What is carbon dioxide (CO2)? Can it rationally be labelled “pollution,” as President Obama does routinely?
CO2 is a naturally occurring trace gas (0.04 percent of the atmosphere), as natural as oxygen. Everyone reading this article today emits CO2 24/7, every time they exhale.
The Democrat Party-controlled-media never report that trace carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is essential to the survival of all life on the planet! Plants need CO2 to grow and conduct photosynthesis, which is the natural process that creates food for animals and fish at the bottom of the food chain. Without CO2, plants would die, and without plants, animals, including humans, would die for lack of food.
The increased concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere caused by the combustion of fossil fuels has actually increased agricultural output, causing a greening of the planet.
For these reasons, CO2 cannot rationally be called “pollution.”
Sea levels have been rising, since the end of the last Ice Age, over 10,000 years ago! Recently, that sea rise has been slowing, to about 1 mm to 3 mm a year. The Polar ice caps have not been melting. The Antarctic ice cap has grown to record size, and the Arctic ice cap recently has been fully restored.
U.S. satellites orbiting the Earth 24/7 produce the only incorruptible, authoritative, temperature record. That record confirms that there has been no increase in global temperatures for the past 19 years. During that period, 130 billion tons of carbon has been added to the atmosphere, about a third of all the CO2 generated by humanity since the dawn of the industrial revolution.
Soon that period of no global warming will be longer than the period of actual global warming, which lasted only about 20 years, from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. Before that was 30 years of global cooling. During the 20th century, and before, temperature patterns have not followed the consistent increase of CO2 emissions, but the cyclical trends of natural causes.
The source of the claim that human emissions of CO2 are causing catastrophic global warming is the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body empaneled by the UN. The UN is an organization of governments favoring an expansion of government power and authority, and therefore biased in favor of the theory of catastrophic global warming. That is not because of “science,” but because it is a justification for government takeover of the energy industry, and massively increased regulation, taxes and government spending.
The UN loves it because it inspires fantasies of the UN growing up to be a world government, with real government powers of global taxation, spending and regulation, all to “save the planet.” Scientists who go along with the cause are rewarded not only with praise for their “social conscience,” but also with billions in science and research grants for their cooperation.
In contrast to the UN’s IPCC, a peer group of hundreds of independent, private sector scientists has organized the Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). The NIPCC states, “It is wholly independent of political pressures or influences and therefore not predisposed to produce politically motivated conclusions or policy recommendations.” By sharp contrast, the IPCC “is government-sponsored, politically motivated, and predisposed to believing that climate change is a problem in need of a U.N. solution,” the NIPCC reports.
The IPCC produces long, voluminous “Assessment Reports,” making the case that human emissions of CO2 from burning fossil fuels threaten catastrophic results for human civilization, and, indeed, all life on the planet. But the NIPCC has now established a record of producing equally long, voluminous, reports thoroughly and logically rebutting the IPCC’s Assessment Reports and discussing at least as much scientific data and peer-reviewed scientific literature, probably more. The NIPCC reports are published by the Heartland Institute, under the title Climate Change Reconsidered II. That title now encompasses three one-thousand page volumes of peer-reviewed scientific literature and analysis published over the last year. This is the world leading source for the alternative to global warming alarmists, like President Obama.
The conclusions of Climate Change Reconsidered II are that the U.N.’s IPCC has exaggerated the amount of global warming attributable to mankind’s emissions of CO2, which “is likely to be modest and cause no net harm to the global environment or to human well-being.” The primary, driving force of global climate change is natural causes, not human effects, it shows. These scientists explain, “The hypothesis of human-caused global warming comes up short not merely of ‘full scientific certainty’ but of reasonable certainty or even plausibility.”
Among the thousands of scientists expressing this viewpoint are: Atmospheric Physicist Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, IPCC author and contributor, with over 220 published, scientific, peer reviewed publications; Physicist William Happer, Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University, former director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science; Meteorologist Roy Spencer, Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite, former Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center; Physicist Fred Singer, Emeritus Professor of Environmental Science at the University of Virginia, founder of the U.S. National Weather Satellite Service, President of the Science & Environmental Policy Project; John Christy, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, IPCC lead author, NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal; Patrick Michaels, Research Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, past President of the American Association of State Climatologists; Solar Physicist Willie Soon, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Judith Curry, Professor and former Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Craig Idso, a lead author and editor of Climate Change Reconsidered II. There is no better collection of climate scientists in the world.
(Part II to continue tomorrow)
Lew Uhler is Founder and President of the National Tax Limitation Committee and of the National Tax Limitation Foundation. Peter Ferrara is Senior Fellow for Entitlement and Budget Policy at the Heartland Institute, a Senior Policy Advisor to the National Tax Limitation Foundation, and an attorney for the Energy and Environment Legal Institute. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under President George H.W. Bush.