CO3? CO4? How much is too much CO2?
Mark Honeychurch - 24th November 2025
A couple of weeks ago in the newsletter we let you know about Siouxsie Wiles’ fundraising campaign, and we pledged to match our members’ donations up to a limit of $2,000. I’m pleased to say that, so far, we’ve reached over $1,500 in donations so far. But it would be even better if we could hit our $2,000 target! So if you plan to donate to Siouxsie, please let us know when you do so, and if you’ve already donated, send us evidence of your donation and we’ll add you to our list. Just forward your donation email to news@skeptics.nz.
In that newsletter, I also accidentally pasted my editorial as plain text, which meant that the text lost the link to Anke’s article. So, here’s the broken sentence as it should have been:
“Journalist and DeCult conference founder Anke Richter messaged me and suggested that readers might want to read her interview of John Potter, the “absent father” of the MENZ website, that came out in North & South magazine in 2021.”
Finally, the last newsletter contained an email from Dr John Happs, an Australian climate change “skeptic” (although denier is probably a more accurate term) who wrote about climate alarmism and his thought that the NZ Skeptics aren’t being critical enough when it comes to the science of climate change. I also published my opinion that Dr Happs’ willingness to use bad-faith arguments and incorrect data to argue against the idea that climate change is a real, pressing issue is not very skeptical. This exchange was started by one of our members, Mike, who had emailed me with his concerns about our recent climate change articles, which have been written by Patrick Medlicott.
Mike emailed me again last week, asking a simple question:
How low do you want the amount of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere? If we are committed to reducing emissions to lower concentrations - then what is the current level of Carbon Dioxide and what level do you want it to be?
I responded that, as I’m not a climate scientist, or indeed a scientist of any kind, I don’t know what ideal levels of CO2 would be, but that I would likely defer to the experts in this matter. I also suggested that in this instance maybe we could crowdsource an answer to the question from our readers, and asked Mike if he would be willing to expand his email into an article that more thoroughly explained his thinking.
Mike was kind enough to take the time to put his thoughts together for us, and the result is the first article in this issue of our newsletter. If anyone who reads Mike’s article would like to write an answer to his question, I would love to hear from you and would be keen to publish your thoughts. Failing that, I’ll collate a few reasons why I think that his idea that more CO2 is better might be overly simplistic, and put them in the next newsletter.
Speaking of the next newsletter, as I’m off for a family holiday to Japan soon we might end up on a reduced schedule over Christmas. I’m hoping to gather enough articles over the next couple of weeks so that I can queue up a couple of newsletters to go out while I’m away. If any of our readers would like to help me out by sending me something I can publish, that would make my job a little easier! We’ll likely skip a couple of podcast episodes as well, but given that we’ve managed to put out over 100 episodes over the last four years I think that a short break for our hosts might be well-deserved.
As well as Mike’s question about CO2 levels, this week’s newsletter has an article from Katrina about a parenting book she read recently - Hunt, Gather, Parent. I have strong opinions on parenting books, and self-help books in general, so I’m sure this week’s podcast conversation is going to be interesting. Bronwyn has looked into the hottest thing since the Rapture - demon-possessed alarm clocks. And, finally, I’ve written a review of season 2 of John Campbell’s TV show Under His Command, about Brian Tamaki and Destiny church.