Dear Prime Minister
‘Climate change’, ‘global warming’, ‘climate emergency’, ‘planetary emergency’ are different names describing the same apocalypse.
Since you’re ‘following the science’ you’ll appreciate that precise language is needed to describe events. You see, there are actually two types of climate change: natural and anthropogenic (meaning man-made).
Clarification matters because if it’s natural climate change, it could be caused by weather or volcanic eruptions, for example. The damage would be visible but nobody would be liable for the harm.
If it’s anthropogenic climate change, the harm will be visible and liability could be attributed for compensation. I think you’re costing natural and anthropogenic harm jointly, and that leaves mankind with disproportionate and very expensive costs.
So whenever you discuss climate change could you please preface it with ‘natural’ or ‘anthropogenic’ so we know which one you mean?
Similarly, the confusion over ‘carbon’ and ‘carbon dioxide’ is fundamental. ‘Carbon’ identifies particulate matter – dirty soot belching from diesel exhausts, for example.
‘Carbon dioxide’ is a trace gas. Far from being a pollutant, it’s the gas upon which all plant growth depends.
When you talk of ‘carbon’ I think you mean ‘carbon dioxide’ – but clarification would be helpful (especially if you could also prefix it with ‘natural’ or ‘anthropogenic’).
Carbon dioxide is only 400 parts per million of the atmosphere and Mother Nature is responsible for 95 percent of that. This means humans are responsible for 5 percent, or just 20 parts per million (so you can see why it’s important to be clear).
Following on from this is the concept of ‘decarbonization’. If we’re talking about ‘natural climate change’, we humans cannot ‘decarbonize’ Mother Nature’s work.
On the other hand, if it’s ‘anthropogenic climate change’ we have yet to devise the technology to remove some of the 20 parts per million.
But how do you measure anything so small (and so beneficial) and then fragment it into even smaller proportions to attribute and apportion blame?
And what is ‘carbon neutral’? Is that shorthand for ‘no anthropogenic carbon particulates’ or for ‘no anthropogenic carbon dioxide gas more than natural level’? It’s important. (It’s lucky that last week’s Climate Summit was virtual. If you’d had to fly to America, you would have consumed a large proportion of your personal (anthropogenic) ‘carbon [dioxide] budget’.)
By the way, I’ve learned that carbon dioxide increase is 800 years behind temperature rise (give or take a decade or two).
Mother Nature was in control 800 years ago and Earth is probably only now reaping benefits from her Herculean efforts. So anything we do now won’t be felt for 800 years!
Furthermore, Mother Nature managed 5,000 parts of carbon dioxide per million before mankind appeared. Her view of ‘carbon capture and storage’ was to increase plant growth – a low-cost solution requiring no expensive technology.
No need for ‘carbon’ brokers/consultants/markets/taxes/trading/budgets or any of the other new ‘green opportunities’ which (for the sake of preciseness) should also be prefaced with ‘natural’ or ‘anthropogenic’.
Dumbing down the scientific language has led to skepticism and confusion (as by now I’m sure you’ll agree).
If you would like to discuss, I’d happy to share a bottle of carbon-neutral wine and a low-carbon vegan sausage roll (available from my local deli).
Yours sincerely
Deborah Ancell
I have a CO2 lesson for the big guy … https://newtube.app/user/RAOB/aGqDEVt
Let’s take all the CO2 out of the atmosphere — for global warming — and watch every plant on earth die. All other life forms soon to follow.
It is increasingly obvious, way beyond “conspiracy theories”, that a shamefully simplified picture of Earth, planetary and solar dynamics, planetary magnetism, cosmic rays, galactic patterns, etc etc about which we still know so little, the whole of climatology is now politicised science. Indeed, a leading figure of the UK IPCC has openly said so: they are little concerned with environmentalism, but very much about redistributing money via “carbon taxes” etc. Boris Johnson and Biden have made this clear himself without realising and understanding it. It is hubris on a grand scale. China must be laughing: Lenin said sell the capitalists enough rope and they will hang themselves with it.
The Working Class Guide to Climate Change:
Decarbonising the economy = Removing your job.
Carbon Capture = Capturing your savings.
Net Zero = How much you’ll have in your pocket after decarbonisation and carbon capture.
The Great Reset = Replacing Make America Great Again with Make AOC a Greater Pain.
Climate Summit = An opportunity for peak hypocrisy.
Renewables = Power generation infrastructure that often needs to be renewed (replaced) before it has generated more power than was used in manufacturing and installing it.
I would moot that the term “carbon” is not just restricted to particulate matter, but to the 6th element in the periodic table, an element that has the greatest number of known variants and possibilities of any other element, is the provider of the greatest number of viable energy stores, as well as being the element upon which ALL life that we know of is based. This makes its demonisation, and the resultant desire to restrict it and remove it from the environment utterly absurd, to the point of criminally insane.
Someone PLEASE gift Boris a comb!
Strap Bojo to a chair and make him read this over, and over, and over again..
They sent a robot all the way to Mars, and used a shoebox-sized experiment to convert a tiny bit of the 96% CO2 in the Martian atmosphere into pure Oxygen, plus a small pile of deep black elemental Carbon I presume…