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Climategate Round-Up #7

Here’s a quickie round-up from the climategate world. No hottie today, you’ll have to wait for tomorrow’s round-up for the fleshy goodness.

The Leak/Hack

The odds are shortening that the ‘hack’ was in fact more of a ‘leak’. Toldya. If it’s true that some ’scientists’ received death threats over their involvement in Climategate, that’s appalling and I hope they catch a jail the jerks that would utter threats. But, exactly how many threats were issued? pssst

Climategate Inconvenient Emails/Data

Two investigations have been ;aunched as a result of the climategate leaks, one by the University of East Anglia into the behavior of Phil Jones and his motley CRU, and one by Penn State into Michael ‘Stick’ Mann’s involvement. But are the investigations impartial? It’s time to start the science over, and this time without dishonest manipulation. Canada’s ‘climate change ambassador’ suggest that the world should debate the solution to global warming rather than the science. Nevermind that the solutions are expensive and unnecessary if the science is meaningless. He’s just protecting his job, right? Fun (h/t Theo): .. The UK’s Met Office has found an excellent method for dealing with climategate – ignore it and keep on peddling the numbers as if nothing could be wrong with them. Climategate never happened, see? One scientist is certain that climategate is just the tip of the iceberg (heh) and that there are more revelations to come. The science is shaky, so Obama had the EPA label CO2 a danger to Americans. Which is like finding that seawater is lethal to dolphins, pure nonsense.

Climategate in the Media

The Washington Times notes media complicity in NOT covering climategate. CNN, while not perfect, is making up for the two weeks they took to get on the story: .. The American Physical Society is coming under pressure (again) to rescind its support for the global warming hoax in the wake of climategate. Andrew Bolt tried to elevate one of the motley CRU for his principles, only to find that the scientist in question didn’t need no stinkin’ principles.

Hippie Heads Hexploding

Dr. Tim Ball has a look at the Climategate Goon Squad. A lefty hates that Climategate won’t go away and blames ‘the right’ for pushing it. Heh, you’re welcome, hippies. UN IPCC Chief Pachauri takes on… err, UN IPCC Chief Pachauri. This is just too good, meet the neo-deniers. Thanks for reading.Source

Surprise, Surprise, Many Scientists Disagree On Global Warming

There is hardly unanimity among scientists about global warming or mankind’s role in producing it. But you wouldn’t know it if you just listened to the Obama administration.

By John Lott
As the Climate-gate controversy continues to grow, amid charges of hiding and manipulating data, and suppressing research by academics who challenge global warming, there is one oft-repeated defense: other independent data-sets all reach the same conclusions. “I think everybody is clear on the science. I think scientists are clear on the science … I think that this notion that there’s some debate . . . on the science is kind of silly,” said President Obama’s Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, when asked about the president’s response to the controversy on Monday. Despite the scandal, Britain’s Met, the UK’s National Weather Service, claims: “we remain completely confident in the data. The three independent data sets show a strong correlation is highlighting an increase in global temperatures.” But things are not so clear. It is not just the University of East Anglia data that is at question. There are about 450 academic peer-reviewed journal articles questioning the importance of man-made global warming. The sheer number of scientists rallying against a major intervention to stop carbon dioxide is remarkable. In a petition, more than 30,000 American scientists are urging the U.S. government to reject the Kyoto treaty. Thus, there is hardly the unanimity among scientists about global warming or mankind’s role in producing it. But even for the sake of argument, assuming that there is significant man-made global warming, many academics argue that higher temperatures are actually good. Higher temperatures increase the amount of land to grow food, increase biological diversity, and improve people’s health. Increased carbon dioxide also promotes plant growth. Let’s take the issue of data. The three most relied-on data series used by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report came from the University of East Anglia, NASA, and the British Met Office. As noted in my previous piece for the Fox Forum, the problem of secretiveness is hardly limited to the University of East Anglia. NASA also refuses to give out its data. NASA further refuses to explain mysterious changes in whether the warmest years were in the 1930s or this past decade. The British Met office, too, has been unable to release its data and just announced its plans to begin a three-year investigation of its data since all of its land temperatures data were obtained from the University of East Anglia (ocean temperatures were collected separately), though there are signs that things might be speeded up. Neither the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia nor the British Met are able to provide their raw data to other research scientists because of the confidentiality agreements that Professor Phil Jones at CRU entered into. Unfortunately, Jones did not keep records of those agreements and, according to the British Met, can neither identify the countries with the confidentiality agreements nor provide the agreements. Earlier this year the British Met wrote the following to Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit: “Some of the information was provided to Professor Jones on the strict understanding by the data providers that this station data must not be publicly released and it cannot be determined which countries or stations data were given in confidence as records were not kept.”A press spokesman for the British Met, John Hammond, confirmed this statement in a telephone conversation on Monday to FoxNews.com. But the claimed confidentiality restrictions have hardly been followed consistently. When asked why the University of East Anglia was allowed to release the data to the Met but not to other academics, Mr. Hammond e-mailed back: “This is a question for the UEA.” Unfortunately, however, neither the University of East Anglia nor anyone associated with the CRU was willing to answer any questions about the climate research conducted at the university. But why would countries want confidentiality agreements on decades old data that they are providing? “Climate data continues to have value so long as it is commercially confidential,” Mr. Hammond says. But when pushed for evidence that this was in fact the concerns that countries had raised, Mr. Hammond said: “Although I do not have evidence to hand at the moment, some nations, especially in Africa for example, believe that the information does have commercial value.” Earlier, in July, the Met had raised a different issue — that scientists in other countries would be less willing to share their scientific research if the Met could be expected to pass on the data to others. However, professional meterologists are unimpressed by the claimed reasons for confidentiality. “Research data used as the basis for scientific research needs to be disclosed if other scientists are to be able to verify the work of others,” Mike Steinberg, Senior Vice President, AccuWeather, told FoxNews.com. In addition, while the data access may be restricted in some countries because they sell data and forecasts, that doesn’t explain why the data isn’t released for all other countries. It is not just the University of East Anglia that has been accused of massaging the data (what they called creating “value added” data). Recently, New Zealand has also had its temperature series from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) challenged. Still the NIWA continues to insist that the “Warming over New Zealand through the past is unequivocal.” Indeed, the institute claims that the New Zealand warming trend was 50 percent higher than the global average. But the difference in graphs between what NIWA produced after massaging the data and what the original raw data showed was truly remarkable and can be seen here. As the Climate Science Coalition of New Zealand charged: “The shocking truth is that the oldest readings have been cranked way down and later readings artificially lifted to give a false impression of warming, as documented below.” Similar concerns have also been raised about Australian temperature data. Global warming advocates may believe that if they just keep shouting that everyone agrees with them, they will be able to enact their far-reaching regulations before everyone catches on. With President Obama’s — and the Democrats’ — fondness for more spending and increased regulations, our hope may have to rest with India and China to finally bring the Copenhagen conference to its senses. John R. Lott, Jr.is a FoxNews.com contributor. He is an economist and author of “Freedomnomics.”Source

I just shoveled 6 inches of global warming off my driveway

By William D. Zeranski

The UN announced 2000-2009 to be the warmest decade as the country braces for a massive winter storm as reported by Weather Channel:

Winter Blast hauls blizzard, heavy snow, rain

The system that brought heavy snow and gusty winds across the West yesterday will impact much of the rest of the country today and tomorrow. Heavy snow and gusty winds are expected over much of the country.

As of 6 a.m. Eastern time this morning, 22 states were under some advisory, watch, or warning for wind, with 30 states under some sort of advisory, watch, or warning for wintry weather, both stretching from California to Maine.

There’s a list of other nasty weather stories, which include deep snow and low temperatures, and no immediate signs of improvement.

As the climate circus continues to parade through the streets of Copenhagen, we must ponder how we will answer our grandchildren when they ask “What did you do during the climate change conference?”

Our response just might be, “Oh, I missed it, because I was shoveling out the driveway while waiting for the electricity to be turned back on.”

Of course, we know the UN and the Obama Administration are using fraudulent, yet convenient, numbers. We also know, as we face thirty below in many states, that what’s going on in the real world just doesn’t matter.

Source

BREAKING: Over 140 scientists challenge UN's climate claims in open letter

Open Letter to Secretary-General of United Nations

His Excellency Ban Ki Moon Secretary-General, United Nations
New York, NY
United States of America
8 December 2009

Dear Secretary-General,

Climate change science is in a period of ‘negative discovery’ – the more we learn about this exceptionally complex and rapidly evolving field the more we realize how little we know. Truly, the science is NOT settled.

Therefore, there is no sound reason to impose expensive and restrictive public policy decisions on the peoples of the Earth without first providing convincing evidence that human activities are causing dangerous climate change beyond that resulting from natural causes. Before any precipitate action is taken, we must have solid observational data demonstrating that recent changes in climate differ substantially from changes observed in the past and are well in excess of normal variations caused by solar cycles, ocean currents, changes in the Earth’s orbital parameters and other natural phenomena.

We the undersigned, being qualified in climate-related scientific disciplines, challenge the UNFCCC and supporters of the United Nations Climate Change Conference to produce convincing OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE for their claims of dangerous human-caused global warming and other changes in climate. Projections of possible future scenarios from unproven computer models of climate are not acceptable substitutes for real world data obtained through unbiased and rigorous scientific investigation.

Specifically, we challenge supporters of the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused climate change to demonstrate that:

1. Variations in global climate in the last hundred years are significantly outside the natural range experienced in previous centuries;
2. Humanity’s emissions of carbon dioxide and other ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHG) are having a dangerous impact on global climate;
3. Computer-based models can meaningfully replicate the impact of all of the natural factors that may significantly influence climate;
4. Sea levels are rising dangerously at a rate that has accelerated with increasing human GHG emissions, thereby threatening small islands and coastal communities;
5. The incidence of malaria is increasing due to recent climate changes;
6. Human society and natural ecosystems cannot adapt to foreseeable climate change as they have done in the past;
7. Worldwide glacier retreat, and sea ice melting in Polar Regions , is unusual and related to increases in human GHG emissions;
8. Polar bears and other Arctic and Antarctic wildlife are unable to adapt to anticipated local climate change effects, independent of the causes of those changes;
9. Hurricanes, other tropical cyclones and associated extreme weather events are increasing in severity and frequency;
10. Data recorded by ground-based stations are a reliable indicator of surface temperature trends.

It is not the responsibility of ‘climate realist’ scientists to prove that dangerous human-caused climate change is not happening. Rather, it is those who propose that it is, and promote the allocation of massive investments to solve the supposed ‘problem’, who have the obligation to convincingly demonstrate that recent climate change is not of mostly natural origin and, if we do nothing, catastrophic change will ensue. To date, this they have utterly failed to do so.

Signed by: [click here to view the entire list of scientists]

Visit CopenhagenClimateChallenge.org for more information.

Washington Examiner: Copenhagen Climate Scam Conference

With delegates from 194 nations present, the Copenhagen Climate Conference in Denmark got off to a fitting start with a film focusing on the alleged apocalyptic consequences of not acting to stop global warming before it’s too late. The planet will be ravaged and millions of people will die horrifying deaths as increasing temperatures in the Earth’s atmosphere result in a monumentally devastating deluge of man-made floods, droughts, storms, and rising seas. At the end of the terrifying film, a sweet little girl plaintively begs the conference attendees to “please help save the world.” It’s a script right out of Hollywood, made to order for an Academy Award-winning spectacular produced by Cecil B. DeMille or George Lucas. There’s just one problem: It would have to be titled “Climate Scam” because of the ultimate inconvenient truth: The case for global warming is based on junk science. This reality became clear recently when thousands of e-mails were made public by an unknown person or persons who somehow gained access to the computers at ground zero for global warming data and research, the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia University in Britain. Among the e-mails were multiple messages in which many of global warming’s most respected advocates discussed how to suppress data that contradicts their view that the Earth’s atmosphere is being warmed to dangerous levels by the burning of fossil fuels like oil, natural gas and coal. There were also multiple e-mails in which they discussed how to prevent studies by global warming critics from being published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and how to avoid answering or at least deflect freedom of information act inquiries about their data and research techniques. In the most disturbing of the e-mails, Phil Jones, the CRU’s director, asked colleagues to “hide the decline” in recent temperature data. Jones has since stepped aside, pending the outcome of an investigation. Instead of ignoring this science fraud, the Copenhagen delegates ought to be demanding that an independent investigation be undertaken as soon as possible of the CRU data used in the United Nations’ Report of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC report is the fulcrum upon which all global warming policymaking rests, both internationally and here in America. Experts from across the spectrum of opinion for and against global warming agree that suppressing CO2 emissions sufficiently to avoid the predicted calamities would be prohibitively expensive. Since the IPCC report is based on faulty data and the Copenhagen delegates refuse to acknowledge East Anglia’s climate scam, President Obama should challenge the United Nations to put the Denmark deliberations on hold. The one thing global warming advocates and skeptics ought to agree on is that policy must be based on credible data.Source

Climate hysteria just warming up

By Terry McCrann

No Hopenchangen in Nopenhagen

An illuminated globe with the writing ‘Hopenhagen’ stands in Copenhagen’s city center.

COPENHAGEN is going to be two weeks of insane hysteria. Just like the Olympics, but with lots of snow, courtesy of Al Gore and his ‘Gore Effect.’

There’ll be another major difference. This will be like the Olympics with only one country represented. All 40,000-plus attendees will be batting for the same side, so to speak.

We are going to be deluged with wall-to-wall coverage of hysterical end-of-the-world claims unless we hand over billions of dollars a year, every year, and close down our economy.

This really is the ultimate gift that keeps on taking. Give us the money to fight climate change; and as the climate changes every year, the funding has to be permanent.

Gets hotter? Climate change. Gets colder? Climate change. Stays pretty much the same? Now, that’s the really insidious climate change!

We’ve already had something of a minor deluge in the Antipodean paper of record for the First Church of Climate Apocalypse and Purportedly Pissed-Off Gaia, the Melbourne Age. [Climategate]

A series of them last week exactly and beautifully captured the mindless pap that passes for climate ‘science’ and the proselytising of the climate hysterics and true or ‘truther’ believers.

Beautifully, because the writers wouldn’t have had any awareness of the mush they were delivering.

Arguably our greatest national hysteric, certainly at least an archbishop in the First Church, Tim Flannery, angrily denied that he’d become a ‘climate sceptic.’

Such a claim was “outrageous.” He laid the blame for the outrage at the feet of our (the Herald Sun’s) Andrew Bolt.

How did Bolt “twist” the truth? Simply by quoting what Flannery had said on the ABC’s Lateline.

And I quote again: “So when the computer modelling and the real world data disagree you’ve got a very interesting problem … Sure for the last 10 years we’ve gone through a slight cooling trend.”

That was it. Bolt pretty much just recorded Flannery’s concession on temperature. He didn’t accuse him of being a sceptic. He wouldn’t have been that generous.

I’m not. Flannery revealed himself as a mathematical dunce. And I’m going to do the dastardly trick of quoting him directly again from his Age article.

The “overall increase (of the earth’s temperature) since the industrial revolution of 25 per cent – from 15 to 20 degrees … “

Actually Tim, that’s a 33.3 per cent increase. And these are the sort of people who ask us to take as gospel – that word is used advisedly – the accuracy of the most complex mathematical calculations.

Mathematical ineptitude aside, the utterly unqualified statement of the temperature increase self-announces Flannery as a fool or a fraud or most probably both.

So the world’s temperature around the time of the industrial revolution was 15 degrees? Not 14.5 or 15.5 or even 14-16? But 15, exactly and unqualified?

Presumably the global temperature came from readings from those 17th century satellites, with the data then fed through the computers at the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia university.

With exactly the same integrity of all the other data from the CRU, which is the single most important research driver of the Copenhagen dynamic.

Oh, and by the way, it’s not just the 15 degrees three hundred or so years ago that’s gospel certain for Flannery. But the 20 degrees – crucially, not now when we might be able to get close to a global measure of temperature, but at some unstated time in the future.

Then we had a strange piece from a character named Stephen Lewandowsky, described as the ‘Australian professorial fellow in the school of psychology at the UWA.’

A little bit of self-analysis wouldn’t have gone astray.

The piece consisted of simple denial of facts. The Arctic is melting faster than predicted. No it isn’t – it was predicted to have already melted right away.

Temperature increases over the past decade had conformed to predictions. No they haven’t – see inconvenient Flannery quote.

Ludicrous claims. The genocide in Darfur was “a climate war.”

A series of questions to which the answer is no, your premise is exactly wrong. And a defence of the thuggish behaviour of the climate believer-insiders at the CRU as an exercise in “quality control rather than censorship.”

In the process very neatly demonstrating why the scandal at CRU should be a matter of concern for all academics. As it brings all peer review across every discipline into serious disrepute.

Peer review? Oh you mean peer conspire.

Beautifully captured when someone like this character can defend it even after the disclosure of the sordid behaviour.

It’s going to be both a delicious and depressing fortnight as we get inundated with sludge and mush from Copenhagen, mediated through much of the lamestream media to borrow Bernie Goldberg’s apt description.

Via Email to ILoveCarbonDioxide.com, sourced from the HeraldSun

Breach in global-warming bunker rattles climate science at worst time

By Doug Saunders, The Globe and Mail
A short drive from the windswept North Sea coast of England, the Climatic Research Unit occupies a squat, weather-beaten grey concrete building on the campus of the University of East Anglia. This scientific bunker holds the world’s largest trove of climate-change data, gleaned from Siberian tree-ring counts, Greenland ice-layer measurements and centuries-old thermometer readings. Now the pirating of thousands of e-mail messages from within its walls has revealed a dangerous bunker mentality among the scientists who guarded those records and a data-fudging scandal that has created a crisis of confidence in global-warming science that is threatening to destroy the political consensus around next week’s carbon-policy summit in Copenhagen. Said one scientist working at the institute: “It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that this has set the climate-change debate back 20 years.” The crisis intensified yesterday as the head of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the main scientific and political authority on global warming, announced an investigation into the university’s practices and the reliability of the findings that have underpinned the UN’s climate-change conclusions. The university has launched its own inquiry and on Wednesday ordered the CRU’s embattled head, Phil Jones, to step down until it is complete. On a political level, coming on the eve of the Copenhagen summit, the controversy has been catastrophic: In the last few days, it has prompted opposition politicians in the United States, Britain and Australia to argue that human-caused global warming is a myth.

Saudi Arabian officials now say that they will argue in Copenhagen that carbon-emission controls are pointless because the CRU scandal has nullified any evidence of human-caused atmospheric temperature increase. The reports the CRU produced from its now-controversial data were the main source of the UN’s key global-warming document, the IPCC’s report of 2007, which concluded that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal” and that “most” of the global temperature increase since the mid-20th century has been caused by human activity – a conclusion, still supported by the majority of atmospheric scientists, that most governments adopted as the basis of their carbon-emissions policy. That consensus has been shaken by hundreds of pages of messages, apparently stolen from the lab’s servers, which have been interpreted as suggesting that the scientists at the CRU manipulated data to make it deliver a more dramatic message about the human contribution to global warming, destroyed data files that did not support their hypothesis, and tried to prevent critics within the scientific community from having access to their raw information and methods. Unusually, even sympathetic scientists and some activists have concluded that the credibility of climate science has been seriously harmed. “We should not underestimate the damage caused by what has happened, either for the science or for the politics of climate change, and potentially it could have some very far-reaching consequences,” said Mike Hulme, a climate scientist at East Anglia whose e-mails were among those included in the pirated files and who has been critical of the secrecy and lack of impartiality in his colleagues’ work. Independent scientists are quick to point out that the actions described in the e-mails do not describe anything like a fabrication of global-warming evidence, and that two other major sets of historical data drawn from the same sources, both held by NASA institutions in the United States, also show a historical warming trend. That has not stopped right-wing politicians in Western countries from using the scandal to dramatic effect: Yesterday, a group of Hollywood conservatives launched a campaign to revoke the Academy Award given to Al Gore, the former vice-president and a carbon-cap advocate, for his climate documentary An Inconvenient Truth. But perhaps more important than the ammunition the CRU affair has given to conspiracy theorists is what it has revealed about the awkward role scientists have come to play in the heated world of climate policy. “I think there is a serious problem with the way scientists are used, and the way they position themselves, in climate-policy debates,” Prof. Hulme said. “Wherever you look around climate change, people are bringing their ideologies, beliefs and values to bear on the science.” The CRU files, apparently hacked or leaked from the institute’s server, began appearing on websites on Nov. 17, and reached the attention of climate-skeptic groups and the media two days later. The most contentious e-mail was written by Prof. Jones, the director of the CRU, who wrote to colleagues in 1999, as they studied measurements of Siberian tree rings, which scientists have long realized do not reflect local temperature changes after 1961: “I’ve just completed Mike’s trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 to hide the decline.” While it seems clear that he is using “trick” to refer to a change in algorithm to remove the nonsensical data after 1961 and “decline” likely refers to the quality of the data, the phrase has led some of the more extreme critics to conclude that a data-shaping plot was at work. Referring to weather data from the last decade, another scientist wrote: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” While such insinuations of poor scientific practice have drawn the most attention, more damaging for climate scientists are e-mails which reveal the hostile, partisan, bunker-like atmosphere at the lab, which goes to ridiculous lengths to prevent even moderate critics from seeing any of the raw data. In one e-mail, Prof. Jones wrote that climate skeptics “have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send it to anyone.” As it happens, Prof. Jones admitted earlier this year that he “accidentally” deleted some of the CRU’s raw-data files, material that the centre says amounts to about 5 per cent of its collection. Prof. Jones wrote of efforts to deter skeptics from having access to data: “We will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” In another, he asks that several of his colleagues “delete any e-mails” about their work on the IPCC’s 2007 report. That sort of language has led many people, including climate scientists, to worry that the scientific findings of the centre have been undermined by scientists who see themselves as activists trying to prove a case rather than impartial arbiters of scientific fact. As the political fallout escalated yesterday, it became apparent that it may take some time for climate scientists to repair their collective reputation. In Australia, 10 shadow ministers in the opposition Liberal Party resigned in the wake of the revelations, in protest against their party’s support for Australia’s carbon-reduction bill. In the United States, Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner, leader of a climate-skeptic caucus, declared that the e-mails “call into question the whole science of climate change” and pledged to resist any climate bill. And Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer, announced that the e-mail leaks provide sufficient proof that climate change is not man-made that there should be no policy resulting from the Dec. 7-18 Copenhagen summit, in which the world’s nations will try to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. “It appears from the details of the scandal that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activities and climate change,” said Mohammad al-Sabban, the head of the Saudi Arabian delegation. “Climate is changing for thousands of years, but for natural and not human-induced reasons.” While some climate scientists have taken a defensive posture, the crisis has led a number of others to conclude that their approach to the subject needs to change. Prof. Hulme leads a group of CRU scientists who believe that the extraordinary political importance placed on their research, and the activist, ideological way that research has been used by the IPCC, has put scientists in the position of being the authors of policy – a position that distorts the role of science in society. “If we simply believe that science dictates policy, then I’m afraid we’re living in an unreal world,” Prof. Hulme said. “If people are arguing that science policy should flow seamlessly from the science, then science becomes a battleground, where people start saying that we must get the science on our side. We have lost an openness and a transparency that leads to good science.” Prof. Hulme is one of several scientists calling for the raw data of climate-change research to be made available to everyone, including climate-change skeptics, on the Internet. That, he says, would allow genuine research to proceed unhindered. Some of his colleagues also say the IPCC now does more harm than good and should be disbanded. That position has led some of his colleagues to attack him. This week, several said in Internet posts that such transparency would be unworkable because the matter of climate is too urgent and the stakes too high to allow skeptics to have any influence on policy. That, Prof. Hulme said, is exactly the attitude that led to the sort of questionable practices chronicled in the CRU e-mails.
Source

CO2 Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

On the same day that the EPA is set to falsely accuse the atmosphere’s CO2 molecules an “endangerment”, I hereby unofficially nominate the humble CO2 molecule for the Nobel Peace Prize. Hey, it makes more sense than calling this beneficial trace gas an “endangerment”. In his own Nobel acceptance/lecture, Al Gore has went so far as to call CO2 “global warming pollution”, and that emissions of it are akin to treating our atmosphere like an “open sewer”. He couldn’t be more wrong. When it comes to molecules that are necessary for life to exist on earth, with the possible exception of H20, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more beneficial molecule than good old carbon dioxide. CO2 is good for plants:

Literally thousands of laboratory and field experiments have conclusively demonstrated that enriching the air with carbon dioxide stimulates the growth and development of nearly all plants. They have also revealed that higher-than-normal CO2 concentrations dramatically enhance the efficiency with which plants utilize water, sometimes as much as doubling it in response to a doubling of the air’s CO2 content. These CO2-induced improvements typically lead to the development of more extensive and active root systems, enabling plants to more thoroughly explore larger volumes of soil in search of the things they need. Consequently, even in soils lacking sufficient water and nutrients for good growth at today’s CO2 concentrations, plants exposed to the elevated atmospheric CO2 levels expected in the future generally show remarkable increases in vegetative productivity, which should enable them to successfully colonize low-rainfall areas that are presently too dry to support more than isolated patches of desert vegetation. Elevated levels of atmospheric CO2 also enable plants to better withstand the growth-retarding effects of various environmental stresses, including soil salinity, air pollution, high and low air temperatures, and air-borne and soil-borne plant pathogens. In fact, atmospheric CO2 enrichment can actually mean the difference between life and death for vegetation growing in extremely stressful circumstances. In light of these facts, it is not surprising that Earth’s natural and managed ecosystems have already benefited immensely from the increase in atmospheric CO2 that has accompanied the progression of the Industrial Revolution; and they will further prosper from future CO2 increases. Join us as we explore these and other important benefits that rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations are bestowing on plants. Carbon dioxide emissions resulting from the burning of fossil fuels should not be feared; they are something to be celebrated!

CO2 is good for humans:

Far from being a pollutant, rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations will never directly harm human health, but will indirectly benefit humans in a number of ways. Chief among these benefits is global food security. People must have sufficient food, simply to sustain themselves; and the rise in the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration that has occurred since the inception of the Industrial Revolution (an increase of approximately 100 ppm) has done wonders for humanity in this regard. And, it will continue to work wonders in helping us meet the rising food consumption needs of a larger, future population. In addition to increasing the quantity of food available for human consumption, the rising atmospheric CO2 concentration is also increasing the quality of the foods we eat. It significantly increases the quantity and potency of the many beneficial substances found in their tissues (such as the vitamin C concentration of citrus fruit), which ultimately make their way onto our dinner tables and into many of the medicines we take, improving our health and helping us better contend with the multitude of diseases and other maladies that regularly afflict us. In just one species of spider lily, for example, enriching the air with CO2 has led to the production of higher concentrations of several substances that have been demonstrated to be effective in fighting a number of human maladies, including leukemia, ovary sarcoma, melanoma, and brain, colon, lung and renal cancers, as well as Japanese encephalitis and yellow, dengue, Punta Tora and Rift Valley fevers.

CO2 an “endangerment”? Hardly. Al Gore and the rest of the alarmists need to stop smearing the good name of this beneficial trace gas, and learn to embrace CO2. If they truly wanted a greener planet, they’d learn to love CO2! CO2 for the Nobel Peace Prize!
Thanks to GORELIED.