Why these Bills should be resisted, rejected or replealed
By Viv Forbes, Carbon Sense Coaltion
There is no evidence that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere controls the climate. However there is strong evidence that global temperature controls the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere via the absorption or emission of this soluble gas from the vast oceans.
There is no evidence that the current gentle warm era is unusual or harmful. There have been warmer periods in the past and all have encouraged a profusion of animal and plant life.
In the broad sweep of natural climate change it is clear that life on earth has far more to fear from global cooling than from global warming. It is the ice ages that cause massive extinctions. In the long history of life on earth, global warming has never been a threat to the biosphere.
There is significant evidence that solar cycles have a notable effect on global temperature and rainfall. The sun, the clouds, the oceans, volcanic dust and the winds create our climate with its cycles, seasons, tides, unpredictable variations and occasional extremes. Carbon dioxide exists as a tiny trace of invisible gas in the atmosphere (1 part of CO2 per 2,500 parts of other gases). It exerts a steady, moderating, but very tiny influence on global temperatures.
The effect of a carbon tax on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will not be measurable. The effect of a carbon tax on the sun, clouds, oceans, volcanoes and winds will be zero. Therefore a carbon tax will have no measurable effect on global climate, even if every country in the world introduced it.
Many of the climate scares, such as loss of corals and rising sea levels, are inventions or exaggerations. Corals have survived for millions of years, have adapted to rising and falling sea levels, and have moved north and south as earth’s temperatures changed. Sea levels have been rising slowly for thousands of years, long before steam engines were invented, and current changes are very gentle and not unusual. In fact recent credible studies show sea levels are gently falling.
It is nonsense to call carbon dioxide a pollutant. It is better called “The Gas of Life” as it provides the major source of food for all plant life which in turn supports all animal life. Current levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are lower than they have been many times in the past and significantly lower than is optimal for all life.
Every molecule of carbon dioxide released by burning coal today was once part of the atmosphere at a time of prolific growth of the huge forests that formed the coal in the first place, millions of years ago. Burning the coal just recycles the natural carbon and other minerals back to the biosphere where the next generation of plants can use them. Coal is as natural and “green” as the forests from which it came.
Mankind does clearly affect his environment with land clearing, cultivation, irrigation, sewerage, garbage, roads, railways, dams and his massive cities of bitumen, concrete, sky scrapers, schools, hospitals, houses and heat generating machines and appliances. The heat from the activities of people and their machines does cause minor but measurable urban heating. Man (and woman) also creates real pollution with smoke, dust and chemical gases, and pollutes waterways and landfill with various waste products. All sensible people want to see a reduction in this real pollution, but carbon dioxide plays no part in it, and a carbon tax will not reduce it.
Carbon dioxide has zero ability to produce heat in itself. It does not burn like carbon, coal or wood � it is a harmless and invisible gaseous by-product of burning these fuels. It is not a source of radioactive heat like uranium. All it can do is redirect some of the heat exchanged between the sun and the earth.
Carbon dioxide is generally transparent to most heat and light radiation. However, during the day, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can temporarily interrupt and redirect some of the heat flowing between the sun and the earth (generally keeping the surface cooler than it would have otherwise been). During the night, carbon dioxide again interrupts some of the heat escaping from the surface to space, thus keeping nights warmer than they would have otherwise been. Water vapour has a similar but far greater effect. The net effect on average global temperature is negligible and beneficial to the comfort of life on the surface of the earth.
Earth’s climate is always changing and cycles of heating and cooling have been a regular feature of earth history for as long as geological and historical records exist. To suggest that man is suddenly causing every extreme weather event is just superstitious scare mongering.
To believe that a tax on some Australian businesses which emit carbon dioxide will have the slightest effect on global climate is ludicrous.
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