Climate Change Consensus?

[Don Hudson]

It is. They are known as Pillowsophy, Philosleepy and Philosedate, Philosnoozing and Philoshuteye, depending upon how deeply one is affected. The last condition is the most serious where one wakes with a startle and a book over one's face, the light on and in the most serious of serious cases, a slight drool marks one's page and CBC's test pattern is on,.... or so I've been told, CC.

[GDR]

http://www.thejohnrobson.com/2009/12/04/a-...e-game-changer/

I don't have anywhere enough knowledge to commment but I found your post thought provoking. The trouble with so many of these causes is that they become a means of livelihood and then the objectivity is completely gone.

The main reason I posted is that the message on the link is gone.

Cheers

Greg

[Canus Chinookus]

HA! Philosedate; that's me.

[Canus Chinookus]

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/12/global...skepticism-101/

Global Warming Skepticism 101

December 9th, 2009 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

(last updated 9:05 a.m. 9 December 2009).

I get so many questions from readers about a variety of global warming issues that I thought I would whip up some Q&A for those who want to understand the views of skeptics a little better. I will try to update these with links and additional answers as time permits.

Climate science is complex and the study of it is highly specialized. Nevertheless, there is a common theme that runs through the claims of the global warming establishment, from Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth, to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): Weather and climate events that happen naturally are being increasingly blamed on the activities of humans. So, causation is at the root of most beliefs about global warming and climate change.

As one digs further into the science, the direction of causation also emerges as a key theme, and it is one that can totally change the degree to which it appears humans affect the climate system. In my own area of research I have found that mixing up cause and effect when examining how cloud cover varies with temperature has greatly misled the scientific establishment regarding how sensitive the climate system is to our addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

Not all skeptics believe the same things, though, so some skeptics will object to some of what I have listed below. These represent my opinions, not all of which are necessarily ascribed to by other skeptics. Additional details on many of these issues can be found throughout this website, including a Q&A list I published on April 19, 2009.

The following list, in no particular order, are my responses to common claims and accusations about global warming skeptics. If other scientists or laypersons want me to add to the list, or want to argue for changes, email me and I will update it as appropriate. Please be sure to check back for the latest update (posted above).

1. Skeptics deny global warming. No, we deny that warming has been mostly human-caused.

2. Skeptics are paid by big oil. The vast majority of skeptics have never been paid anything by Big Oil (me included).

3. Skeptics don’t publish in the peer reviewed literature. Wrong…but it is true we do not have nearly as many publications as the other side does. But it only takes one scientific study to destroy a scientific hypothesis, which is what anthropogenic global warming theory is.

4. Skeptics are not unified with an alternative explanation for global warming. Well, that’s the way science works in a field as immature as climate change science. The biggest problem is that we really don’t understand what causes natural climate variability. Kevin Trenberth has now famously admitted as much in one of the Climategate emails, where said it’s a “travesty” that we don’t know why warming has stopped in the last 7 to 10 years. For century-time-scale changes, some believe it is cloud cover being modulated by cosmic ray activity, which is in turn affected by sunspot activity. A few others think it is changes in the total energy output of the sun (possible, but I personally doubt it). In my opinion, it is internal, chaotic variability in the ocean and atmosphere circulation causing small changes in cloud cover. Since clouds are a natural sunshade, changing their coverage of the Earth will cause warming or cooling. The IPCC simply assumes this does not happen. If they did, they would have to admit that natural climate change happens, which means they would have to address the possibility that most of the warming in the last 50 has been largely natural in origin.

5. But the glaciers are melting! Many glaciers which have been monitored around the world for a long time have been retreating since the 1800’s, before humans could have been responsible. A few retreating glaciers are even revealing old tree stumps…how did those get there? Planted by skeptics?

6. But the sea ice is melting! Well, the same thing happened back in the 1920’s and 1930’s, with the Northwest Passage opening up in 1940. It was just as warm, or nearly as warm, in the Arctic in the 1930’s. Again, this is before humans could be blamed. There were very low water levels in the Great Lakes in the 1920’s too, just as has happened recently. We have accurate measurements of sea ice cover from satellites only since 1979, so there is no way to really know whether sea ice cover is less than it was before.

7. But we just had the warmest decade in recorded history! Well, if thermometer measurements had started in, say 200, AD (rather than in the 1800’s), and it was now 850 AD, the same thing might well have been said back then. The climate system is always warming or cooling, and the Industrial Revolution (and thus our carbon dioxide emissions) just happened to occur while we were still emerging from the Little Ice Age…a warming period.

8. But the Antarctic ice shelves are collapsing! Well, sea ice around Antarctica has been expanding since we started monitoring by satellite in 1979….so which do we use as evidence? There is no convincing evidence of warming in Antarctica, except in the relatively small Antarctic Peninsula, which juts out into the ocean. Just as glaciers naturally flow to the sea, ice shelves must eventually break off. It is very uncertain how often this happens through the centuries, and what has been observed in recent years might be entirely normal. Similarly, it was warmer in Greenland in the 1930’s than it has been more recently.

9. But the sea levels are rising! Yes, and from what we can tell, they have been rising since the end of the last Ice Age. Again, the more recent rise might be just a consequence of our emergence from the Little Ice Age, which bottomed out in the 1600’s.

10. But we keep emitting carbon dioxide, which we know is a greenhouse gas! Yes, I agree. But the direct warming effect of moré CO2 is agreed by all to be small…and I predict that when we better understand how clouds change in response to that small warming influence, the net warming in response to more CO2 will be smaller still. This is the “feedback” issue, which determines “climate sensitivity”, the area of research I spend most of my time on. I and a minority of other scientists believe the net feedbacks in the climate system are negative, probably driven by negative cloud feedback. In contrast, all twenty-something IPCC climate models now exhibit positive cloud feedback.

11. But we can’t keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere forever! No, and we won’t. Assuming fossil fuels will be increasingly difficult to find and access in the coming decades, the continuing demand for energy ensures that new energy technologies will be developed. It’s what humans do…adapt.

12. But we shouldn’t be interfering with nature! Actually, it would be impossible to NOT interfere with nature. Chaos theory tells us that everything that happens, naturally or anthropogenically, forever alters the future state of the climate system. I predict that science will eventually understand that more CO2 is good for life on Earth. This doesn’t mean it will be good for every single species…but when Mother Nature changes the climate system, there are always winners and losers anyway. In the end, this is a religious issue, not a scientific one. Interestingly I have found that the vast majority of scientists also have the religious belief that we should not be impacting nature. I believe this has negatively affected their scientific objectivity.

[Mitch Cronin]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejEVczA8PLU

[Guest rattler]

Note the date of when the iceberg broke off, you can only imagine how big it had to be then to be it's present size some 9 years later.

Massive iceberg spotted off Australia

Last Updated: Friday, December 11, 2009 | 10:46 AM ET CBC News

An iceberg twice the size of Manhattan discovered 1,700 kilometres off the coast of Australia has prompted a shipping alert.

This satellite image shows several icebergs breaking off the Antarctic ice shelf in 2000. The iceberg B17B on the left has been spotted 1,700 kilometres from Australia. (Australian Antarctic Division/Associated Press)

The country's Bureau of Meteorology issued the alert Friday after the iceberg was seen off the country's southwestern coast.

Glaciologist Neal Young of the Australian Antarctic Division found the iceberg using satellite images. Young described it as 19 kilometres long and eight kilometres wide.

The iceberg is one of several that broke off from ice shelves in Antarctica in 2000.

It is expected to break apart as it moves into warmer waters farther north, but the resulting flotilla of smaller icebergs could pose a hazard to ships.

The Australian Antarctic Division has called the presence of such a large iceberg this far north a once-in-a-lifetime event, but cautioned against attributing it directly to global climate change.

Scientists say that ice shelf carvings such as the one in 2000 happen about once every 30 years.

Last month, New Zealand issued a shipping alert when several icebergs were seen moving toward the country's South Island. They have since moved east out into the Pacific Ocean.

With files from The Associated Press Post

[13820]

Greg, just hit the home button on the page that is linked to There is an archive section.

I listened to today's audio and it was very good.

Laughed at his point near the end.

Copenhagen has a shortage of limousines

They are importing 1400 some being driven from Germany.

[Canus Chinookus]

Note the date of when the iceberg broke off, you can only imagine how big it had to be then to be it's present size some 9 years later.

I'd say this is a reasonable explanation:

8. But the Antarctic ice shelves are collapsing! Well, sea ice around Antarctica has been expanding since we started monitoring by satellite in 1979….so which do we use as evidence? There is no convincing evidence of warming in Antarctica, except in the relatively small Antarctic Peninsula, which juts out into the ocean. Just as glaciers naturally flow to the sea, ice shelves must eventually break off. It is very uncertain how often this happens through the centuries, and what has been observed in recent years might be entirely normal. Similarly, it was warmer in Greenland in the 1930’s than it has been more recently.

[Guest rattler]

I'd say this is a reasonable explanation:

Not really, the average temp of the seas in the region are well above the melting point of the ice so it must have been a very lot larger when it first broke off.

Southern Ocean Temp Range: 28 to 50 °F

[Canus Chinookus]

And it takes a LONG time for water that temperature to cause a glacier that size to break off. The glacier is constantly expanding, it is very thick, it expands over very cold water(which is above 0 deg C), eventually the sheet of ice extends out far enough plus the slightly warmer water from below erodes from below, and SNAP, off goes a large iceberg.

[Guest rattler]

and back to the debate, seems that there is lots of money available to those who steal

The EU carbon trading market is estimated to be worth nearly $140 billion a year, and 12,000 emitters have purchased more than two billion EUAs thus far. The Emission Trading System is one of six recognized European carbon trading markets

you do have to wonder "what if that money went to developing alternate energy sources rather than lining pockets.

European fraudsters steal $7B in carbon credit scam

Last Updated: Friday, December 11, 2009 | 3:38 PM ET Comments104Recommend45CBC News

Fraud within Europe's carbon credit trading system has cost taxpayers more than $7 billion in the last 18 months, European police said Friday.

Geese fly past a Kansas smokestack. Companies in some countries buy credits to offset their greenhouse gas output. (Charlie Riedel/Associated Press)

Officials at Europol, the body in charge of co-ordinating police forces inside the European Union, say fraudulent activity on the EU's Emission Trading System was first suspected in late 2008 when police noticed the volume of trades in certain countries would mysteriously spike.

"It is estimated that in some countries, up to 90 per cent of the whole market volume was caused by fraudulent activities," Europol said.

Since late 2008, the total value of fraudulent activity is believed to be in excess of five billion euros ($7.7 billion Cdn) from bogus trades in European unit allowances, or EUAs, the credits that companies in some countries buy to offset their greenhouse gas output.

In the EU and other jurisdictions, caps are put on the total amount of carbon dioxide that is allowed to be emitted. Companies that pollute more than their fair share must then buy carbon credits from companies that don't pollute, to keep the total output below the prescribed cap.

Market volume on the EU's carbon trading system peaked in May 2009, with several hundred million EUAs traded in France and Denmark alone, Europol said.

Market worth $140 billion annually

At the time, one EUA was worth about 12.5 euros, or about $19.30.

In the scam, criminals set up a carbon trading account on a recognized European market. They would then buy credits tax-free on exchanges in countries outside Europe. Those credits are then transferred into the European account, and the fraudsters collect tax on that transaction, but the monies are never paid to any European tax agencies.

The bogus trading account is then shut down before tax authorities can collect.

To prevent further losses, governments in France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and most recently Spain have all changed their taxation rules on the transactions. Trading activity from the aforementioned countries has declined by as much as 90 per cent as a result, Europol said.

Police agencies throughout Europe are currently collaborating to uncover specific fraudulent trades, and there are reasons to believe that fraudsters might soon migrate toward the gas and electricity branches of the energy sector, Europol said.

The EU carbon trading market is estimated to be worth nearly $140 billion a year, and 12,000 emitters have purchased more than two billion EUAs thus far. The Emission Trading System is one of six recognized European carbon trading markets

[Guest woxof]

Now some people don't like me saying "the lefties hijacking a subject in order to force through their social engineering projects."

So instead, in my daily article, I will post a link. It basically says what a lot of people of a certain far end of a certain political spectrum have shifted this whole man-made global warming idea into.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinio...article1395002/

Their real reasons, that strangely enough, the whole rest of the side of one political spectrum appears to have either bought into or been willing to align themselves with.

Copenhagen climate rage: Who's the villain?

It's no surprise that accusations of ‘carbon colonialism' are filling the air in Denmark

What exactly is the purpose of Copenhagen?

For Western countries, it's to hammer out a unified response to the global threat of climate change. But for poorer countries, environmental groups and other activists, the purpose is quite different. It's to extract huge sums of money from the capitalist West, as soon as possible. They've made their bottom line clear: No money, no deal.

Developing countries say they're owed massive amounts of money as compensation for the climate crisis. After all, it's the First World that created it, but they're the ones paying the price. “Millions of people are suffering from the effects of a problem to which they did not contribute,” said Angelica Navarro, Bolivia's chief climate negotiator, who described how melting glaciers are threatening the water supply.

This line of argument marks a “dramatic shift” in climate activism, says Naomi Klein, a big star in Copenhagen. She's right. Her recent article in Rolling Stone, Climate Rage, is a must-read guide to the climate summit. The argument that the West owes the Rest a “climate debt” has now been firmly embraced by the West. The only question is how much.

Even Stephen Harper has signed on to a $10-billion-a-year climate fund. Sounds nice. But that amount “would not buy developing countries' citizens enough coffins,” said Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, the Sudanese chief negotiator for a coalition of poor countries. The European Union says the fund should grow to $150-billion by 2020. But China says $400-billion a year would be more like it.

In some ways, a climate fund seems only fair. But no one knows how the money would be raised, who should oversee the spending, or even what it's really for. Western governments presumably would like it spent on helping poorer countries adjust to climate change and reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. But the poorer countries have no intention of reducing emissions. Instead, they want the rich ones to make steep cuts while they “catch up.” That's essentially what the big flap over the leaked draft memo was about. In a nutshell: It's their turn.

It's no surprise that accusations of “carbon colonialism” are filling the air in Denmark. Ms. Klein says the concept of “climate debt,” also known as “reparations,” is a direct steal from the left-wing argument that Western powers owe a vaguely defined “economical debt” to poor countries for centuries of colonial land grabs and resource extraction. But climate debt is better, because you can actually measure carbon dioxide. As she puts it, the United States owes the world's poor for “200 years of over-emissions.”

If you're wondering whether all these billions are likely to be spent wisely – given the history of foreign aid to governments not always known for their competence, transparency or honesty – then you're not alone. But that's not the point. The point is that the West (capitalism) is to blame for every natural disaster in the world, all of which are now presumed to have been caused by global warming, which is presumed to have been caused by us. Feeling guilty yet? Here's Sharon Looremeta, an advocate for Kenya's Masai, who've lost millions of cattle to drought in recent years. “The Masai community does not drive 4x4s or fly off on holidays in airplanes. We have not caused climate change, yet we are the ones suffering. This is an injustice and should be stopped right now.”

It was the West that invented airplanes, too. Bad us. The trouble with energy consumption is that it is inextricably linked with prosperity, productivity and progress – even in righteous Denmark, which oozes green but remains highly tied to fossil fuels. Canada emits far more greenhouse gases than Kenya because we are far more prosperous and successful. And so – no matter how carbon virtuous we are – we're doomed to be cast as global greenhouse villains.

And if that sounds like the familiar old morality of socialism, it is.

Woxof...what would you do without me?

[Guest woxof]

Obama will be at the conference on Friday, so I guess he arrives Thursday. BBC weather forecasting quite windy and a low temperature of -9°C. Record low for December in CPH....-11°. I have a winter parka, with big boots and mitts for any world leader who is interested.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/forecast/35

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/city_gu...tml?tt=TT003490

Maybe they can warm themselves up by reading this article posted below by the fireside. It was about a debate between Elizabeth May and George Monbiot versus two so-called skeptics. Guess what...all kinds of misinformation from the May side and she had to have her microphone turned off because she wouldn't shut up. Oh yeah...she linked climate change to AIDS.

One has to ask why there are more and more skeptics?

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/column...c2610a0cd47&p=1

Skeptics score a win against alarmists

"On Tuesday night about 1,100 people participated in a sold-out global warming debate that, in the end, turned downtown Toronto's new concert hall at the Royal Conservatory of Music into a microcosm of a larger tranformation that is sweeping the world. The debate pitted two well known global warming activists of international repute against two well-known skeptics. The skeptics won, shifting the audience's support away from the drastic global warming action demanded by activists and toward the moderate reponse of the skeptics, a move that is rapidly becoming a trend everywhere. If global warming is a problem -- and many have growing doubts about that -- it is not a crisis that warrants draconian policy intervention in Copenhagen or anywhere else.

In polls and in science debates, in political discourse and in the buildup to Copenhagen, the foundations of support for global warming action are in decline. A new Harris Poll yesterday found a big drop, from 71% to 51%, in Americans who believe that the release of carbon dioxide and other gases will lead to global warming. While many people are not sure, those who do not believe that carbon dioxide emissions will cause global warming have increased from 23% to 29% since 2007.

Australia is in political turmoil over carbon emissions policy. In the United Kingdom, the leading scientist charged with assembling temperature data has resigned pending an investigation. The recent leak of emails from Britain's Climate Research Unit, at the University of East Anglia, where the words "trick" and "hide the decline" are found, is gradually snowballing from being a skeptical bloggers' dream event into a mainstream political scandal. From Daily Show host Jon Stewart to Canadian Environment Minister Jim Prentice, there is a sense that all is not right with the global warming file. "I take from what's happened at the East Anglia institution is that there were some serious allegations of impropriety and some serious questions about the quality of the scientific work that was done there," said Mr. Prentice yesterday.

At the Munk Debate in Toronto Tuesday night, the email scandal was barely mentioned and so had little direct impact on the results. Before the debate, the 1,100 people in the audience cast ballots, with 61% supporting the resolution that "climate change is mankind's defining crisis and demands a commensurate response." At the end of the debate, support had fallen to 53%.

Had the email exchange among leading scientists been explored, the outcome might have been even more significant decline in support for extreme climate action. Support might have collapsed completely had there been a way to have a fact checker interrupt the debate to review the various clashes over science and the statistics.

On the activist side were two leading climate activists, Canadian Green Party Leader Elizabeth May and British author and columnist George Monbiot. The miracle is that these two grandstanding professional agitators held on to as much of the audience as they did after two hours of cheap theatrical tricks, ad hominem attacks, dubious science claims and frequent dips into Stephen Lewis's tear-filled pool of emotive personal anecdotes of poverty and disease. They rarely got the science or the economics right.

Trying to bring rational argument to all this were Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool it: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide To Global Warming, and Lord Nigel Lawson, Margaret Thatcher's former finance minister and also the author of An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming. They stuck to their core arguments and, for the most part, successfully defended their positions against exaggerated claims and counter arguments that were questionable or just plain wrong.

Too bad the audience had no way of knowing what was fact and fiction. A fact-checking referee would have helped verify Mr. Monbiot's and Ms. May's frequent stretches and exaggerations.

Peer reviewed economics: Mr. Lawson, for example, got into a slugging match with Mr. Monbiot over a British economic report, the Stern Review, which claimed that climate change would bring massive economic decline. The report, said Mr. Lawson, was politicially generated rubbish that had never been peer reviewed and had been dismissed by all serious economists. Mr. Monbiot then introduced the preposterous idea that while the Stern Review had not been peer reviewed, it was itself a summary of a lot of other peer reviewed papers, and therefore was above reproach, an "uber-peer reviewed" report.

Global water stress: The Lomborg argument is that while global warming is a real global issue, it is not one that should be allowed to divert attention and money away from more pressing and real crises. Mr. Monbiot claimed global warming would only make the plight of the world's poor all the worse. He said -- citing official United Nation's science reports -- that 2.3 billion people would be subject to new "water stress" as warming advanced, meaning they would not have access to minimum quantities of water. Mr. Monbiot reacted vehemently when Mr. Lomborg said the opposite was true -- that studies showed that global warming would also relieve water stress on 3.3 billion people.

The audience had no way of knowing that Mr. Lomborg was right. The official UN report says that "using the per capita water availability indicator, climate change would appear to reduce global water stress." The research paper supporting that finding shows, for example, that while as many as 2 billion people might experience more water stress by 2050, as many as 4.3 billion will experience reduced water stress.

Food production: The audience also had no way of knowing that Mr. Monbiot was also wrong when he clashed with Mr. Lawson over the theoretical impact of global warming on food production. Mr. Lawson said the UN reports that food production would increase if the global temperature rose by 3 degrees Celsius. Mr. Monbiot disputed the number, claiming that the world food production would begin a "net decline" if the temperature rose above 3 degrees. The actual report is far from categorical, although the general conclusion is that climate change is not a major driver of food production (relative to technology and economic and social factors).

The audience did see through Ms. May's antics. Many groaned when she tried to link climate change with AIDS in Africa. At one point the moderator, Rudyard Griffiths, had to cut Ms. May's sound off when she would not stop one of her many attacks on Mr. Lomborg, who is obviously still a thorn in the sides of green activists. For a while, it looked like Ms. May was going to do a page-by-page assault on Mr. Lomborg's books, which she had piled up on a nearby table along with other material.

The declining alarmist case hit bottom in the dying minutes when Mr. Monbiot, in Stephen Lewis mode, brought in a personal story that linked climate change with the slaughter of 96 people in Kenya (see Mr. Monbiot's closing statement elsewhere on this page). Nobody groaned.

The debate, on the whole, was a conceptual and disjointed mess, as are most global warming debates. Which may be why the activists lost the Munk event and are losing the global event.

[Guest woxof]

The discourse, and the statement above, are wholly ironic. Those "Lefties" actually are hoping they "lose". Are the "Neocons" hoping they "win", and what is the prize if they do?

Hmmm.....what is the prize if the "neo-cons" win.

Looks like a very bleak future if I sense the hint in your last post correctly.

My own sense...life will just go on.

[Mitch Cronin]

Woxof, do you have any children?

[Lakelad]

Obama will be at the conference on Friday,....

Should be an interesting speech given his previous utterances vs the mounting gale of skepticism. Oh well, always entertaining to watch him dance.

"It is also why the world must come together to confront climate change. There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, famine and mass displacement that will fuel more conflict for decades. For this reason, it is not merely scientists and activists who call for swift and forceful action -- it is military leaders in my country and others who understand that our common security hangs in the balance."

[Guest woxof]

The capitalist view of the world justifies the use of raw materials for manufacture and profit without consideration for the effects on change. The notion of "pollution" arose only when we began to "see" that people couldn't swim at some beaches and couldn't drink some water.

We do not know if we are collectively facing a choice of mere corporate profit numbers being stolen by evil socialists, or whether we, like many mass extinctions before us, face the same circumstances at some point in someone else's future.

Nobody can "win" the present Climate Change argument. There is no failure like success. That is the issue, not Copenhagen, Obama's contribution, yours or mine. In the meantime, the internet and media make lemmings of us all.

If I remember correctly, it is not only the evil capitalists that have been polluting as the legacy of communism in eastern Europe shows.

Mass extinction seems quite unlikely to me as one of the choices we are facing. Personally, I think the internet especially and the mass media allows a vast wealth of knowledge to be presented to us. One just has to use common senseas an appropriate filter and then come to logical conclusions(which may include no conclusion).

Woxof, do you have any children?

As for children, I am curious why I would be asked. I hope it is not to hint that only a person who has children can care about the future? If I do have children, yet I am a skeptic, then am I guilty of the equivelent of abusing my own children or others, as an English Bishop accused me of doing(see link).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/206...f-Stafford.html

Please tell us why you would ask such a question in a global warming thread.

[FireFox]

National Post - The Gas of Life

Western carbon dioxide emissions increase plant yields in the Third World. So why are they asking for reparations?

By Lawrence Solomon

At Copenhagen, Third World countries are demanding hundreds of billions of dollars in reparations from the West for the consequences of the West’s fossil fuel burning, among them droughts and crop failures.

Third World countries have it backwards. The West’s CO2 emissions have been increasing crop yields while helping to ease the Third World’s water shortages. Rather than plead for reparations, Third World governments should offer a paean to Providence.

The bureaucrats at Copenhagen dread high CO2 levels. The biosphere craves them. Plants evolved when CO2 levels in the atmosphere stood at a healthy 1000 parts per million, two-to-three times today’s paltry level of about 380 parts per million. Plants crave CO2 so much that commercial greenhouse operators often enrich greenhouse air with CO2 — also known as nature’s fertilizer — to levels of 1500 parts per million, or four times that of our current atmosphere.

Since humans began adding CO2 to the planet’s atmosphere, taking plants off their starvation rations by creating a planet-wide greenhouse, plants have thrived. Data from NASA satellites, which since the early 1980s have been tracking the amount of biota on Earth, vividly demonstrate the results. As CO2 emissions grew in leaps and bounds, so did plants — the data shows planet Earth is now greener than when those satellite measurements began.

Growth in greenery varies from country to country, and within countries, because climatic factors are so many and so varied, but the overall trend is clear, and especially in the Third World. The Indian subcontinent, the Amazon, the tropical countries generally, all show marked improvement, with studies pointing to improvements in carbon dioxide levels as an important factor.

China, which includes some of the most resource-stretched regions on the planet, provides the most dramatic demonstration of the boon in biota. As shown in a 2007 analysis by academics at the country’s prestigious Beijing Normal University, China’s plant growth increased by an astounding 24 % over the 18-year period studied, 1982 to 1999. The Chinese analysis, which like many others was based on satellite data, notes that China’s resource-constrained regions sometimes did particularly well. In water-constrained Northwest China, for example, plant growth increased by 29%. In Northeast China and the Tibetan Plateau, where temperatures ordinarily place severe limits on vegetation, plant growth increased by 30%. South China and East China, where sunlight is a limiting factor, saw plant growth increase by a still-impressive 19%. Changes in CO2 during those 18 years correlated well with the changes in vegetation.

That plants love CO2 comes as no surprise — CO2 is not only their food, it is a gas to which they are superbly adapted. When the air is rich in CO2, plants don’t need to work as hard to breathe it in, letting them reduce the number of stomata, or air pores, on the surfaces of their leaves. Fewer pores means the plants breathe out less water vapour, letting them conserve moisture and better survive droughts. CO2 also helps plants survive droughts and other adverse conditions by extending their root systems, allowing them to collect minerals and moisture from afar. Through other mechanisms, CO2 protects plants against insect infestations, soil salinity and other environmental threats.

This gas — also known as the gas of life — is healthful and helpful to humans, too. CO2 not only boosts agricultural yields, it boosts the antioxidant and vitamin content in plants, as well as their essential minerals. Also importantly, CO2 helps make hospitable marginal areas of the world that would otherwise be inhospitable.

Industrialization in the West, along with the fossil fuel burning that it has entailed, has been a win for the West and a win for the world, including the Third World. The colourless, odourless, tasteless gas called CO2 is indispensable to life and, because China and India are certain to rapidly increase their CO2 emissions, the world will soon be getting more of it. They say you can have too much of a good thing. With CO2, the science tells us, the planet is far, far away from reaching its cornucopia potential.

[Mitch Cronin]

Please tell us why you would ask such a question in a global warming thread.

I ask because I think the answer speaks to your interests. If one has children I think they're necessarily more interested in the quality of world he/she leaves behind. That certainly doesn't say that one who doesn't have children would necessarily not care, but I think he/she is less likely to, because he has less reason to.

Do you have children?

[Guest woxof]

Do you have children?

Maybe yes, maybe no.

I must say that it is fascinating when the people supportive of the man-made global warming theory ask whether I have children(and if I don't, then I care less about the future), that I am the equivelent of a child abuser, a luddite according to Gordon Brown and so many other insults. For those on the sidelines and not sure what to believe, please keep this in mind as I continually post my reasonable articles.

[Mitch Cronin]

Maybe yes, maybe no.

I must say that it is fascinating when the people supportive of the man-made global warming theory ask whether I have children(and if I don't, then I care less about the future), that I am the equivelent of a child abuser, a luddite according to Gordon Brown and so many other insults. For those on the sidelines and not sure what to believe, please keep this in mind as I continually post my reasonable articles.

[Guest woxof]

Now you can see the type of responses that are quite typical to the arguments I have made. However, I will continue with my reasoned posts. To the younger generation, I say...never let the bullies or insults or mocking win against logic, reason and principle.

Woxof...standing tall in the face of adversity.

[Seeker]

Western carbon dioxide emissions increase plant yields in the Third World. So why are they asking for reparations?

See?

Everything is more complicated than it seems.

[Moon The Loon]

See?

Everything is more complicated than it seems.

Been saying that for years. Here!

Trouble is, science isn't just a series of sound bites. Bigger trouble is, many in the world can't digest anything more than a sound bite when it comes to science. Get a few good, charismatic ring leaders, and you can make the masses believe anything you want, and stir up their activism at the same time.

One of the many forms of fear mongering.

[Mitch Cronin]

Now you can see the type of responses that are quite typical to the arguments I have made. However, I will continue with my reasoned posts. To the younger generation, I say...never let the bullies or insults or mocking win against logic, reason and principle.

Woxof...standing tall in the face of adversity.

Woxof, you're something of a practicing propagandist, aren't you? I asked you a question, with no intent to insult. You chose, not only to not answer me - "maybe yes, maybe no" -, but you instead spoke to an imagined audience, attempting to muster their support behind you, by spewing nonsense about what you MISread in my question. Need I remind you it wasn't long ago that you and I agreed to be civil to one another? I disagree with Don on this one point, I see insult in your propagandizing.

You portray me as a bully without conscience, without reason, without logic and without principle? How? Because of what you IMAGINED was between the lines in my question?

Let's have a look at your answer to my question:

Maybe yes, maybe no.

I must say that it is fascinating when the people supportive of the man-made global warming theory ask whether I have children(and if I don't, then I care less about the future), that I am the equivelent of a child abuser, a luddite according to Gordon Brown and so many other insults. For those on the sidelines and not sure what to believe, please keep this in mind as I continually post my reasonable articles.

...and earlier:

As for children, I am curious why I would be asked. I hope it is not to hint that only a person who has children can care about the future? If I do have children, yet I am a skeptic, then am I guilty of the equivelent of abusing my own children or others, as an English Bishop accused me of doing(see link).

Firstly, can you see what you've done? You assumed I accused you of that. Not once did I breathe any hint that I might think anything like that of you, much less accuse you of it, yet you assumed it and carried on speaking to your imagined gang of followers -- who, by the way, are just as likely to be either sitting back and shaking their heads, or laughing their asses off and wondering if they should encourage you some more. (some people are terrificly amused watching others get excited)--... as though it were all true.

I'm trying to help you here Woxof. There's a reason you keep running into trouble here... You're reading things into what is actually written, and forming your opinions of those authors and their motives, based on those erroneous assumptions.

Know that MOST people won't be describing their true thoughts very accurately... We do have the very good fortune to have a few here who are really good at it, but writing clearly doesn't come easy to most us. So give people the benefit of doubt and ask them to articulate their thoughts a little better before tossing them in all those nasty little cubby-holes you seem to keep so handy.

...and for goodness sakes, how many times do I have to tell you I am no more "supportive" of anthropogenic global warming theory than I am of any theory to the contrary? I DON'T KNOW ! Do you hear that Woxof? I don't know. So I read, and listen, and wait for those who can know, to find out for the rest of us.

Cheers,

...have a good day... think about what I've said... (and I'm certain that English Bishop would know full well that he cannot know you well enough to accuse you of anything at all)