Look at the whole global warming picture in the round, not just CO2 emissions

I found Dr Lee’s letter to be rather long on the usual zero-carbon rhetoric, and in fact these questions are not matters which can be decided by debate. This is part of the problem with the current situation, which I tried to bring out in my letter, which is that vested interests and ill-advised comment are inhibiting a proper scientific investigation of the reasons for global warming and climate change. Those scientists who are trying to raise the level of investigation are being stifled.

Anybody who has had anything to do with computer projections (and I’ve had a bit) knows that these are not based on facts but on assumptions for the future. In other words they are speculations. Surely we all learned that lesson during the Covid pandemic?

In a situation as complex as global warming and climate change, computer projections are, in my view, hardly any better than using a crystal ball. But we in the west are making important and far-reaching decisions, which will quite likely bankrupt our economies and may even destroy our societies, based on this flimsy ‘evidence’. While no doubt the leaders in the east are looking on at all this with quiet satisfaction, the west really is in panic mode.

Dr Lee takes me to task for using the word ‘panic’ in describing the current dogmas surrounding CO2 emissions, but what else do you call proposing such extreme actions on such insubstantial grounds? It is particularly panic mongering to suggest, as Dr Lee does, that unless we achieve so-called ‘net zero’ (even if this was possible) we might end up with what he calls ‘an extinction event’ of, not just our own species, but other species as well. Life is far more resilient than that in any case.

There are, though, a few potential threats which might conceivably cause the extinction of our species, or at least make things very uncomfortable. Nuclear weapons are one, and the possibility of a major asteroid strike is another, however unlikely.

But there is one threat which is very important and which is also one which we humans seem completely powerless to counter.

This is the huge mushrooming of the world population in recent decades, which has reached a level where it is arguably already becoming greater than the planet can reasonably be expected to sustain in the medium to long term. We can already foresee the exhaustion of not just fossil fuels, but also mineral ores and, perhaps most importantly of all, the availability of enough land on which to grow food.

And we are also increasingly pushing out many wild species, as pressure of our numbers shrinks available habitats.

In the few billion years since life started on this planet there have been a number of mass extinctions, of which the best known is the extinction of the dinosaurs. But actually the thing about the dinosaurs is not that they became extinct, but that their dominant presence on the Earth lasted for so long – something like 150 million years.

In comparison, we modern humans have only been around for several thousand years. Although the future is always unpredictable, it currently seems somewhat unlikely that we will be able to emulate anything like the longevity of the dinosaurs, though you never know. To me the important factor here is the future exhaustion of the Earth’s natural resources in the face of such huge numbers of people, and not the production of carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

Well, we suppressed a proper scientific investigation of global warming, because we became hysterical over some speculative modelling. Personally I’m encouraged now by growing evidence that more scientists and other people – and not only Drs Happer and Lindzen – seem to be starting to look at the whole global warming picture in the round, and not just slavishly adhering to the CO2 emissions dogma. We in the west certainly need to work this out a whole lot better before we continue much further down the road of doing ourselves down in the name of zero carbon.

Bob Perkins

Les Corneilles, Rue de la Ronde Cheminee, Castel, GY5 7GD

Email: pkns@cwgsy.net