OPINION
John Porter
Bay FM
Hello, it’s John Porter on Bay FM and today I’m talking about the slanted news coverage we receive from the MSM around Climate Change.
It seems to me that if you belong to the school that think the world is ending next week unless we eliminate CO2, you are the only faction to be happy with what the MSM prints about Climate Change.
We’ve all seen the banner headlines, The Earth has entered “uncharted territory” and life on earth is “under siege.”
Designed to create fear because fear begets compliance?
Even U.N. chief António Guterres did his bit of fearmongering by declaring “the era of global boiling has arrived!”
A December ‘23 report from Oxford Academics’ BioScience keeps that fear narrative alive!
The public has failed to heed this message and now “time is up,” the report warns.
The authors say the catalyst behind the dire warnings is escalating concentrations of CO2.
To salvage what remains, the authors say a much faster phase-out of oil, coal, and other fossil fuels is necessary. Failure could cause water and food shortages, plus extreme heat, for a third to half of the world’s population.
More fear and pessimism and note the “arse covering” with the use of could!
But hold on, isn’t CO2 essential for life on earth? Wasn’t that what we learned in basic science at school? Now we are being threatened that the world is ending next week unless we eliminate CO2?
What really annoys me about the Climate Change debate is that the MSM give the impression they and only they can decide what we are able to read on Climate Change.
I recently read online articles by one Professor William Happer, emeritus professor of physics at Princeton University.
These are exactly the type of articles you will never see in the MSM.
Professor Happer believes that the current crusade against carbon dioxide and climate alarmism is not based on science, but rather on personal prejudices and the religious-like fervour of the doomsayers and warns of the potential negative consequences of such a crusade.
Prof. Happer strongly advocates for the importance of CO2 and how it is essential for life on earth. CO2 is what drives life on Earth!
Happer writes, “We need to be vigilant to keep our land, air and waters free of real pollution, particulates, heavy metals, pathogens, but CO2 is not one of these pollutants. Carbon is the stuff of life. Our bodies are made of carbon.”
CO2 is a greenhouse gas that, yes, warms the Earth, but without it, the Earth would be too cold to live on.
Physicist Professor Happer is, possibly, the most qualified scientist when it comes to calculating the likely effect on the Earth’s temperature with a doubling of atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide.
His research showed CO2 levels have increased from about 270 ppm to 390 ppm over the past 150 years or so, and the earth has warmed by about 0.8 C during that time.
Doomsayers, therefore, believe the warming is due to CO2. But Happer says, “Correlation is not causation.”
“The local rooster crows every morning at sunrise, but that does not mean the rooster caused the sun to rise.”
According to Professor Happer there will be NO climate catastrophe from increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide because of the structure of the atmosphere and laws of physics.
He explained the physics that results in the more precise value of a 0.75 C increase in temperature should there be a doubling of carbon dioxide and that after that, the effect of a doubling CO2 again would be miniscule because of saturation.
So, he says a 100% increase of today’s CO2 levels would only cause a 1% decrease in the earth’s cooling radiation that goes off to space.
Happer says, at the current rate of CO2 increase in the atmosphere —about 2 ppm per year— it would take about 195 years to achieve this doubling. Then, getting from our current level to 1000 ppm would take about 300 years—and 1000 ppm is still less than what most plants would prefer.”
Well, that’s certainly “counter current” thinking!
He explained, that the carbon dioxide in the air diffuses into the leaves of plants through microscopic holes, and the plants combine this with water and to do that it requires energy, energy from sunlight.
So, the combination of CO2, the so-called “earth destroyer”, water and sunlight is what makes life.
Hatton asks “How do you explain that about fifty million years ago geological evidence indicates, CO2 levels were several thousand ppm.” That’s hugely higher than today’s level of 390 ppm. Yet life flourished abundantly back then!
There’s even a school of thought that we don’t have enough fossil fuels around to restore those levels CO2, where plants evolve and where they function best?
There’s another hypothesis that actually, we were not that far from CO2 anorexia just prior to the Industrial Revolution, the period when mankind began the massive burning of fossil fuels!
Massive amounts of coal were burnt during the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution created a huge demand for coal, to power new machines such as the steam-engine. In 1750, Britain was producing 5.2 million tons of coal per year. By 1850, it was producing 62.5 million tons per year.
Due to the higher amount of carbon in coal that reacts to form CO2 when burnt, coal, typically produces more CO2 than other fossil fuels.
Intriguingly, Happer points out, “By breathing are we rendering the air unclean.” “Every day a normal human exhales around 1 kg of CO2.”
The current population is 8 billion. Therefore, humans are pumping 800,000 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere daily.
Think Klaus Schwab and worldwide birth control!
Reading breathless media reports about “CO2 pollution” and minimizing our “carbon footprints,” one could be forgiven for thinking that the earth cannot have too little CO2. That is especially true in relation to the “brainwashing” our younger generation is receiving at the hands of the MSM!
Therefore, the next question we must ask is – “What will happen if we overcompensate and all, or most, of the CO2 in the atmosphere is removed?” Because most plants stop growing if CO2 levels drop much below 150 ppm.
Easy to answer. The planet gets colder, all the plants die. With the plants dead, there is no more oxygen production, so very shortly all the animals (including humans) die!
So, CO2 is an ineffective climate influencer. Yet you get the doomsayers pronouncing the demon CO2 is going to cause us all to boil to death. Nothing could be further from the truth according to Prof Happer!
Now I’m not saying Prof Happer is correct and all the doomsayers are wrong. That would be just emulating the MSM.
The point I am trying to make is; That without us being able to easily access balanced, impartial and nonpartisan views on climate change, or any subject for that matter, how will we ever be able to formulate informed and reasoned decisions and judgements?
The MSM are stubbornly and even recklessly determined on deciding what they will let us see, hear and read!
That’s censorship, isn’t it?