What Won’t be Talked About at COP30
Somewhere in the Amazon forest, there’s climate hand-wringing going on, which will continue long after the talkfest because against the tide, some politicians have plucked up the courage to take their foot off the net zero pedal. Gwynne Dyer (ODT 13.11.25) was still waxing lyrical about the old ‘1.5°C above pre-industrial revolution levels’ narrative. But the narrative lack wisdom, and is easily dispelled through simple logic, without involving complicated science. Let’s ask a simple question, ‘When exactly, is pre-industrial revolution?’ The industrial revolution is said to have occurred between 1750 and 1850, and for sure, since 1850 the planet has warmed somewhat. But blaming carbon dioxide is glossing over some important facts. 1750, was towards the tail end of the 1330 – 1850 little ice age. So, the start point of the ‘pre-industrial revolution’ myth must be somewhere in the middle of an ice age! Why would anyone think the planet’s best or safest temperature would be only 1.5°C above the middle of an ice age? Yes, some may say the little ice age wasn’t worldwide, but we do know that during that period the Thames river was frozen over, our two West Coast glaciers reached the sea, and Argentina’s glaciers were bigger back then. And there another key question, ‘How do ice ages end, if it isn’t with warming?’
The little ice age was caused by four known climate-related cycles reaching their minimum at roughly the same time; Wolf, Spöres. Maunder and Dalton. The cold was further compounded by more than usual volcanic activity which sometimes blocked the sun. When those events passed after 520 years, slow natural warming from the sun occurred, which reduced sea ice and snow cover, and therefore, the amount of reflected heat, which allowed further warming. The climate change lobbyists, erroneously attribute atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuels as the sole cause. Carbon dioxide is a critical gas; around 1850, atmospheric carbon dioxide was at a historical low, barely enough to support plant growth, which is why poverty and disease reigned in the UK and elsewhere. The records are available. Food shortages, disease and superstition are symptoms of scant food production and cold. Without doubt, its cold that is the enemy of humanity. Since 1900, the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased the world’s green vegetation by 30%, the equivalent of three Amazon forests, and since 1900 nature herself, has released four times more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than human activity. The litmus test of carbon dioxide’s usefulness, is that world life expectancy has doubled and crop yields are at historical highs. It’s also known that as the oceans warm, they release carbon dioxide, but not necessarily by the sun alone; ocean warming also comes from the ocean’s volcanic activity; fissures and volcanoes; there are about a million of them. Any human cause of warming is most likely from land use… cutting forest and scrubland, bared soils and the heat-island effect of towns and cities.
COP30 is bound to talk about sea level rise and how much compensation can be squeezed out of the west. Charles Darwin showed how coral atolls grow, and sure enough, Tuvalu, one nations seeking compensation, has grown 8% over the last forty years. Going back 12,000 years, there was a big block of ice over the northern hemisphere that was, in places, a mile thick. To understand this, think of a raw egg, without its shell, but with the thin membrane underneath the shell. This represents the planet; it’s crust and molten core. Push down on it and it will bulge somewhere else. Ok, back to the northern hemisphere; the weight of the ice pushed the crust down, causing some of the southern hemisphere to rise in sympathy. When the ice disappeared, there has been a slow rebound and still, parts of Canada and Europe are rising, which means some of the southern hemisphere is sinking in sympathy. Remember the one million fissures and volcanoes under the ocean? The Icelandic Laki fissure eruption of 1783/84 spewed up fourteen cubic kilometres of lava - its gas resulted in the death of 6 million. Nobody knows how many of the million undersea fissures and volcanoes are active at once but their eruptions will alter the sea level to some extent. And then there’s geological activity of erosion on the land. For example, our Southern Alps are made of greywacke; metamorphosed sandstone, which means it was once a mountain in Gondwanaland, the mountain eroded to sand, which lay on the ocean floor; the Pacific plate. For 25-30 million years the Pacific plate has been subducting under the Australasian plate, thus ‘cooking’ the sandstone and pushing it up to form the Alps… and they too are eroding about as fast as they are growing… which is how the Canterbury plains formed. The rivers carry the eroded material seaward. Gravity and extreme weather events are the forces that reduce mountains to peneplains; flat and featureless land. So where do the eroded mountains and other land features go? Either into the sea to eventually to be recycled by tectonic plate movement, or to add to the land; all of which alters the sea level. Sea ice melt cannot raise the sea level because it is already in the sea but ice and snow melt on land can. When someone suggests that sea levels are rising, it’s simplistic to say the cause is solely a minor greenhouse gas. But observationally and uncannily, there seems to be a sort of equilibrium. What must be understood about the geology of this planet, is that extreme weather events and geology go hand in hand and floodplains are often the result; they are fertile areas, ideal for growing food, but sooner or later they will flood again, which should raise a red flag for proposed infrastructure. But somehow, the COP30 lobbyists have forgotten that the geological processes of the planet, although slow, will continue relentlessly, as they always have.
When governments try to mitigate climate change with net zero policies, it’s important to know from what to what, and for what outcome … it’s far too complicated to be certain. Additionally, there are ‘unpredictable anomalies’ like the Laki eruption which changed the climate for two years; the Tongan undersea eruption, which loaded the stratosphere with moisture that caused flooding around the world; silt-makers like cyclone Gabriel with the aftermath of excellent crops, random heatwaves, cold spells, droughts, all of which may have widespread or local effects, but they do not necessarily signal climate change. Such anomalies have always been. So, when the United Nations, COP30 and governments propose net zero policies, someone needs to ask the question.
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