits, particularly the reduction in water requirements for plants in arid and semiarid regions as atmospheric CO2 concentration increases.
CO2 is essential to life, a CO2 rise in our bloodstream triggers the next breath, without this we will die. Plants need CO2, they produce our oxygen so if all the CO2 were to be captured, all life on this planet ceases to exist. Perhaps this is what some greenies want?