Carbon dioxide: “world’s best friend”
The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition
15 September 2009 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Carbon dioxide: David Bellamy says “world’s best friend”; Nick Smith says “pollutant”.
“Within days of the distinguished British environmentalist, Dr David Bellamy reminding New Zealanders that carbon dioxide is the world’s best friend, a desperate local politician has described it as a pollutant and proposes to cripple our economy with charges for its emissions.” This statement from the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition in response to the explanation by Climate Change Minister Nick Smith: “New Zealand needs an emissions trading scheme to discourage carbon pollution...”
“In their zeal to confuse the public, politicians like Minister Smith use the term ‘carbon’ when they are referring to the odourless, colourless gas, carbon dioxide (CO2) that comprises just 3.62% of so-called ‘greenhouse’ gases in the atmosphere, of which just 3.4% is human caused, meaning that the human contribution of CO2 to the greenhouse effect is a miniscule 0.123%, the equivalent of 12 cents in $100.
“Compare that 12 cents with what it will cost each New Zealand household. Earlier Mr Smith and Prime Minister John Key told us ETS will cost us each $30 a week, adding up to $6000 a year for a household of four. It will be little consolation to be told that, as a result of a deal with the Maori Party, it will now cost each household only $3000 a year to reduce that 12 cents equivalent of CO2, with no sound evidence that it will have any effect on whether the climate warms slightly as it has many times in the past, or returns to a cooling phase as it’s doing right now.
“David Bellamy was in New Zealand last week, and reminded us that claims of human-caused global warming are, in his words, ‘poppycock!’. He was even more scathing about those who dare to label CO2 as a pollutant. He reminded us of a paper he co-authored two years ago describing CO2 as ‘the world’s best friend’, because it is the natural fertiliser that all plants need for their growth, including all the vegetative plants needed for human and animal survival.
“In that paper, he wrote: ‘Take heart:
Earth’s climate has remained within the limits tolerated
by life, for several billion years. During this time the
planet has experienced unimaginable volcanic events which
liberated huge amounts of CO2, we have collided with
extraterrestrial objects which triggered either increase or
decrease of temperature and even the energy flow from the
sun has altered over such a span of geological time. And
yet here we are! Life remains. The global temperature is
well within life’s limits - indeed the present-day is
cooler than much of previous geological time. There is one
circumstantial conclusion and one only: Earth’s climate,
self-regulates, with or without us.’” (The full paper
can be accessed at
more “The economic
consequences of ETS for New Zealand are horrendous. Nick
Smith would serve us better by producing justification for
his threatened degradation of our way of life and standard
of living. He relies totally on the UN Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which in four reports so
far has produced a lot of computer modelled ‘scenarios’
and ‘projections’ but not a single piece of scientific
evidence or a firm prediction. We can be sure that neither
his Prime Minister nor his Finance Minister would allow the
International Monetary Fund or the World Bank to write New
Zealand’s Budget, yet we allow UN IPCC to determine our
climate policy. “Nick Smith would have been better
advised to stop listening to global warming propagandists,
and to look out the window at a real world that has been
cooling since 2002, and, according to solar scientists, is
likely to continue to do. There is every likelihood of a
return to the early 1970’s when the over-rising world
fear was for another impending ice age.”
Ends