We are being bombarded with constant rhetoric that increases in CO2 emissions are a prelude to the demise of civilization as we know it. To support the recent increases in CO2 emissions to 400 ppm the NASA graph displays this increase as the “hockey stick” curve by conveniently only looks at CO2 levels back 800,000 years.
Yes, there are accelerating levels of CO2 in that “hockey stick”, but when you look at the earth’s historical levels of CO2 you need to microscopically view a small piece of the 600,000,000-year history of CO2 in the graph at the extreme lower right corner to see the “hockey stick” curve.
Despite the fluctuations in CO2 over the 600,000,000 years when humans were nonexistent on this earth for most of the graph of CO2 changes during earth’s history, we are now seeing massive government interventions to address weather events in the climate. Government involvement in our daily lives recalls the most terrifying nine words in the English language:” I’M FROM THE GOVERNMENT AND I’M HERE TO HELP.”
Today, 400 ppm of CO2 is 10 percent of the Earth’s historical levels 500,000,000 years ago when CO2 reached 4,000 ppm that supported the vegetation during the dinosaurs reign.
Dinosaurs that roamed the Earth 250 million years ago knew a world with five times more carbon dioxide than is present on Earth today, researchers say, and new techniques for estimating the amount of carbon dioxide on prehistoric Earth may help scientists predict how Earth’s climate may change in the future. Looking back, 65 percent of dinosaurs were herbivores. Those plant-eating dinosaurs included the Brachiosaurus, the Diplodocus, the Stegosaurus, and the Triceratops.
While humans try to reduce CO2 emissions, the recent Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption in Iceland spewed volcanic ash. In just FOUR DAYS, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT have made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet. Carbon dioxide is also coming out of the recent La Soufriere volcano eruption that has rocked the eastern Caribbean island of St Vincent.
Al Gore’s limited “tunnel vision” correctly reminded us that there is more CO2 in the atmosphere today than there has been for the past 400,000 years. What he intentionally does not mention is the previous Ice Age that peaked 450,000,000 years ago occurred when CO2 was about 4,000 ppm, more than 10 times its present level.
If both warm and cold climates can develop when there is far more CO2 in the atmosphere than today, as the graph shows, how can we be certain that CO2 is determining the climate now?
Interestingly, the hockey stick CO2 growth has simultaneously occurred while human welfare has grown right alongside carbon dioxide emissions and concentration beginning around 1900.
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The inventions of the automobile, airplane, and the use of petroleum in the early 1900’s led us into the Industrial Revolution and victories in World Wars I and II. The healthier and wealthier countries of today now have more than 6,000 products manufactured from petroleum derivatives that did not exist before 1900.
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Post 1900, the healthier and wealthier countries now have medications, electronics, cosmetics, plastics, fertilizers, transportation infrastructures and more than 6,000 products that come from the derivatives of crude oil, including every part in solar panels and wind turbines as well as the various fuels to the world to operate planes, trucks, construction equipment, merchant ships, cruise ships, and automobiles.
Despite all those successes since 1900 in reducing weather related fatalities and extended life longevity, government is mesmerized by the doomsday projections of CO2 increases.
To enhance plant life growth, greenhouse growers increase CO2 to obtain growth rates that are 40 to 50 percent higher than the rates plants grow under in today’s atmospheric conditions. This makes sense when you consider that CO2 levels were generally higher during the time when plant life was evolving that they are today.
China will build 2 million hectares (20 billion square meters) of controlled environment greenhouses by 2025 and this will produce half of their vegetables and crop needs. Temperature, humidity, lighting would all be under controlled conditions. And like other greenhouse growers, to enhance plant growth and a key to ending hunger, they will intentionally increase CO2, levels for the plants they are growing. Plants grow best at a CO2 concentration of around 1,500 ppm, or 4 times today’s CO2 levels, which boost plant yield by 25 to 65 percent.
The present CO2 levels in the global atmosphere are about 400 ppm. In other words, the trees and other plants that grow around the world would benefit from a level of CO2, about four times higher than it is today. There is solid scientific evidence that trees are already showing increases growth rates due to rising CO2 levels, but the world economies are focusing efforts to reverse the CO2 growth displayed in the “hockey stick” portion of the graph.
CO2 makes almost all plants grow better. It greens the planet. It makes food more abundant for every living thing. And, yes, it helps keep global temperature above the dismal ice ages—great for all life. CO2 is breathed out by all 8 billion human beings, and every animal, with every breath and taken in by every plant.
The fact is, at today’s historically low CO2 concentrations, we can look at 600,000,000 years of CO2 data that reveals current CO2 starvation and easily see that all the plants on earth are CO2 deprived. As greenhouse growers, and China, have shown us, those plants are starving out there!
Today, legislators and governors are frequently asserting dictatorial powers implementing Green New Deal-style legislation for subsidized wind and solar intermittent electricity and the falsehood that renewables can reduce carbon dioxide emissions and, therefore, prevent the planet from imminent immolation.
With China having total domination of the supply chain of the exotic minerals and metals for “clean” electricity, every single windmill and solar panel is money for Communist China. In addition, the world is paying no attention to the environmental degradation and humanity atrocities occurring in China during the mining for these “green” exotic minerals and metals.
The fact that those pushing subsidies for net-zero emissions targets, are not talking seriously about zero emission nuclear power, gives the subsidized game away, for intermittent electricity from wind and solar, i.e., a life dependent upon the time of day and the weather.
[Originally posted on Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT)]
Ronald Stein is an internationally published columnist and energy consultant, and a policy advisor for The Heartland Institute.
