NET ZERO BY 2050
Ian McNaughton and Erik Bye
November 3rd, 2025
INTRODUCTION
Many people now support the developing trend by influential figures such as Bill Gates (who used to be a “Climate Alarmist”) that the slow and steady increase in global temperatures is not a cause for concern for anyone, anywhere, on planet Earth.
America is fortunate to have a president who has seen through what he (and many of us) regards as a hoax, and is in the process of returning his country to the prosperity it once had prior to Al Gore’s unfortunate claims about carbon dioxide over several decades, culminating in the release of his infamous documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006.
My fervent hope is that our politicians here in Australia will also wake up from the nightmare they are creating and return Australia to the level of prosperity it once enjoyed by scrapping all their useless, unnecessary, and grossly expensive attempts to control the world’s climate.
DISCUSSION
The following remarks about climate change aim to challenge the notion - held by some governments - that global climate can be artificially controlled and that if that control is not implemented, the planet is doomed. Public arguments on this issue tend to polarize into two broad camps:
• Climate Alarmists who attribute rising global temperatures primarily to human activity and demand urgent intervention to prevent an otherwise inevitable global catastrophe.
• Climate Sceptics argue that large-scale cosmic and planetary processes and not the emission of carbon dioxide by humans, are the dominant drivers of climate, and that human intervention is not only ineffective but also completely unnecessary.
Despite their differences, both sides generally agree that global temperatures are increasing at a rate of approximately 0.015°C to 0.018°C per year, a trend that has probably existed for several centuries. Climate Alarmists are terrified by this rise while Climate Sceptics are relaxed and convinced, not only that there is nothing to worry about, but rejoice in the clear evidence that the increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, together with mineral fertilizers and better crop varieties, have contributed to an amazing increase of agricultural productivity over the past 75 years and that this increase has been a net benefit to the biosphere.
During the past couple of decades, governments that attribute rising global temperatures to human-generated carbon dioxide emissions have enacted policies they believe will slow - or even halt - this trend. Many have committed to the COP framework, pledging to achieve “net zero” emissions by 2050. In this context, “COP” refers to the Conference of the Parties, and “Net Zero” denotes a balance between carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere and that removed from it.
Sceptical scientists, however, have presented compelling evidence suggesting that carbon dioxide accounts for only a minor portion of observed warming. They argue that long-term climatic shifts are primarily driven by natural cosmic and planetary cycles that have shaped Earth’s climate for hundreds of millions of years. This conclusion is supported by ice-core data, which has revealed fluctuations in both temperature and carbon dioxide concentrations across geological epochs. Notably, these records also consistently show that temperature increases tend to precede rises in atmospheric carbon dioxide not the reverse as claimed by the Alarmists.
For the sake of argument, consider a hypothetical scenario in which the rising concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is solely responsible for the observed annual temperature increase of 0.015°C to 0.018°C. Each nation’s contribution to this rise can therefore be quantified using publicly available emissions data.
While neither Climate Alarmists nor Climate Sceptics endorse this extreme scenario, its use in discussion serves to illustrate the pointlessness of the Alarmists concerns - bordering on hysteria – that surround human emissions, and the questionable logic behind claims of imminent global catastrophe.
Under this hypothetical scenario, the combined carbon dioxide emissions of all nations are assumed to drive the current global temperature increase of 0.018°C per year. All other influences are assumed to have zero impact.
The table shown at the end of this discussion uses emissions data for three countries and extrapolates their respective contributions to global temperature rises for the years 2050 and 2100.
In summary, if the three countries listed in the table achieved NET ZERO by the year 2050, then, in the hypothetical scenario examined for that year:
1. China would have reduced the global temperature increases by 0.166°C
2. The United States by 0.064°C
3. Australia by 0.005°C.
4. All three countries by 0.234°C
5. All the countries in the world would have reduced the global temperature increases by 0.504°C – if they had all followed the COP agreement.
Specifically, the Australian Government is therefore implementing trillions of dollars’ worth of economy-crippling actions to reduce by the year 2050, a rise in global temperatures by 0.005°C which they blindly insist would have been caused by Australia’s emissions of carbon dioxide.
That is the definition of blind insanity!
Under the hypothetical scenario, if all the countries in the world did nothing to mitigate the temperature rise, the rise in global temperature would be 0.504°C by 2050 and 1.404°C by 2100.
Those temperature rises are minor and definitely not catastrophic for the planet!
These calculations are based on a hypothetical case where carbon dioxide is blamed alone for the temperature rises. In reality, carbon dioxide is not the culprit and efforts by governments to mitigate the imagined effects of carbon dioxide will have almost zero effect on global temperatures which will continue to rise (and later fall) independently under the influence of never-ending Cosmic and Global forces.
CONCLUSION
The calculations shown in the following table and linking carbon dioxide to the steadily increasing global temperature, were based on the false premise that carbon dioxide, as a greenhouse gas, was totally responsible for the increasing temperature.
Reality paints a different picture.
Of the existing greenhouse gases, the influence of carbon dioxide on global temperatures is dwarfed by the influence of water vapour which, although of varying concentrations in the atmosphere depending upon the location and season, contributes on average ~50% of Earth’s natural greenhouse effect, far more than any other gas.
This means that the mitigating actions being implemented by governments to lower the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are targeting a greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide) that has little impact on global temperatures. Therefore, the calculations greatly exaggerate that impact.
A sane, intelligent government would not even contemplate spending trillions of dollars to achieve a reduction in temperature of only 0.005°C by 2050 – but here we are – our Australian government is doing just that!
Forget about carbon dioxide - Cosmic and Global forces which have existed for geological epochs, are the driving forces behind the increase in global temperatures and cannot be controlled by humans!
Finally, the likely increase in global temperatures by the year 2100 caused by cosmic and global forces (i.e. not by greenhouse gases) of 1.404°C and coincidently, also predicted by the Climate Alarmists, is trivial and should be of no concern to anyone.
There is no Climate Emergency!
EMISSIONS AND TEMPERATURE CALCULATIONS
