A Christmas message for alarmists
By Ed Caryl
I am constantly struck by the extremes that the alarmists will reach attempting to convince the rest of us that we should abandon our comfortable life-styles and live in fuel poverty, burning our corn in our cars, eschewing all use of fuels that have accumulated in the ground over the eons, reaching into the winds to catch a few watts from the occasional breezes at the cost of beating to death random vistas, bats and birds, and paving our deserts and rooftops with silicon to capture a few hours of sun on the off chance it shines.
These efforts are awfully inefficient, and incredibly costly for the achieved results. Especially when the achieved result is exactly nothing. Of course, the money spent, and made by your friends, is always someone else’s, so that doesn’t count.
All this is done in supposed fear that adding a few parts per million to the carbon dioxide already in the air will somehow, in some yet to be explained way, turn our planet into another Venus. Never mind the fact that at several points in our planets history, including in the beginning, carbon dioxide was many times more prevalent than it is today, and no disaster happened, as we know because we are here. We know that carbon dioxide was a major part of the early atmosphere because of the mountains of carbonate rocks all around us, and the deep layers of carbonate rocks beneath us in vast areas of the world. Life uses CO2. Life uses it up.
Why the continuous negativity? Rejoice! Abundance surrounds us! More CO2 in the atmosphere fertilizes our crops, as those crops labor to use it up. On a warm, windless afternoon in a cornfield, photosynthesis slows because all the available CO2 gets consumed. If there is more of it in the beginning, this doesn’t happen. In a closed greenhouse, CO2 must be added to the air or growth slows as it is used up. If extra CO2 is added, growth is faster than in an open field, a lot faster. Defining CO2 as a pollutant is the worst kind of lie.
Does CO2 make it warmer? The first 200 parts per million does, but so does water vapor, and this is a water world, not a CO2 world. We really don’t have much CO2 in the atmosphere. By geological-historical standards, the atmosphere right now is in fact close to record lows. During ice ages, the amount of CO2 drops to the point that grasses outcompete trees in the tropics, and rain forests dwindle to remnant islands in vast savannas. This happens when the concentration drops below 250 parts per million as the cooling oceans take it up. Life likes more CO2. Life returns in abundance as the oceans warm and release the CO2 they took up when it was cold. If there is more CO2, plants can close the vents that let it in (stomata) and can conserve moisture, letting less water out. Life isn’t poisoned by CO2 until the concentration reaches the point where oxygen can’t be traded for it. This doesn’t happen until the CO2 concentration is 25 times what it is now. No, CO2 is not a pollutant.
Will more CO2 make it warmer? When it is from fuel used to heat our houses and cook our food, yes, but inside our houses. Outside? No one knows how much. Really! No one truly knows. Yet billions, verily, trillions of dollars and euros, will be wasted on the fear that extra CO2 will make it hotter outside in some catastrophic way. As I sit here writing this, with a fire in the fireplace, looking at the snow in the back yard, watching a squirrel feasting on sunflower seeds, I don’t think the squirrel knows either, and doesn’t care. In the Pleistocene and Holocene, man worried about staying warm. He should continue that practice in the Anthropocene.
Stay warm. Have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year. And stop worrying about an insignificant trace gas in our atmosphere!
Ed Caryl is a regular contributor at NoTricksZone.
Finland has about 0°C today. For climate sceptics
it may reasonable to look back a couple of decades,
and what the New York Times reported: on Christmas:
“December 24th 1939: Report by James Aldridge: “The cold numbs the brain in this Arctic hell, snow sweeps over the darkened wastes, the winds howl and the temperature is 30 degrees below zero (minus 34.4° C). Here the Russians and Finns are battling in blinding snowstorms for possession of ice-covered forests. …I reached the spot just after the battle ended. It was the most horrible sight I had ever seen. As if the men had been suddenly turned to wax, there were two or three thousand Russians and a few Finns, all frozen in fighting attitudes. Some were locked together, their bayonets within each other’s bodies; some were frozen in half-standing positions; some were crouching with their arms crooked, holding the hand grenades they were throwing; some were lying with their rifles shouldered, their legs apart….Their fear was registered on the frozen faces. Their bodies were like statues of men throwing all their muscles and strength into some work, but their faces recorded something between bewilderment and horror.” (NYT, December 25 , 1939). ”
It still unclear whether the story is true, or a blunt lie. It is still unclear whether WWII contributed, or was it a mere ‘natural variability’?
More about Russian-Finnish Winter War 1939/40 : http://www.seaclimate.com/c/c2/c2.html
Best Seasonal Greeting !
For what it is worth, the normal use of the English word “couple” always means two. Never three, though some references try to allow it. However, for non-native speakers, “couple” is often used where in English the word “few” is meant.
To say “look back a couple of decades” cannot by any stretch mean 7 decades, so that was a bit confusing.
As for the temperature in Finland, it appears to be about -10 in the Arctic area today.
As for Sweden, it is a snowless but stormy Christmas. around 5 deg C. Quite different to the recent years with a metre of snow, but apart from the warm spell, we already had lower than -10 C is southern Sweden and the lakes had started to freeze some weeks ago, now they are open again. It seems as though our snow headed off to the middle east and the pyramids this year.
I see the Germans are continuing their move AWAY from fossil fuels.:) Way to go Germany…..I love you folks:)
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/12/23/3101911/german-utility-coal-power/
Good work GERMANY!!!!
Merry Christmas to all good Germans…..:)
Only until they get cold and poor.
Buddy; you shouldn’t read that; it makes you stupider. Electricity production from brown coal has increased in Germany as half the nukes have been switched off.
BTW love that ThinkProgress has a huge sneaker advertisement as their opening frame. George Soros sneakers? Do they come free with infanticide?
Merry Christmas to all non-atheists.
Happy Festivus to the atheists.
the winds howl and the temperature is 30 degrees below zero (minus 34.4° C –
Isn’t -30F = 62°F below 0°C ?
NYT reported temperatures only in Fahrenheit: “temperature is 30 below zero” (p.7. NYT, 25Dec39), which correspond to: minus 34,44°Celsius.
On the front page, in section “The International Situation” a reference to James Aldridge’s report is made as it follows:
___”Silent after a two-day battle at the Kemi River, where a correspondent saw 2,000 defeated Russians dead and frozen in fighting attitude. (Page7.)”
Buddy 24. Dezember 2013 at 16:39 | Permalink | Reply I see the Germans are continuing their move AWAY from fossil fuels.:)
I guess that’s why the germans are building 12 new lignite powered stations. Dirtier than coal but a whole lot cheaper.
Way to go all bad Germans. Let’s hope the rest of europe joins them soon or the only working economy in europe will be german.
WONDERFUL NEWS for a wonderful new year in 2014. VERY NICE looking charts. The new world is shaping up to be a much better world without fossil fuels. It is going to take a long period of transition….but thanks to Germany….and other countries around the world….the move away from fossil fuels is very much under way.
Thank you again Germany!! And a Merry Christmas to all good Germans….:)
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2013/03/2012-german-nuclear-gas-fired-generation-falls-further-while-renewables-grow
The fossil fuel loving Germans will just have to get used to a much cleaner world, one that won’t rise in temperature as much as it would have by burning all the fossil fuels….:)
You’ll get used to it. Energy will be cheaper…….the air will be cleaner….the water will be cleaner. You’ll get used to it……especially after the fossil fuel industry quits paying people to lie about it:)
Merry Christmas once again to a cleaner and more prosperous Germany….
Are you being sarcastic? Your observations are so different from reality it’s difficult to tell.
you should look at the power not the energy and think what if everybody do what germany does?
everybody in ue with windmills and pv.. look at the price of electricity in ue..what do you think it means when germans are exporting electricity to country where where the price of electricity is lower? They are giving it..and german tax payer have to pay to produce it.
some renewable ? why not? but don’t fool people saying it can be the foundation of the production system except, here come the magic, if people accept to need ( !?) electricity when it is produced…
“some renewable ? why not?”
If they were economic it would make sense. The way it is, they are financed by robbing value out of the real economy, and make it ever more expensive to buy any product or work from a fellow citizen; the parasitic state creates a higher and higher friction loss between people trading with each other.
People like “Buddy” are doubtlessly the benefactors of this; they want an ever bigger government. The division between warmists and skeptics is the same as the division between parasites and productive sector. And as he has shown by linking to thinkprogress with infanticide-Wendy’s sneakers on it, he is godless; the government is his god.
Great point, Dirk!
“Merry Christmas once again to a cleaner and more prosperous Germany…”
I see you are still pretending to be a Christian after linking to thinkprogress with infanticide-Wendy’s sneakers on it. I don’t believe you. You’re a liar.
Well, and of course my electricity bill here in Germany keeps rising year after year, notwithstanding your lies. I can pay it, it’s one of the smaller problems. It fixes no problem at all, of course, as there is no correlation between temperatures and CO2.
Time for you Government troll pretend Christians to take a hike to the aluminum pole for the Airing Of Grievances methinks.
Dirk….I was raised Episcopalian. You…apprently are an atheist, because I don’t know any REAL CHRISTIANS that speak with the hatred and vitroal that you do. If you ARE a real Christian….you should try to “walk the talk”…..and act like a real Christian.
Merry Christmas to you….even if you are an atheist.
Buddy, Please point out the exact words of hatred and vitriol. .??? When did disagreement become hatred and vitriol?
Suddenly so touchy, Buddy? You had no problems linking to a site advertising Late Term Abortion protagonist Wendy Davis.
As I said, I don’t believe you a word.
Are you just demented or a lie’r sometimes it is hard to tell with you guys .
That was to Buddy and bye the bye MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL.
I leave you all with this:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/24/monckton-of-meteorology-and-morality/
Hi Ed, Merry Christmas and a happy new year to you. Hope you enjoy some of the CO2 in those drinks and cakes you’ll be sure to be drinking. Here’s an article I put together about 6 months ago along similar lines. Cheers from down under. http://www.kiwithinker.com/2013/05/advocating-for-co2/