Dear Reader,
A publication named The Conversation moans that:
- Trump’s return to the presidency means concerns about the future of US climate policy are mounting. His opposition to climate action and support for fossil fuels could slow down the nation’s net-zero transition.
Net zero, Generative AI informs us:
- Is a globally agreed-upon goal to balance the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by human activities with the amount removed from the atmosphere. It’s an important goal because it’s the state at which global warming stops.
The United Nations informs us that net zero must attain fruition by the year 2050.
Else, we are told, Earth will cook and cook — and cook some more.
Yet I cling to a vast suspicion of such doomsday claims.
Really?
I have interrogated the literature on carbon dioxide. Thus I learn:
Natural carbon emissions constitute some 97% of all atmospheric additions. Man’s emissions constitute a mere 3%.
Are we to believe a mere 3% increase to the natural contribution sparks a fever?
If Earth’s climate was so exquisitely sensitive to minor carbon dioxide rises… why didn’t it erupt long ago?
I am informed that Earth has endured carbon dioxide concentrations greater than today’s… for 80% of its history.
At times, 25 times greater.
Yet for vast spans of that history Earth shivered in ice.
I am further informed that climate zealots likely place the climate wagon-cart before the climate horse.
That is, they confuse cause and effect.
The geologic record indicates that carbon dioxide does not warm Earth… but that a warming Earth produces greater carbon dioxide concentrations.
That is because a warming Earth — and warming oceans — release carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
A fine point to put somewhere!
That’s It?
Meantime, carbon dioxide represents a vanishing 0.04% part of Earth’s atmosphere.
Imagine — if you will — this atmosphere as 100 cases of one-liter bottles. That is, imagine this atmosphere as 2,400 one-liter bottles.
Of those 100 cases, 99 are not greenhouse gasses whatsoever. They are therefore irrelevant to our inquiry.
A mere one case of the 100 represents greenhouse gasses. Of the one case that represents greenhouse gasses, merely one bottle of the 24 represents carbon dioxide.
Of the one bottle that represents this demon molecule, perhaps 50 milliliters represent mankind’s annual contribution — roughly one shot glass.
And so… of our theoretical atmosphere of 2,400 liters, humans contribute perhaps one shot glass of carbon dioxide per year.
Alternately: Analogize the atmosphere to a 100-story building. The human CO2 contribution rises merely to the linoleum on the ground floor. No higher.
Yet the United Nations informs us that this relative trifle is scorching the planet. I request authenticated documentation — chapter, verse, line, letter.
And please include the footnotes.
Why Wait Until 2050?
Yet let us suspend judgment for the moment. Let us assume Earth will cook if net zero fails to obtain by 2050.
Let us then propose an even more ambitious carbon dioxide ban. Let us propose that all carbon emissions cease immediately.
All gasoline-powered vehicles are banished to the scrap heap this evening, all airplanes consigned to the boneyard, all coal and natural gas stores locked immediately away.
When will Earth begin to break its alleged fever? When would Earth begin cooling from present temperatures?
Here are your choices:
- A) 2½ years
- B) 21 years
- C) 99 years
- D) 213 years
The devil is in me today. Let me then befuddle, confound and dizzy you with another selection:
- E) 476 years
Drumroll Please…
Have you selected your answer? Here it is…
The correct answer is E — 476 years. Earth will cool in 2500 if all emissions cease today.
Here Nature magazine cites projections by a climate model named ESCIMO:
- ESCIMO is a “reduced complexity Earth system” climate model which we run from 1850 to 2500. In ESCIMO the global temperature keeps rising to 2500 and beyond, irrespective of how fast humanity cuts the emissions of man-made greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions… the global temperature keeps rising for hundreds of years…
The forecast relies of course on a climate model. Most climate models are botchwork. Yet my scientific advisers claim its crystal-gazing is sound.
Many men of science agree. Reports the Royal Society:
- Even if emissions of greenhouse gasses were to suddenly stop, Earth’s surface temperature would require thousands of years to cool and return to the level in the pre-industrial era.
Meantime, Princeton’s crackerjacks inform us that:
- Even if carbon dioxide emissions came to a sudden halt, the carbon dioxide already in Earth’s atmosphere could continue to warm our planet for hundreds of years.
Chicken Little
We must reduce carbon emissions “for the children,” we are told.
Yet we must apparently do it for the great-great-great-great-great grandchildren.
“But Maher,” shrieks Chicken Little, “you don’t get it.”
“The best case is that Earth will begin to cool in centuries. That’s assuming that we stop all emissions now. If we don’t drastically reduce carbon emissions soon, we’ll soon reach a tipping point that’ll result in runaway global warming. We must act now.”
Yet we have endured these howls for decades. Doomsday will happen by such-and-such date if we don’t stop emissions immediately.
We did not stop emissions immediately. And many doomsdays passed… invariably… without incident.
Losing a Coin Flip 48 Consecutive Times!
Geophysicist Mr. Allan MacRae:
- By the end of 2020, the climate doomsters were proved wrong in their scary climate predictions 48 times. At 50-50 odds for each prediction, that is like flipping a coin 48 times and losing every time! The probability of that being mere random stupidity is one in 281 trillion!…
- The global warming alarmists have a perfect NEGATIVE predictive track record — they have been 100% wrong about every scary climate prediction — so nobody should continue to believe them.
Thus I am convinced the next alleged doomsday will pass without incident.
And the one after that and the one after that one — and the one after that one — world without end.
Here is my own forecast… which I am prepared to etch in granite… such is my supreme confidence:
Chicken Little will shriek about runaway global warming for the next 476 years.
And in the 477th year he will scream about the impending ice age.
Regards,
Brian Maher
for Freedom Financial News
