By David Craig

Obviously I’m not a climate scientist. I’m not even a scientist. But I like to think I still have a few small remnants of common sense in what little is left of my rapidly-declining, alcohol-addled brain.

At the weekend, I started trying to quantify the threat that increasing CO2 levels could have on our planet and whether rising CO2 really could lead to the hysterical claims of those screaming about “Climate Crisis” and “Climate Breakdown” and “Extinction”.

Let’s accept that since industrialisation, the volume of CO2 has risen from around 300 ppm (parts per million) to around 400 ppm. A figure of 400 ppm represents (I think) 0.04%. That’s why CO2 is often referred to as a “trace gas” – because there’s really not very much of it compared to all the other stuff in the atmosphere.

How about a 4 pence a year pay rise?

Now let’s change measurements for a moment. Imagine you are a public-sector employee like most of the howling, mouth-frothing, snarling Greenies. And imagine you were being paid £30,000 a year. Well, if the bureaucracy you worked for offered you a pay rise equivalent to the rise in CO2 as part of the atmosphere from 300 ppm to 400 ppm over the last 100 or so years, you would get 33% of 0.04% of your salary – around £0.33p a month (£3.96 a year) gradually over the next 100 years. That’s about 4 pence a year.

If you were offered that, I’ve no doubt you’d be calling this “an insult” and “paltry” and “worthless” and going on strike. Yet somehow we’re expected to believe that a similar rate of increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere will lead to the extinction of the human race in just 12 years?

Cutting CO2 emissions – saving mankind?

The next claim of the Greenies, the mainstream media and our supine, pandering politicians is that humans can influence the climate by cutting CO2 emissions. Let’s quickly test that proposition.

The Earth produces about 750 gigatons of CO2 each year. Somewhere between 30 and 40 gigatons – between 4% and 5% – are estimated to come from human activity. Apparently termites release much more CO2 than humans.

The level of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing by around 2 ppm per year – 0.0002%. Therefore, were all human activity to cease and were we to become extinct, CO2 levels in the atmosphere would be just an almost infinitessimal 0.0002% lower each year than they are on current trends (I think – my calculator isn’t powerful enough to measure the tiny changes in CO2 levels that the Greenies claim will destroy us all). And if we were to just cut human CO2 emissions by an unlikely 10% – unlikely because the world’s population is growing so fast and China and India couldn’t give a monkey’s arse about growing CO2 emissions – this would only represent a 0.00002% reduction in CO2 as a percentage of the atmosphere.

These figures are so small that the Greenies’ claims of imminent catastrophe can start to look totally ludicrous.

Britain leads the way into lunacy

Now let’s look at our little UK. The UK produces about 1.02% of man-made CO2. Therefore, if we were to shut the UK down immediately and all live in solar-powered caves with no meat to eat, the difference in atmospheric CO2 would be something like (0.04%) x (5%) x (1.02%). This equals……. actually I haven’t a clue. And I’ve probably got the equation wrong anyway. My brain hurts and I’m getting confused by such mind-blowingly small numbers.

So, let’s just conclude that totally shutting down the UK would make “f**k all difference” (that’s a technical expression used by all the greatest mathematicians) to anything anywhere ever.

These figures would be the same for us in NZ. The mad greens want to drag us back into the dark ages. Perhaps this is why they like immigrants from the dark age religion?