Humans cannot affect global temperature change, so damaging Western economies with Net Zero policies is pointless. We can, however, learn to adapt to climate change
By Roger Palmer, Climate Realists of B.C., June 9, 2025
Summary
This paper discusses the many myriad factors that affect the Earth’s climate, many of which are still poorly understood. It presents a number of conclusions:
a) Climate change is a naturally-occurring, cyclic phenomena, and it has been going on for millions of years.
b) Climate change is primarily driven by changes in the energy of the sun that impinges on the earth. The dominant factors driving this are variations in the sun (total output power, spectral distribution, sunspot cycles) Milankovitch Cycles, variations in ocean currents (ENSO, PDO, and AMO). Other factors include the effect of varying cosmic-particle influx and high-altitude bacteria, causing changes in cloud cover.
c) The primary greenhouse gas is water vapour — the effect of atmospheric CO2 on global temperature change is much less than water vapour. Because of the non-linear effect of CO2 concentration, increases beyond the current level will have a decreasing effect on the earth’s climate (it is sometimes stated that CO2’s Greenhouse Effect is becoming “saturated”).
d) Man-made CO2 does have a minor effect on global temperature changes, but it is not the dominant factor. A reduction of man-made CO2 emissions would have a negligible effect on global temperature.
e) Man’s understanding of the various climate-influencing factors is very limited.
f) Climate models are not effective at forecasting future long-term global temperatures.
g) There is very little that mankind can do to affect global temperature change. Therefore, it does not make sense to introduce regulations that will have a negative impact on Western economies in a pointless attempt to change the natural rate of global climate change.
h) Mankind will have to learn to adapt to future climate changes. If mankind is still around in a few thousand years, they will then have to adapt to global cooling and glaciations!
Any legislative efforts to limit man-made carbon dioxide emissions at the local, regional, provincial, or federal levels may be well-intended, but are ultimately futile, and potentially dangerous. These efforts will harm the economy, waste resources, and not significantly affect the naturally-occurring cyclic climatic changes.
Roger Palmer is a retired electrical engineer who, after moving to Victoria in 1994, became a technical and business consultant specializing in strategic planning and technology evaluation. An expert witness in numerous intellectual property litigations, he is also the author of a successful text book on radio-frequency circuit design.
The paper is available for download in three parts:
Click here for Part 1 (1.5 MB)
Click here for Part 2 (1.7 MB)
Click here for Part 3 (1.6 MB)