Don’t Fear Rising CO2 Levels: The Relationship of CO2 to Climate

Christopher Monckton in Global Warming Has Stopped (http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/_global_warming_has_stopped.html ) notes that all four of the world’s major surface-temperature datasets show seven years of global cooling. And this has happened while CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere continue to rise. With temperature falling while CO2 rises, we have further evidence that there is no established correlation between CO2 levels and the warming of the past few decades (1975-1995). 1998 was an El Nino anomaly and temperatures were flat from 1995 to 2002, when they began to fall.

One clear conclusion arises from this disconnect between CO2 levels and temperature- rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere do not cause global warming. While it is understood that CO2 contributes a small amount to the greenhouse gases and their warming effect, this influence has not been responsible for any of the notable warming periods over history; not the major shifts to warmer interglacial periods, or the warming optimums during interglacials (century long and even millennial trends), or shorter decadal warming trends.

Paleo-climate records such as the Vostok Ice Core research (http://www.co2science.org/articles/V6/N26/EDIT.php ) show that temperature on Earth rises and falls not in relation to CO2 but more in relation to other natural factors such as cosmic rays (and related cloud cover), Earth’s 100,000 year wobble, solar cycles (as related to cosmic rays- see Svensmark’s The Chilling Stars), ocean decadal oscillations (current changes), and other natural factors....

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The Basic Science Of Carbon

Note: All four of the world’s major global surface temperature datasets (NASA GISS, RSS, UAH, and Hadley/University of East Anglia) now confirm that we have been in a global cooling trend since 2001 and numerous scientists are predicting that it could last for decades. It is important to understand that the climate is cooling while CO2 levels continue to increase. This shows that increasing CO2 does not cause global warming (and never has, according to paleo-climate records).

This is why the 31,000 scientists who signed the Protest Petition stated that CO2 emissions are not damaging the environment but to the contrary are benefiting all life immensely. Earth greened by a further 6.17% over the 1982-1999 period (increased plant growth) due to increased levels of CO2, which is the food of all life.

Below is a protest against carbon/CO2 cap and trade or tax proposals. This summary is being sent to politicians, media outlets, scientists, and others across the world. It is a protest against the madness of anti-carbon thought and policies.

The Basic Science of Carbon/CO2: a brief summary

(Why are we trying to limit- cap and trade, tax- the basis of all life?)

All life is built from carbon. All life depends on carbon for its existence and functioning.

“All living things, starting at the cellular level which is common to all life, is based on carbon compounds, including the DNA that carry the gene sequences of the genetic codes. Of the trillions of cells in the human body, there is not one of them that is not made of carbon” (see article by Bob Brinsmead- The Vindication of Carbon- at www.bobbrinsmead.com). We subsist almost entirely on carbon dioxide. “The food used by all living things, to grow and to live, is carbon dioxide…food is carbon dioxide…the food of all plants and animals is carbon dioxide” (http://www.bydesign.com/fossilfuels/greening_benefits/ ). Everything is made of carbon and fueled by carbon. All things need carbon to grow and reproduce.

There is only one source of carbon for all life- CO2 in the atmosphere. Plants absorb CO2 from the atmosphere (“they consume almost entirely carbon dioxide for food”- www.bydesign.com) and process it into carbohydrates for the animal kingdom. We get our food from this chain of CO2/carbon processing.

“The only gateway through which carbon can enter the food chain to enable the biosphere to exist is through the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. There is no other way. It all starts with CO2 in the atmosphere. The entire chain of life starts with plants absorbing this entirely natural, colorless, odorless, absolutely non-toxic aerial gas called CO2…more than 90 % of the dry matter of plants is simply processed CO2. Whether it is a cow eating grass or humans eating cows, all are eating- and being fuelled- by processed CO2” (Brinsmead, The Vindication of Carbon). As the people at ilovecarbondioxide.com say, “Without atmospheric CO2, none of the life we see on Earth would exist”.

Recent levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have been unprecedented and dangerously low. Plant growth shuts down between 50-200 ppm (parts per million in the atmosphere). Plant life is stressed and unhealthy at such low levels. Life evolved over the past 500 million years at levels of CO2 that were on average a more healthy 1500 ppm (see paleo-climate graphs at sites such as Geocraft.com). A dangerous upper limit of CO2 in the atmosphere would be from 5,000 to 10,000 ppm (http://www.theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/11Phl/Sci/CO2&Health.html). Other sources argue that CO2 levels are not dangerous till 15,000 or higher (see research papers on CO2 at co2science.org). We are in no danger of approaching these high levels. Our atmosphere is currently “CO2 impoverished”.

Plants and crops are healthier at higher levels of CO2 than are currently present in our atmosphere (now 386 ppm). They produce significantly more biomass, and are able to cope better with such natural vagaries as drought, heat, and cold (http://uddebatt.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/the-wonderful-benefits-of-co2/ ). “More CO2 makes plants more resistant to extreme weather conditions…and this expands the habitat of many plants…and enhances agricultural productivity…and helps tropical rainforests” (http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA334.html ). Animals also survive better with more plant life. The small increase in CO2 over the past century has significantly greened the earth (a 6.17% increase in Net Primary Production- global vegetative productivity- from 1982-1999, see Greening of the Earth-Summary by Craig Ipso at co2science.org) and this has increased populations in the animal kingdom. It has also enhanced the impacts of the Green Revolution with notably increased crop production which has helped to feed the poor.

As Christopher Monckton notes: “Professor Will Happer of Princeton testified before the Senate recently, the planet’s atmosphere is currently starved of CO2- now at <400 ppm when it has been >1000 ppm for most of the past 600 million years, and sometimes as high as 7500 ppm (IPCC, 2001). Satellite assessments of vegetation density show that plant productivity is increasing worldwide as CO2 starvation gradually ends. As a result, as figures by US Forest Service show, there has been a rapid increase in the rate of growth- and hence in the volume- of standing timber” (Lies, Damned Lies, and Al Gore on Climate at SPPI).

Higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are more normal and natural.

Current world average temperatures are also abnormally low. Higher temperatures on an ice-free earth (a warmer earth) are more normal and natural (see paleo-climate graphs at Geocraft.com). We are in one of earth’s infrequent and abnormally cold ice-age eras (the past two million years). A warmer earth would be better for all life.

A recent SPPI (Science and Public Policy Institute) paper by Christopher Moncton notes that today's temperatures are well below those of the Medieval, Roman, and Minoan warm periods. They are 5 degrees F. below temps over the past 10,000 years, 10 degrees F. below temps of each of the past four inter-glacials, and 12.5 degrees F. below median global temperature (surface) over the past 600 million years. Warmer periods with higher CO2 have benefited all life. This is the normal and natural condition for life. Not this abnormally cold and CO2 impoverished situation of the current ice age era. All life flourishes during warmer periods.

CO2 is not a pollutant but is a rare gas (1 molecule to every 3,000 molecules of the atmosphere) that is the essential food of all life. “All plants and animals are growing and living on a rare gas” (www.bydesign.com). And while there are other potential pollutants associated with fossil fuel use, CO2 and carbon are not among them.

CO2 does not cause dangerous global warming. Rising levels of CO2 follow warming periods and do not precede or cause warming periods. See the Vostok Ice Core research at http://www.co2science.org/articles/V6/N26/EDIT.php . Oceans, which hold 90 times the CO2 that is in the atmosphere, release CO2 as they warm and this increases atmospheric CO2 levels. The CO2 increases tend to lag behind warming periods by about 800 years. This lag (response to warming) is the only clearly established relationship of CO2 to climate warming. Rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere have not been found responsible for causing (preceding) any of the significant warming periods of the past, whether interglacial periods, warming optimums during interglacials, or even notable decadal warming trends ( http://www.co2science.org/articles/V2/N7/EDIT.php ).

CO2 is a tiny part of the greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect ( http://geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html ). The warming effect of CO2 gets lost among other much larger natural climate drivers. Human emissions of CO2 are even tinier (1 part per 100,000 parts of the atmosphere) and a human fingerprint causing warming is even more lost among natural influences. The human contribution to climate warming, if it were statistically detectable, would amount to nothing more than “a fart in a hurricane”. Natural climate drivers with strong, clear correlations to warming/cooling periods include cosmic rays (see Henrik Svensmark’s The Chilling Stars), solar flare cycles, related cloud cover, ocean current decadal oscillations (changing current patterns), earth’s 100,000 year wobble, and others.

CO2 levels have been as high as 7,000 ppm in the past (Cambrian Period) and no dangerous global warming occurred. During the Late Ordovician Period (some 400 million years ago) CO2 levels were 4,400 ppm and Earth was as cold as it is now. Note also that Earth has been cooling since 2002 despite the fact that CO2 emissions have been increasing. “There is no valid correlation between CO2 emissions and global warming”, concludes geophysicist Norm Kalmanovitch.

Therefore, there is no valid scientific reason for us to worry about contributing to increasing CO2 levels. We do not need to reduce our carbon footprint. We do not need to reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere or decarbonize our economies. As the 31,000 plus scientists who signed the Protest Petition have stated, “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth” ( http://www.petitionproject.org/ ).

To demonize carbon/CO2, as environmentalists have done, is to demonize life itself. This is ridiculous hysteria and entirely unscientific. The only way to fully understand this anti-carbon movement is to recognize that it is ideologically-driven extremism now gone utterly mad. Its real goal is to slow, halt, and even reverse economic growth and development and it uses carbon as a proxy to fight growth and the human enterprise. But the Green movement in demonizing carbon has become anti-green, anti-life, and anti-nature.

Wendell Krossa wkrossa@shaw.ca

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The Roots of Anti-Growth Activism:
Demonize Carbon, Demonize Humanity

“Today’s debate about global warming is essentially a debate about freedom. The environmentalists would like to mastermind each and every possible aspect of our lives” Vaclav Klaus, Blue Planet In Green Shackles

Professor Bob Carter summarized some comments below made by Dr. John Sununu at the second Heartland conference on global warming: “Dr. Sununu advised his audience to recognize that the climate change issue will never go away, no matter how much the false alarmism of global warming is exposed. The reason is that global warming is not the real target, but just a convenient demon around which anti-growth and anti-development activism can be mounted. Early demons for the same cause after the second world war were first, the declared ‘population crisis’, and then the global cooling alarmism that became prevalent in the 1970s” (http://www.quadrant.org.au/)

Now in the same spirit exhibited by Dr. Sununu of getting to root issues, let me take things down a step further. Respectfully, Dr. Sununu did not go deep enough. The anti-growth activism that John Sununu refers to has even deeper roots in anti-human mythology/ideology. The global warming activism that demonizes carbon/CO2 is rooted in a deeper demonization of humanity. Most fundamentally, these people are promoting activism against humanity and the human enterprise or human civilization. Notable here is that one of Canada’s leading environmentalists and a leading thinker in the formulation of contemporary environmental ideology, Bill Rees (father of the Ecological Footprint model), has stated that not only should the human enterprise be halted, but it should actually be reversed. Earth, he argues, can only sustain about 1 to 2 billion people at a much more primitive and low-consumption lifestyle. Others, like Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Society, have publicly stated that 85 percent of humanity should be eliminated. Humanity is the AIDs of the earth, he says. A cancer on nature.

Why are these people so set against human growth and development? Why are they so down on people (the anti-population growth movement)? Here we get to the very root of the tree, to the primitive themes that have long shaped human worldviews and perspectives; themes that do not die out on their own (unless consciously isolated, re-evaluated, and properly countered). These themes are repeatedly reincarnated in modern ideologies and belief systems, like that of the environmental movement. How true it is that if we remain ignorant of the history of human belief and thought then we will continue to repeat the mistakes of our ancestors...

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The Insanity That is Apocalyptic
(subtitles: It’s a legacy destroyer or It’ll make a fool of you)

Posted January 26, 2009

Christopher Moncton, in an essay posted on the Science & Public Policy website (“Yet another moment of fateful decision”), examined a speech given by Al Gore at the UN Climate Conference at Poznan during the fall of 2008. In that speech Gore stated that humanity had arrived at another “moment of fateful decision” and “earth was in danger”. Gore added that we were again at a dangerous tipping point toward disaster. Using words like ominous, crisis, alarming, threatening, massive, and hottest, Gore tried to scare his audience with the claim that the world was facing an “unprecedented threat” from global warming. Moncton, with his detailed appeal to factual evidence, showed that no such threatening crisis existed.

One of Gore’s mentors, James Hansen of NASA, has also recently (Jan.2009) gone public again with renewed predictions that due to global warming we are doomed within a few years (within the first term of the Obama presidency).

In recent decades apocalyptic scares have increased in both scale of predicted disaster and frequency of occurrence. Around the decade of the 1970s we had predictions of food scarcity and massive starvation due to population growth. At that time it was also claimed that global cooling would soon end modern civilization. The Club of Rome added that resource exhaustion would lead the end of economic growth. Rachel Carson also set in motion the chemical scare movement. Civilization-ending disaster was predicted from multiple sources.

In the Eighties and into the Nineties new scares erupted over the supposed loss of the world’s forests, species dying en masse, acid rain, ozone hole expansion, soil depletion and desertification. The approach of the year 2000 brought the scare of Y2K, followed in the new millennium by bird flu panics, more economic scares, and ongoing environmental apocalyptic. But few scares have approached the levels of hysteria and consequence that have been generated by the mother of all scares- the global warming panic.

Yet consistently all of these apocalyptic scenarios have come to nothing. Absolutely nothing. A one hundred percent failure rate, according to some. A check of pertinent information shows that while some of these scares relate to significant problems that need to be addressed, none of them poses an unsolvable crisis that will bring about the end of civilization or life on the planet. The issues around each scare have consistently been exaggerated all out of proportion to the actual state of things.

So as a general rule of thumb, whenever you hear some startling new prophecy of doom, instinctively shift to skeptical mode. The doom scenarios may relate to some actual problem but be assured that the specified problem is likely several magnitudes of order less serious than what the doomster is presenting. This downsizing re-evaluation will get you closer to an approximation of the truth about any given matter.

After the repeated failures of doom scenarios to materialize do the apocalyptic fear mongers then learn something and become more cautious the next time around? It appears not. When one scare runs its public course and interest begins to fade, the professional scare mongers quickly move (like scam artists) on to the next crisis in order to keep public consciousness in a state of perpetual hysteria and panic. For example, note Paul Erhlich who shifted from global cooling panic in the 1970s to later global warming hysteria. He will no doubt shift right back to global cooling alarmism now that world average temperatures have been dropping over the past decade. A true prophet of apocalyptic never gives up on his mission no matter how foolish his irrational flip-flopping makes him.

And the media pack dogs are no less irrational and foolish. They run the scares and almost seem to enjoy the upsurge of each new panic as it means fresh business and ratings upticks.

But there are huge societal costs to this irresponsible fear mongering. Fear has an exceedingly destructive impact on public consciousness and consequently on people’s ability to confidently engage life and progress. This makes fear mongering one of the most irresponsible things that any public person can promote. Fear also leads politicians and their constituencies to embrace all sorts of screw ball policies that waste enormous sums of public finance and divert people from tackling genuine problems that need attention.

Look at Europe where fear of GM research (Genetically Modified crops), stirred by environmental extremists, has led to a ban on such research and how this hinders human progress in improving the world food supply. Or the many cap and trade schemes being proposed to halt the use of fossil fuels which will in turn hamper economies with excessive costs and regulatory burdens that slow economic growth and development. Economic growth and development is critically important to our ability to solve the varied problems that humanity will face from such things as ongoing natural climate change.

William Watson has pointed to this retreat from life that has been caused by recent scare mongering from politicians and media (in regard to the worldwide recession of late 2008). He notes that despite all the stimulus packages offered by governments, people are still not buying again. He says, “The problem is that people are scared to death about the imminent return of the Great Depression, the Black Death, The Hundred Years War, the Comet that Killed the Dinosaurs and who knows what other epochal horror” (Deflation isn’t the problem, National Post, FP Comment, Jan.15/09).

When scientists, media and politicians continually scare populations with talk of crises, worldwide meltdowns, and catastrophes, they traumatize people and cause them to retreat from life; to become overly cautious and withdrawn. This is more damaging to any society than attacks by foreign enemies. It can be a worse form of terrorism than that of the military variety. It undermines the essential progress of societies (and yes, this is exactly what many apocalyptics want- to halt industrial societies)..........click for Full Article

The Insanity That is Apocalyptic
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Its All Rising 2

Posted December 21, 2008

Its All Rising: 2 (a secularized version- see button at bottom for the fuller metaphysically oriented version)

(Intro: the three great emergences- the material universe, life, and consciousness/civilization- turned into three great trends in physical reality. These are the expansion and development of the cosmos, the growth and development of life, and the growth and development of consciousness in human civilization. The basic features of these overall trends show that everything progresses eventually toward something better, toward something more humane. Keeping this larger picture in view can help us from getting carried away in the hysteria and panic that is often associated with short-term reversals, downturns, and catastrophes that plague life. While none of us are guaranteed protection from personal involvement in the suffering associated with such reversals and disasters, an understanding of the dominant long-term trends of life can help us stay centered on what really matters and find hope in the ultimate progress of existence)

Scaring People

A guest on a local radio show made the comment that “the world’s a mess” and it was “easy to see this”. Another radio commentator noted the recent news that the ozone hole over the Antarctic was reaching a record extent this year. He apologized for bringing such dismal news up, leaving his listeners with the impression of great peril and disaster looming ahead due to human influence on nature. This widespread belief that the world is messed up and in peril has become one of the commonly accepted truisms of our time (see postscript 2 at end).

Unsettling scares are repeatedly sent surging through the public consciousness. A fog of apocalyptic despair has become the background atmosphere of our age. For instance, we have been told in recent years that bird flu disease would kill multiple millions of us (a more sane doctor responded to this scare by noting that such a massive outbreak was unlikely today with our worldwide monitoring and communications systems. Some poor bird in rural Asia gets sick and within hours the white-suited sentinels descend with flame throwers to ‘cull’ the whole flock). And we have been frightened with the hypothesis that human-caused global warming will devastate life on earth, and so on. Julian Simon said that there is no sanction for floating such scares but there is news value in them. And the more these scares proliferate they add to the growing impression that the environment is a more and more frightening milieu (Ultimate Resource, p.264).

A self-reinforcing insanity cycle operates with such scare-mongering. Someone- some authority figure such as a scientist- will start a scare with some comment that expresses more apocalyptic mythology than rational science. These comments may be in reference to some setback, some disastrous event often taken out of its long term context. The media then pick up on these comments, liberally spicing reporting with extremist and fear-engendering language to upgrade the sense of panic and looming disaster in order to capture public attention. Note the repeated use of words in headlines such as crisis, peril, threat, catastrophe, cataclysm, meltdown, alarming, and so on (see media sociologist David Altheide’s book Creating Fear). Polling organizations then take the public pulse and report back statistical levels of fear and worry. The political elites then take the polling results as evidence of public support for their interventionist policies which further weaken economies and, along with other unintended consequences, tend to do more damage than good in the area the fear has focused attention on (note, for instance, the rush to biofuels based on global warming alarmism and the consequence of rising food prices which hurt the poorest people most). Policies enacted in response to public panic are usually costly and damaging to public good.

The larger damage from such fear-mongering is that populations are frightened into immobility. People are frightened away from adopting new technologies that could improve life (e.g. Genetically Modified foods). They are pushed to abandon cheap energy sources (oil) for expensive and unreliable new sources (solar, wind). The outcome is a general hindering of growth and development and in such situations the poor suffer the most severe consequences.

All it takes is the irresponsible expression of some shoddily concocted fear to start a public scare but it then takes huge amounts of wasted resources and time to prove that these scares have no sound scientific basis. As some have said, apocalyptic scares have a 100 percent failure rate. Surely Y2K, with airplanes falling out of the sky, should have taught us something about the irresponsibility of such scare-mongering.
 
This may be the greatest battle that humanity faces today- the fight against the despair and hopelessness engendered by a distorted apocalyptic view of reality. The endless repetition of such views in public reinforces a distorting narrative about life, deepens gloom, and weakens the ability of people to engage life positively and fully.

Focus on The Long Term Trends

Apocalyptic doom and gloom is entirely distorting of reality. Life on earth has never been better. The cosmos has never been better and human civilization has never been better. And it is only going to get much better still. We have only just begun the rise toward a far better future. The actual state of the world and the prospect of an improving future should buoy our spirits with hope and celebration.

What do I base this view upon?

I believe that in part the erroneous belief that the world is a mess is the result of a distorted focus. It is the result of thinking that has been taught to look at certain things and to make wrong conclusions about the actual status or influence of those things in reality. It emphasizes certain things out of proportion to other things and this creates a distorted perception of what reality and life are about.

In response I would argue that we need to train our minds to focus on what is most fundamental about reality, life and civilization. This triumvirate- reality, life, civilization- relates to the three great emergences and mysteries of the universe: the emergence of material reality (cosmos), the emergence of life, and the emergence of consciousness which has led to the unique development of human civilization. These three emergences have all exhibited the same fundamental trends. In all three emergences we see clearly the rise of life toward a better future......click for remainder of secularized version

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Its All Rising
Full Version

(Note: A new extremist religion/ideology is taking hold in public consciousness across the world. This new religion has a grand myth or narrative with which it hopes to shape human consciousness and thereby enslave the human spirit. This religion exhibits many of the basic themes and drives of previous religious movements- an unchallengeable truth impervious to scientific fact, the demand for a strictly constrained and regulated lifestyle in accordance with the core beliefs, an orientation to fear as a basic motivation, and so on. The material below outlines some of the basic features of this new environmental religion and points to facts that counter its central themes.) Full Article

Life will only get better, much better
 
Foreword: Julian Simon was of the same intellectual stature as someone like Einstein. He has offered insights that have influenced people like Ronald Reagan and done immense good for humanity, especially his profound re-evaluation of humanity as a force for good. Simon’s response to the fallacy of limited resources was to point to the unlimited nature of the human mind and human potential. The creative intelligence of humanity is the answer to the environmental doom religion. It is a message that needs more public airing to counter the dark themes underlying contemporary alarmism about almost everything.
 
Julian Simon took a good look at all the major material trends of life and discovered that they were all improving. So he stated his long-run forecast for life on Earth: “The material conditions of life will continue to get better for most people, in most countries, most of the time, indefinitely” (The State of Humanity, p.642). Sure, there were ups and downs along the way but no permanent reversals to any of the trends of life...full article

The Genius of the Western Tradition (the fount of modern prosperity)

The success of Western prosperity and progress can be traced to two prominent features in Western history (specifically English history)- the restraint and legal limitation of the state/government and the legal protection of individual freedom and rights (the rights to property, protected investment and invention, production and trade, among other features of free enterprise). These two features have been best expressed in the classic British liberalism of the 17th and 18th Centuries or in what is known as the Libertarian tradition (see, for instance, Libertarianism by David Boaz).
In subsequent centuries these two fundamental elements of Western freedom and rights have suffered ongoing assault from repeated attempts to increase government taxation, spending, intervention and regulation. One notable period of such increased government intrusion was in post-war America where total government spending (federal, state, and local) grew from 25 percent of national income in 1950 to 45 percent of national income in 1993 (Milton Friedman in his Introduction to Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. p.xvi). This excessive intrusion undermined post war rates of growth and we are now 40 percent poorer than we should be, according to David Boaz (Libertarianism, p.4)....full article

Trends in Environmental Thought

Over the past year I have had an interesting back and forth with a former professor of mine, Bill Rees of UBC (former director of the School of Community and Regional Planning). Bill is the father of the ecological footprint theory and considered one of Canada’s leading environmentalists. He travels the world lecturing on environmental issues and is an influential thinker in the environmental movement. It is helpful, therefore, to note the direction his thinking is taking.
Especially, I find interesting his orientation that views humanity and the human enterprise as a pathology and his subsequent endeavor to criminalize human economic activity. See, for instance, his Environment Canada article on consumption as violence and culpable even under current law (http://www.ec.gc.ca/seminar/WR_e.html). This is part of his overall endeavor to set fixed boundaries to the human enterprise, which, in effect, is an endeavor to not just limit human growth and development, but to limit human progress (in one note he actually argues for the superiority of slash and burn agriculture. Such proposals appear to be the result of a commitment to ideology coming before practicality). In this regard I also remember that in classes at UBC Bill stated that he would not just stop economic growth and development, but he would “reverse it”.
Bill’s concern is that if we exceed certain limits nature will collapse around us and then we all suffer. Hence, we must limit human growth, economic growth. And yes, there is a valid concern here- that we do not destroy the very systems that we depend on for our own existence...full article

Bill Rees on Eco-violence

This material was posted on the Environment Canada website http://www.ec.gc.ca/seminar/WR_e.html. First Bill’s address then my response below and then some more back and forth.

Our Ecological Footprint: When Consumption Does Violence, Bill Rees
Western science and western thought have generally been informed by Cartesian dualism for the past two centuries. This dualism, which views man as distinct and separate from his environment, seriously influences our behavior with respect to the rest of physical 'reality'. For example most academic disciplines, including economics and ecology tend to treat human activity and 'the environment' as separate domains – most economists deal almost exclusively with the humans, all but ignoring the economy of nature; most academic ecologists study non-human organisms, all but ignoring 'man'. Even in environmental economics, the environment serves merely as a source of resources for, and a sink for waste from the economy. Importantly, our concept of 'the environment' is very much a social construct, a product of mind more than of nature. Remember, while we cannot, by definition, be part of the environment, humans are very much a part of every ecosystem they exploit...full article

Bill Rees Conversation

Wendell -
I'm not a climatologist and don't KNOW in any absolute sense what's actually going on out there. I form opinions based on what I read interpreted in light of what I know of the basic science.

In fact, I do know quite a bit of the science and on that basis can say that the interview in The Australian was somewhat naive on such simple things as the assumption that 'warming' or 'climate change' moves in lock step with carbon emissions. No climate change scientist of whom I am aware would make such an assumption.

In any case, here's an alternative description that may be of interest, particularly for its distinction between multi-year ice (this tracks long-term changes) and seasonal ice (this tracks short-term, i.e., annual, conditions). In short, don't let short-term observations fool you (or the Australian). The lags in the system are sometimes 20-60 years so we may cross a threshhold long before there is any physical evidence.
Cheers, Bill

Bill, And if we follow the longest term records (paleo-climatology) then this caution to not be fooled would apply equally to warming alarmism. Glaciation has extended far South and melting has entirely freed the North of ice. I remember those stumps of tropical trees discovered in the Arctic.
My hope is that, as we are nearing the end of an extended inter-glacial period, we will encourage further wealth creation so that warmer or cooler we will have the resources to adapt. Wendell...full article