A letter to CR April 2021

I am sorry this communication is lengthy but trust - at your convenience - that you will do me the courtesy, given the time I have invested in researching and constructing it, of investing your time to read it fully.

The cause of my deliberations has been my intense disappointment, frustration and anger at the Community’s repeated proclamations of the completely false gospel of global warming.

This first came to my attention in an outrageous article published in the CR Review. I immediately despatched a response, refuting the totally false assertions made therein. That response may be read in full here:

http://rfmaulden.co.uk/letter.htm

Fr George conceded to my response, considerably reduced and in bullet point form, being published in the next CR Review but with a link included therein to the full text. I had hoped this would be sufficient to put a stop to such silliness but imagine my incredulity when another article was published in a subsequent CR Review again propounding the same false gospel. Once more I despatched a response refuting the points made and endeavouring again to set the matters into a correct context. That response may be read in full here:

http://rfmaulden.co.uk/letter2.htm

This time, in reply, Fr George was not at all conciliatory, refusing to publish it (or even a redacted version of it), appealing to his own (clearly warped) version of “the science" and stating "For those of us who are not expert we make our judgement on the basis both of the arguments presented by the different points of view and on the authoritativeness of their proponents".

However, it is blatantly apparent to me that no “different points of view" have in any way been taken into account, the Community having quite obviously closed its collective mind to any such and refusing to embrace the many prominent scientific voices continually being raised against the sheer scare-mongering nonsense pedalled by the mainstream media. It is this refusal, in the face of Fr George's assertions, even to entertain that he and the Community may be mistaken, which really hurts most.

That a group of - forgive me - mostly elderly individuals largely removed from the world and dependent upon limited media, the content of which is intent on pursuing its own political agenda, should mistakenly reach an erroneous conclusion I can entirely understand and appreciate. However, to dismiss right out of hand any contrary views presenting scientifically supported facts, as opposed to pseudo-science alarmism, I find unforgivable. If there is one thing I thought the Community stood for and would be determined to proselytise it is surely the truth, not an entirely scientifically unsupported fabrication designed by those intentionally seeking to gain wealth, power and control.

I was, further, deeply disappointed to learn that the Community is hell-bent on following an insane “carbon-neutral” path. One of the many advantages of the Community is that it stands largely outside the structures and strictures of the Church of England and therefore has no compulsion to follow all the latest fads and trends enrapturing a Church apparently intent on destroying itself. Further, I had always understood the Community to be supportive of the poor and underprivileged, the very same people in the world who will be most affected by pursuance of such a ridiculous policy.

It seems I cannot say in large enough letters - and these are not my unsupported personal views but the actual truth, readily scientifically verifiable - the following:

• CARBON DIOXIDE IS NOT A POLLUTANT. It is non-toxic and non-noxious; it is colourless, odourless and tasteless. It is ESSENTIAL for life on this planet, being the vital chemical compound which every plant requires to live and grow and to synthesize into oxygen for all humans and animal life. Everything green which is natural relies upon carbon dioxide and it benefits when carbon dioxide levels are far higher than now

• Those promoting climate alarmism apparently fail to understand that carbon dioxide is not carbon; they say we need to cut carbon dioxide from the use of coal, oil and natural gas but then they talk about carbon. Carbon dioxide is a gas but carbon is a solid and is in every cell of our bodies. What makes our planet so liveable and unique is the fact that we have more carbon concentrated on our planet than is the case across the universe. Carbon, like carbon dioxide, is essential for life.

• Carbon dioxide constitutes just 0.0415% (naught point naught four one five per cent) of Earth’s air, i.e. just four parts in every million. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is scientifically classified as a trace gas because there is so little of it. By contrast, when you or I exhale carbon dioxide we do so at 40,000 parts per million; that is 100 times greater. In their headlong rush to be “carbon-neutral”, is the Community proposing that all the Brethren should stop breathing?

• Some may say ‘Oh but cyanide can kill you with just a trace’. That is true but it is a chemical effect. However, the claimed effect of carbon dioxide promoted by alarmists, i.e. global warming, climate catastrophe and the so called greatest existential threat that we now face - which are all complete lies - are physical effects yet the trace gas carbon dioxide has no physical effect which can be recorded.

• Importantly, carbon dioxide which nature produces (and this is from the United Nations climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is 97% of the carbon dioxide produced annually on our planet. In other words, each year, nature produces 32 times more than the entire human production of carbon dioxide.

• Carbon dioxide does not discolour the air. Carbon dioxide does not impair the quality of water or soil. Carbon dioxide does not create light, create heat, create noise or create radioactivity. It does not distort our senses. It does not degrade the environment, nor impair its usefulness, nor render our environment offensive.

• Carbon dioxide does not harm ecosystems, plants, animals or humans. In fact, we put it in soft drinks; we put it in champagne, beer and soda water: we carbonate these by putting carbon dioxide in there (will the Community be banning all such fizzy drinks in the future?). Carbon dioxide does not cause discomfort, instability or disorders of any kind. It does not upset nature’s balance. It remains in the air for only a short time before nature cycles it into plants, animal tissue, the oceans and natural accumulations. It does not contaminate, apart from nature’s extremely high and concentrated volumes of carbon dioxide from volcanoes and even then it is only locally and briefly under rare natural conditions when in very high concentrations and amounts, far higher than anything humans can produce.

• Carbon dioxide is not a foreign substance. In the past, on this planet there have been times when carbon dioxide levels were 130 times higher than the concentration in the earth today. In fact, in the last 200 years, scientists have measured carbon dioxide levels in places up to 40% higher than they are today. No scientific body (for example the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation [CSIRO]) has ever said that carbon dioxide from human activity is a threat or a danger.

• Without carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, all life on earth would cease to exist. No plants would grow and no oxygen would be produced, carbon dioxide being the sole source of the molecular oxygen which we breathe. Indeed, without the steady supply of carbon dioxide from thousands of active volcanoes and fumeroles, life on earth would already have come to a standstill and the oceans and most freshwater on the earth would have become acidified.

• Just one of those volcanoes, the most recent major eruption to take place in Iceland, negated in just four days EVERY SINGLE HUMAN EFFORT made in the preceding five years to control carbon dioxide emissions on our planet. All of the emission savings accomplished by individuals whilst suffering the inconvenience and expense of driving electric vehicles, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up to midnight to finish their children’s "Green Revolution" science project, throwing out all of their “non-green” cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in their toilet cistern, selling their petrol-cars and boats, holidaying at home instead of abroad, riding everywhere on their bicycles, replacing all of their 50p bulbs with £5 ones; all of those actions were rendered futile in just four days. Not only that, there are around 200 active volcanoes on this planet spewing out carbon dioxide every day. When the volcano Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it disgorged more so called “greenhouse gases” into the atmosphere than the entire human race had emitted in all its years on earth. The Community’s absurd drive to “carbon-neutrality” will not stop a single volcano from erupting.

• There is no correlation whatsoever between the earth’s temperature and the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Both have fluctuated widely over time (please see the attached graphic): ice ages have occurred when carbon dioxide levels have been high whilst high temperatures have occurred when carbon dioxide levels have been low. At one point the level of carbon dioxide dropped to 180 parts per million, within just 30 parts per million of the level at which all plants die. At other times in the relatively recent past it has been as high as 2,500 parts per million, at which time life on earth flourished. It is universally accepted that climate varies quite naturally, most of it cyclically but sometimes in a combination of cycles which makes it look like it is highly random.

• Carbon dioxide does NOT drive temperature. From at least 4,800BC, carbon dioxide was rising and temperature was drifting down. From 1750 (the start of the industrial revolution), carbon dioxide continued to rise but temperatures kept falling. Even after 1850, when carbon dioxide rose even faster, temperatures keep falling. Not until 1930 do they start moving together and then only for 14 years. After that, carbon dioxide keeps rising but temperature does not until 1980. From 1981 to 2000 they both rise but then temperatures stop rising. On any scale that is studied, no relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature is found: in fact, they both move in the same direction only 15% of the time. Many scientific experiments have proven that increasing levels of carbon dioxide do NOT give rise to any increase in temperatures, a basic scientific fact ignored by the first and subsequent proponents of climate alarmism.

• Scientific bodies aver that today’s temperatures are not unprecedented and indeed, generally speaking, there has been no global warming in the last two decades despite an increase in the amounts of carbon dioxide - natural and man-made - in the atmosphere.

• Many scientists, including members who are lead authors for the United IPCC such Dr John Christy, have left the United Nations climate body (and others) because of the corruption in place therein. He and many other scientists have confirmed that nowhere in the world has anyone ever presented any empirical scientific evidence showing that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate and needs to be cut; not NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, not the UK Met Office, not the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, not the CSIRO, not any university, not any academic, not any science paper and not any scientific journal.

It manifestly follows, therefore, that the policies such as carbon-neutrality pushed by climate alarmists are not based on science. Causation is never even proven. Instead, as substitutes for science, emotion, stories, fantasies, dreams and promises are used. Policy needs to be based on specific, quantified cause and effect. That has never been presented anywhere in the world.

You should be fully aware that the two factors which have driven the rapid improvement in human standards of living over the last 170 years have been the use of hydrocarbon fuels and their derivatives plus the consequential relentless decrease in the price of energy from 1850. However, some countries have started to take a backwards trend, thanks to so called renewable (“green”) energy, which is in truth very far from being either renewable or environmentally friendly. Prices for electricity have started to increase; in some areas they have doubled and tripled and nothing has changed, save an increasingly unsustainable burden on the poor. Coal-fired power stations have become more efficient yet there has been an increase in the price of electricity because of the artificial regulations and the artificial impediments on the most productive and efficient source of electricity generation plus an imposition of massive subsidies for the dreams of weak, unreliable and intermittent solar and wind, which will never, ever catch up with coal, hydro or nuclear.

The lunacy of the climate alarmists, calling carbon dioxide ‘carbon’ - calling a gas a solid - is driving a de-carbonisation that is, in effect, a de-industrialisation. What will disappear are all the material benefits which have accrued over the last 150 years, to be replaced by a reliance on very scarce materials only capable of extraction in very limited quantities, under atrocious conditions and by the poorest and most underprivileged in society.

Further, without the continued reliance on hydrocarbons for energy, every tree on the planet would be cut down for fuel, the atmosphere would be thick with burning wood smoke and billions of people worldwide would die. Those still alive without fossil fuels would have a life expectancy of under 30 years.

Hydrocarbons and their by-products (e.g. plastics) have led to humans now living lives that are longer, safer, easier, more comfortable and more healthy than ever before and in us having far more choices than anyone could ever have imagined. Today we benefit from the more than 6,000 products which are all made from oil derivatives, most of which did not even exist in the developed countries before the 1900s. In its insane drive for “carbon-neutrality”, will the Community be discarding everything made of plastic (including the computer on which you are reading this) and only use those goods, medicines and protections which existed before the discovery of oil?

As for CR’s false gospel of global warming and climate catastrophe, it seems that, yet again, I cannot stress enough the following realities (these are neither fake nor hype and are merely a selection of some recent reports; there are very, very many more in similar vein which I could supply. I am NOT making up this stuff):

• Recently, in many parts of the world, record low temperatures and record high snowfalls have been experienced. The latest data from NASA confirms that there has been a 0.44 degree centigrade fall in global temperatures in just the past five years alone. February 2021 was actually 0.54 degrees centigrade cooler than February 2020. Cold cannot be produced by warming.
• Australia has just experienced its coolest summer in ten years, with increased rainfall. The United States has just had its coldest winter for over 30 years. Parts of California have just suffered their coldest day in 110 years. There has been no warming in Japan for the last 32 years. There has been no warming in east Antarctica for the last forty years. Greenland and Iceland mean winter temperatures have been cooling since the start of the century. In the UK, February has not warmed since 1992. In Ireland, February temperatures have cooled or remained almost steady over the past 33 years.
• From 80,000 to 12,000 years ago, when carbon dioxide concentrations lingered near or below 200 parts per million, many studies aver that when directly comparing region to region it was as much as 6°C warmer than today.
• The fastest glacial retreat ever recorded, a distance of 48 miles, took place between 1794 and 1879, not in modern times.
• A recent study shows that variability in climate is strongly linked to natural cycles. For example, 22,000 years ago the whole eastern part of Canada was covered with a one to three kilometre thick sheet of ice. Since then, over a period of around 15,000 years, it just melted away with natural climate variations. Does the Community really believe this melting occurred because of some camp-fires by the few earthlings then inhabiting the continents? Furthermore, analyses of deep ice core samples showed that carbon dioxide rose well after the ice began melting, actually with a time-lag of 1,000 years.
• Numerous studies report a decreasing trend in the global number of tropical cyclones, floods and climate related catastrophes globally. There has been no increase in extreme weather generally across the planet; there are no more severe events now than there were 50 or 100 years ago (the period for which reliable data exists). The percentage of people in the world who die from extreme weather events (such as monsoons, forest fires, high temperatures, frigid winters, hurricanes and tornadoes) has been consistently falling for at least a century and is lower today than any time in human history. We are actually 99% safer from extreme weather (floods, droughts, storms, wildfire, extreme temperatures) than a century ago.
• The global area burned by fires has declined over past decades and there is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago.
• Global areas of severe drought have been declining steadily since 1901.
• Sea levels have been rising very gradually since the end of the last ice-age (at about one foot per century) and there has be no acceleration in the rate of this rise. In fact, the rate has decreased in recent times.
• Arctic sea ice extent is well above the 1997 to 1990 average and is currently the highest in six years. Greenland ice melt has slowed down significantly over the past decade. In the Antarctic (where there are active volcanoes under parts of the ice) the sea ice extent is well above the 1981 to 2010 mean. In fact, satellite data reveals that sea ice extent around the southern pole has actually grown over the past 40 plus years, Four years ago, during late-March of 2017, Antarctic sea ice measured 3 million sq km but as at late-March of 2021, measurements have reached 5+ million sq km. This growth in ice of over 2 million sq km is an impossibility under the global warming theory.
• Polar bear numbers have increased substantially in the last 50 years.
• A recently published study of coral reefs finds coral populations are staggeringly large and extremely unlikely to face extinction pressures anytime in the foreseeable future.
• World wheat and grain production is at its highest level ever.
• Not one single prediction by climate alarmists, based largely on unvalidated and erroneous computer models, has come true.

Eliminating carbon-based energy and carbon dioxide emissions will impose far greater human and ecological costs than hitherto. It is fossil fuel replacements which will inflict incalculable damage to people and the planet. Replacing coal, oil, natural gas and internal combustion vehicles would require millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels, billions of battery modules, millions of acres of biofuel plantations, a complete overhaul of electrical grids and infrastructures, on millions of acres. That will require billions of tons of steel, aluminum, copper, lithium, cobalt, rare earth elements, concrete, plastics and other materials, which will require digging up and processing hundreds of billions of tons of ores and minerals. This will be carried out often with slave and child labour and with few or no workplace safety, air and water pollution, toxic substances, endangered species or other rules.

Only seven times in the last BILLION years have average global temperatures ever been at the rather arbitrary present day global average temperature and then only when going into, or emerging from, an ice age. The long-term global average mean temperature is actually three to five degrees centigrade above the present level. As recently as the mid-1800s, parts of China were up to three degrees centigrade warmer than today

It is manifestly evident to everybody that the earth's climate has always changed and always will change, quite naturally. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. There is no global warming. There is NO climate catastrophe. The very idea that mankind can predictably manage natural changes in climate by manipulating at the margins one politically selected atmospheric trace gas, carbon dioxide, is as misguided as it gets. It is scientific nonsense. Trying to change the climate by moderating humanity's carbon dioxide emissions is thus a Canute-like exercise in futility.

Accordingly, I PLEA with the Community immediately to come to its senses and revert to its constitution, which states that it is called to public, prophetic witness to the Christian hope of the Kingdom, not to promulgating a monstrous lie. Please, please stop following and, particularly, promoting the totally false gospel of global warming, anthropogenic (man-made) climate change and “carbon-neutrality". None of these is God’s message, particularly when pursuance of the current cult-like desire for “decarbonisation” policies - which have absolutely no basis in science - would result in worsening the environments and lives of the very people the Community should be supporting and would foster severe negative consequences on future generations, all without affecting climate one iota.

The Community now has the opportunity, some might say a duty, to take its rightful place in the fightback against the climate nonsense pedalled by others, many of whom know better but fear for their employment if they were to voice their concerns. It is time for the Community to stop its woke, virtue signalling and get back to its core fundamentals. The insistence that humans should limit future access to fossil fuels and the products made from oil derivatives has a dramatic cost, because cheap and accessible power and products from fossil fuels are life saving and one of the best ways out of poverty. Abandoning fossil fuels and moving into unreliable and intermittent electricity from wind and solar will deprive at least 80% of humanity, or more than 6 billion people in this world living on less than $10 per day, from enjoying the same products which benefit the developed countries. Further, of all deaths in those countries, heart disease accounts for around a third and cancer for around a quarter. Why, therefore, is the Community not directing its efforts to aligning itself alongside the worthy causes of research into alleviation of such morbidities, when - and not a single one of the following are caused by carbon dioxide - cold kills just six percent, heat kills less than one third of one percent and extreme weather kills a miniscule 0.015%?

I would be pleased to provide supporting evidence at any time for any or all of the above FACTS.