Ian Bradford: Net Zero impossible since CO2 does not control the climate

The Radical net zero plan crafted by the United Nations and endorsed by such entities as the World Economic Forum, presses nations to abdicate reliance on fossil fuels, nuclear energy, and even hydroelectric dams in favour of so called “green energy” that is not that green and does not generate and transmit reliable, affordable energy. UN chairman Antonio Guterres and UN climate chief Christiana Figueres crafted a plan that granted absolute dictatorial power to national governments to act under UN mandates to destroy the fossil fuel, livestock and other industries. Their collectivist plans were said to be based on claims that relatively minor increases in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere would submerge the Statue of Liberty, raise sea levels to kill or displace millions, and burn up land long devoted to agriculture.

It is amazing how many sophisticated governments have made the Net Zero commitment without there existing anywhere in the world a demonstration project showing how this can be done and at what cost. For example the provision of nuclear power began with small government funded prototypes in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, followed by larger demonstration projects in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. Only in the late 1960’s, twenty years into the effort and after feasibility and cost had been demonstrated, were the first large scale commercial nuclear reactors built.

Today there is no such thing anywhere in the world and on any scale, whether large or small, as a functioning wind/solar electricity system that functions free of fossil fuel backup, or even close to that. The few places that have made attempts at wind/solar storage systems have fallen woefully short, and at this point are not even trying to bridge the remaining gap to get to Net Zero.

Commentators try to quote the Island of El Hierro, (One of Spain’s Canary Islands), which has wind turbines which are supposed to supply all the island’s needs. The operator of the wind system is Gorona del Viento and they boast that the Island had 1293 hours in 2020 when it got all of its electricity from the wind/storage system. There were 8784 hours in 2020 - a leap year. This means the turbines were only able to supply 0.15 or about 1/7 of the Island’s energy needs.

The major European countries like Germany and the UK have supposedly plenty of capacity of wind and solar generators to supply all the energy they need when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining. But they have no fossil fuel plan for the regularly occurring times of low wind and sun. The problem cannot be solved by building more wind and solar facilities.

Price increases for consumers of electricity and gas are now skyrocketing.

Coal is experiencing a comeback on several fronts in Europe’s top economy. A looming shortage of Russian gas in the wake of the Ukraine war has reignited enthusiasm for heating private homes.

Nobody in Europe thought to make a plan for the non-fossil backup to get to Net Zero electricity generation. You will be extremely safe in betting against Net Zero generation of electricity any time during your life. Nuclear is the only way it could potentially be done.

In the US from New York to California, state renewable electric power dreams are collapsing. For the past two decades, state governments have embraced policies aimed at replacing coal and natural gas power plants with renewable sources. Twenty three states enacted laws or executive orders to move to 100% Net Zero electricity by 2050.

The artificial intelligence revolution now drives the nation’s power system, interrupting the renewable energy transition. Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon and other giant firms are building new data centres and upgrading existing data centres to power AI. AI processors run 24 hours per day for months to enable computers to think like humans. Data centres consumed 4% of US electricity at the start of 2024 but are projected to consume 20% within the next decade. The unreliable renewables will not be able to supply.

The Composition of the Atmosphere Today

A recently released science paper suggests Net Zero is a complete waste of time and money. The Journal of Atmospheric and oceanic Science Vol 3 Issue 1, states that anthropogenic carbon dioxide is too minute to have a physical effect in the atmosphere. The paper title is “ Human CO2 emissions Have Little Effect on Atmospheric CO2”

The Paper highlights the following conclusions:

1. The UN/IPCC agrees that the human-made portion of the atmospheric CO2 increase is only 5% and nature produced CO2 is 95%.

2. But the IPCC claims that that only the human made CO2 has caused all the rise in atmospheric CO2above 280 ppm - parts per million since the industrial revolution.

3. The IPCC model treats the human made CO2 and nature made CO2 differently, which is impossible since the molecules are all identical.

4. IPCC’s Bern model artificially traps human CO2 in the atmosphere while it lets nature-made CO2 flow freely out of the atmosphere.

5. By contrast a simple Physics Model treats all CO2 molecules the same as it should and shows how CO2 flows through the atmosphere and produces a balanced level where outflow equals inflow.

6. The conclusion is that human-produced CO2 is insignificant to the increased CO2 in the atmosphere.

Water Vapour

Water vapour is a “greenhouse gas” seldom mentioned in spite of its heat trapping ability. Warmer air holds more moisture than cooler air. As global temperatures rise, the total amount of water vapour in the atmosphere also increases, further amplifying the warming effect.

New research debunks the uncertain greenhouse gas theory of climate change

Clouds have a vital role as a global heat shield reflecting sunlight that would otherwise bake the earth and obliterate life.

Ned Nikolov a Physical scientist and researcher affiliated with Colorado State University says the IPCC is incorrect regarding CO2. He said the IPCC is arguing that tiny increases in CO2 in the atmosphere cause global warming and that we must stop burning fossil fuels to avoid dangerous climate change. Nikolov and Karl Zeller a retired US forest service meteorologist published their study that found that recent warming is not the result of increasing CO2. Instead, after analysing satellite data the two researchers found that the Earth has warmed because it’s been absorbing more sunlight due to reduced global cloud cover.

Climate is controlled by the amount of sunlight absorbed by Earth. And the amount of infra red (heat) energy emitted to space. Since March 2000 NASA has been collecting satellite data to examine energy exchange between the Earth and space. Using these measurements Nikolov and Zeller show how Earth’s decreasing albedo - the fraction of sunlight reflected back into space - impacted global temperature during the 21st century.

Nikolov quoted the second law of thermodynamics which said heat trapping is impossible in an open system such as the atmosphere. Because clouds reflect solar radiation back into space, their impact on climate is measurable and significant. Cloud formation is largely controlled by cosmic forces. When clouds decrease the planetary albedo drops (The fraction of sunlight reflected back into space) and more radiation reaches the Earth’s surface, causing higher temperatures.

Nikolov states: “In our paper we show using the best available observations from the (clouds and the Earths’ radiant energy system) platform, that the warming of the last 24 years was entirely caused by the observed decrease in the Earth’s albedo and NOT by increasing greenhouse gas concentration as claimed by the IPCC.”

In their research, Nikolov and Zeller found that the atmosphere warms the surface not through long wave radiation emitted by greenhouse gases but through total pressure –adiabatically without loss or gain of heat and that what the atmosphere is composed of does not affect global temperature. Adiabatic heating is a well known thermodynamic process. Adiabatic heating is the increase in a gas’s temperature due to it being compressed in a system that does not exchange heat with its surroundings. The work done to compress the gas converts to an increase in the gas’s internal energy thus raising its temperature without any external heat being added.

Some of you may have used a bike pump to pump up your bike’s tyres. You will remember that the pump becomes quite hot as you pump. You are increasing the adiabatic pressure and that causes a temperature rise. (adiabatic because you are not adding or taking away heat from some external source).

This is why when you go up a mountain the temperature drops because the pressure decreases with height. Also, there is no atmosphere on the moon. Nikolov found that the moon was 88°C cooler on average than the Earth. The greenhouse theory claims that without atmosphere the earth would only be 33°C cooler, but this theory grossly underestimates the actual thermal effect of our atmosphere. So the earth would actually be 88°C or thereabouts cooler with no atmosphere.

So If I am standing on top of a mountain (which I have done many times), there is less atmosphere above me compared to standing at sea level. So there is less weight due to the atmosphere on the top of a mountain and on me. As adiabatic pressure is less, then the temperature at the top of a mountain will be less also. That’s why the tops of mountains are covered in snow.

The total mass of the atmosphere is only slowly changing and at a very tiny rate compared to the overall mass. A small amount of Hydrogen and Helium leaks into space, while meteoric dust enters the atmosphere. So the pressure on the surface is close to constant and hence the temperature of the Earth would be constant if it wasn’t for other influences.

One of those influences is cloud cover.

For the past 24 years at least, cloud cover has been decreasing. This lets more of the sun’s radiation reach the Earth, and so warming occurs. Nothing to do with so-called greenhouse gases.

Why is cloud cover decreasing?

Danish scientists Christensen and Svensmark made the breakthrough using NASA cloud data, that there was a strong correlation between extensive cloud formation and the relative intensity of cosmic rays. They also noted that when the sun was active the sun’s magnetic field increased and this helped block cosmic rays from entering our atmosphere.

Now cosmic rays knock electrons out of air molecules to produce charged particles called ions. Ions help form sulphuric acid and water molecules. These are aerosols and the ions accelerate the growth of these aerosols into cloud condensation nuclei seeds in which water droplets form to make clouds. So cosmic rays help seed clouds in the atmosphere when the sun is in a quite phase. But the variability of cosmic rays hitting the Earth may also be affected by the Earth’s position in the Milky Way Galaxy. The MWG has four major spiral arms and some smaller arms. Our solar system travels around the centre of the galaxy at about 863,000 km/hr. The spiral arms also rotate but at a slower speed of 76,000km/hr. So our solar system passes through the spiral arms because it is rotating faster. The Earth passes through one of the four major arms approximately every 135 million years, and takes 10 million years to pass through. When in an arm it is quite likely to be closer to an exploding star - a supernova - than it normally would. You would therefore expect more cosmic rays to be hitting the Earth. When not passing through an arm the cosmic ray intensity would drop. This means less cloud formation here around the Earth as there will be less cosmic rays. This has been happening for the past 24 years. It appears that cosmic ray intensity NOT CO2 is the dominant factor affecting the Earth’s climate.

Shaviv and colleague Veizer studied calcium and magnesium isotopes and showed that the Earth had experienced major warming/cooling cycles every 135 years and that coincided with the earth passing through one of the four major arms of the galaxy.

We now have a logical explanation why the climate has changed in the past, long before humans. The composition of gases in the atmosphere has nothing to do with climate. We need to stop all this Net Zero nonsense now. Carbon dioxide and Methane do not cause global warming.

Professor LIndzen said in a recent talk in Brussels: “The political obsession with Net Zero is not genuinely motivated by environmental concerns, but is part of a broader effort to control society by playing on people’s fears.”

He suggests that this trend of control has roots in a societal shift that began in the 1960’s and 70’s, where elites began to criticize the working class for their materialism, referring to their pursuit of consumer goods like homes and cars as a sign of poor taste or misguided values. This has since evolved into the WEF’s famed propaganda piece: “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy,” with environmentalism the driving force!

Ian Bradford, a science graduate, is a former teacher, lawyer, farmer and keen sportsman, who is writing a book about the fraud of anthropogenic climate change.