Government continues to talk of imposing carbon tax on industry.

The carbon tax is wrong and should not be introduced at all. The principle of the carbon tax is that it is supposed to ‘save the planet’. The idea is to inflict pain on industry for emitting carbon dioxide (CO2) gas so that it reduces the amount of CO2 that it emits.

Of course, any immediate reduction in CO2 emissions will cost industry money, which, in turn, will be passed on to consumers. So, you and I will pay more to ‘save the planet’. The planet does not need any ‘saving’ from CO2. The reason is that significant indications are that man-made CO2 has nothing to do with any observed global warming.

Therefore, trying to cut CO2 emissions is going to do absolutely nothing for any perceived global warming or climate change issue. Sadly, what we are experiencing worldwide is that the CO2 warming lobby is chanting loudly and the popular press keeps on projecting this lobby’s story. This is a case of ‘if you keep repeating the claim often enough, the public will believe it’. In contrast, when other stories come up which argue against the CO2 theory, these are mainly ignored by the media. The media seems to want the doom-laden predictions to continue in order to be able to scare the public.

Recently, news came out that the sun is unusually quiet, so much so that the current sunspot cycle is likely to be the weakest in more than a century. This bit of news did not get into any of the popular media. Quite probably, the media did not understand the significance.
Let me point out that there is little to zero correlation between CO2 concentration and global warming. But there is a significant correlation between sunspot numbers and global warming.

When there are a lot of sunspots, there is global warming, and when there are few sunspots, there is global cooling. This correlation can be tracked back for thousands of years. Not only is there a poor correlation for the CO2 theory and a good correlation for the sunspot theory, but there are also what is known as causal mechanisms evident.

In the case of CO2, the enhanced greenhouse story is a very weak argument. Believe it or not, there has been no global warming for the past 17 years, although the CO2 concentration has continued to rise.

Eventually, last year, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admitted that there had been no global warming for 17 years but said that this observation was a temporary halt that could not be easily explained and that man-induced global warming was real and would come back soon. Predictably, this most important story did not get into the popular press. One wonders why not.
Previously, the IPCC had also admitted that its claim of rapidly melting glaciers was also incorrect. That story also did not make it to the popular press.

Currently, there are virtually no sunspots on the sun, which is remarkable. Such a situation has not occurred since February 1906.
In the past, such low solar activity has led to global cooling. A high sunspot number has correlated with global warming. About 1 500 years ago, the earth was warmer than it is now. That was known as the Medieval Warm Period, or MWP. There were many sunspots then. When Jan van Riebeeck landed at the Cape of Good Hope, which was the same era as Shakespeare’s, there was global cooling, and the River Thames froze over. It was so solid that people rode horses on the river. There are paintings showing such scenes.

When solar activity is high, the sun’s magnetic field is strong and interacts with the earth’s magnetic field to form a strong screen against incoming cosmic rays from the stars. Cosmic rays cause cloud formation. Clouds reflect incoming sunlight and heat, acting like a mirror.
When there is more cloud, the earth is cooler because some of the heat does not reach the ground. So, a large sunspot number means less cloud, and consequently leads to global warming, and vice versa.

Right now, the sun is incredibly quiet, which means that we are probably heading for global cooling if this state of affairs continues. In the past, global warming has been associated with health, wealth, and happiness. Global cooling has been associated with crop failure, death and misery. The great plague of Europe happened during the global cooling period, known as the Little Ice Age.

The solar theory fits the facts; the CO2 theory does not. But if you stick with the CO2 theory, then governments can levy carbon tax; with the sunspot theory, it cannot.