The Greening of America

Environmentalists have used "greening" as a proxy for the process of improving our environment ... but what is happening ... have you noticed? ... is there seems to be a real increase in the verdant vegetation in our fields and forests. In his famous discourse on global warming, Princeton Professor of Physics Emeritus, Freeman Dyson, said that the world's vegetation has been long living on a "starvation diet of carbon dioxide". This meager diet of CO2 in our atmosphere got as low as 36 parts per million (that's 0.0036%) at its low. Now it is closer to 0.004% and one can almost here our shrubs and trees licking their lips and burping.

Not that this current level is a bacchanalian feast because hundreds of million years ago (the Carboniferous Period) CO2 got as high as 0.04% (400 parts per million). Even nurserymen today pump equivalent or higher levels of CO2 into their greenhouses to enhance the plant growth there. So we see, boys and girls, that our Industrial Age can be viewed as a great benefit to our plants as we are clearly helping them grow and stay healthy. Our plants are gobbling up the carbon dioxide we are producing almost as fast as we can pump it out ... possibly why Al Gore's bugaboo "global warming" has defied the computer models of 97% of our environmental scientists. They seem to have forgotten about ol'  Mother Earth's feedback mechanisms.

Perhaps our environmentalists might wake up soon and start loving CO2, like I do, for all the good that it does in "the greening of America."

Semantics

There has been a subtle shift in the semantics being used by Obummer and John Kerry when crowing about the squishy results of the Paris Climate Accord. Instead of talking about reductions of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, they are now taking about targeted reductions in "carbon." Now this seems like a trivial difference but it truly isn't. Smoke is comprised mainly of unoxidized carbon and its reduction is a good thing ... with which most civilized people can agree. Whereas CO2 is the source of all life on Earth ... and its reduction is not necessarily a good thing. During the Carboniferous Period (360-300 million years ago) CO2 was 10 times higher than it is today, yet the Earth survived well ... thank you very much.

In fact this 60 million year period in our planet's formation is when most of the oil, coal and natural gas was laid down underground. Ponder on this for a moment. All the lush vegetation that was growing in this CO2-rich environment is the source of most all of the fossil fuels that we use today. 60 million years is 20 times longer than when the earliest man appeared on Earth and 30,000 times longer than the period of time since the birth of Christ. That's a good long time with a whole lot of vegetative growth ... and thus a whole lot of fossil fuels ... much more than I suspect we currently estimate. Yes, some day we will run out... but this is many lifetimes away ... and I believe that our sources of energy then will not be wind ... maybe sunshine ... but more likely safe fission and fusion.

So our administration's purposeful obfuscation of the term "carbon" to imply both smoke and CO2 is disingenuous and purposefully confusing. ... an attempt to lead the uninformed to its way of thinking. How very semantically Orwellian!

See also: Power Line Blog.

Damn!

Here follows a series of on-the-street interviews with the yo-yos marching at the climate protests in New York City this past weekend ... see: Powerline Blog ... watch the video ... it's priceless!. I say "damn" because I would have loved to have this interviewer ask the following question, "What percent of our Earth's atmosphere now is carbon dioxide?" I am certain that the answers would reflect the hysteria that these useful idiots are experiencing. I sincerely believe that most of them would have suggested well over 10% ,.. but nothing like 1%. However, you who read this blog religiously would know that the actual number is much less than 1/10 of 1%. In fact the actual number is 0.04% (see: Wilipedia Entry) ... and this fraction has only grown by 0.0065 percentage points over the last 34 years (see: Answers' Answer)! 300 million years ago (during the Carboniferous Period) carbon dioxide was over ten times as prevalent as it is today ... yet the world survived then very nicely thank you.

I might have even had this interviewer instead ask the question as to what the percentage of carbon monoxide is in our atmosphere ... as I am also reasonably sure that most of these self-defined saviours of our planet would not know the difference. The term "useful idiots" was well chosen by Lenin.

Good Carbon Dioxide

Maybe it’s my imagination but I seem to discern that trees and other vegetation are particularly lush this year.  Yes, here in Boston, we have had lots of rain, but could it also be that the flora here is feasting on our elevated levels of CO2?  In case you are not up on paleontology, during the Carboniferous Period (280-340 million years ago), CO2 levels were about ten times higher than what they are now. This is when plant life was oversized and rampant and when most of the coal, natural gas and petroleum was squished away underground for our current use.  Of course, this then presaged the gigantic plant-eating dinosaurs which then presaged the carnivorous dinosaurs which ate the plant-eaters.

As opposed to the teachings of the Cult of the Global-Warmers and the Environmental Protection Agency, CO2 is a good gas … not a pollutant.  It is a plant food and absolutely essential for floral life … even though it represents well less than 0.04% of our atmosphere (see: MI Stupid Site).  Are you surprised by such a small number?  If you ask the average person on the street for this percentage, I’m certain you will get a number hundreds of times larger (I know because I’ve done it.)

So why is there such global angst over a very small increase in this beneficial aerosol?  I think that we humans are rightfully concerned about our environment … and yet have very little understanding of how it works.  Therefore, we are easily panicked by self-serving charlatans and equally-ignorant politicians who take advantage of this anxiety. Interestingly the Chinese seems to have taken a much more pragmatic attitude toward this so-called impending global disaster … see: Powerline Blog and note many of the provocative queries therein

So, CO2 feeds all the world’s plants, makes our bread rise, and adds sparkle to our soft drinks and champagne.  It is not poisonous (that is carbon monoxide, CO) and is in much higher concentrations in our globe’s southern hemisphere (where it is getting colder) than in the northern hemisphere (where it might be getting slightly warmer).  This is not only counter-intuitive … but I think proves that there are many other things affecting our world’s climate than the callously castigated CO2.