Why we need to talk about CO2.

'Anyone who tries to predict more than five to 10 years is a bit of an idiot.' James Lovelock

What’s the most important substance on earth? Water is somewhat crucial, as is wrapping paper on Christmas eve and love is evidently important; you can live without it but struggle to flourish. It’s the small things that underpin the great, as mentioned in the recent novel The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley by Sean Lusk: ‘It is upon the tiniest that all others depend.’ He might have been referring to the protesting German or Dutch farmers, but was referring to worms, probably in reference to Charles Darwin’s obsession with them in later life. He might also have been describing the crucial element that underpins life on planet earth: CO₂. 

Sadly, if you google CO₂ it reads like the charge sheet of a particularly prolific mobster with global destruction on his mind. CO₂ is blamed for the increase in global temperatures of about 1.2°C since 1850. This is the year that MSM reporting ‘climate catastrophe’ refer to when saying ‘since records began’. In most peoples’ minds ‘since records began’ suggests the time of a burp bubbling to the surface of a primordial swamp, not the mid-Victorian era characterised by the doubling of average national income due to industrialisation and the introduction of the hard felt, dome-crowned bowler hat. Since records began is a useful phrase; I’ve been irrepressibly stylish since records began, if they began from when I ditched the bum-length horsehair wig. 

It’s unclear from where exactly these temperatures are measured or how, as the earth is somewhat varied in its temperatures depending upon where you stand - or shiver. As we know, authorities are keen on measuring temperatures near the after-burn of jet fighters on runways and wind speeds at the tops of coastal cliffs rather than inland. And how accurate were the Victorian thermometers exactly? However, we do know that 1850 marked the end of the Little Ice Age, a period of wide-spread cooling from 1300 to around 1850 when average global temperatures dropped by as much as 2°C. It is this figure that modern alarmists mark as since records began. It’s certainly news to the geological record.

With CO₂ emissions peaking in the 1950s, and the Royal Society recently finding that CO₂ rising ahead of planetary temperature cannot be scientifically supported, might it be reasonable to challenge the so-called climate crisis consensus without having a custard pie thrown in your face, being labeled a climate denier as though you live in a fridge, or a malnourished protestor screaming until they’re as blue in the face as they are in hair?

Green billionaire funded pressure groups, media and our politicians, with the relentlessness of waterboarding, paint CO₂as the biggest villain since Nick Cotton. It has an infamy the Rolling Stones still dream of. CO₂ is being blamed for everything, from global warming, to natural disasters, underperforming woke Star Wars’ TV series, and probably even England’s poor performance in the upcoming European Football Championship. What’s particularly impressive is that CO₂ takes up a mere .04% of the atmosphere. The one thing it is responsible for is that ‘from a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide’, according to the journal Nature Climate Change in 2016. If this is Armageddon then it desperately needs a development meeting and a reshoot involving confused and depressed polar bears CGI’d into the Sahara desert. 

Global monthly average concentrations of carbon dioxide have risen steadily from 337 parts per million in 1979 to 417 parts per million in 2022, an increase of more than 20% in 44 years. Yet rather than run around like a snake has been dropped into our pants, this should be celebrated. The average CO₂ in earth’s history since before human records began, has been 2600ppm. We are not sailing into uncharted waters of high CO₂ concentration, but have in fact barely left the slipway. At the end of the last glacial advance CO₂ fell to 182 ppm, thought to be the lowest in the Earth’s history. It’s hard to know what the clowns at Extinction Rebellion would have made of this because if ever there was a time for poly tunnels pumped full of CO₂ it was then, because below 150ppm most terrestrial plant life cannot exist. 

Yes, CO₂ is the food of life. We are far closer to CO₂ starvation than toxicity. Its 0.04% of the atmosphere is a fart in Wembley arena. Manmade CO₂ is hugely overshadowed by that which is naturally occurring - we had an ice age when the Earth had extraordinarily larger amounts of carbon dioxide._.Accusing manmade CO₂ of global warming is like blaming the 32 straight blokes at a 60,000 strong Take That concert for the atrocious singing (I mean the crowd not the man band). 

Let’s not forget those poly tunnels where strawberry harvests are maximised by pumping them with CO₂. The optimum level of Co2 used in professional greenhouses is 4,000 ppm, which suggests that is a good starting point for any discussion concerning life on planet earth. Besides, who doesn’t want mega-fauna, with ferns the size of bus stops and toadstools you can sit on, or finally even live in. 

However, like finding a song that doesn’t feat. Nile Rogers, it’s impossible to leave the house without encountering public, corporate, political, charitable declarations of commitment to offsetting carbon emissions. Even the republished The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono comes with the publisher’s note on ‘our sustainability commitments’. This is after publishing a book praising reforestation, they still want to flagellate themselves for approval by the high priests of Greenhood; nothing is enough. 

We are in the midst of a global authorial dictatorship of mainstream information. Why is increase in CO₂ not provoking street parties and pagan celebrations of the increased greening of the planet, rather than causing sickly-looking people glueing their sad faces to the road? Partly because the £trillions to be made is in the green industries. 

You can even sense the dismay from The Conversation website with its article entitled more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere helps plants grow, but it’s no excuse to downplay climate change. You can hear their disappointment in needing to potentially revise their orange paint order. There’s currency in caring and people like an easy win. The article reads: : 

If humans are producing more carbon dioxide. This carbon dioxide is causing more plant growth, and a higher capacity to suck up carbon dioxide. This process is called the “carbon dioxide fertilisation effect” – a phenomenon when carbon emissions boost photosynthesis and, in turn, plant growth.

This is backed up by numerous studies such as the the paper ‘Relationship between Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration and Global Temperature for the Last 425 Million Years’ (2017) concluded that regulation of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions may be less important than previously thought for controlling global temperature, but more important than previously recognized for conserving biodiversity. And the 2023 paper Biophysical impacts of earth greening can substantially mitigate regional land surface temperature warming found the Earth has experienced “widespread vegetation greening” since the 1980s due to CO₂ fertilisation effects. We’ve always known the importance of news reporting in creating fear and subjugation, but the unilateral burying of good news that is counter to the doom-porn of the ‘climate crisis’ is revealing. It all fits rather neatly with James Lovelock’s Gaia theory. 

Instead, we have the globalist WEF and Trilateral Commission stooge Herr Starmer already clearing space on his Islington mantelpiece in preparation for his Paris Agreement targets and Net Zero trophies. And what was once on the other side of the house, but is now indistinguishable, we have Tory MP Chris Skidmore resigning because, as a former energy minister, he had signed the UK’s pledge to Net Zero by 2050 into law. Yes, a man who intentionally stuck a knife in the tyres of the UK economy without asking anyone, flounced off because the UK dares to capitalise on domestic oil fields rather than import the stuff at higher cost and higher emissions. It’s not even hard to find his motivation, as he declares being paid £80k a year by the Emissions Capture Company for advice on ‘global energy transition and decarbonisation’. So, while over £12 billion a year from the wallets of electricity customers to pay for inefficient power from wind and sunbeams accounting for barely 5% of energy use in the chase of needless net zero, Skidmore is presumably warms himself beneath a duvet stuffed with £80,000. 

Skidmore is the ego who derided the decision to approve Whitehaven coal mine, bringing jobs and investment to the area, saying it was a mistake, which “would not have been able to happen” if his recommendations on curbing carbon emissions had been in place. The loss of another Net Zero dictator is doubtlessly the renewables industry gain. Meanwhile global coal consumption climbed to a new all-time high in 2022 as the decline in western economies is offset by increased use in Asia, because they know that to fuel a modern industrial system requires more than the vagaries of a sunny day.

The embrace of Agenda 2030 and a collectivist Net Zero is something you might expect UK’s two major political parties to be divided by, and eager to give people an opportunity to vote upon whether we drive our country off a cliff to hit the net zero rocks below. Instead we have climate activists on Sky news like Zoe Cohen, who has that worried look generally seen in sheep spotting a stray dog entering their field, refusing to answer any questions the answers to which she knows will damage her zealotry. It’s noticeably that green representatives when faced with contrary opinion adopt the sort of composure reserved for motorway drivers having dropped a lit cigarette in their lap. The narrative that wind and solar power can energise the UK is like attaching your pedometer to a greyhound and claiming the 20,000 steps as your own. It’s time CO₂ made a comeback to reclaim its existence as the gas of life.

My book on writing - Idle Thoughts of an Idle Writer - is available at Amazon

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