Starts out OK but soon lapses into pseudo science
THE most frustrating aspect of public discourse in Australia is the dominance of the extremists, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the climate change debate.
Driven by factors that have little to do with attempting to deal with the actual questions, the most polarised proponents of each side of the debate have shouted down the moderates.
In such a landscape, each side considers the other in absolute terms – people are either hippie enviro-nazis who want us to go back to living in mud huts, or zealous money-crazed capitalists hell-bent on destroying the world.
Unsurprisingly, this approach is not bringing the two sides any closer.
The real problem with the extremists is that they are arguing from fear of consequences, not observable data – so if one person is opposed to a carbon tax, he or she generally argues that global warming isn’t real rather than attacking the tax on its merits (or lack thereof).
Similarly, people who want to address the problem of climate change adopt the stance that the only way forward is a carbon tax, rather than consider more moderate options (of which there are many).
Curiously, both sides can be shown to be incorrect, using uncontroversial and well-accepted science and economics.
We know that trees absorb carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, releasing oxygen into the air and storing the carbon, and we also know that, globally, we have cut down an enormous number of trees in the past 300 years.
Thus, we know we have reduced the planet’s ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
Apparently you believe in “peak trees”.
Haven’t we harvested a lot of grain over the past 300 years? Are we about to run out of grain? If not, why not” Apply the same to trees. New trees grow just as new grain grows. They are “replaceable resources.”
Also, it is not just trees that remove CARBON DIOXIDE from the air. All plants do. Even the one celled plants in the ocean, lakes, ponds, streams, and rivers.
Here is another panic for you. If the CO2 in the atmosphere gets too low, all plants die. If all plants die, all animals die. This will be a huge extinction event. To prevent that, we have to cut down all the trees. The sky is falling — the sky is falling — run for your lives – there is no hope — woe is us.
There are far more things at work on this earth than are captured by your fantasy. Picking change in one thing and blowing it into catastrophic proportion is the path to doing something that does more harm than good. Things change. Get over it.
Deforestation actually increases carbon intake since small trees and undergrowth grow more and faster than old trees with no undergrowth. If the wood is put into non-degrading usage (such as buildings or furniture), then there is a net positive in carbon uptake over the mid term. Aside from that error, which isn’t too bad considering the author’s apparent lack of a scientific background. One concern that he put out that I do agree with is the dismissal of opposing viewpoints as traitors. What happened to “Not Evil, Just Wrong”? Your own commentary here, Editor, is quite concerning.
Interesting Ben of Houston. May I ask what concerns you about
I base that on
and
In the first case I read “the problem of climate change” as meaning CAGW, something I don’t recognize as extant and in the second case global primary productivity is up, not down. Despite humans liberating increasing amounts of previously sequestered carbon the planet continues to absorb a fairly constant proportion, i.e., earth’s appetite for anthropogenic and natural carbon is increasing, not diminishing.
The author might have good intentions but the statements of “fact” are not genuine – therefore pseudo science.
Please don’t feel attacked or view this response as hostile, I genuinely appreciate your views as a cogent commentator.
To be so persistently wrong in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is to be evil. The alarmists are both evil and wrong!
I’d have to go back and dig out the relevant reference, something I’m not going to do right this instant, but isn’t something on the order of 80% of photosynthesis occurring in the oceans and other waters? Photo-synthetic micro-organisms, as well as water borne plants, absorb a lot of carbon dioxide, and water covers the vast bulk of the Earth’s surface. Between this, and the higher absorption rates of “undergrowth”, we’d have to cut down a LOT of trees to make any real difference.