A public authority (EPA / US) has on 7th of December 2009 formally declared CO2 being a dangerous gas, and this likely means that others will follow.
If one can do it, why shouldn’t others follow, as this can side-step many issues and fast-track regulations and laws on the subject.

[EPA declaration]

Prepare to hold your breath, or either get taxed having to buy carbon offsets for breathing, or end up in the clink for environmental crimes. .
Pick your favorite poison.

“WASHINGTON – After a thorough examination of the scientific evidence and careful consideration of public comments, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today that greenhouse gases (GHGs) threaten the public health and welfare of the American people.”

Although the crafted rules say only facilities that emit 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year or more will be affected, businesses fear the exemption may not hold up in court and could now be imposed on many smaller commercial buildings, farms, restaurants, churches and small businesses.

As far as I know, there are absolute no solid evidence that CO2 is a threat to public health – if there were, it would be widely known in no unsure terms by now.
On the contrary, there’s plenty of evidence showing it is not. Evidence with billions of years on it’s neck.

The major one, is CO2 being an absolute necessity for plant life on earth, and therefore an absolute necessity for any life on earth, and I don’t see millions of carbonated soft-drink or beer consumers, or even carbonated mineral water consumers for that matter, having taken ill at any point in time due to it’s deadly CO2 contents…
Some light into this mystery might be shed by another big organisation in US, the mighty FDA (Food and Drugs Administration), that has CO2 listed as an allowed product for use in human foods.

EPA – “greenhouse gases (GHGs (incl. CO2) threaten the public health and welfare of the American people.”
FDA – CO2 is safe and is allowed for use in food products.

I believe the score table reads: EPA 0 – FDA 1.

If it sounds scary, it probably does so, because it is.

A new world government?

Page 18 in the [UN Framework for COP15 agreement]:

“38. The scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention will be based on three
basic pillars: government; facilitative mechanism; and financial mechanism, and the basic organization
of which will include the following:

(a) The government will be ruled by the COP with the support of a new subsidiary
body on adaptation, and of an Executive Board responsible for the management of the new
funds and the related facilitative processes and bodies. The current Convention secretariat
will operate as such, as appropriate.”

As you can read in the subtexts of paragraph 38 and onwards, these proposals will effectively create a superstate run by a sub-organisation of UN, of which no individual country will be in control of, and they will have the rights to make up new international laws, add penalties for non-conformance, add new levies, as well as apply compensations from developed countries towards “victims” of the natural climate change.

It also includes “mitigation actions”, which in practice means among other things the proposed and currently researched methods for sequestration of atmospheric CO2 – or in SCI-FI terms – The UN is effectively drawing up plans to terraform the planet, and change the atmospheric composition, and place it underground in either liquid form or chemically bound.

Wait a minute – Do we actually know what effects this will have on our climate?

Is there ANY available science that shows what effects this will have?

Are the UN sub-committes about to play roulette with everyones lives?

We know by now that CO2 is NOT the enemy, but absolutely necessary for plant life, and if we start reducing the atmospheric contents of the CO2, we will effectively remove plant food, which in turn will reduce the amount of plant growth.
This is not limited to pot-plants or forrests, but food production.

As this world has ever increasing needs for food production by the day, does a reduction of one of the critical components for this make sense?
Of course not.

The planned active “mitigation” of the “CO2 problem” poses the risk of eventual mass starvation, and as a result of this, to war, if we are not able to cope with increasing demands for food.

An article in NY Times put the effects on plant life quite well, and shows that they way forward to combat the growing needs for food, is not to reduce the CO2, and that increased levels has a very beneficial effect on plant life.  The article is quite neutral in that it argues both con’s and pro’s, and allows you to make up your own mind.

UN’s draft, is potentially a very dangerous document, that places the future of the world in a few hands, that are not elected, and since there are little or no transparency, we will not know what the motives are for their future actions are, or what they will be.
It will be the same as handing over the control to a disclosed group acting as a world government, that can at will penalize anyone for anything, as this group will only be responsible to themselves.

This is a truly frightening concept.

How is this to be funded?

You can find these things in the [UN Framework for COP15 agreement].

One interesting note about the whole thing is that while there are “alternatives” or “options”, there are no “and’s” or “or’s” in the text, and this seems to allow for an arbitrary “pick and mix”.

Clause 33 on page 39 outlines the minimum cash flow from industrialized countries to underdeveloped countries;

“33. By 2020 the scale of financial flows to support adaptation in developing countries must be [at
least USD 67 billion] [in the range of USD 70–140 billion] per year. [Sources of new and additional
financial support for adaptation [must meet the full agreed incremental costs of adaptation and initially
be within a minimum range of USD 50–86 billion per annum and regularly updated in the light of new
emerging science, financial estimates and the degree of emission reductions achieved.] [will be needed to
scale-up adaptation activities at the country level in developing country Parties].]”

Add to this, suggestions of a global levy of 2% on fiunancial transactions on page 135 of the same;

“Option 7
A [global] levy of 2 per cent on international financial market [monetary] transactions to Annex I Parties.”

Annex 1 countries are industrialized countries, which include among others the U.S., Australia, Britain and Canada.

The last one, essentially means 2% of each signatory nations GDP.

Europe’s GDP is roughly $18,400,000 millions ($18.4 trillion), and the US GDP is $14,450,000 millions.

If we take 2% of those two alone, we get $658,000 million, or $658 bn.
Add in a few other nations or regions, and we will soon pass $1 trillion dollars.

If you add up Northern America, Europe, Oceania, and eastern Asia, you will end up with a figure that according to the 2004 figures amounts to appx $2 trillion, or the same as the entire current GDP of Africa.

The GDP is calculated as:

GDP = C + G + I + NX

where:

“C” is equal to all private consumption, or consumer spending, in a nation’s economy
“G” is the sum of government spending
“I” is the sum of all the country’s businesses spending on capital
“NX” is the nation’s total net exports, calculated as total exports minus total imports. (NX = Exports – Imports)

Note that C and G is all based on the individuals (C’s) income and taxation of the same, so therefore, the source is essentially the same pot of money – C, as the money that G has available to spend, almost entirely comes directly out of C’s pocket. They can therefore largely be treated as if the same.
I is largely based on C’s and G’s consumption, and can therefore be said to be based on C, so therefore, a simple removal of 2% of the GDP, will result in removing assets directly from C.

C will have to fork out the difference on top of what he or she is already paying.

If GDP is going to be charged 2% of GDP, and C is the common carrier of the burden, we could theoretically say that:

C is being charged 2% on their individual part of the GDP, G is hit with 2% on their part, I is equally hit, and NX is hit in part locally, part elsewhere, and if we assume that the NX part is in half carried locally, and C is the common source of the economy, C will be hit with 2+2+2+1%, or 7% in directly increased costs.

As a side effect, I will have to counter these 2% by increasing their margin by at least the double to maintain status quo after costs and taxes, and the same goes for G, so the real term will more likely be 2+4+4+2, or a 12% bill that C will be hit with.

This, in turn, effectively means that C will have a wage reduction of 12%.
Not many people have room for this in their budget, and we will see a lot of people breaking under the pressure, especially low-income takers, and the costs to the states will increase, and in turn lead to increased amounts of social benefits for a large group of people, something that in turn, (sorry, long sentence) will have to be countered by G, so the final cost, will more likely have to be a general increase of closer to 15-18%, than the 12%.

This is why this “tiny” 2% levy on the GDP will have more far-reaching impact on the individual people than it seems capable of, where the people is the ones that has to pay for the IPCC’s alleged CO2 impact – an impact that has yet to be seen scientifically proven and shown in practical life, outside of  natural climate cycles.

Add to this the latest news that Africa now demands to get a 5% cut of what is essentially the rest of the worlds GDP.
2% of Europe’s, North America’s, Oceanias and eastern Asia’s GDP is the same thing as the African continents entire GDP.

Please see the previous article about this.

I doubt that the UN drafters really thought about this, and considered the real effects of their proposals, but then, that would not unbe a new phenomenon on the political sky, but on the other hand, if they did, and this is what they had in mind, then this amounts to nothing but modern economic slavery and  penalizisation of people in the developed and democratic countries for fairing better than their unlucky counterparts elsewhere.

References:

Has Anyone Read the Copenhagen Agreement?
UN Framework for COP15 agreement
Carbon Dioxide Rise May Alter Plant Life, Researchers Say – Part 1
Carbon Dioxide Rise May Alter Plant Life, Researchers Say – Part 2
Carbon Dioxide Rise May Alter Plant Life, Researchers Say – Part 3

”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

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?

How silly can it get?

The very gas that is an absolute requirement for all plant life on earth, and subsequently all life on earth, will be classified as a “dangerous pollutant”?

Will this mean that the farmers will no longer be allowed to inject additional CO2 into their greenhouses to boost production?
Will you have to have a special permit to handle this “dangerous pollutant” in the future?

One must ask – has these guys even considered what you get taught in primary school biology classes?

Quote from the article.

“CO2 is not a pollutant. In simple terms, CO2 is plant food,” notes John R. Christy, professor of
Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alabama. “The green world we see around us would
disappear if not for atmospheric CO2. These plants largely evolved at a time when the atmospheric
CO2 concentration was many times what it is today. Indeed, numerous studies indicate the present
biosphere is being invigorated by the human-induced rise of CO2. In and of itself, therefore, the
increasing concentration of CO2 does not pose a toxic risk to the planet.”

Good to see that some hasn’t forgot their lessons.

References:

Obama to Use EPA to Declare CO2 a Dangerous Pollutant

“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.