Kiwifruit is indeed under threat from green fundamentalism - as indeed may be the right of everyone of us to breath out about 2kg of CO2 a day. Jim Anderton, New Zealand minister of agriculture (Letters, November 7), would do better for his country and the world if, rather than plead his case with those who are drafting CO2 rules to curb his economy and impose more taxes, he challenged the false assumptions of global warming ideology.
Measurements (in ice cores and sea beds off New Zealand's shores, for example) show no evidence that changes in CO2 drive world temperatures or climate - indeed, it appears to be more generally the other way round. Sea temperatures generally govern changes in CO2 over very long (and some short) time scales. About 8,000 of the last 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age were warmer than now, and generally had less CO2 and lower sea levels. Interestingly, for 3,000 years - from the peak of the bronze age warmth 5,000 years ago (about 3C warmer than now) to the early Roman empire 2,000 years ago - world temperatures were falling while CO2 levels were rising.
It follows that humankind's CO2, which is no different from other CO2, is of no consequence in climate change. Despite the facts, global warming ideology is sold to us on the basis that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and so more of it means more warmth. But CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas, man's CO2 is only worth 1% of the total greenhouse effect, and plant life and the sea, not taxes and windmills, decide what happens to CO2
What happens to human CO2 - or any "extra" from volcanoes or upwelling sea water - is that it and/or its effects are absorbed and negated by feedback mechanisms of plants and the sea. As became clear at a recent conference in Stockholm, the overall climate machine is driven by much more powerful forces than man's activity, and particle and magnetic effects of the sun play a key role.
It is through this understanding that long-range weather forecasts, 12 months ahead, are now produced for Britain and Europe with a high degree of accuracy - while the CO2-based theories of climate and traditional meteorology only manage a week ahead. It is probable that climate forecasts - many years ahead - could be produced by developing our solar weather technique for a tiny investment compared with the charges the climate-crisis industry hopes for. Surely knowing what will happen is better than suffering through the greedy application of false theories and dogma.
Let's not get taken for a ride. Politicians are jumping on the climate-crisis bandwagon to justify tax hikes. The climate crisis industry hopes to make a lot of money through silly projects and carbon-credit trading which helps the west to dominate the developing world. Africa and the Arctic are being dishonestly used as emotional blackmail by self-interested green fundamentalists. Paying extra taxes or putting up a windmill will not help one jot. The honest application of science will.
Weather Action (long-range forecasters)