Climate change conundrums

Fert Options
with Robin Boom
Agronomic Advisory Services

In late January the Climate Change Commission released its 800 page report to the government on what NZ should do to meet its obligations to the signed UN Paris Agreement in 2016, from which public submissions on the report closed on March 28.

I wrote a 6500 word submission from a science perspective challenging the alarmist metanarrative from the IPCC and mainstream media which feeds into the minds of the gullible creating fear and initiating protests in Wellington and other cities on April 9 on the inaction of governments in addressing climate change issues.

I doubt whether my submission will make an iota of difference, but below is a small section from it…

Robin’s submission

There have been statements made such as ‘the science is settled’ as far as the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory goes, yet real science should be able to withstand the challenges of falsification and not be pressured by political agendas and expediency.

There is no question that CO2 levels in the atmosphere have risen from the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm, to close to 400 ppm today, and that global temperatures have risen almost one degree since 1850.

However 1850 was also the end of what is called the ‘Little Ice Age’ which was a cooling period which began 500 years previously, and was the coldest period on Earth for the previous 10,000 years, so to compare today’s temperature to that of 1850 is to stack the deck.

If we were to compare today’s temperature with 1000 years ago in the Medieval Warming Period ago or 2000 years ago during the Roman Warming Period or 3500 years ago in the Minoan Warming Period, the narrative changes considerably, and there is no alarm.

There is also no question that sea levels rose about 0.3 metres through ice and glacial melt during the 20th century and continues to do so, but when this figure is compared not with what levels were like 150-200 years ago, at the end of the Little Ice Age when glacial ice actually grew and did not melt; but compared with 20,000 years ago when for approximately 12,000 years sea levels rose 120 metres, one metre per century on average, which is three times more than the last century, the alarmist narrative of AGW theory could be seen as skating on a lot thinner ice. Humans had no influence in this dramatic warming which was a natural cycle, and has allowed us as a species to thrive and develop as we have for the past ten thousand years.

Just 20,000 years ago at the peak of the last Ice Age called the Late Glacial Maximum, the Earth was at its coldest point for the previous 250 million years. Although twenty thousand years seems like a long time, it is less than one ten thousandth of 250,000,000 years, so just a blink of an eye in terms of the planet’s history.

On average the planet has been six degrees warmer than today for the past 250,000,000 years, and there were no polar ice caps to speak of. Fifty million years ago, when mammals were starting to appear, the planet was 16 degrees warmer than today, so claims that life will disappear from global warming are wrong. It was only 3 million years ago that the planet started having polar ice caps through a series of ice ages and interglacial periods which occurred every 40,000 – 100,000 years, known as the Milankovitch Cycle, believed to be caused by the relation of the elliptical orbit of the Earth around the sun and its axial tilt.

Discussing history

It can be argued that we are still coming out of the last ice age, which when at its peak, cities like Chicago would have been under a kilometre of ice, Boston under two kilometres of ice and Montreal under three kilometres of ice. Twelve thousand years ago Britain was still covered in glaciers and our own Southern Alps was one massive ice sheet. Ice Ages would appear to have a much bigger impact on life on Earth than warming, and it can be argued that increased CO2 levels is a good thing to help stop the planet going into another deep freeze which will be far more catastrophic for life on our planet than global warming.

One of the concerns of a warming planet, is that there could be a feed-back effect as the ice tundras of northern Russia thaw out, and the trapped methane in these will evaporate into the atmosphere, accelerating the speed of global warming. Frozen mammoth bodies have been found in the Siberian ice, proof that 40,000 years ago this area was a much warmer grassland landscape which was being grazed by these large mammals, when a rapid freezing struck their bodies and preserved them from rapid decay and deterioration, and it is only through recent thawing of the ice that their bodies are being discovered. Forty thousand years ago was an interglacial warming period in the Milankovitch Cycle, and our planet needs to become several degrees warmer before Siberia becomes grassland again like it was 40,000 years ago. From the preservation of these mammoth bodies we can deduce that the Milankovitch switch to cooling was rapid, as mammoths would naturally migrate to warmer tundras where fresh food was available. Should these cycles occur every 40,000 -100,000 years, we need to prepare for the next freeze which could be imminent, and not be focussed on trying to stop global warming.

Plants thrive better with higher CO2 levels, and some glass houses lift CO2 levels to 1200-1500 ppm, three or four times the current atmospheric levels, to produce bigger crops.

Back in the Jurassic period 150 million years ago, CO2 levels were around 2000 ppm, five times higher than they are today, resulting in prolific plant growth which would have fed the large herbivorous dinosaurs alive back then. The vilification of higher CO2 levels may be misguided, and as an agronomist I see there could be positive spin-offs from having more CO2.

ROBIN BOOM

Member of the Institute of Professional Soil Scientists

027 444 8764

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