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Uncovering the real goals of anti-CO2 crusaders
‘Medieval Environmentalists’ attack CO2 in their efforts to derail civilization
By Dr. Tim Ball & Tom Harris Monday, January 21, 2008 |
| California Senator Barbara Boxer is a co-sponsor of the “Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act” (S.309). The title, and much of the text of the bill, is inappropriate since, regardless of its impact on climate change, CO2, the act’s major target, is not a pollutant. |
Part 1: Environmental Extremism
Why are carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, particularly the relatively small amount emitted by human activity, the sole focus of most climate change debates? In scientific circles, CO2 is referred to as a ‘trace gas’ that, for hundreds of thousands of years, has remained at or below five ten-thousandths of the atmosphere by volume. Even among the so-called ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHG), CO2 accounts for less that 4%, with water vapour being by far the most significant GHG. CO2 is clearly a miniscule component of the massive mechanisms that create climate and cause climate change.
Attributing global climate change to human CO2 production is akin to trying to diagnose an automotive problem by ignoring the engine (analogous to the Sun in the climate system) and the transmission (water vapour) and instead focusing entirely, not on one nut on a rear wheel, which would be analogous to total CO2, but on one thread on that nut, which represents the human contribution.
At 385 parts per million (ppm) by volume, CO2 levels are now, in a geologic sense, at their lowest in 600 million years. For example, during the exceptionally cold Ordovician glaciation, about 440 million years ago, CO2 levels were more than ten times higher than today. At other times, warm temperatures occurred when CO2 levels were high. During this period, there was no consistent correlation between temperature and CO2 levels. When, in more recent millennia, a correlation appears evident, temperature changes before CO2. Aside from forecasts of still primitive computer models, modern climatological research consistently shows that there is no scientific justification for the CO2/climate hysteria that has so gripped mass media and politicians.
Attempts to maintain the focus against CO2, a colourless, odourless benign gas essential for plant photosynthesis, have become truly ludicrous. Incredibly, CO2 is branded by many as a ‘pollutant’ – the continual references of Al Gore and Senator Barbara Boxer to “global warming pollution” are prime examples - and some governments have even labeled CO2 as a toxic substance.
In October 2007, Rod Bremby, secretary for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, disallowed permits for coal-fired electricity generating plants, citing an attorney general’s opinion that he could do so if a particular emission “constitutes air pollution and presents a substantial endangerment to the health of persons or to the environment.” According to the Garden City Telegraph in Kansas (ref.), Bremby said in a press release, “I believe it would be irresponsible to ignore emerging information about the contribution of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to climate change and the potential harm to our environment and health.”
Nigel Calder, former Editor of New Scientist magazine, refers to much of today’s global warming, anti-CO2 movement as “Medieval environmentalism”. Such alarmists, Calder explains in the film The Great Global Warming Swindle, embrace climate change dogma, saying to themselves, “Let’s get back to the way things were in Medieval times and get rid of all these dreadful cars and machines.” Calder says that for extremists, CO2 is “an emblem of industrialization”, something they oppose with a passion.
You can stop an engine by pinching the fuel line or by plugging the exhaust. Medieval environmentalists obviously recognized that squeezing the fuel line of society would cause a massively negative public reaction. So, instead they have succeeded in getting our media and, and so our politicians, to identify CO2, the primary exhaust product of modern civilization, as responsible for killing the entire planet, thereby achieving their objectives indirectly.
So, how low would anti-carbon dioxide crusaders consider pushing CO2 levels, if they were able? At 250 ppm, plants suffer and at 150 ppm most die, resulting in no oxygen and no life on the planet. Maybe that answer is the objective, or is it just the people who should go?
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| During photosynthesis, plants absorb carbon dioxide and sunlight to create fuel—glucose and other sugars—for building plant structures. Carbon dioxide is therefore ‘plant food’, and essential to all life on Earth. (Illustration courtesy P.J. Sellers et al.) |
Environmental extremists seem to feel that evolution, survival of the fittest and the most adaptable, doesn’t apply to humans. Some even dare to express their true beliefs in public. David Graber, a research biologist with the U.S. National Park Service, said:
“Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, are not as important as a wild and healthy planet. I know social scientists who remind me that people are part of nature, but it isn’t true. Somewhere along the line – at about a billion years ago – we quit the contract and became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth. It is cosmically unlikely that the developed world will choose to end its orgy of fossil energy consumption, and the Third World its suicidal consumption of landscape. Until such time as Homo Sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.”
What contract are humans supposed to have quit, and with whom? And, “about a billion years ago”, we didn’t exist; in fact, no land creatures existed and hard shelled sea creatures had yet to evolve. Aside from such minor inaccuracies, Graber’s comments are a frightening mix of Darwinism, social Darwinism, environmentalism, economics, socialism and of course anti-humanism. Yet, incredibly, they provide a framework for understanding the driving force behind the dangerous focus on CO2 emission reduction.
Our analysis continues in part 3 coming soon.
Part 2: Historical and philosophical context of the climate change debate.
Part 1: Environmental Extremism
Dr. Timothy Ball, Chairman of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP.com), is a Victoria-based environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. Tom Harris is an Ottawa-based mechanical engineer and NRSP Executive Director.
