As I write these words on 19 December, the temperature of the air outside is about -6 deg. C.; there is is a 5-inch layer of snow on the ground; and, despite all my efforts to reduce the rate of heat loss to the atmosphere, the dials on our gas and electricity meters keep turning too rapidly for financial comfort.
Our main source of heat is a gas-fired central heating system which also supplies domestic hot water. We have a fridge-freezer for extending the life of perishable foods. This is kept in an otherwise unheated annexe to the kitchen to make its task "easier": the freezer itself emits a little heat because of the electricity it uses, and the heat it extracts from its contents has to go somewhere.
I can cope with rare summer "heatwaves" which do not normally require much cooling beyond opening windows; but maintaining something close to 20 deg. C. during most of the year requires artificial heating. Despite all the fuss about "greenhouse gases", the carbon dioxide which my wife and I and our visitors habitually breathe into the house makes no measurable contribution to keeping us warm.
Despite a small grant under the Government's "Warm Front" scheme and the Old Age Pensioners' "winter fuel allowance" (both of which seem contrary to the Government's declared desire to "combat global warming" or to "reduce emissions of 'greenhouse' gases") I should not have been able to effect the above improvements unless I had previously saved enough capital to cover the cost. Although it is doubtful if I shall live long enough to recover all of the outlay through reduced expenditure on gas and electricity, I shall at least leave to the world a more energy-efficient house than that which I purchased 41 years ago.
In addition to the work listed above, I have also investigated the potential value of installing solar water-heating and electricity-generating devices on the roof, but have decided against doing so because I doubt the cost-effectiveness of current state-of-the-art devices.
I also have an 11-year-old car which seldom leaves the garage because of the high cost of fuel — which is due more to taxation than to the combined costs of production, refining, storage, and delivery. I therefore use the car only for occasional shopping and on occasions when its use can help neighbours or family members out of a difficulty.
I must emphasise that in all these things, my object is only to keep my home warm and to maintain a satisfactory standard of living as economically as possible. I give no thought to "emissions" of illusory "greenhouse gases" or to notional "carbon footprints".
As a consequence of adopting this pragmatic attitude, I have learned a few lessons which I am happy to pass on.
I see no prospect that global warming will come to my aid before I leave my present body. Indeed, I foresee a long period of domestic cooling when hardly anyone in the colder parts of the world can any longer afford to pay for burning the fossil fuels which produce carbon dioxide as an inescapable consequence of their combustion. I cannot understand why some "scientists" suppose, or pretend to suppose, that carbon dioxide is a cause of heating rather than an effect.
The origin chosen for the graph was at 310 parts per million for 1950. This serves to highlight the magnitude of the annual variation and the overall rise: but it conceals the part of the graph between 0 and 310 parts per million. I accept that to draw both parts on the same scale would compress the graph into the upper quarter of the paper; but cutting off the bottom three-quarters does tend to exaggerate the magnitude of the rise in concentration in the mind of the unthinking reader. Even in 2009, there is very very little carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by comparison with the 780,000 parts per million of nitrogen and the 210,000 parts per million of oxygen. To make a fair graphical representation of the whole atmosphere on the scale used for carbon dioxide would require a sheet of paper as long as a roll of wallpaper. We should also remember that it is the oxygen in the atmosphere that enables us to burn hydrocarbons in our boilers and carbohydrates in our bodies to keep our blood warm.
What actually happened would have been much better explained as follows:
Carbon dioxide is much heavier than air and therefore tends to concentrate low down in the atmosphere. It has long been used as a fire-extinguisher because it displaces the oxygen which makes burning possible. As the oxygen is effectively removed fron the vicinity of the fire, the fire goes out because the candle flame is suffocated. Sure, the carbon dioxide warms up — as would anything else placed near a flame; but that is in this case an effect, not a cause. We should also notice that the local concentration of carbon dioxide achieved in the TV experiment was incomparably higher than the mere trace contained in the normal atmosphere.
Carbon dioxide is particularly effective as a fire extinguisher in confined areas where there is a risk from flammable liquids. As it is non-toxic and leaves no residue, it will not harm food, fabrics, machinery, or electrical equipment.
Neither of these examples of misdirection would have misled anyone who had been properly educated in elementary mathematics and science. It is a most regrettable fact that after decades of politically controlled schooling, the UK has been left with a preponderance of mathematical and scientific innocents.
A current favourite scenario is that water from melting glaciers and polar ice gaps will cause sea levels everywhere to rise.
There are three incontrovertible natural facts that would tend to reduce such a rise:
A personal anecdote may help us here. I was born in a crofter's cottage just a few feet above the normal high-water mark on a promontory of the NorthWest Highlands of Scotland in April, 1933. I have often heard it repeated that the time of my birth coincided with an unusually high spring tide. The sea was lapping around the doorstep, and those attending my mother's labour had to wade through it. When my father could afford it, we moved to a better house on higher ground.
After nearly 80 years of presumed "global warming", one might reasonably suppose that the cottage in which I was born would long since have been left to the mercy of the sea. Nevertheless, when I went back to my birthplace earlier this year, not only was the cottage still standing but no-one currently living in the village could recall a repetition of such a high tide.
Even if parcels of land have to be evacuated, many evacuations have for various reasons taken place in the history of humanity, and the initial pain has in many cases turned to previously unimagined prosperity.
However, the present is not a good time to think of evacuating unless and until it becomes mandatory. Sheer pressure of population is currently producing an unprecedented rate of migration, and there are few remaining habitable locations which are not already uncomfortably full. When the oil finally runs out, these presently habitable locations shall surely shrink in number and size.
Even in the best of all possible worlds, we know without any computer modelling that all our present bodies will eventually have to make room for new ones. If we can surmount our tendency to identify only with our bodies, we may reasonably expect the essence of our personalities (or, to use an old-fashioned term, our souls) to appear in other bodies in new circumstances and with fresh problems to solve.
If we can learn to trust in ourselves and in The Absolute or whatever we recognise as "God", we can confidently disregard the utterances of the "princes of this world" who have just spent two weeks arguing with each other to little purpose in Copenhagen. We might reasonably conclude that the dire pictures they paint are designed mainly to frighten us into paying ever higher taxes to swell their sense of self-importance.
Should we not begin to teach politicians that even compulsory taxes are not inevitable if we can muster enough collective resistance to them?