”The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history’s judgment on this generation. The transformation will be costly, but the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.”

Opportunities for whom, one might ask. Everyone?

“Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it. The transformation will be costly. The flow of capital tells its own story.”

So, who’s money will pay for all this? Who will make the sacrifice? I’ll give you a hint. It is not the politicians, nor anyone else in power. It is always the lowest common denominators.

Yes, the politicians in Copenhagen just might have the power to shape history’s judgment on this generation. And do you want the next generation still to be able to breath, without having to pay for it? If so, please implore them to make the right choice.

Damien Fields

Quotations from: The Guardian
Reference document: The Copenhagen editorial

Some countries gives 1% of their GDP in contributions to develop and aid underdeveloped countries, the UN draft suggested a 2% levy on developed nations GDP, and now, Africa demands 5%.

What is it with Africa?

Despite the money already spent, they have not taken the chance to stand up, and their “leaders” has taken “care of ” the subsidies given, and very little has actually come to benefit the people of Africa.
Why would this be any different this time, and why should Africa alone get 5%, as there are regions in Asia or South/Latin America that would in large meet the same conditions.

Can they actually prove that they have been hit harder by the so called AGW than anyone else, and what they see is not being an effect of their own actions such as deforrestation, burning of land, unsustainable forms of agriculture that we know turns rich soil into desert land, mining operations without consideration of the environment, dumping of toxic waste and so on?

Why not demand 50% of the developed nations GDP while at it, because they have just as good chance to that, as 5%.

5% of EU’s GDP would amount to almost $1 trillion, or approximately €650 Billion.

The combined GDP of Africa as a continent of $2.1 tn, so they effectively demand 1/4 of their combined GDP from EU.

If you add in some others, like Oceania, Northern America, Eastern Asia, you get a combined figure of around (2004 figures) 12.8+14.2+0.7+12.8, or $40.5 tn, and 5% of that is $2 trillion, or the combined GDP of all African countries.

I believe that before any of that would happen, they would have to get rid of their dictators and other shoddy regimes, end their seemingly never-ending wars, start building schools and hospitals that are available to everyone, and start applying sustainable agriculture so that their food supply is secured, as well as making sure there are proper water supplies.

Dumping a pile of money on Africa before these critical issues are solved, will achieve nothing, and Africa’s shortcomings on these issues has nothing to do with AGW or CC.

Africa needs to get their own act together, and before they do, no money in the world will make them happy.

References:
Africa considering tough demands

The real and very controversial issue is if it is carbon dioxide – CO2 – that is causing it.  Why do I say that? Simple. The documents that many countries are supposed to sign in Copenhagen has 3 major parts.

1. Reduce emission of CO2.
2. Introduce a trading mechanism for treading emission permits.
3. Make UN the “High Court” for some issues related to this.

That is what he documents in Copenhagen are all about. It is all about CO2.
Now let that sink in, and by all means study all the documentation you can get your hands on to see if that is not true.  Sure there might a lot of other things but the the only things that really have a great impact on the world economy and to you as a person are these taxes and restrictions on CO2. To be able to make those drastic reduction on CO2 emissions governments has to in some way or other tax you for emitting CO2. Don’t doubt that. You as an individual are going to pay. And other people will make money trading CO2 emission contracts

Now, why this lengthy discussion about CO2. Again, because that is what it is all about. It is not about the climate. It is not about melting ice. It’s not about saving polar bears. It’s not about raising ocean levels. It is not about cheating researchers. It is not about climate change, the climate will always change. Unfortunately the debate is fought on the AGW proponents terms, namely about the climate.

The debate should concentrate on making absolutely clear that it is CO2 that influence the climate. What I have seen that has not been proved. I have seen the graph that was presented by Al Gore in “An Inconvenient Truth”. That graph DOES NOT show that CO2 causes the temperature to rise. It shows that CO2 increases when the temperature rises. And that is governed by a chemical law. Cold water stores more CO2 than warm.

Get back to basics. PROVE that CO2 has a significant influence on temperature and I will make a new evalution. Stop discussing the climate changes. Concentrate on CO2. I regard it complete insane to take the these drastic measures to lower CO2 emission at considerable costs and reduction in living standards on an assumption (not proof) that CO2 has a significant impact on the climate. What I do know is that an increase of CO2 in our atmosphere will stimulate growth. Check the real issues here.

References:

UN Framework for COP15 agreement
CO2 – is it really a demon?

“If carbon dioxide would be such a big threat to humanity, how come there is such thing as emissions trading? Who could give anyone the right to sell out the survival of mankind in the name of the earth?”

Damien Fields, December 8, 2009

The public story is that unless we reduce our emissions of CO2, the world will drown in rising seas, the arctic caps will melt, species go extinct and we will slowly cook to death.

Is AGW, or man-made global warming real?

While writing this, let’s keep it to layman terms that can be easily understood, potentially sacrificing a tiny bit of accuracy for ease of understanding and clarity of the message for all the non-scientists among us, and while I will be happy to answer relevant questions, I would ask that those that intend to, or wants to end up in endless and possibly pointless but time-wasting discussions about nitty-gritty irrelevant details, don’t.

While we can keep talking big and absolute numbers like giga-tons of carbon, this doesn’t help understanding, so let’s keep to smaller and more understandable units like percentages, and where appropriate for comparison, ppm’s (parts per millions), and even if there will be small rounding errors introduced, they will still be for practical purposes correct when related to each other.

The true facts are:

Yes, CO2 IS a greenhouse gas, and Yes, it DOES reflect some of the infrared radiation, stopping it from being irradiated into space, but this is not the whole story, and it certainly will not get twice as bad if we double the CO2 in the atmosphere, as the UN IPCC, the climate scientists and the climate alarmists claim.

CO2 is often referred to as “the gas of life”, and we all get taught in school that CO2 is used and depended upon by the plants for their photosynthesis, so could this really be so bad?

The AGW proponents repeatedly claims that if we double the amount of CO2, we will see as much as 6 degrees increase in temeparture on earth, and therefore, we need to stop our emissions and possibly even remove existing CO2 in the atmosphere, before it is too late.

On the other hand, the hard science on this subject, shows something completely different, science that has been around for decades and that are equally well-proven as old, science that is conveniently ignored by IPCC and the climate scientists, as accepting these well-proven facts would instantly kill their claims about the CO2′s rampant effects stone dead.

The first 20ppm of CO2, stands for almost all of the effect of CO2.
The next 20 ppm, stands for an additional effect equal to about 1/5 of the first 20ppm, and it keeps falling very quickly.

Even if you doubled the amount of CO2 from todays level, to the projected 800-1000ppm in the catastrophy scenario of IPCC,  the combined effect of the additional 400-600ppm CO2 in the atmosphere would amount to no more than approximately 1% of the total effect from the current CO2.

1% additional effect from increasing the amount of CO2 five (5) times in the atmosphere.

See for yourselves in the chart below, how increase of CO2 relates to global warming.

Ask yourself, does this sound like anything that you have been told?

But CO2 stays in the atmosphere for very long periods!

No.
This is a false statement, as some scientists claim that the CO2 will stay in the air for up to 200 years or even more, and therefore affect future AGW , but taken the recent research that shows that a balance between the oceans/vegetation and the air is achieved in as little as bout 5 years from increasing the level in the air, the long-term effects is greatly reduced, where the ocean acts as a sink for the CO2.
This means that the oceans/vegetation, as they always has, is acting as natural CO2 sinks, and this is the factor that accounts for the “unexplained” missing amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Contrary to the claims, CO2 is very easily solved in water, and it doesn’t take long for water to absorb CO2.
After all, this is how they make fizzy drinks – by injecting CO2 into water, where it is very quickly absorbed.

Add to this, that plants thrive on increased CO2, resulting in increased growth and thereby increased uptake of atmosphereic CO2.

Also, this explains why there is a natural increase or reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere over time, as cold oceans holds CO2 far easier than a warm ocean does, and as the oceans has changed in temperature there has been periods with more or less CO2.
This largely explains the pre-industrial changes in atmospheric CO2 levels.

Think of a cold vs warm soda bottle.
If it’s warm, it goes flat, if it’s cold, it stays fizzy.

So, how long does the CO2 stay in the atmosphere?

A: The average molecule of CO₂ spends about four years in the atmosphere before it gets sucked up by a plant or dissolves into the surface layer of the ocean.

But man-made CO2 is far bigger than any other source?

Some numbers – in “units” for simple comparison;

The pre-industrial amount of atmospheric CO2 was 288 units.
After that, the natural additions are 69 units, and the man-made are 12 units.

The scientists certainly wants to make us believe that we add more CO2 to the atmosphere and the total amount of greenhouse gases than we actually do, and they apply a simple trick to do this.

In their calculations of how bad we are, they simply omit the single biggest greenhouse gas around, that we have no control over, in any way, shape or form, even if we actually do produce some of it.

Water vapor.

Water vapor stands for 95% of the effects of greenhouse gases.

If we don’t take water into account, we end up with man-made effects on the GHG of 5.5%, or if we do, and don’t ignore those pesky clouds in the sky, or the moist in the air, the man-made part of the GHG is about 0.28%

Try to follow me here;
Out of those 0.28%, CO2 stands for 3.62% of the total effect of the greenhouse gases.
Out of that 3.62%, the man-made effect amounts to 3.22% of the total 3.62% greenhouse effect.
3.22% of 3.62%, is about 0.1% of the total effect of the CO2.

So, if we agree to cut the CO2 emissions in half, globally, everyone pitching in, along the lines of what many AGW proponents demands, we will drop the net man-made greenhouse effect contribution from 0.1% to 0.05%.

I agree that these measures would make sense if our contribution was in the range of 5% or more of the total greenhouse gas effect, but since the net effect is less than the effect of natural month-to-month variation of atmospheric water vapor, I fail to see how this could possibly achieve anything in practical terms, as the effects of human contributions are in reality entirely masked in the noise of natural variations.

Logical question for you:
When it comes to climate simulations, which by mathematicians are considered meaningless as the climate scientists are trying to simulate chaotic systems which can’t be simulated, do you really think that you would stand even a chance of getting it right, if you begin with omitting the single biggest affecting component – water vapor – from the model?

So, worst-case scenario of the added CO2 then?

Assume that the horror scenario of IPCC comes true, and that we end up with 800-1000 ppm CO2 (1% of the atmosphere), how much will the additional 400-600 ppm affect us?

Given that the additional CO2 will have about 1% additional effect on the effects of CO2, and that CO2 stands for a total of about 3.62% of current greenhouse gas effects, this would mean that we would increase the effects of the CO2 from 3.62% of the total to about 3.65% of the total effect.

If we were to cut the emissions in line with the kyoto protocol, reducing our emissions by 30%, we would reduce the effect from 3.65% down to about 3.64% of the total effects of GHG.

On the other hand, we would see a heavily increased plant growth thanks to the increased amount of CO2, as this is pure food for plants, and this would not only act as a carbon sink, but also provide for substantial increase in food production.
Greenhouse farmers are known to inject up to 2000 ppm (about 5.5 times current atmospheric levels) of CO2 into their greenhouses in order to boost production.

CO2 is not the climate supervillain it is portrayed as, but absolute essential for all life on earth.

Would it hurt to change course?

No, of course not, but let’s be practical about this, and not sacrifice peoples well-being for the sake of a climate scare that lacks scientific base and stands on very shaky ground.

Sure, we could (and we should) aim for a less carbon-intense lifestyle where possible, not for the sake of CO2 emissions, but all the side-effects that comes from burning carbon, such as emissions of soot, heavy metals and general pollution, but this is an entirely different question from the one discussed, and one that has been heavily overshadowed by the side-track of AGW that has gotten if not all, so for all intents and purposes almost all attention as well as research money for the last decade.

Did you for example know that 16 (!) very large cargo vessels burning bunker oil emits more sulphur than all the worlds cars and lorries  combined every year? Want to read more? See [Daily Mail] or How 16 ships create as much pollution as all the cars in the world.

I believe that there are far more pressing issues to deal with, than reducing CO2, taken the extremely small impact that any additional CO2 can possibly have, and I believe that we may actually benefit to some extent from a slight increase in CO2 levels, due to the boosting effect it has on plant life.

Reference material:

Global Warming – A closer look at the numbers
The Skeptics handbook 2.3
Peter Dietze – Carbon cycle
Peter Dietze – Radiative forcing

Corrections:

Changed pppm’s to ppm’s.