I AM A retired geologist living in Australia and am hugely concerned that the rush to Net Zero is not only unnecessary, but is pushing my country towards a fatal dependence on sometimes hostile overseas sources of what we need to maintain our standard of living.
I am confused as to why, some 20 years after Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, which promised climate disasters imminently, he is still being listened to. None of the promised ‘end of life as we know it’ scenarios have come to pass, even though annual emissions have continued to rise, from 29,000million tons or 3.7ppm (parts per million) pa in 2006 to 35,500mt or 4.6ppm pa in 2024. It is the same with all the claims coming out of the mouths of his fellow catastrophists, yet governments still plan climate policy on the basis that the catastrophe is upon us.
Why, when the evidence of more fires, more droughts, more forest fires, more heat, more cold, more rain, more hurricanes, more tornadoes, less snow, more snow, melting ice, more extinctions, accelerating sea level rise etc, etc, is not there? None of these promises have held true. Is it perhaps because they are based on computer modelling rather than actual data?
The data on fossil fuel emissions and on atmospheric CO2 concentrations shows very clearly that the former does not drive the latter. The year by year increase in atmospheric CO2, as recorded at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, shows that since 1965, when records began, the annual increase has been somewhat linear at around 0.06ppm per year. Atmospheric concentrations however have increased in a random way varying between +0.5 and +3.5. More revealing, however, is that while emissions tripled from around 2003, atmospheric concentrations continued fluctuating as previously. The very low value of 0.67ppm in 1993 was due to the Pinatubo eruption which of course did not affect emissions.
While correlation does not prove causality, lack of it must destroy any hypothesis, but still, some Western governments keep their heads in the sand and blindly follow their Pied Piper. Why?
The justification for pursuing Net Zero is that ‘we must cut emissions to meet the Paris Agreement targets’, which are to reduce global emissions, with each country being set a target based on their past emissions. However, most industrial countries can only reduce their emissions by cutting back on manufacturing, not just by reducing their use of fossil fuels. Australia had six motor manufacturing plants when I emigrated in 1985, now they have none. Hoorah! says the government.
But we are buying more and more cars (and everything else that keeps the modern world ticking) as our population grows. But that’s OK, as the emissions produced during their manufacture are happening in underdeveloped countries, which are excused from adhering to the Paris Accord. Perhaps it is also OK because CO2 does not cause catastrophic climate change, which it can only do by proportionately increasing global warming, which as shown above, is not happening.
Banning the importation of all manufactured goods is the only way that Australia will be able to meet its obligations. Which government will be brave enough to push that law through, I wonder?
There are many other reasons why the Net Zero effort is not only foolishly unnecessary, but dangerous (note that adding 7,800million tons of CO2 to the atmosphere increases the amount of CO2 by just 1ppm):
1: Australia’s emissions from fossil fuels in 2024 were 377million tons, or just over 1 per cent of the global total; even if we went to absolute zero tomorrow, the global atmosphere would not register our departure.
2: Half of all human emissions of CO2 are, according to the IPCC, naturally sequestrated by the biosphere and oceans, so our effective contribution is just 188million tons, compared with China’s net emissions of 5,622mt, which are increasing annually while ours are falling.
3: We can effectively cut emissions only by never again replacing our ageing computers, iPhones, refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers, motor vehicles, ships, planes etc, let alone the hospital equipment and the other thousands of everyday manufactured goods that we now have to buy from China or Asia. Will they fall enough if Australia stops buying cars and stuff from China?
4: Renewable energy can only help to power a modern economy as it will always need firming for when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine; and if it isn’t nuclear it has to be fossil fuels. Even with complete security of supply, electricity alone can manufacture none of the stuff that makes the modern world tick.
5: CO2 can only affect global temperatures in a very small atmospheric window between 14 and 16 microns, where water vapour has little to no effect; that is, it can absorb energy from just two of the 70 microns of infrared energy emitted by the earth’s surface as it is warmed by the sun. However, it does increase global vegetation and crop yields (with some help from fossil fuel-derived fertilisers) which explains why, when the global population doubled over the last 50 years, the numbers living in poverty have fallen below a billion for the first time.
6: No experiment will ever prove that CO2 causes dangerous climate change, because more than 600million years of geological data prove that changes in atmospheric CO2 have always followed (or ignored) changes in temperature.
7: To call CO2 a pollutant is the last resort of a mindset that is devoid of any shade of scientific rationalism, or even common sense. All life is made from carbon, which is derived solely from photosynthesis of CO2; cut that and you will reverse the trend in global greening, which could cause the final extinction.
We in the West are on a fool’s errand in following the dictates of the Paris Accord.
