Carbon dioxide: “world’s best friend”

The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

15 September 2009 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Carbon dioxide: David Bellamy says “world’s best friend”; Nick Smith says “pollutant”.

“Within days of the distinguished British environmentalist, Dr David Bellamy reminding New Zealanders that carbon dioxide is the world’s best friend, a desperate local politician has described it as a pollutant and proposes to cripple our economy with charges for its emissions.” This statement from the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition in response to the explanation by Climate Change Minister Nick Smith: “New Zealand needs an emissions trading scheme to discourage carbon pollution...”

“In their zeal to confuse the public, politicians like Minister Smith use the term ‘carbon’ when they are referring to the odourless, colourless gas, carbon dioxide (CO2) that comprises just 3.62% of so-called ‘greenhouse’ gases in the atmosphere, of which just 3.4% is human caused, meaning that the human contribution of CO2 to the greenhouse effect is a miniscule 0.123%, the equivalent of 12 cents in $100.

“Compare that 12 cents with what it will cost each New Zealand household. Earlier Mr Smith and Prime Minister John Key told us ETS will cost us each $30 a week, adding up to $6000 a year for a household of four. It will be little consolation to be told that, as a result of a deal with the Maori Party, it will now cost each household only $3000 a year to reduce that 12 cents equivalent of CO2, with no sound evidence that it will have any effect on whether the climate warms slightly as it has many times in the past, or returns to a cooling phase as it’s doing right now.

“David Bellamy was in New Zealand last week, and reminded us that claims of human-caused global warming are, in his words, ‘poppycock!’. He was even more scathing about those who dare to label CO2 as a pollutant. He reminded us of a paper he co-authored two years ago describing CO2 as ‘the world’s best friend’, because it is the natural fertiliser that all plants need for their growth, including all the vegetative plants needed for human and animal survival.

“In that paper, he wrote: ‘Take heart: Earth’s climate has remained within the limits tolerated by life, for several billion years. During this time the planet has experienced unimaginable volcanic events which liberated huge amounts of CO2, we have collided with extraterrestrial objects which triggered either increase or decrease of temperature and even the energy flow from the sun has altered over such a span of geological time. And yet here we are! Life remains. The global temperature is well within life’s limits - indeed the present-day is cooler than much of previous geological time. There is one circumstantial conclusion and one only: Earth’s climate, self-regulates, with or without us.’” (The full paper can be accessed at

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“The economic consequences of ETS for New Zealand are horrendous. Nick Smith would serve us better by producing justification for his threatened degradation of our way of life and standard of living. He relies totally on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which in four reports so far has produced a lot of computer modelled ‘scenarios’ and ‘projections’ but not a single piece of scientific evidence or a firm prediction. We can be sure that neither his Prime Minister nor his Finance Minister would allow the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank to write New Zealand’s Budget, yet we allow UN IPCC to determine our climate policy.

“Nick Smith would have been better advised to stop listening to global warming propagandists, and to look out the window at a real world that has been cooling since 2002, and, according to solar scientists, is likely to continue to do. There is every likelihood of a return to the early 1970’s when the over-rising world fear was for another impending ice age.”

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