Jeremy Nieboer wrote the excellent 'Climate: all is well, all will be well', published by the Bruges Group in 2021. His new book is another thought-provoking contribution to the debate about climate change.
The author, a retired lawyer, forensically examines the scientific evidence about CO2. He shows that CO2 is essential to all life on Earth. Carbon provides the structure and the means of nutrition for all humanity, all animals and all plants. CO2 provides the food of plants and so of all humans and animals. By photosynthesis in plants it produces all the oxygen we breathe. It keeps Earth's temperature in natural balance.
We are told that higher temperatures bring higher CO2 atmospheric concentrations, and that all this is incredibly bad for humanity. Is this true? The Roman Warming Period of 250BC-400AD and the Medieval Warming Period of 900-1350 were the warmest periods of the last 2,000 years, with temperatures at least 20C higher than our current average. In both periods, civilisation flourished. With the higher temperatures, more crops grew, so populations grew. There was expansion of life.
Adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause only negligible increases in its greenhouse effect and no further appreciable warming. Even if CO2 more than doubled, no warming effect would be noticed. During the Roman Warming Period and the Medieval Warming Period, CO2 atmospheric concentrations stayed within a range of 260-290 parts per million by volume [ppm].
For 10,000 years, CO2 density in the atmosphere averaged between 260 and 280 ppm until about 1850. It has risen since then to 410 ppm - an increase of 45 per cent that is related to human activity. But, as satellite data show, global temperature has increased in that time by only 1.1 per cent.
Nieboer points out that the IPCC has not proved that the global warming since 1850 is caused by a rise in CO2 density, not by heightened solar activity. Global temperature has increased by only 0.27 per cent since 1980, and there has been no warming trend since 1998.
Neither the 0.27 per cent warming nor the 45 per cent increase in CO2 density in the atmosphere are the real problem that countries face. The problem is not global, demanding global solutions. Every country needs to get to grips with the real problem - the dangerous shortfall in energy supply.
Since 2000, Britain's oil production has fallen by 62 per cent, gas by 65 per cent, and coal by 94 per cent. Britain is now a net importer of all main fuel types.
Russia's disastrous war of aggression against Ukraine forces us to confront the reality that we have become far too dependent on foreign sources of energy. We were the first country to develop nuclear power for civil purposes. It is ludicrous that we now seem to depend on French and Chinese (!) expertise to build new nuclear power stations. We need to put money behind building new nuclear power stations and small nuclear reactors, where Britain – and Rolls Royce in particular – is a pioneer.
We must make hard choices. We must reject the wishful thinking which has brought us to our current perilous state of energy dependence.
The Russian government, of course, is quite happy for the countries of Europe and elsewhere to depend on Russian energy resources, because this increases Russia's influence beyond its borders. But we must not accept this energy imperialism. Every country in Europe needs to achieve energy sovereignty, energy security. We must become self-sufficient in energy - in abundant, reliable and affordable energy.
We can only achieve energy sovereignty by exploiting the fossil fuels that lie under the surface of our land and seas. But for far too long successive governments have closed down our reserves of coal, oil and gas. They have stopped us becoming energy sovereign.
To add injury to injury, governments make us pay vast subsidies to sustain wind and sun power. Subsidies impose a levy of some 25 per cent extra on the fuel bills of all our households, commerce and industries.
But electricity that depends on atmospheric pressure is unreliable, inefficient and costly. It can't be stored. Sun panels depend on absence of cloud cover. There is no power for half the year. Wind turbines depend on the right wind speed. In storms and on days of high pressure they are no use. In 2020, just 13.7 per cent of our primary energy came from low carbon sources. Wind provided 4 per cent of power generation, sun power 0.7 per cent, nuclear 6.6 per cent. We depend on gas for back-up, to keep the lights on.
Our energy crisis has not been caused by war, or by the exhaustion of resources. Oil has not run out, despite all the Green forecasts (hopes?) The dogma of global warming depends on a single big lie - that CO2 is a pollutant that acts as a 'blanket' to 'trap' the Earth's heat, causing a warming that imperils our existence. This book exposes that lie.
