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contact RMAP RESEARCH SEMINAR: LET THEM NOT EAT: CO2, FOOD AND CLIMATE - Mr Tim Curtin 12.30-1.30pm Thursday 29 April 2010 - Seminar Room B, Coombs Building This seminar challenges the quasi-Malthusian assumption going back to Wigley ( CRU-UEA & CSIRO, Tellus 1993) and maintained by Sokolov et al (MIT, 2009), that there is a fixed limit to the volume of CO2 emissions that can be absorbed by land and ocean biospheres. Wigley ’s assumption is central to the MAGICC models relied on by IPCC to project global climate to 2100, as it results in more than doubling the projected rate of growth of the atmospheric concentration of CO2, from the actual 0.4% (1958 –2009), to 1% p.a (2000 –2100). Presentation Flyer (PDF File) Full Presenation (PDF File) More scientific evidence, please Tim Curtin was pleased to find that claims he has made over the last 2 years (see links below to Tim's first Submission to the Garnaut Review and his articles in Quadrant and Energy & Environment), that there is no evidence - despite the claims by Lord Stern, the IPCC, and the Garnaut Review - for any weakening in the ability of the so-called carbon "sinks" to absorb anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide, have been confirmed in a recent peer-reviewed paper (Knorr 2009). The sinks are the globe's oceans and land and sea-based plant life, which have taken up on average 57% of CO2 emissions since 1958. Stern and Garnaut used the false assumption that the sinks are or will soon be "saturated", so that in effect 100% of CO2 emissions would remain airborne for ever, resulting in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 rising from 387 parts per million of the atmosphere to 887 ppm by 2100. They used the alleged resulting accelerated "global warming" to justify their draconian proposals for terminating our carbon-based economy. Tim's letter in today's (29th January 2010) Sydney Morning Herald gives more details: Full Story (PDF File) Two new papers published - 15 October 2009 Tim has just (15 October 09) had two papers published in the journal Energy and Environment. The first shows how the "prestigious" journal Nature refuses to admit the palpable errors in the 9 papers on climate change it published in its issue of 30 April 2009. The second, more substantial, paper show how important atmospheric carbon dioxide is for global food production, and that it would be a serious calamity if the Copenhagen Conference succeeds in getting global CO2 emissions down to the proposed 40 per cent of the 2000 level, since that is less than half the current annual new uptake of emissions by the world's oceanic and terrestrial biospheres, via photosynthesis to phytoplankton (the feedstock for the krill that whales just love) and all our own food crops and vegetables. The outcome will be severe food shortages for every living creature from dolphins and whales to the teeming millions of Africa and Asia. We Australians are rich enough to avoid starvation come what may, but we should care about the less well-off worldwide who will suffer grievously if food prices rise as my paper suggests they will after Copenhagen.