"Australia must increase its carbon footprint!
If Australia is to enhance the biosphere and green the dead areas of the planet for future generations, it is imperative that we pump much larger quantities of carbon dioxide—the gas of life and a vital plant food—into the atmosphere over the immediate years ahead. While Australia’s emissions will initially make little overall difference to global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration—being only 1.3 per cent of global anthropogenic emissions—over several decades and in concert with other nations, we can increase the total mass of life on earth. Working in our favour is the fact that this colourless, odourless gas will be an inevitable byproduct of the massive program of infrastructure development that we must undertake in the immediate future to rebuild from the current economic catastrophe.
After a generation of globalisation, our cities are stuck in traffic jams due to lack of transport infrastructure; we’ve experienced increasing water restrictions due to lack of water supply infrastructure; blackouts and brownouts occur at peak periods due to lack of electricity supply infrastructure, and the list goes on.
We need a massive rebuilding program and this will require lots of concrete, steel, aluminium and much more.
Cement, which is used in concrete as a binder, is made by heating limestone (calcium carbonate) in a kiln, in a process known as calcination. Carbon dioxide gas is liberated during calcination and kilns require lots of energy.
Iron, steel and aluminium production all require vast quantities of energy and until we establish a nuclear power industry, most of the power for metals production can only be efficiently generated from coal-fired power stations and other carbon-based fuels.
Many thousands of dump trucks, excavators, bulldozers, graders and other earthmoving equipment will be required to build dams, roads, railways, tunnels, bridges and whole new cities. Forget solar and wind power for an earthmover! They will be powered by diesel engines.
We won’t live in poverty and squalor as the greenies demand. We are going to rebuild our economy and provide a prosperous future for the coming generation.
Happily, this physical economic activity will add extra carbon dioxide to our atmosphere and assist the process of photosynthesis in plants. And with this economic expansion, we’ll also reduce air pollution by freeing up city traffic jams by building electric-powered magnetic levitation transport. Coal-fired power stations will continue to use electrostatic precipitators as they do now already, which removes particulate pollution from the chimney stacks.
Numerous scientific studies identify the benefits of increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and since current concentration is only at around 390 ppm (parts per million)—in other words a mere 0.039 per cent of the atmosphere by volume, our natural environment is craving for more. For most of the last 600 million years of life on Earth, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration exceeded 1,000 ppm and much of the time, including during the era of the dinosaurs, concentration exceeded 2,000 ppm. To date, 31,487 scientists (9,029 with PhDs) have signed the Global Warming Petition Project debunking the theory of manmade global warming and adding that “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.”
Australian scientist Professor Bob Carter spelt this out in the Sydney Morning Herald on 27th June: “Extra carbon dioxide helps to shrink the Sahara Desert, green the planet and feed the world. Ergo, carbon dioxide is neither a pollutant nor dangerous, but an environmental benefit.”
Numerous scientific studies also indicate that the oceans and sea life will prosper from any additional carbon dioxide. Enhanced nitrogen fixation has been experimentally observed in waters exposed to high levels of carbon dioxide. Studies have also identified that elevated carbon dioxide levels boost iron’s positive impact on phytoplankton productivity.
The oceans contain 39,000 Gt C (gigatonnes of carbon), mostly in the form of bicarbonate ions, whereas the atmosphere currently only contains 830 Gt C. Global energy-related emissions are now a mere 8.3 Gt C per year—a tiny fraction of the 39,000 Gt C stored in the oceans. However, with a global commitment to uplift the bulk of humanity out of poverty—a real moral challenge—industrialising Africa and other poor regions of the world, will fortunately, significantly increase global carbon dioxide emissions.
Over several decades, this biospheric engineering will liberate “locked up carbon” allowing our vegetation and oceans to flourish.
By contrast, Julia Gillard, the Greens, and the Liberal/National coalition all plan to cut emissions by minimally five per cent from 1990 levels by 2020. Not only do they seek to deny nature this life-giving gas, but it shows they also intend to block any plan to rebuild our economy, because there’s no possibility of building major infrastructure and growing our economy without increasing emissions. "
