The war on the use of available energy (coal, oil, and natural gas) not only continues, it received a huge boost at the recent United Nations Climate Summit in Paris.
The doomsayers who gathered in the “City of Light” decided that the world must be saved from certain calamity by markedly reducing the amount of carbon dioxide put into the air by burning fossil fuels. But the carbon dioxide resulting from such fuel burning happens to be well known among competent scientists as the “gas of life.” Simply stated, plants eat carbon dioxide. The more that’s available, the healthier and larger will be the trees and plants that humanity uses for food, building, and more.
Several years ago, scientists at the U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory in Arizona conducted a remarkable experiment. They planted small orange trees side by side with each tree enveloped in a clear plastic container whose top was left open. Half of the trees were supplied with ambient air and the other half received air enriched with an additional 300 parts per million of carbon dioxide. After four and a half years, the trees enriched with carbon dioxide grew three times larger — both above and below ground — than those exposed only to ambient air. Also, the trees receiving the carbon dioxide produced ten times more fruit than the nearby trees that didn’t receive the added carbon dioxide.
An experiment like that has undoubtedly been duplicated elsewhere. It demonstrates carbon dioxide’s value, not its supposed harm. But what the Arizona scientists showed was politically incorrect. Some even feared that publicizing the results of their work could lead to cancellation of their funding by the government. No one is supposed to conduct experiments that contradict politically correct conclusions.
Increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is blamed for melting polar ice, rising sea levels, droughts, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and more. But fluctuations in the Earth’s temperature have been occurring regularly for as long as records have been kept. As for the claimed weather anomalies, they too have occurred before coal, oil, and natural gas heated our homes and ran our industries.
The war on carbon dioxide amounts to a war on productivity, even a war on life itself. And there are plenty of scientists who have taken a stand against the scientific fright-peddlers and the hordes of agenda-promoting politicians. As recently as 2014, Dr. Art Robinson, the co-founder of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, obtained 31,000 signatures from American scientists on his Global Warming Petition Project. It stated in part, “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” If you have never heard of this petition, its political incorrectness is the reason.
Who promotes the fears about climate change? From 2008 to 2015, Dr. Ottmar Edenhofer chaired a prestigious United Nations panel dealing with the topic. He stated his goal in promoting fears about carbon dioxide: “We redistribute the world’s wealth by climate policy.” Separately, UN official Christiana Figueres said that the real goal of the claims about climate change was “a complete transformation of the economic structure of the world.” These individuals are not alone.
The truth is that carbon dioxide is a blessing and the claims of global warming and climate change alarmists amount to dangerous politically motivated hokum.
The New American, a JBS affiliate, sent a team over to the UN Paris Climate Conference. The January 4, 2016, issue offers their findings. Either download or order physical copies today of “UN Climate Summit: Shackling the Planet to ‘Save’ It.” Learn more about the climate agreement that will affect every American, and what you can do about it.
John F. McManus is president emeritus of The John Birch Society. This column appeared originally at the insideJBS blog and is reprinted here with permission.
