Capitalism and Climate Change

 Our friend John Osman asked a short time ago whether I thought that Global Warming, aka Climate Change, was caused by Zionism.

The answer is no: nor do I think that it is caused by Capitalism.

Even though both Capitalism and its attack dog, Zionism, make its effects so much more intolerable.

One way of considering a proposition that X is True is to invert it and examine it's opposite: that X is not true.

In this case, the anecdolal, empirical observations that I, as a Canadian, have are that it is is the case that, for Canada and the high Arctic, Climate Change is real: Arctic Ice is now, at best seasonal.

While my experience in Ottawa had been that in the 1990's The Canal was so regularly frozen that skating on it was a regular 'Winterlude' pleasure.

Now, 'Watetlude' had taken its place.

(I hope that someone will find a time series for Ottawa for each day in, say, February, over a long period.)

But, as I say, these are anecdotal, empirical observations.

As to measuring the *net* effect, globally, that's  something for others to wrangle over.

And in that regard, I encourage readers to review Alternative Voices such as Denis Rancourt (externalised Professor at Ottawa U) and much-vilified Piers Corbyn: the most brave man on the planet.

Do, as I said above, one thought approach is to invert the proposed assertion.

Another way is to tip it on its side and then examine the proposal as a spectrum of 'Perhaps Yes, Perhaps No'.

This question as to whether Climate Change had been caused by Capitalism (Ie by recent human activity) is, implicitly, claimed by 'Environmental Activists': the most recent of which is XR.

Now, aways back, when I was a teaching chemist (then as Head of Chemistry at Eltham Green School, a two-thousand plus pupil genuinely Co-ed (mixed gender) genuinely all-ability Comprehensive in South-East London: a marvellous experience!), I recall *exactly* where I heard the word 'Environment': on the top floor, outside two of our Chemistry teaching labs, late in the afternoon, perhaps in September 1977.

Why, at that time, I don't know.

But it was consistent with the evolution of chemical understanding (Under-Standing!): which was the investigation and appreciation of the, comparatively 'weak' chemical forces (chemical bonds) *between* molecules, as the source of subtlety to the stronger forces (bonds) *within* molecules.

As a case in point; the beautiful hydrogen bonds in ice.

On the Rideau Canal in Ottawa, for example.

(As an aside, one of my moments of honour and a Research Chemist, was for one of the Participants at a cross-border Canadian-US Symposium on Physical Organic Chemistry to say, after my lecture contribution, "This us great: exactly the sort of thing we want to hear about." That lecture was on my/our studies of the rôle of the even-weaker force directing chemical change, entropy, in determining the speeds of ultra-fast free radical reactions in liquid solutions.)

So, is Climate Change wholy, largely, partly, a little, not-at-all due to human activity is to Capitalism?

First of all human activity *must*, by virtue of its activity alone change the rest of The Planet (and indeed, The Universe). This is, as best we know it *absolutely mandated* by the Laws of Chemistry, including the Laws of Thermodynamics: the Second, Entropy, Law itself.

Moreover, if we move away from Atmospheric Chemistry to Terrestrial (Ie Land-based) Chemistry and Aquatic (and in a particular example, Marine Chemistry), the *wicked*  influence of Capitalism on 'The Environment' is clear: I cite, respectively, The Tar Sands Abomination in Canada and the M40 Cutting and adjacent mega-Quarry at Chinor in England and examples of Terrestrial Holocausts and the floating islands of plastic waste and of turtles trapped in discarded fishing nets and the near mass extinction of whales 'harvested' for margarine as examples of Marine Holocausts.

Now, back to what my friend Piers Corbyn calls the CO2 'Hockey Stick' diagram.

Whatever maybe the exactitude of the measurements of historical CO2 Levels might be, Climatic variations have been much more subtle than the smooth 'Hockey Stick' diagram.

Just to cite one example: I *love* Gay-Lussac's Law on the ratios of reaction volumes for cases where gases react when mixed.

Accordingly, I have just bought three discarded volumes of chemistry texts (which I'll photograph and share) including s biography of Gay-Lussac.

Therein, I learn that Gay-Lussac's first winter in Paris was so severe that many Parisians left the city for the Countryside.

Where, presumably, they burnt wood to keep warm, clean and well-fed.

Now, burning that short-lived fossil fuel, wood, will have added two things to the atmosphere: CO2 and H2O.

And it's the variation in the later that, in my view as a Chemist (and Denis Rancourt's as a Physicist) that absorbs infra-red radiation (far more than the other waste product, CO2).

But, of course, targeting CO2 has allowed the Eugenicists to proceed with their agenda.

Upon which, more, next.