Environment
Scientific Report Pours Cold Water On Major Talking Point Of Climate Activists
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
The purveyors of climate doom will not tolerate the good news of our planet thriving because of modest warming and increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. However, a recent scientific paper concludes that an optimistic vision for Earth and its inhabitants is nonetheless justified.
Widely accepted data show an overall greening of Earth resulting from a cycle of natural warming that began more than 300 years ago and from industrialization’s additions of CO2 that started in the 19th century and accelerated with vigorous economic activity following World War II.
Also attributed to these and other factors is record crop production, which now sustains 8 billion people—ten times the population prior to the Industrial Revolution. The boost in atmospheric CO2 since 1940 alone is linked to yield increases for corn, soybeans and wheat of 10%, 30% and 40%, respectively.
The positive contribution of carbon dioxide to the human condition should be cause for celebration, but this is more than demonizers of the gas can abide. Right on cue, narrators of a planet supposedly overheating from carbon dioxide began sensationalizing research findings that increased plant volume results in lower concentrations of nutrients in food.
“The potential health consequences are large, given that there are already billions of people around the world who don’t get enough protein, vitamins or other nutrients in their daily diet,” concluded the The New York Times, a reliable promoter of apocalypse forever. Among others chiming in have been The Lancet, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the National Institutes of Health.
Of course, such yellow journalism lacks context and countervailing facts —elements provided in “Nutritive Value of Plants Growing in Enhanced CO2 Concentrations” published by the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia.
Any deficiency of nutrients from the enhancement of plant growth by elevated carbon dioxide “are small, compared to the nutrient shortages that agriculture and livestock routinely face because of natural phenomena, such as severe soil fertility differences, nutrient dilution in plants due to rainfall or irrigation and even aging of crops,” says the paper.
And while there is evidence of marginal decreases in some nutrients, data also show that higher levels of CO2 “may enhance certain groups of health-promoting phytochemicals in food crops” that serve as antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds, says the paper, which lists seven authors and more than 100 references. The lead author is Albrecht Glatzle, a member of the Rural Association of Paraguay and a former international researcher of plant and animal nutrition.
Among other points made by the paper are the following: Throughout a majority of geological history, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have been several times higher than today’s, which are less than optimum for most plants; atmospheric warming from even a quadrupling of CO2 concentrations would be small compared to natural temperature fluctuations since the last glacial advance more than 10,000 years ago.
Having virtually no scientific basis, the “green” movement’s hostility to carbon dioxide seemingly ignores the gas’s critical role as a plant food. As the paper notes, “CO2 is the only source of the chemical element carbon for all life on Earth, be it for plants, animals or fungi and bacteria — through photosynthesis and food chains.”
The so-called greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide— perversely exaggerated to support climate fearmongering— is a life-saving temperature moderator that keeps Earth from freezing over.
The obvious benefits of CO2 is “an embarrassment to the large and profitable movement to ‘save the planet’ from ‘carbon pollution,’” write the authors. “If CO2 greatly benefits agriculture and forestry and has a small, benign effect on climate, it is not a pollutant at all.
More CO2 is good news. It’s not that complicated.
Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist; executive director of the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Va.; author of “Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know” and “A Very Convenient Warming: How modest warming and more CO2 are benefiting humanity” and a co-author of “Nutritive Value of Plants Growing in Enhanced CO2 Concentrations.”
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Stephen Moore
A few days before last week’s election, Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders issued a dire warning to voters. If Trump won, “the struggle against climate change will be over.”
He had that right.
Climate change fanaticism was effectively on the ballot last week. That green energy agenda was decisively defeated.
It turns out the tens of millions of middle-class Americans who voted for Trump weren’t much interested in the temperature of the planet 50 years from now. They were too busy trying to pay the bills.
The result shouldn’t be too surprising. Polls have shown climate change ranks near the bottom of voters’ concerns. Jobs, inflation and illegal immigration register much higher on the scale of concerns.
But if you asked the elite of America in the top one percent of income, climate change is seen as an immediate and existential threat to the planet. Our poll at Unleash Prosperity earlier this year found that the cultural elites were so hyper-obsessed with climate issues, they were in favor of banning air conditioning, nonessential air travel and many modern home appliances to stop global warming. Our study showed that not many of the other 99 percent agree.
Wake up, Bernie and Al Gore.
Climate change has become the ultimate luxury good: the richer you are, the more you fret about it.
Among the elite, obsessing about climate change has become a favorite form of virtue-signaling at the country club and in the faculty lounges. There is almost no cross that the green elites — the people who donate six figures or more to groups like the Sierra Club — aren’t willing to make lower income Americans bear to stop global warming.
Herein lies the political curse of the climate issue. A millionaire doesn’t care much if the price of gas rises by $1 a gallon or if they have to pay another $100 a month in utility bills. But the middle class hates paying more.
It wasn’t just economic concerns that turned the voters against climate crusaders like President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Workers weren’t too thrilled with the heavy fist of government commanding them to buy an electric vehicle — whether they wanted one or not.
It hasn’t helped the greens’ cause that the same progressives who are out to save the planet with grandiose transformations and global government, seem to have no problem with the garbage polluting the streets of our major cities or the graffiti or the feces and urine smell on the street corners of San Francisco and New York. That’s real pollution. And it’s affecting us here and now.
The good news is this year’s voter revolts against the radical green agenda are not a vote for dirtier air or water. The air that we breathe and the water we drink is cleaner than ever — a point that President Donald Trump correctly made. We will continue to make progress against pollution.
To try to sell middle America on the climate-change agenda of abolishing fossil fuels, the greens peddled bogus arguments that climate change would hurt poor communities most. In reality the financial costs of the climate policies and the paychecks lost were felt by the non-elite.
Democrats forgot to visit the steel-mill construction sites or the auto plants or the oil patch and ask those workers what they thought.
Well, now we know the reality. Americans think their shrinking paychecks and the higher price of gas they pay at the pump is the real clear-and-present danger. If Democrats don’t start to get that, they too will go to bed worrying about their jobs.
Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a co-founder of Unleash Prosperity. His latest book is titled: “The Trump Economic Miracle.”
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Nick Pope
The Biden-Harris administration is quietly backing away from a plan to use the ongoing U.N. climate conference to announce an international call for emissions reductions, according to Politico.
It is not clear whether it is because President-elect Donald Trump decisively won last week’s presidential election, but Biden-Harris officials reportedly intended to partner with several other countries in announcing “ambitious” carbon emissions reduction goals for 2035 before the announcement fell through, according to Politico, which cited a draft press release it obtained and several unnamed officials. Had it not fallen through, the announcement could have gone live as early as Monday, the first day of the conference — commonly referred to as COP29 — in Azerbaijan, a Caucasian petrostate with a questionable human rights record.
The aborted call to action would not have been legally binding, though it would have served as a signal to corporations to invest in emissions reduction initiatives and pave the way for other nations to get on board, according to Politico. The countries that would have been named in the announcement would have committed to slashing emissions across nearly every sector of their respective economies, and they would have taken aim at specific chemicals like carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.
The press release announcing the commitments “clearly won’t be published” at this point, one senior foreign diplomat told Politico, which granted the source anonymity to speak freely on the matter. Beyond Trump’s victory, other potential factors that may have interfered with the plan to roll out the 2035 targets include ambivalence from potential partners or bureaucratic logjam in the European Union, an American ally that typically collaborates on similar climate targets.
The U.S. circulated the idea of putting out a statement ahead of COP29 with “a lot of parties but never pushed for it to become something more,” a European official involved in climate negotiations told Politico.
Trump’s pending return to the White House is looming large at COP29, given the president-elect’s pledges to roll back green spending, regulations and initiatives and jack up fossil fuel production, according to CBS News. Moreover, Trump has also promised to withdraw again from the U.N.’s Paris Climate Accords, which he did in his first term before the Biden-Harris administration rejoined the deal.
The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
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