Comments by "Old Scientist" (@OldScientist) on "COP28: King Charles says dangers of climate change are no longer distant risks | BBC News" video.

  1. Extinction rates (1500-2009) peaked around 1900 at 50 per decade. Extinction rates have declined dramatically to around 4 to per decade in the 2000s. So the extinction rate is very low: 900 known lost species for 2.1 million known species in 500 years (IUCN), so from observations there are an average of slightly less than 2 species lost every year. Out of a known species total of over 2 million. That gives an annual percentage loss of less than 0.0001%. That's background extinction. At that frequency it will take over 930,000 years to reach 80% extinction of species experienced at the K-T boundary that saw the extinction of the dinosaurs. Of course, extinction is a natural part of the evolution of life on this planet with the average lifespan of a species thought to be about 1 million years (cf 930,000). It is estimated that 99.9% of all plant and animal species that have existed have gone extinct. It should also be noted that no families or genera have become extinct in the last 500 years. In fact marine diversity at the taxonomic level of families is the highest it has ever been in the Earth's long history (see Sepkoski Curve). In a review of 16,009 species, most populations (85%) did not show significant trends in abundance, and those that did were balanced between winners (8%) and losers (7%) (Dornelas et al, 2019). There have been only 9 species of continental birds and mammals confirmed extinct since 1500 (Loehle, 2011). No global marine animals have become extinct in the past 50 years (McCauley et, 2015 using IUCN data). There is no climate crisis.
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  5. Everything we do releases carbon dioxide, so the Carbon Cult want to control everything. There will be global starvation if fossil fuels are eliminated. At risk in coming decades will be half of the world’s 8.5 billion to 10 billion people who are fed by crops grown with fertilizers derived from fossil fuels. Getting to Net Zero by 2050 would cost $9.2 trillion a year globally (McKinsey). That's not going to be good value for money. That's nearly one-tenth of global GDP. That money would be better spent on a myriad of things including educating the fifth of humanity who are illiterate and represent a 7% annual loss to the world's economy. Any country that attempts it will be indebted or impoverished. Example: For the UK to reach net zero by electrification of its transport fleet and heating system, it will require a tripling (as a minimum) of its current electrical generation capacity among other things. This will essentially require the UK consuming all of the current global supply of copper and other rare metals for the next 25 years. The cost will be unaffordable and the skilled manpower levels unattainable. And that is just to eliminate the 1% of the global CO2 emissions that the UK is responsible for. So times that by 100 for the Earth. 10,000 child slaves in the cobalt mines of the Congo not enough for you? Make it a million. Imagine all the human suffering and environmental damage done from all that resource extraction! It's pointless anyway. In just 8 years (prior to 2021) China emitted more CO2 than Britain did since the start of Industrial Revolution that began over 220 years ago! And China plans to vastly increase its coal fired generating capacity. An electric vehicle requires 6 times the mineral input compared to a conventional one, and the carbon cost is greater until you reach 80,000 miles. Production of all of these minerals has been mastered by China: a totalitarian communist regime that thinks nothing of the mass murder of its own citizens, imagine how much it cares about the rest of us. And why are we embarking on this great net zero crusade? For what? So someone can virtue signal by driving around in a Tesla. Maddeningly, there is no climate crisis. The Earth was warmer in the recent and distant past.
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