Science lesson on carbon dioxide to Australian Senate
I want to show you the power and significance of carbon dioxide. NASA has found ‘from a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide’ and CSIRO has found the same. I’ll explain why.
The earth’s atmosphere contains a certain amount of carbon dioxide. The earth’s oceans contain 50 to 70 times more carbon dioxide in dissolved form than in the entire atmosphere. The United Nations’ so-called climate agency admits this.
The data shows that, as water temperature rises, the solubility of carbon dioxide in water decreases and the oceans liberate carbon dioxide and we get a rise in the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
When the oceans cool, due to that big ball in the sky that you see in the day—the sun—it increases the solubility of carbon dioxide in the oceans and that takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
Nature itself produces an estimated 32 times more carbon dioxide every year than the entire production from humans. What that means is that nature overwhelmingly dominates the level of carbon dioxide production and, in addition, the oceans control that level according to the temperature of the oceans.
And there are many other factors to do with the vegetation in the oceans and on the land as well. Let me give you a few more facts, because it is an absolutely ridiculous proposition to bury life-giving carbon dioxide in the ground and, worse, to do it at enormous cost.
Firstly, let’s get the term correct. The Labor Party and the Greens keep referring to carbon dioxide, essential for all life on earth, as carbon pollution. I’ll ask you all to think about the term ‘pollution’ in a minute. Carbon dioxide is a gas—colourless, tasteless, odourless and invisible. It’s called a trace gas because the scientific community recognises that there’s bugger all of it.
There is 0.04 per cent in the atmosphere. That’s four 100ths of one per cent. There’s virtually nothing there—and yet it is essential for life on this planet, because every one of us in this chamber, every human, every living organism, contains in every single cell in our bodies the element carbon. Carbon’s not very common in the universe, but the beauty of earth, the miracle on earth, is that carbon is concentrated.
That element is concentrated, and that’s what makes life possible on our planet. Carbon is a source of life. Every one of us, including the senators now looking down at the ground, is based on carbon. It’s in every cell of our bodies.
When we breathe, we take in oxygen. We also combine that in our lungs, our digestive systems and our blood with carbohydrates—carbon and hydrogen—in the food that we take in.
The carbon in that food produces carbon dioxide when combined with oxygen. The hydrogen combines with the oxygen to produce H20, water. So our basic chemistry is that we take in carbon, we take in hydrogen and we produce water and carbon dioxide—which are essential for all the trees on this planet.
How ironic that the Greens demonise carbon pollution, because carbon dioxide, nature’s trace gas, essential for all life on earth, is essential for everything green we see on this planet—in the oceans and on the land. So carbon dioxide is essential for life.
The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is miniscule. The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not affected by human impact because of the oceans.
If humans produce slightly more or incredibly more, the oceans release slightly less. If humans produce less carbon dioxide, then the oceans release more. We see that in the fact that, after the global financial crisis in 2008, most countries went into a recession—there was globally a recession—the level of energy used was less in 2009.
That means that we produced less carbon dioxide from humans; yet the level in the atmosphere continued to increase. What that means—if senators stop and pause and think, in serving the people of Australia—is that it doesn’t matter if humans cut our carbon dioxide output, because the oceans will dictate the level in the atmosphere.
Senator Sterle talked about greenhouse gas storage and capture. It’s a nonsense. It doesn’t matter how much we pump into the ground and take away from the plants, it will not affect the level in the atmosphere, but it will cost us—and I will give you the explanation later in this speech.
It cost 1.3 billion just for one series of burials for carbon dioxide from power stations and cement plants in Norway.
Every single person in this chamber right now takes in air with 0.04 per cent of carbon dioxide and we’re all breathing out four to five per cent, that is we’re increasing the carbon dioxide levels in our air by 100 times or more. You, according to the Greens’ senators, are all carbon polluters.
Senator Malcolm Roberts is a long-standing member of Principia Scientific International and Project Leader of the Galileo Movement. Malcolm holds an engineering degree (honours; based on the Earth science geology; University of Queensland, 1976) and postgraduate studies in economics/business (Masters Degree in business from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business). More recently, he entered Australian politics and was elected Senator for Queensland in the 2019 Australian federal election.
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Andy Rowlands
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I’ve yet to hear Senator Roberts say anything that is not first rate. He is a good ally to us Slayers.
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Barry
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Wish we had even one honest politician like him in Canada.
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Barry
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This requires clarification or modification
‘When the oceans cool, due to that big ball in the sky that you see in the day—the sun—it increases the solubility of carbon dioxide in the oceans and that takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.’
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Kevin Doyle
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Amen!
A miracle, a politician can speak common sense and truth to his fellow idiot politicians.
Keep up the good work!
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WhoKoo
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There is something very wrong with this article.
Senator Roberts, meticulously, talks of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere yet all the newspapers I read mention carbon in the atmosphere and I can not reconcile the difference.
I have been out with a butterfly net for months trying to capture this carbon in the atmosphere but to date have recovered no diamonds, coal or graphite.
What the soot am I doing wrong?
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judy Ryan
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You will have to take up mining and use different equipment. 😂
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JOHN MICHAEL LEONN
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Black micronised carbon ( less than 250 microns) is not visible unless in huge quantities as a blanket of pollution hanging over industrialized areas …. some new electric generation coal burning plants remove that electrostatically in their smoke stacks….
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WhoKoo
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Thank you John. I was being satirical and you contributed some knowledge. Cheers.
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JOHN MICHAEL LEONN
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Mandated reading for Climate Barbie ( CanadianMinister of Environment & Climate Change “) also Trudeau ,, who now says he is open to a discussion with the electorate ….
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