The Basic Science Of Carbon

A protest against carbon/CO2 cap and trade or tax proposals. This summary is being sent to politicians, media outlets, scientists, and others across the world. It is a protest against the madness of anti-carbon thought and policies.

By Wendell Krossa Apr 18, 2009

Editor's Note: As you can see I published Wendell's commentary 13 years ago, and now with the SCOTUS ruling curtailing the EPA's blatantly unconstitutional rule making, it seems more appropriate than ever to republish it. RK

The Basic Science of Carbon/CO2: a brief summary (Why are we trying to limit- cap and trade, tax- the basis of all life?)

All life is built from carbon. All life depends on carbon for its existence and functioning. “All living things, starting at the cellular level which is common to all life, is based on carbon compounds, including the DNA that carry the gene sequences of the genetic codes. Of the trillions of cells in the human body, there is not one of them that is not made of carbon.”   

 

We subsist almost entirely on carbon dioxide. “The food used by all living things, to grow and to live, is carbon dioxide…food is carbon dioxide…the food of all plants and animals is carbon dioxide”.   Everything is made of carbon and fueled by carbon. All things need carbon to grow and reproduce.

 
There is only one source of carbon for all life- CO2 in the atmosphere. Plants absorb CO2 from the atmosphere (“they consume almost entirely carbon dioxide for food”- www.bydesign.com) and process it into carbohydrates for the animal kingdom. We get our food from this chain of CO2/carbon processing. “The only gateway through which carbon can enter the food chain to enable the biosphere to exist is through the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. There is no other way. It all starts with CO2 in the atmosphere. The entire chain of life starts with plants absorbing this entirely natural, colorless, odorless, absolutely non-toxic aerial gas called CO2…more than 90 % of the dry matter of plants is simply processed CO2. Whether it is a cow eating grass or humans eating cows, all are eating- and being fuelled- by processed CO2” (Brinsmead, The Vindication of Carbon).

Recent levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have been unprecedented and dangerously low. Plant growth shuts down at 200 ppm (parts per million in the atmosphere). Plant life is stressed and unhealthy at such low levels. Life evolved over the past 500 million years at levels of CO2 that were on average a more healthy 1500 ppm (see paleo-climate graphs at sites such as Geocraft.com). A dangerous upper limit of CO2 in the atmosphere would be from 5,000 to 10,000 ppm. We are in no danger of approaching these high levels. Our atmosphere is currently “CO2 deprived”.

Plants and crops are healthier at higher levels of CO2 than are currently present in our atmosphere (now 386 ppm). They produce significantly more biomass, and are able to cope better with such natural vagaries as drought, heat, and cold. “More CO2 makes plants more resistant to extreme weather conditions…and this expands the habitat of many plants…and enhances agricultural productivity…and helps tropical rainforests”. Animals also survive better with more plant life. The small increase in CO2 over the past century has significantly greened the earth and this has increased populations in the animal kingdom. It has also enhanced the impacts of the Green Revolution with notably increased crop production which has helped to feed the poor.

Higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are more normal and natural.

 

Current world average temperatures are also abnormally low. Higher temperatures on an ice-free earth (a warmer earth) are more normal and natural (see paleo-climate graphs at Geocraft.com). We are in one of earth’s infrequent and abnormally cold ice-age eras (the past two million years). A warmer earth would be better for all life.

CO2 is not a pollutant but is a rare gas (1 molecule to every 3,000 molecules of the atmosphere) that is the essential food of all life. “All plants and animals are growing and living on a rare gas”. And while there are other potential pollutants associated with fossil fuel use, CO2 and carbon are not among them.

CO2 does not cause dangerous global warming. Rising levels of CO2 follow warming periods and do not precede or cause warming periods. CO2 does not cause dangerous global warming. Rising levels of CO2 follow warming periods and do not precede or cause warming periods.

CO2 does not cause dangerous global warming. Rising levels of CO2 follow warming periods and do not precede or cause warming periods. See the Vostok Ice Core research. Oceans, which hold 90 times the CO2 that is in the atmosphere, release CO2 as they warm and this increases atmospheric CO2 levels. The CO2 increases tend to lag behind warming periods by about 800 years.

Oceans, which hold 90 times the CO2 that is in the atmosphere, release CO2 as they warm and this increases atmospheric CO2 levels. The CO2 increases tend to lag behind warming periods by about 800 years.

CO2 is a tiny part of the greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect.

 
The warming effect of CO2 gets lost among other much larger natural climate drivers. Human emissions of CO2 are even tinier (1 part per 100,000 parts of the atmosphere) and a human fingerprint causing warming is even more lost among natural influences. The human contribution to climate warming, if it were statistically detectable, would amount to nothing more than “a fart in a hurricane”. Natural climate drivers with strong, clear correlations to warming/cooling periods include cosmic rays (see Henrik Svensmark’s The Chilling Stars), solar flare cycles, related cloud cover, ocean current decadal oscillations (changing current patterns), earth’s 100,000 year wobble, and others.

CO2 levels have been as high as 7,000 ppm in the past and no dangerous global warming occurred. During the Late Ordovician Period (some 400 million years ago) CO2 levels were 4,400 ppm and Earth was as cold as it is now. Note also that Earth has been cooling since 2002 despite the fact that CO2 emissions have been increasing. “There is no valid correlation between CO2 emissions and global warming”, concludes geophysicist Norm Kalmanovitch.

Therefore, there is no scientific reason for us to worry about contributing to increasing CO2 levels. We do not need to reduce our carbon footprint. We do not need to reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere or decarbonize our economies. As the 31,000 plus scientists who signed the the Protest Petition have stated, “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth”

To demonize carbon/CO2, as environmentalists have done, is to demonize life itself. This is ridiculous hysteria and entirely unscientific. The only way to fully understand this anti-carbon movement is to recognize that it is ideologically-driven extremism now gone utterly mad. Its real goal is to slow, halt, and even reverse economic growth and development and it uses carbon as a proxy to fight growth and the human enterprise. But the Green movement in demonizing carbon has become anti-green, anti-life, and anti-nature.

Wendell Krossa wkrossa@shaw.ca

 

World Forests

By Wendell Krossa
Intro: The rate of deforestation is decreasing (FAO). The rate of species loss is decreasing (UNEP). This is occurring while population and industrialization are increasing. Go figure, eh. Now why are the environmental alarmists telling us that overpopulation and industrialization are destroying nature?
Forest Facts

Total forest area on earth today is 4 billion hectares (46 million square kilometers out of 148 million total square kilometers of land on earth). This is 30.8% of the total land area on earth which is 13 billion hectares.

Interesting here is that the FAO notes that the rate of deforestation is decreasing.

This area of forest is the same as the total forest area in 1948 which was also 4.0 billion hectares. This area apparently dipped to 3.8 billion hectares in 1963, to 3.6billion hectares in 1980, and to 3.4 billion in the 1990s.

But the FAO Production Yearbooks show no significant decline of forest area from the 1960s to the 1990s (see graph of the history of forest cover in The Skeptical Environmentalist, Bjorn Lomberg, p.111). Gathering forest statistics has been notoriously difficult but the FAO provides the best rough estimates.

What these stats show is that forest cover on earth has remained fairly stable at about 30% of total land area over the past seven decades but it actually appears to be increasing now (46 million square kilometers today versus only 43 million square kilometers in the 1990s).

Note also that the world population in the 1940s was about 2.4 billion. It is 6.6 billion today. And industrialization has increased significantly with increasing population across the globe.

Several things stand out from these statistics. First, they undermine the basis of the alarmist’s argument that species are going extinct at increasing rates. This argument is based on the assumption that a certain number of species go extinct per area that is deforested. But this assumption is obviously wrong because there is no massive deforestation occurring and, correspondingly, species extinctions are not occurring anywhere near the rate that environmental alarmists claim (Paul Erhlich, for instance, states that some 70,000-130,000 species go extinct every year.)

However, the 1992 IUCN study found no species extinctions above the historical rate of 1.5 per year. Known extinctions have been about 675 over the past 400 years.

The environmental alarmists have been wrong on this issue because they ignore the research that shows species adapt well to secondary habitat (fragmented habitat) or they migrate to new areas. They also ignore the fact of reforestation and recovery of habitat (see “No convincing evidence for decline in tropical forests” by Simon Jenkins.)


Further, they ignore the fact that higher rates of CO2 in the atmosphere have led to a significant greening of the earth, with a 6.17% increase in Net Primary Production (NPP) which refers to world vegetative productivity (this particular increase was for the 1982-1999 period). This increase was especially notable in tropical trees (“Greening of the Earth- Summary”).

This increase in NPP may explain in part the decreasing rate of deforestation. It appears that with larger trees, more people on earth need to cut fewer trees to meet their needs. More efficient use of forest products also plays a role in reducing the need to cut trees.

To help understand the decreasing rate of extinctions in relation to the increase in NPP, I would point to research that shows that with increased CO2, plants survive better and species dependent on such plants therefore survive better also. As the Idso science team notes, “Higher atmospheric concentrations of CO2 make plants more heat tolerant, and less susceptible to extinction. If plants are better able to survive, then the animal species that depend directly or indirectly on these plants will also be better able to survive” (“The Specter of Species Extinction: Will Global Warming Decimate the Earth’s Biosphere?”, S.B. Idso, C.D. Idso, and K.E. Idso, quoted in The EKC literature provides empirical support for that claim.

Also helpful to understanding this situation re population, forests, and species is to note that improvements in GM crops, along with higher levels of CO2, have increased crop yields significantly (see research papers at co2science.org). This has led to higher crop yields on less land and this too has relieved pressure to cut more forests (“The historical increase in the air’s CO2 content has improved human nutrition by raising crop yields during the past 150 years on the order of 70% for wheat, 28% for cereals, 33% for fruits and melons, 62% for legumes, 67% for root and tuber crops, and 51% for vegetables” Climate Change Reconsidered, p.8). And, in fact, increasing agricultural yields have also resulted in the return of excess agricultural land back to nature (100 million acres of farmland were returned to nature in the US over the last century- see A Moment On The Earth by Greg Easterbrook).

These ongoing improvements in agriculture and increases in CO2 levels are vital to preserving natural areas. And contrary to the alarmist’s counter argument, we have not reached a plateau of diminishing returns in GM research. We are just getting started. The only plateau is that of reduced funding for GM research due to environmental opposition.

The sensible response to such information is to recognize that the human discovery of fossil fuels, and consequent emissions of CO2 (industrialization), has benefited all life. We have contributed significantly to the increase in NPP on earth (and particularly to increased crop yields) and this has ‘saved nature’- both plants and animals. Also, our advances in GM crop research have supported the trend toward using less land to grow more food. This too has helped save nature. We ought then to celebrate and support the human enterprise and industrialization, instead of wrongly demonizing it as a curse on nature.

These facts show that the human enterprise is not destroying nature.

Wendell Krossa wkrossa@shaw.ca
For more of Mr. Krossa's thoughts you may wish to log on to his site, The Human Spirit.

The Basic Science Of Carbon

A protest against carbon/CO2 cap and trade or tax proposals. This summary is being sent to politicians, media outlets, scientists, and others across the world. It is a protest against the madness of anti-carbon thought and policies.

By Wendell Krossa Apr 18, 2009

The Basic Science of Carbon/CO2: a brief summary (Why are we trying to limit- cap and trade, tax- the basis of all life?)

All life is built from carbon. All life depends on carbon for its existence and functioning. “All living things, starting at the cellular level which is common to all life, is based on carbon compounds, including the DNA that carry the gene sequences of the genetic codes. Of the trillions of cells in the human body, there is not one of them that is not made of carbon.”   

 

We subsist almost entirely on carbon dioxide. “The food used by all living things, to grow and to live, is carbon dioxide…food is carbon dioxide…the food of all plants and animals is carbon dioxide”.   Everything is made of carbon and fueled by carbon. All things need carbon to grow and reproduce.

 
There is only one source of carbon for all life- CO2 in the atmosphere. Plants absorb CO2 from the atmosphere (“they consume almost entirely carbon dioxide for food”- www.bydesign.com) and process it into carbohydrates for the animal kingdom. We get our food from this chain of CO2/carbon processing. “The only gateway through which carbon can enter the food chain to enable the biosphere to exist is through the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. There is no other way. It all starts with CO2 in the atmosphere. The entire chain of life starts with plants absorbing this entirely natural, colorless, odorless, absolutely non-toxic aerial gas called CO2…more than 90 % of the dry matter of plants is simply processed CO2. Whether it is a cow eating grass or humans eating cows, all are eating- and being fuelled- by processed CO2” (Brinsmead, The Vindication of Carbon).

Recent levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have been unprecedented and dangerously low. Plant growth shuts down at 200 ppm (parts per million in the atmosphere). Plant life is stressed and unhealthy at such low levels. Life evolved over the past 500 million years at levels of CO2 that were on average a more healthy 1500 ppm (see paleo-climate graphs at sites such as Geocraft.com). A dangerous upper limit of CO2 in the atmosphere would be from 5,000 to 10,000 ppm. We are in no danger of approaching these high levels. Our atmosphere is currently “CO2 deprived”.

Plants and crops are healthier at higher levels of CO2 than are currently present in our atmosphere (now 386 ppm). They produce significantly more biomass, and are able to cope better with such natural vagaries as drought, heat, and cold. “More CO2 makes plants more resistant to extreme weather conditions…and this expands the habitat of many plants…and enhances agricultural productivity…and helps tropical rainforests”. Animals also survive better with more plant life. The small increase in CO2 over the past century has significantly greened the earth and this has increased populations in the animal kingdom. It has also enhanced the impacts of the Green Revolution with notably increased crop production which has helped to feed the poor.

Higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are more normal and natural.

 

Current world average temperatures are also abnormally low. Higher temperatures on an ice-free earth (a warmer earth) are more normal and natural (see paleo-climate graphs at Geocraft.com). We are in one of earth’s infrequent and abnormally cold ice-age eras (the past two million years). A warmer earth would be better for all life.

CO2 is not a pollutant but is a rare gas (1 molecule to every 3,000 molecules of the atmosphere) that is the essential food of all life. “All plants and animals are growing and living on a rare gas”. And while there are other potential pollutants associated with fossil fuel use, CO2 and carbon are not among them.

CO2 does not cause dangerous global warming. Rising levels of CO2 follow warming periods and do not precede or cause warming periods. CO2 does not cause dangerous global warming. Rising levels of CO2 follow warming periods and do not precede or cause warming periods.

CO2 does not cause dangerous global warming. Rising levels of CO2 follow warming periods and do not precede or cause warming periods. See the Vostok Ice Core research. Oceans, which hold 90 times the CO2 that is in the atmosphere, release CO2 as they warm and this increases atmospheric CO2 levels. The CO2 increases tend to lag behind warming periods by about 800 years.

Oceans, which hold 90 times the CO2 that is in the atmosphere, release CO2 as they warm and this increases atmospheric CO2 levels. The CO2 increases tend to lag behind warming periods by about 800 years.

CO2 is a tiny part of the greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect.

 
The warming effect of CO2 gets lost among other much larger natural climate drivers. Human emissions of CO2 are even tinier (1 part per 100,000 parts of the atmosphere) and a human fingerprint causing warming is even more lost among natural influences. The human contribution to climate warming, if it were statistically detectable, would amount to nothing more than “a fart in a hurricane”. Natural climate drivers with strong, clear correlations to warming/cooling periods include cosmic rays (see Henrik Svensmark’s The Chilling Stars), solar flare cycles, related cloud cover, ocean current decadal oscillations (changing current patterns), earth’s 100,000 year wobble, and others.

CO2 levels have been as high as 7,000 ppm in the past and no dangerous global warming occurred. During the Late Ordovician Period (some 400 million years ago) CO2 levels were 4,400 ppm and Earth was as cold as it is now. Note also that Earth has been cooling since 2002 despite the fact that CO2 emissions have been increasing. “There is no valid correlation between CO2 emissions and global warming”, concludes geophysicist Norm Kalmanovitch.

Therefore, there is no scientific reason for us to worry about contributing to increasing CO2 levels. We do not need to reduce our carbon footprint. We do not need to reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere or decarbonize our economies. As the 31,000 plus scientists who signed the the Protest Petition have stated, “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth”

To demonize carbon/CO2, as environmentalists have done, is to demonize life itself. This is ridiculous hysteria and entirely unscientific. The only way to fully understand this anti-carbon movement is to recognize that it is ideologically-driven extremism now gone utterly mad. Its real goal is to slow, halt, and even reverse economic growth and development and it uses carbon as a proxy to fight growth and the human enterprise. But the Green movement in demonizing carbon has become anti-green, anti-life, and anti-nature.

Wendell Krossa wkrossa@shaw.ca

Get Your Story Right

By Wendell Krossa

(Note: A new extremist religion/ideology is taking hold in public consciousness across the world. This new religion has a grand myth or narrative with which it hopes to shape human consciousness and thereby enslave the human spirit. This religion exhibits many of the basic themes and drives of previous religious movements- an unchallengeable truth impervious to scientific fact, the demand for a strictly constrained and regulated lifestyle in accordance with the core beliefs, an orientation to fear as a basic motivation, and so on. The material below outlines some of the basic features of this new environmental religion and points to facts that counter its central themes.)

All of us inform our lives with stories and we live our lives as individual stories. Living a story is essential to what it means to be human. And various groups in our societies present us grander stories or narratives that powerfully influence our own personal adventures. Many of us live our lives in terms of some in-group story, whether it be religious, ideological, scientific or other.

Global warming alarmism is perhaps the most prominent public story being that is being embraced across the Earth today. While there has been some effort to place this story within the realm of science, at core it is just the latest version of the same old doom/salvation narratives held by our ancestors. Nonetheless, this story has successfully lodged itself in the public consciousness because it resonates with a number of widely accepted themes that have long been beaten into human consciousness. These would include:

Life and ecosystems are fragile (the “great planetary imperilment myth”, according to www.ecofascism.com ).

Life is heading for some soon-to-arrive calamity (this central apocalyptic theme with its related fear-mongering and despair has an especially long history in human story telling- see, for instance, Mircea Eliade’s History of Religious Ideas).

Human intervention in nature is mainly destructive (this is based on the belief that people are inherently bad) and therefore people need to be strictly regulated and constrained. They cannot be trusted. (This theme of pure nature as victim of evil humanity is perhaps one of the more central ideas to this great warming myth. Evil humanity is destroying pure and delicate nature which must be protected from such a greedy species). Life is static and unchanging, hence any change is evidence of decline and fragility. This distortion is most notable in pop ecology and its endless hysteria over any discovered changes in ecosystems.

Resources are scarce and life is stingy or strictly limited. Hence, severely curtailing consumption (which is essential to human progress) is the one and only way of salvation. Guilt and fear are the primary emotions that are manipulated here.

Various other related themes could be added here such as the primitive tribal view of ‘limited good’ which argues that because resources are limited if some take more than a “fair share” then others will suffer loss. Another theme supporting the alarmist climate warming story is plain old anti-capitalist ideology and the drive to halt economic growth. This anti-capitalist ideology fits well with the limited good or limited resources view of contemporary environmentalism. Many environmentalists view capitalism as built around what they believe to be the fallacy of unlimited resources and endless growth. They believe unfettered (free) capitalism will lead to the exhaustion of resources and breakdown of environmental systems. Wilfred Beckerman (A Poverty of Reason), Huber and Mills (Bottomless Well), and Julian Simon (Ultimate Resource), among others, all deal with this primitive and distorting view of limited resources.

Related to the concept of limits is the religious belief in the moral superiority of a low consumption lifestyle (Julian Simon, a rare voice on this issue, deals thoroughly with the importance of consumption and its benefits to all life in his book Ultimate Resource). This set of anti-economic development themes has coalesced in the crusade to enact centralized control and regulation to constrain and even stop economic growth, which makes it a crusade to halt human progress. The socialist element in this crusade is driven by the old collectivist urge to deny the value and freedom of the individual in favor of some greater good. Closely related to this anti-economic growth ideology is the pagan demonization of humanity along with the sacralization of nature as a greater good. In such nature worship, evil humanity is to be sacrificed on the altar of pure and pristine nature.

Julian Simon notes a variety of other elements in the outlook of the lead narrators of the alarmist story. He points to the arrogant debasement and dismissal of other human beings evident in the comments of leaders promoting the socialist/environmental tale. For instance, Paul Erhlich has said that giving people access to cheap, inexhaustible supplies of energy, “is like giving a machine gun to an idiot child” (Ultimate Resource, p.298). Another theologian of environmental apocalyptic, Garret Hardin, said, “People ask me- don’t you have faith in anything? And I always have the same answer…I have an unshakable faith in the unreliability of man” (p.299). Would he also categorize himself and his own views as unreliable?

And then there is the elitist selfishness of the people who want to conserve pristine nature for their own enjoyment to the exclusion of others. “When some famous conservationist tells us that there should be fewer people so that it is easier for him or her to find a deserted stretch of beach or mountain range or forest, she or he is simply saying…’I enjoy it, and I don’t want to share it’” (p.284). This call to save nature for me and my environmentally enlightened friends demands that others be eliminated. The obvious question that is begged here is who decides who should be removed so some may enjoy more untouched nature? Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said, “The human population is the AIDs of the earth…(and) should be cut by 85%”. The rest should return to a primitive lifestyle and only a very small percentage should be allowed to reproduce (“Send in the assmonkeys”, National Post, May 15/07). Would those 85% cut include him and his family? And would the tiny percentage allowed to reproduce include him and his wife?

Simon also notes the perverse orientation to death and destruction evident in the narration of leading environmentalists. Instead of focusing on things like planting and growth (human creativity, productivity, and inventiveness), environmentalists focus on destruction and death (the supposed loss of species and habitat, which has often been proven to have been based on false claims). While there are areas where loss and destruction are a genuine concern, too often the focus on relatively minor problem areas is extrapolated out to damn all human activity and engagement of nature. In this perverse view of human engagement of nature as harmful, harvesting of nature’s resources is not celebrated but damned as destructive. This is evident, for instance, in the environmental charge that using too much paper destroys forests. But people are not told that trees are planted and forests created in order to make paper. Or that only 5 percent of the world’s forests are required to meet humanity’s demands for wood and paper products (Bjorn Lomberg, The Skeptical Environmentalist, p.115).

With the dismal view of humanity and human activity as destructive is it any wonder that the environmental/socialist response is to advocate for the strict control and restraint of other people? This moralistic urge to tell others how to live their lives is based primarily on the moral and aesthetic preferences of the environmental extremists and not on any sound scientific reasoning. It is a primitive tribal urge to dominate and control others. It has no place in modern human society.

These basic themes and drives, along with others, shape the core of environmental mythology. And they distort the actual nature of life. But they have been effective in reinforcing the current global narrative of fear and despair. They affirm the basic outlook on life that is held by the narrators of this story, an outlook oriented to doom and destruction. To maintain this orientation to disaster the narrators of this story ignore the actual fundamental trends of life to focus too often on aberrations that confirm their addiction to despair (episodes of disease, disaster, and human fallibility).

Nonetheless, this story appeals to many people with its emphasis on looming disaster and promises of salvation. It stirs the urge to heroic action and sacrifice to save something.

But it is a pathological story that has inspired a severe case of denial and, at times, even lunacy among its advocates. The free private property economic system that people have devised over the past three centuries has produced a level of human well being that has never before been attained in the history of the world. Things have never before been so good. We are wealthier, healthier, we live longer with fewer diseases and disabilities, and we are cleaning up and improving our environments as never before. Yet these climate hysterians want to shut down this economic growth and insist on blaming it for all the ills still present in the world. Ills that should more correctly be blamed upon the excessive state interventionism that they advocate.

The promoters of this story of despair are perhaps the most dangerous people on earth. Their hysteria drives them to halt economic growth and development which will only endanger human life and progress as well as undermine our ability to protect the environment. For example, remember the anti-chemical hysteria stirred by Rachel Carson which led to the banning of DDT. That ban led to immeasurable human suffering and the unnecessary deaths of multiple millions of people in some of the poorest regions of the world (see DDT FAQ at JunkScience.com). It has significantly set back the development of regions like Africa.

Contrary to the environmental mythology, the actual story of life is rooted firmly and safely in the following facts:

Life is exceedingly durable and resilient. It possesses incredible self-buffering and self-regulating capacities such as protective and life-enhancing feedback mechanisms/loops. This is especially evident in relation to climate. The Earth has experienced repeated spells of cooling and warming over its history, going through climate changes more sudden and severe than those of today. Yet species have adapted to such changes and life has continued to thrive. Remember that polar bears have survived the repeated entire melting of Arctic ice.
Life has evidenced an amazing creative adaptability in progressing toward something better from the very beginning.

Intelligent human intervention has improved the state of nature and worked well to rescue it from its own dead ends (predation) and deformities (viral, natural disaster- see Craig Easterbrook’s A Moment on the Earth). This affirms the fundamental goodness of conscious humanity and humanity’s valuable contribution in bringing order to the randomness of nature (as Simon notes, we create more than we destroy).

Life has never known an original and static condition that can be called natural, but is ever-changing and often massively and rapidly.
Life encompasses a generous outpouring of energy and resources to be harvested and ‘wasted’ in creating more order, organization, and wealth (see Hard Green and Bottomless Well by Huber and Mills).

To properly comprehend the nature of life we need to look at the long term trends where we find no reason for fear or despair but rather much evidence for profound hope and optimism. Check the data sources listed at the end and see for yourself what the actual long term trends of life are about. And remember, it was the genius of researchers like Julian Simon to note the long term trends and not to focus on downturns, setbacks, and other aberrations to the fundamental trends of life.

For instance, Bjorn Lomberg gives the example of Professor David Pimentel of Cornell University who ignored the long term trend of improvement in treating tuberculosis and instead focused on a small reversal of this trend in the 1990s. Pimentel then tried to make the argument that TB was getting worse and extrapolated this out to a more general argument that all disease was getting worse (The Skeptical Environmentalist, p.21-26). Ignoring the long term trends to focus on aberrations will lead to such distorting conclusions about life and its fundamental features. This has been a repeated error of the climate hysterians.

The long term rise and progress of life is most evident in the history of humanity and the human engagement of life. Here we find millennia of evidence of creativity, adaptation, development, and progress in health, wealth, peace and order, and general living conditions. This is due to the fundamental human impulse to find and make something better. This basic human impulse has resulted in ongoing improvement to the state of the world. It is an impulse that operates best in a climate of freedom.

Julian Simon said that scares come and go. And it is entirely irresponsible and unscientific to react to each change in life (especially in climate) with schemes of massive government intervention and regulation. Policy choices that are enacted out of fear and that over-react with excessive regulation to prevent imagined catastrophes, such policy choices are detrimental to freedom and progress. History has shown that the state interventionist approach has been the most destructive response to human freedom and progress (note for instance, the devastating impact- on people and the environment- of last century’s grand experiment in socialist intervention and control).

We end up looking real silly when we blow our whole wad, for instance, on each shift in climate. And slowing economic growth will not stop the climate from changing anyway. It has been noted that if Kyoto were fully enacted the impact on climate would amount to a small fraction of one percent which is statistically insignificant and probably not even measurable. It would likely not slow climate change at all. Climate will continue to warm and cool as it has done repeatedly over Earth’s history (remember that just as recently the 1970s we were being warned of climate cooling disaster- that scare crusade was also fueled by an anti-capitalist or anti-industrial ideology).

Recent research now shows that since 1998 no further warming has occurred and this may signal the fact that we are already entering another cooling period (CCNet Dec.20/07). In response to these natural swings in climate it is wiser to promote further economic growth in order that our societies, with increasing wealth, may be able to better assist their populations in adapting to more climate change, whichever direction it takes.

But behind the proposed Salvationism of the global warming alarm story there exists the more fundamental assault on economic freedom and growth by people who want to control others and dictate to them how to live their lives. This drive to dominate is visible in the current widespread endeavor to regulate and constrain economic growth, and to redistribute wealth. It is just more of the same old socialist meddling that destroyed economies and environments across the earth in the last century.

I would suggest that this primitive drive to dominate and control others, to tell others how to live their lives, is one of the core drives behind the global warming alarmist narrative (and it is also behind contemporary Islamic extremist threats, as well as other forms of totalitarianism). It is a perverse drive of people who mistakenly believe that they have a final truth and want to convert all others who lack their level of enlightenment.

This drive to dominate and control assaults the most important human right of all- that of individual freedom. The right of individual freedom has been best stated in the libertarian ideal- that each person is free to live their life as they choose, as long as they grant the same freedom to all others.

Only individual freedom of this type can make a society truly human or humane. As Lanny Ebenstein said in his biography of Milton Friedman, “There is no good of society not found in the good of the individual, just as there is no society apart from the individuals who compose it. In Friedman’s, the libertarian, the classical liberal, and the utilitarian philosophies, all place the individual at the center of the universe and place the individual’s greatest good, happiness and freedom as the summum bonum or ultimate good” (p.141).

Ebenstein continues, noting that what motivated Friedman was his passion for individual human freedom. “Friedman’s philosophy, following the utilitarians, is individualism. ‘The heart of the liberal philosophy is a belief in the dignity of the individual’, Friedman writes. Friedman passionately believes that each individual has value. This is why he so strongly emphasizes human freedom. Only in a condition of freedom can each individual develop himself or herself to the fullest” (p.141). Where individual freedom is protected and promoted, there individuals reach their fullest potential. And this is the primary obligation of any state, to protect and promote individual freedom, not some collective good. When states forget the primacy of individual freedom and interfere to promote some imagined public welfare or greater good then individual freedom suffers. And, as Milton Freidman and others have argued, the promotion of individual freedom will result in the highest collective good in the end, anyway. The highest form of any greater good is the sum of free individual choices or free individual lives, diverse as they may be.

On any scale of human well being it is unacceptable for some people to coercively impose restrictions on other’s lives especially when that coercion is based on beliefs that are simply wrong about the real nature of life. This is an intolerable assault on individual freedom. The outcome of the domination impulse in modern society has been the endless crusade to enact new laws and regulations to cover every conceivable potential ill. This regulatory trend often unnecessarily hinders the freedom of others who will never contribute to any potential ill anyway. And more recently, this drive for regulation has been co-opted by those seeking to prevent economic growth by prohibiting the use of the energy that is vital to such growth. It is an endeavor to criminalize the very economic growth and development that is essential to all human progress and well being.

In recent years, the anti-capitalist narrators have focused their crusade to demonize capitalism in the anti-CO2 or anti-energy campaign and would love to halt it entirely or severely hamper its use with all sorts of regulations, bans and caps. But energy is the life blood of our economies (and remember that carbon is the very basis of all life). The extremists simply will not recognize that our free private property economic system has done more than any other system to lift people out of poverty and to consequently clean up and protect the environment (Indur Goklany’s The Improving State of the World presents evidence of the ‘environmental transition’ where increasing wealth via economic growth and development has resulted in an improved environment). Add to this the fact that scientific evidence has not yet established the linkage of CO2 to global warming. In fact, the evidence shows that CO2 increases follow warming periods.

In the grand narrative employed by those fighting capitalism there is also the continuing devaluation of people as essentially greedy and selfish. This disparagement of people is entirely wrong-headed. Our history proves that, to the contrary, we have steadily improved life. Our history shows that in net terms we are far more creators than destroyers. Central to a more accurate story of life must be the fact of the essential goodness of people and what Joseph Campbell calls the wonder of being human (The Power of Myth). This basic human goodness requires freedom from any constraining government intervention and regulation in order to reach its fullest potential.

I would add here that Milton Friedman countered the grand narrative of his time- that the supposed failures of capitalism required massive government intervention a la Keynes- with a dogged presentation of facts and eventually convinced people of the need to lessen government intervention. Many of his policy proposals to limit government have become conventional wisdom across the globe (see recent biography ‘Milton Friedman’ by Lanny Ebenstein). His policy proposals have done more to advance freedom than perhaps the work of any other individual over the past few centuries.

But admittedly, many devotees of the environmental religion and its doom narrative will not listen to scientific facts or scientific reason. They are enthralled to the grand Salvationist story they have created, a story that appeals to the basest drives in human psyches- fear of the future and change, the urge to convert and control others, guilt over consumption and the felt need to live simply, and hatred of an economic system that is built around consumption. All of these powerful themes reinforce the grand narrative and render scientific reason and fact of little value in the thinking of the committed devotee of the grand story.

In this current global warming hysteria we are observing the irresponsible terrorizing of public consciousness with an alarmist story of climate apocalyptic. Psychologists have even noted the increased levels of anxiety and fear over this climate alarmism (“Anxiety brings memories of nuclear threat”, National Post, Feb.10/07).

This incredible tale of looming disaster is being promoted to hinder and halt the very economic growth that will lift people out of poverty and enable them to properly adapt to whatever climate challenges the future will bring. But scaring people has always been an effective way to manipulate and control them. Once terrorized, people are all too willing to give up their freedom to those who promise to save them from whatever has been employed to terrorize them in the first place. This is why these climate hysterians, like Al Gore, are the most dangerous people on earth. They pose a threat to freedom that has potential to cause more damage to human progress than any other form of terrorism today.

After more than two centuries of theorizing, practical experimentation, and refinement we now know that the story of human and environmental success is built on such things as freedom of commerce and trade, private property rights, limited government, privatization, protected investment markets (good contract and other law), a scientific approach to problem solving, and modern technology, among other elements.

Understand well the global warming narrative that is being beaten into the public consciousness. Note its underlying themes and check them against the real story of life and humanity and what has worked best to advance life on earth. Some excellent sources of data are listed immediately below to aid in checking the fundamental trends of life and the true nature of life. These will help in the creation of a grand new story based on life as it actually exists and functions. This factually based story of life will unleash hope, human potential, and unlimited progress in all areas. It is a life-affirming and humanity-affirming narrative.

The real story of life assures us that we need not fear life or the future. It is critically important that we structure our life and beliefs around the authentic story of life. This will enable us to avoid unnecessary guilt or despair over life and prevent us from taking the wrong actions when engaging life (e.g. the unnecessary demonization and regulation of CO2, which is not a pollutant but is a nutrient of critical importance to life and progress). Embracing the wrong story can lead to much wasted time, resources, and effort. It can severely restrain human potential and progress.

Suggested reading: Julian Simon’s Ultimate Resource, Indur Goklany’s The Improving State of the World, Bjorn Lomberg’s Skeptical Environmentalist, Greg Easterbrook’s A Moment On The Earth, James Payne’s History of Force, Stephen LeBlanc’s Constant Battles, Alston Chase’s In A Dark Wood, and the CCNet archives online.

Wendell Krossa wkrossa@shaw.ca



_____________________________________

Crimes Against Life

By Wendell Krossa

Environmentalists, like NASA’s James Hansen, have claimed that people such as oil company executives are committing crimes against humanity and nature by promoting CO2emissions and should be tried. David Suzuki has similarly claimed that politicians “ignoring climate science” (i.e. refusing to act on his alarmist and extremist views of CO2 emissions) should be jailed.

Based on the actual science that we have regarding CO2, the situation ought to be reversed and it is these environmental extremists that should be charged with crimes against humanity and nature. But that would be falling prey to similar ridiculous extremism, wouldn’t it?

It is enough to expose the unprecedented irresponsibility of these alarmists for dumping such distorting information into the public arena. This is the most dangerous form of pollution occurring today- the polluting of human minds with the environmentalist distortion of good science. And this unfounded fear-mongering is having the damaging impact of slowing the human enterprise.

Environmental extremists have whipped up populations with fear over one of the greatest non-existent problems ever- increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere and the supposedly harmful impact of energy-driven economic development and growth. Scared citizens have then been polled by survey organizations and their concerns have in turn been employed by politicians as reason to enact policies that are distorting normal healthy market processes (e.g. cap and trade, carbon tax). These policies are now hindering economic growth and development. They are having devastating consequences for the poorest people as well as for the environment (the bio-fuels fiasco is notable here- it was an attempt to avoid more CO2 emissions and it has had an adverse impact in causing food prices to rise for the poorest people, along with the cutting of more rainforest to grow palm oil). The interrelated complex of environmentalist fear-mongering, public stress, and political reaction has become a self-reinforcing cycle of insanity.

David Suzuki has been a key figure in this environmental irresponsibility and unfounded alarmism. He has referred to CO2 as a poison. His foundation website refers to CO2 as “harmful, heat-trapping emissions”. But as many other scientists have pointed out CO2 is not harmful to humanity or nature. More CO2 in the atmosphere is actually good for life. It creates a greener, healthier planet with more abundant life. The 32,000 scientists who signed the protest petition against global warming alarmism have included the following statement affirming the importance of CO2: “This treaty (Kyoto) is, in our opinion, based on flawed ideas. Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful”

There is no clear evidence that CO2 causes dangerous global warming. It has been merely hypothesized that it adds a small effect at the margins of natural warming trends (about as much as a few farts in a hurricane, according to one scientist) but this has been hard to actually detect among the many other natural variables in climate. Others point out that atmospheric increases of CO2 follow warming trends by several centuries and do not precede them (i.e. do not ‘cause’ them). This is established paleo-climatology fact that undermines the CO2/warming hypothesis. We also have our own experience over this past century where CO2 increased significantly while climate cooled from 1940 to 1975. And Earth is now again cooling and yet CO2 continues to rise. Where then is the causal relationship of CO2 to harmful warming?

This is not to deny that CO2 has a small radiative effect (greenhouse effect) but just to place this effect in proper perspective to much larger natural effects such as that of water vapor. Among other natural effects there are the varied negative feedback mechanisms in the climate system that continually bring temperatures back into ranges suitable to life (see Climate Confusion by Roy Spencer). And when you focus in on the tiny human contribution to CO2 cycles then you can understand why our contribution to any greenhouse effect is, as scientists say, “undetectable” or “statistically insignificant”.

Some people have argued that we must halt further emissions and get CO2 levels back to about 350 ppm (parts per million) in the atmosphere. But why pick that particular number? CO2 levels have varied significantly over history and such ongoing variation is natural. CO2 levels have never been static just as no other part of nature has ever remained static. Why then such hysteria today over these changes? And why pick a level that is historically low and arguably insufficient for sustaining a more healthy level of plant life?

Evidence reveals that more CO2 in the atmosphere is beneficial to plant life, animal life and humanity. The authors of "Welcome to the Greening Issue: The Good Side of Carbon Dioxide” have noted, “The biggest confusion is that people talk of CO2 as fertilizer. Fertilizer is to plants what vitamins are to people. CO2 is not fertilizer, it is food, the principal food of plants”. And more food means that plants grow more and become more healthy. They are able to adapt to more severe growing conditions such as in drier areas. More CO2 in the atmosphere over the past few decades has resulted in a presently greener world. And with more plant life, animal populations have increased. Also, more CO2 has meant that human crop growth has benefited and this means that more CO2 has contributed to feeding the world. The authors ask then, “How much of this benefit will be lost if the CO2 increase is slowed or halted?”

“Alarmists fail to incorporate the known ecological benefits of rising CO2 levels in their models. Scores of laboratory and field studies show that higher CO2 concentrations help most plants grow faster, stronger, and more profusely, utilize water more efficiently, and resist pollution and other environmental stresses.[102] Needless to say, all animals directly or indirectly depend on plants as a food source.

”Based on numerous empirical studies,(actually observable, not models) the 100ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 content over the past 150 years has increased mean crop yields by the following amounts:

wheat, 60 percent;
other C3 cereals, 70 percent;
C4 cereals, 28 percent;
fruits and melons, 33 percent;
legumes, 62 percent;
root and tuber crops, 67 percent;
and vegetables, 51 percent.[103]

”Were it not for the extra CO2 put into the atmosphere by fossil fuel combustion, either many people now living would not exist, or many forests now standing would have been cleared and turned into farmland—or both. CO2 emissions are literally greening the planet, enhancing biodiversity and global food availability. Continuing CO2 enrichment of the atmosphere will be necessary to feed a global population expected to increase by 3.3 billion over the next 50 years—and limit pressures to convert forests and wetlands into cropland.[104]” As John Carlisle notes in his commentary "Carbon Dioxide is Good for the Environment", “With little evidence that carbon dioxide triggers dangerous global warming but lots of evidence showing how carbon dioxide helps the environment, environmentalists should be extolling the virtues of this benign greenhouse gas”.

Add further this insightful comment from “Welcome to the Greening Issue: The Good Side of Carbon Dioxide” which points out that “Each plant's body, and therefore all bodies of living things, are built primarily from CO2. Most people do not understand this. It is one thing to say that CO2 is essential for life, which every biology book does. It is quite another to actually get people to understand that when they eat a steak they are eating processed CO2. That when they watch the leaves come out, they are watching CO2 being processed. That when they watch their child grow, they are watching processed CO2 being further processed. Plus that CO2 is a rare gas, therefore not to be blithely curtailed”.

Others have noted that “Carbon dioxide is not the dreaded greenhouse gas that the global warmers crack it up to be. It is in fact the most important airborne fertiliser in the world and without it there would be no green plants at all. In fact, a doubling of the levels of this gas in the atmosphere would bring about a marked rise in plant production -- good news for everyone, especially those malnourished millions who can't afford chemical fertilisers. Perhaps the time is ripe to really start worrying (again) about the fact that for the last 200 million years the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has been falling. Indeed it dropped to dangerously low levels during recent ice ages. The Plant Kingdom responded to this potentially catastrophic (no carbon no food) situation by producing the so-called C4 plants that can survive low CO2 by using sunlight more efficiently”

I could quote so much more but you get the drift. More CO2 in our atmosphere is good for all life. Hindering the increase of CO2 could have dangerous consequences for humanity and life.

With all this confirmed research on the benefits of more CO2 in our atmosphere I again ask: Why then all this current hysteria over increasing CO2 levels? Why fear something that is natural and good for life? One answer I would suggest here relates to the practice of the ancient shaman of the Paleolithic era who used exaggerated myths to scare their fellow tribesmen into submission. They blatantly used fear-mongering to control others. And similarly today we have anti-growth, anti-humanity (they want to severely reduce the human population), anti-progress, anti-technology (see The Origins of Modern Environmental Thought by J.E. de Steiguer for detail), anti-free enterprise zealots who have demonized CO2 which is a key output of our energy-based industrial societies. CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels are at the very heart of our modern progress and improved standards of living. By demonizing the essential basis of our society and progress, environmental extremists hope to halt the free enterprise endeavor and impose instead their preferred solution of socialism reborn in environmentalism with a new worldwide system of central planning (Kyoto) and accompanying highly regulated and constrained economic activity. They actually want us to return to a more primitive way of living (e.g. David Suzuki touts the wonders of Cuban ox-driven agriculture as preferable to modern mechanized agriculture). This is their preferred utopian vision. An earth covered in wilderness with a radically reduced human population “living in harmony with nature” (read- “living as primitives once lived”).

One of the esteemed environmental leaders, Arne Naess, said that green fits best with red, that is, communism or socialism. Hence, the re-emergence of socialism in environmentalism. It is this contemporary merging of neo-socialism with environmentalism that is proving to be the greatest threat to freedom, human well being, and to the environment today.

So while too many of us were not watching carefully a minority of extremists like Suzuki have successfully hijacked environmental concern (a good thing espoused by most of us) and used this concern to push a destructive anti-life program on humanity. This new extremist and unscientific environmentalism may prove to be the most destructive of all the mass hysteria movements of past history. It has already had impacts in slowing economic growth in places like Europe and its offspring, the bio-fuels fiasco, has harmed immense numbers of poor across the world. It has sent multiple tens of millions of people back into poverty. This is the true crime against humanity and life.

And most disturbing is that these extremists have pressured governments across the world to enact green policies that are distorting free market mechanisms and seriously constraining human freedom and choice. Oil companies are being hindered from exploring for new sources of energy and widespread environmental guilt-mongering is making it hard for many people to freely choose less expensive energy options. These extremists are trying to change human behavior and freedom of choice on a massive scale across the globe. They now comprise the greatest assault on human freedom of the past few centuries.

Surely, the example of Rachel Carson ought to serve as a warning regarding all these extremist bouts of hysteria and scare-mongering. Her excessive alarm over chemicals led to a ban on DDT and the resultant impact may have led to the deaths of tens of millions of people (see DDT FAQ at Junkscience.com). Did we not learn anything from past scares over global cooling, the ozone layer, forest harvesting, species loss, and so many others? While we should rightly be concerned about all aspects of our environment, environmental extremists have repeatedly presented these issues to the public in such exaggerated and distorting manner as to make all reasonable discussion or debate next to impossible. And their environmental scares have repeatedly come to little or nothing and yet they continue to irresponsibly spew them into the public realm and equally irresponsible media grant them ever more coverage, adding to the exaggeration and hysteria of the extremists. The consequences have been exceedingly costly to humanity and to all life, especially in terms of slowing human progress.

Ecological Footprint and Sustainablilty

By Wendell Krossa

Ooops, There Goes Half the Ecological Footprint

(Note: Mounting evidence undermines the anthropogenic warming theory and therefore effectively undermines the basis for over one half of the ecological footprint models)

The Ecological Footprint model has been gaining acceptance across the globe as a government planning tool at federal, provincial/state, and even local/urban government levels. Advocates of the Ecological Footprint (EF) argue that it shows that humanity is “overshooting” the capacity of ecosystems to support our standards of living and we are heading for catastrophic environmental collapse.

Bill Rees, the originator of the EF, refers to a litany of supposed disasters to support his contention that the human enterprise is destroying nature and must be, not just halted, but actually reversed. He points to such things as massive species loss, forest devastation, pollution, overpopulation, soil degradation, agricultural decline, resource exhaustion (e.g. peak oil), and of course, potentially catastrophic global warming. Ozone depletion and acid rain also still hover in the background as occasional elements of his litany. This litany of disasters is employed to support his contention that we are using too much of nature’s resources and must reverse this overshoot level of resource use. He claims that if all of humanity desires to attain to the current standard of living of the developed world then we would need several more earths. I’ve read estimates of from 2 to 4 more earths.

One of his critics noted that politicians tend to accept the EF model without taking a close look at its details (data, methods). Some advocates of the model, noting its weaknesses such as “calculations based on crude estimates”, nonetheless dismiss such weaknesses as peripheral to the main purpose of the model. “Since the focus of the ecological footprint is heuristic- to awaken people, particularly those in more heavily industrialized societies, to their extensive resource use and its externalized costs- greater precision or detail might actually get in the way of this teaching goal” (http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Ecological_footprint_-_Criticisms/id/1349467). Did I actually read that? Yikes.

But what piqued my curiosity recently, especially as the model claims that we are seriously overshooting nature’s ability to sustain us, was a statement by the co-developer of the EF- Mathis Wackernagel- that “Land for carbon absorption is the most significant globally, representing nearly half of humanity’s total footprint” (Methods for Calculating National Ecological Footprint Accounts- available online). Rees has also stated in a paper at http://www.scarp.ubc.ca/faculty%20profiles/W.Rees-Pubs-2004_files/WileyRevised(Rees).doc (Ecological Footprints and Bio-Capacity: Essential Elements in Sustainability Assessment) that sequestration of CO2 makes up “half the global average eco-footprint and a greater proportion in high-income countries”. His ecological footprint model is especially dependent on the anthropogenic warming hypothesis and the belief that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant that must be removed from the atmosphere.

I have argued with Bill that his assumption that CO2 is a major factor in climate change and a primary forcing mechanism for climate modification is simply unproven. No consensus exists on this. There is no clear evidence to support this contention. I’ve sent him the recent APS paper by Lord Moncton and Roy Spencer’s Senate Testimony, along with other research on CO2 and warming. Emerging evidence continues to undermine the AGW theory from many differing angles. It appears then that, ooops, there goes one half, and more, of the human ecological footprint.

What about the other elements of Rees’s catastrophe litany that are used to validate the rest of his footprint model- for instance, forests? FAO Production Yearbooks show no serious decline in earth’s forest cover over the past 60 years when the human population went from 2.5 billion to 6.3 billion and world GDP went from $4 trillion to over $40 trillion. During this massive increase in population and consumption, forest cover remained roughly stable at about 30% of land area. One would think, according to ecological footprint theory, that such expansion of the human enterprise would have had a much more notable ‘overshoot’ impact on a resource like forests.

Also, the 1992 IUCN report uncovered no evidence of any species holocaust. Species losses appear to continue at low historical rates. Most species have survived past periods of massive change and upheaval such as glaciations, severe episodes of volcanism (with sudden cooling), and so on. They have adapted by migrating up and down mountain slopes and north and south over continents, as well as making other adaptations. So once again, on biodiversity, no evidence of overshoot. Now, if the litany of disasters is not as apocalyptic as he presents them then this undermines Rees’s central contention that the human enterprise is destroying nature and needs to be halted or reversed. Bill responds by pointing to local situations of devastation and the loss of isolated species with the less than subtle presumption that these can be extrapolated out to characterize the overall world situation. Or he will argue that our current overshoot will suddenly hit an unexpected tipping point and massive collapse will then occur. This is hard to imagine as today across the world scientists and others are watching the varied elements of ecosystems more closely and thoroughly than at any previous time in history. Satellites observe 24/7. If evidence of overshoot is there, surely we will know about it.

He further dismisses suggestions that such technologies as hydroponic crop production can be employed to alleviate pressure on what he views as overstressed agricultural resources. Inputs to hydroponic agriculture are even higher than those to regular agriculture, he claims. When I argued that we are not exhausting agricultural resources but are actually using less land over time he again stated that this higher agricultural production that uses less land requires more inputs and the impending disaster is that we will soon exhaust these limited inputs of fertilizers. He also argued that GM technology and other agricultural advances will also run up against similar constraints and limits. For every argument for technological advance he counters with a dark view of limited resources of some sort or other. Creative technological solutions do not fit his apocalyptic outlook which is heavily dependent on concepts of closed systems and strict resource limits and the dissipation, decline, and disorder produced in such systems by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, as he employs it. The unlimited creativity of the human mind has no place in his model and is dismissed as a factor of limited impact. History proves him entirely wrong on this. The Green Revolution and Norman Borlaug’s work is one good example here. Borlaug ignored Paul Erhlich’s doom prophecies of massive famine and in a relatively short time had turned food shortages into agricultural abundance. The unlimited creativity of the human mind is the key factor that leaves doom scenarios with a 100 percent failure rate.

Rees also makes the following argument that we have improved our developed country environments at the cost of devastating the environment’s of other countries. “There is a whole other point: China and now India are among the most polluted countries on Earth but much, if not most, of the worst pollution comes from particularly dirty processing and manufacturing industries that have migrated there from Europe, North America and Japan but continue to operate producing goods mostly for consumption in those countries. Result: The rich countries get cleaner, the developing countries and their populations pay the pollution costs. (This phenomenon is readily revealed in our ecological footprint analyses--much of the pollution in China represents the extra-territorial eco-footprints of the US, Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia, etc., not of China itself.) In short, Goklany, Beckerman, Lomborg and the like, select data to create a black and white and partial caricature of a very complex and grey-scale picture. This is dangerously delusional and grossly misleading”. In my discussions with Rees I had been quoting research from Goklany, Lomberg, and Beckerman.

To be generous, one could grant that on varied points Rees expresses common sense concern over environmental issues. Obviously, we ought to try as much as possible to better understand our engagement of nature and the capacities of its varied resources that are essential to our living standards. It’s just that this EF model has been constructed by an ecologist who is committed to halting and reversing the human enterprise to a level appropriate to what many view as environmental extremist visions- a much diminished human population living in a largely wilderness world at a much lower standard of living. Rees states plainly that the human enterprise, as it currently exists in developed countries, is unsustainable. He believes this to be so because he is committed to the concept of strict limits in closed systems and the primacy of the Second Law with its inevitable consequences of decay, dissipation, and decline. I have responded to Bill that the concept of closed systems is a human invention and not a natural fact. It is simply a “philosophical prejudice that has led to unsound long-term forecasts” (Julian Simon, Life Against The Grain, p.330). Simon has countered well the dismal philosophical prejudice of limited resources and closed systems that is promoted by doomsters like Bill Rees (see for instance Ultimate Resource or A Poverty of Reason by Wilfred Beckerman).

If you buy Rees’s contention that our current developed world standards of living are unsustainable and all of humanity attaining these standards of living will require from 2 to 4 more earths, then you can see what diminished levels of living standards all of us would need to return to in order to live on just one of Rees’s earths. Rees argues that most families could live on about $8,000 of annual income. I doubt he is trying to do this himself.

Other questionable assumptions that under-gird the EF model include the argument that humanity should be allowed access to only a strictly limited amount of natural resources because if we take more, then other species are denied access to those same resources (e.g. photosynthetic capacity). Wilfred Beckerman responds to this argument in his book Green Colored Glasses. Also, the contention is made that our excessive use of renewable resources is undercutting the ability of ecosystems to regenerate or replenish themselves and hence these systems are facing collapse. While isolated species (e.g. cod in Eastern Canada) have been decimated, as noted above there is no evidence of overall collapse of larger ecosystems or general serious loss of biodiversity. Another contention is that of intergenerational equity. EF advocates argue that we must pass on to future generations an undiminished stock of natural capital. This ignores the fact that future generations will be much wealthier than we are and better able to solve any resource issues. They most likely will discover and access entirely new sources of energy to fuel the human enterprise. Arthur Clarke suggested that we would access dark energy in this century and have an unlimited source of energy. Again, researchers like Wilfred Beckerman have responded well to these questionable assumptions and presented the more complex elements surrounding these issues such as personal values/ideology and sense of aesthetics.

It is hard to take this ecological footprint model seriously because it seeks validation in an unsubstantiated litany of disasters to support its disturbing devaluation of the human enterprise. And then there is the political component- Rees views the free enterprise system as responsible for what he believes to be our current destructive overshoot and he zealously advocates central planning and state regulation to slow and reverse economic growth. Hence this telling quote at the end of some of his papers, “Mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon”. Emphasis on coercion. As Wackernagel said in a video presentation on EF, “Aggressive sustainability initiatives are good for us” (http://ecocity.wordpress.com/tag/ecological-footprint/). Even if we don’t like them.

Despite the weaknesses of EF analysis, Rees has managed to promote awareness and acceptance of this planning model across the globe. His model claims to provide the factual basis for the sustainable development movement (what levels of human activity are ecologically sustainable). And it has now become a widely accepted belief in the public arena that the human footprint is too large and must be decreased in every way possible. As its influence grows, this model (its data details, methods, and assumptions) will have to be more closely looked at by capable researchers. I wonder if any subscribers to CCNet might be interested?

Wendell Krossa

PS. In relation to the above, the debate continues over the Science paper (see http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/pr98/oct98/noaa98-67.html) that suggested that North America naturally absorbs perhaps all of its human emissions of CO2 (human emissions of CO2 in the US are estimated to be around 1.7 to 2.0 billion tons annually- 1.87 billion tons in 2004, http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/em_cont.htm). Pieter Tans is quoted as stating, “The North American land surface appears to be absorbing possibly as much as between one and two billion tons of carbon annually, or a sizable fraction of global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning”. This appears to further weaken the ecological footprint arguments for fully one half of the human footprint to be allocated to CO2 sequestration. Bill Rees dismisses this evidence.

The Weather Is Just Fine

By Wendell Krossa
There has been a slight warming (0.6 degrees Celsius) over the past century which is part of the natural rebound from the unnatural cold of the Little Ice Age of approximately 1350 AD to 1850 AD. We hope the trend toward a warmer world will continue but unfortunately the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDA) has shifted back to its cooling phase. These phases last approximately 20 to 30 years. A previous shift to a warming phase helps explain the warmer temperatures that we had from about 1975 to 1995.

Also, solar cycle 24 has not yet produced any sunspot activity and this further explains the cooler temperatures that we have been experiencing since the turn of the millennium. This could mean cooler temperatures for some decades to come but such is the natural variation in a climate system that is influenced most prominently by such things as the PDA and solar cycles. The best we can do in light of such natural variation is to adjust.

Over the past century and a half there has been a rise of about 100 ppm in CO2 levels in the atmosphere (from 280 to 380). This rise has resulted in a healthier amount of CO2 in the atmosphere which has led to increased plant growth (a greener world). More plant mass on earth has meant more food for animal populations which have subsequently increased. It has also meant more crop growth for humans and this has helped in feeding the increased human population.

Unfortunately, the small human addition to CO2 in the atmosphere has not helped to further warm the earth very much, if at all. There has still not been a scientifically confirmed linkage of CO2 levels with warming. And CO2 levels are still low compared to past history and have been exceptionally low over the years of the Ice Ages. Our atmosphere continues to be “CO2 impoverished”.

Perhaps we could encourage governments to pay people to produce more CO2 emissions. Or find a way to properly value CO2 in the market (I’m just kidding). But it is not a negative externality that needs some market mechanism to price its supposedly damaging costs.

The best way to prepare for whatever weather we will experience in the future is to encourage economic growth and development across the world. We can do this best by strengthening the fundamental institutions that have produced such growth and development in the past. These would include the most vital of all elements- individual freedom and individual rights such as private property rights. The critical counterpart to individual freedom and rights is to limit the greatest threat to such rights which is state power and intervention (growing government). The growth of government has inevitably resulted in the decline of economic growth and development. The history of the past few centuries has taught us clearly that trusting the spontaneous activity of our citizens is the safest way to promote freedom and growth. Freeing our citizens encourages them to express their natural creativity which then results in great explosions of technological innovation and progress.

Economic growth and development is also the best way to ‘save’ our environment. Such growth and development leads to meeting the basic needs of people. Once their basic needs are met and they have the money to do so, people then naturally turn to improving their environments as they are natural environmentalists at heart and value clean and enhanced surroundings.

So this is your latest weather report. Relax and enjoy the weather as for the most part it will continue its natural variation due to factors beyond human influence. Over the past we have learned to adjust to such natural variations and even adapt to the extreme weather events. The result has been less loss of life, especially in the more economically developed regions.

The future looks promising.

Wendell Krossa wkrossa@shaw.ca

Halting The Human Enterprise

By Wendell Krossa

The great environmental narrative beaten into public consciousness across the world today is that the human enterprise (economic growth and development) is destroying nature. Environmentalists claim that, in particular, our use of energy is producing pollution and this is leading to catastrophic global warming. Hence on every side we are being told to lessen our footprint, to be more green, to use less energy and fewer chemicals. And like any myth there is an element of truth buried in this narrative- that we should always strive to be more efficient in using resources and not wasteful and that we should lessen any pollutants that we put into the environment. Agreed. But the downside to this narrative is devastatingly harmful in that it is slowing economic growth and development and this is hurting many poor people.

The use of energy is the life blood of human economies. To restrain energy use (by taxing and prohibiting emissions) will lead to further loss of competitiveness, loss of jobs, lowered living standards, along with a general hindering of economic growth and development (note reports on the problems in Europe from all the tax and cap schemes and the public revolt now brewing).

This environmental claim that human activity is destroying nature is simply not true. The planet is not in peril from our engagement of nature. Certainly we use land and other resources to improve our living conditions and to make further progress on varied fronts. But this is natural and humane. It is the right thing to do. We have the right to use and change the natural environment in our search for better living conditions. Human beings have always done so. And while we do this, many of us also value the preservation of some wilderness for recreational and other purposes.

The conflict arises over how much of nature should be preserved as wilderness. Many environmentalists believe that much more of nature should be preserved in wilderness conditions with little left for human use (Ecological footprint activists argue that humans should use only one quarter of the Earth). Should the rest of us then be limited in our pursuit of improved standards of living (our use of nature) according to these extreme green visions? Many of us do not believe that nature is supreme and that most of nature should be preserved as wilderness.

We believe that humanity has priority rights to nature. And again, this does not mean that we would want to transform all of it into built environment (“paving paradise, put up a parking lot”). Despite environmental exaggeration and distortion, the fact is that at this time in world history in our advanced societies we have actually built up very little of our land area. In the US the built up areas are only 3.6 percent of the total land area and in Europe the built up areas are only 8 percent. This is a small fraction of the entire land area. And remember, agricultural land is still natural and reverts quickly to wilderness when no longer used. But even our built up areas should be considered natural in the sense that we are as valid a part of nature as any other species and what we do is as natural as what any other species does (e.g. termites or bees building their housing and work areas).

Other good sources also disprove the environmental claims that we are destroying nature. For instance, the FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization- UN) shows that net deforestation has declined significantly and there is no forest holocaust occurring. Also, see the IUCN information at the end of this essay on the great environmental lie regarding species holocaust. And what about the DDT alarm that has resulted in the unnecessary deaths of as many as 50 million people (see DDT FAQs at Junkscienc.com)? All of these environmental alarms (add here the great ozone layer scare and the acid rain scare) have come to nothing. Nothing.

Wilfred Beckerman, among others, has challenged this environmental belief that the human enterprise is destroying the Earth and must be slowed or even halted. He argues well that the environmental endeavor to stop human growth and development is based on a personal aesthetic vision that cannot be pushed on others. The interests and needs of all people must be taken into account and these take priority over nature preservation. Some people want more wilderness but many others want improved standards of living and this is a basic right. What right do some have to deny them this basic right and need?

And what about the fact that lifting people out of poverty (by using natural resources) is essential to saving the environment? Poverty is the main destroyer of the environment. “Economic growth is still a necessary condition for remedying most of the serious environmental problems facing the world…in the (developing world) environmental problems persist largely because of poverty…the only route by which these countries can overcome their appalling environmental problems is to become richer…the resulting rise in incomes leads to a shift in people’s priorities from the satisfaction of basic needs to concern with their environment and a greater willingness to devote resources to environmental protection” (Wilfred Beckerman, Green Colored Glasses, p.4-6). Indur Goklany calls this the “Environmental transition” (with increasing wealth, and after meeting basic needs, people naturally turn to protecting their environments- The Improving State of the World).

The environmentalists continue to argue against further economic growth and development by claiming that we are using more of such resources as photosynthetic capacity and when we do so we deny this capacity to other species of plants and animals. Beckerman responds- So what? Before, that capacity was simply wasted. And if some species are lost when we take more resources, then we need to publicly debate such questions as how many members of any given species (or entire species themselves) deserve to be preserved before human needs are met? Here we get to differing valuations of nature and humanity. These are personal aesthetic and philosophical differences. While it is unfortunate that any species should go extinct, it is simply not feasible or reasonable or humane to preserve every species no matter what the cost to humanity. And despite the wildly exaggerated claims of environmentalists that there is a species holocaust occurring due to human activity, there is absolutely no evidence of species loss above historical rates which run at about 1 or 2 species a year (again, see IUCN report at the end of this essay).

In trying to sort out these differing beliefs and information we must not be cowed by the alarmism and manipulation of data by environmental extremists as they try to force their apocalyptic hysteria on the rest of our populations.

I would add here that the novel Pan’s Labyrinth has an interesting chapter on animals in nature and in zoos. Even animals are not wild about wilderness living. In the wild they are subject to insecure food supplies, violent predation, and disease. They, like us, may actually prefer the security of a domesticated situation such as a zoo where they are free from the stresses of life in the wild. Nature is a wicked old witch or Dark Nature according to Lyall Watson.

The great tragedy now arising from all this environmental alarmism and extremism is that humanity is being made poorer. Human progress is being seriously hindered. And the poorest people are suffering the most. Too much public and private money is being wasted in response to green hysteria. Environmental regulation is hindering companies from exploring and accessing more energy sources. Money is being diverted from other research to green causes. Much funding is being diverted to alternative energy sources that are more costly to develop and use than hydrocarbons. And taxes on energy are distorting free market processes.

Milton Friedman warned about the growth of government after the Second World War and how this hindered economic growth. David Boaz estimates that postwar growth in government has made us all 40 percent poorer. Indur Goklany has presented research that shows that for every 10 percent growth in government there is a correlated 1 percent drop in economic growth rates. And this excessive government growth is continuing in response to the hysteria of the environmental movement.

In light of this I would argue that the only safe use of the precautionary principle should be to encourage economic growth and development as much as possible in order for humanity to be able to adapt to whatever natural variations nature throws at us, which is most likely to be a cooling spell over the next few decades and possibly longer.
And especially, we need to quit worrying about our use of fossil fuel energy and consequent CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Lawrence Solomon has summarized the research which shows that CO2 is not a pollutant but is a beneficial nutrient on which all life depends.

The 32,000 scientists who signed the protest petition against global warming alarmism have included statements affirming the value of CO2. “This treaty (Kyoto) is, in our opinion, based on flawed ideas. Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful” (http://www.oismorg/pproject/s33p36.htm). Increased CO2 has produced a greener world over the past few decades and this has benefited animal life with increased numbers supported by increased plant life. And humanity has also benefited with increased crop growth. In the past there were periods with much higher levels of atmospheric CO2 and geologists have argued that our current atmosphere is “CO2 impoverished” (Geocraft.com).

Why then such fear of CO2? Some have suggested that CO2 has become a proxy for socialist hatred of capitalism. They attack CO2 which comes from the use of energy to fuel our economic growth. People who hate development, humanity, free markets, and progress will focus on stopping such by hindering energy use because it is the life blood of our economies and success. These opponents of human progress have been effective in publicly demonizing CO2 as a pollutant and poison, which it is not.

Much more could be said about CO2 such as the fact that there is no scientifically confirmed link of CO2 emissions with climate warming trends. For instance, Earth cooled from 1940 to 1975 while CO2 levels increased significantly. And Earth is now cooling since 1998 while CO2 levels continue to increase. So there is no clear linkage between CO2 levels in the atmosphere and global warming. While it is theorized that CO2 may have a miniscule effect at the margins of natural warming trends (as much as a fart in a hurricane, according to one scientist) there is no clear scientific evidence that more CO2 will cause catastrophic warming as in the alarmist models.

Unfortunately, many governments are cowing to pressure from Green extremists and alarmists who are making it harder for people to use energy. These politicians are proposing policy responses that are making energy use more expensive and this in a time of cooling when we need more and cheaper energy to adapt to such cooling. The International Energy Agency predicts that all the effort to slow energy emissions will add some $45 trillion to global energy bills over the next 40 years. This is money that could be better spent in increasing economic growth and development in order for humanity, and especially the poor, to adapt to whatever natural variation climate throws at us in the future.

Environmental extremists are hampering freedom to explore and use cheap energy to fuel economic growth and development. They are creating unnecessary guilt and distortion over the falsely imagined damaging impact of CO2. They are trying to halt the human enterprise and our use of resources. This is anti-human and anti-progress. It is becoming the greatest assault on human freedom since Communism. Vaclav Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic, has said, “I feel obligated to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning” (quoted in Ray Evans essay The Chilling Cost of Climate Catastrophism).

In the midst of the current hysteria and pressure to “go green” we need to ask some basic questions: Why? Why are we trying to reduce CO2 emissions? Why are we trying to stop climate change? (the natural variation of climate that has always been the norm for Earth and cannot be stopped by human action) Why are people so hysterical about all this natural climate variation at this time in human history?

One answer to the last question- why is the public going along with environmental hysteria over natural variation- is that climate alarmists have vented their hysteria in the public realm and the media with typical knee-jerk irresponsibility have further exaggerated even more this green alarmism. This has panicked the public and then surveys have reported such panic which has then pressured mindless politicians to react with fear-based policy responses which have increased government regulation and control over citizens. It is a self-reinforcing cycle of insanity.

Future generations will look back on this time of hysteria over nothing and how it hindered human progress and development and will shake their heads just as we shake ours over the witch hunts and crusades and other movements of mass hysteria of the past.

In conclusion let me state clearly that the planet is not stressed or in peril from our economic growth and development. Evidence on every important indicator- species, forest, land use, climate- shows no reason for alarm. In fact, it is the very growth and development of our economies that will lessen any destruction of nature. The human enterprise will save nature. And yes, increased energy efficiency is a smart thing to engage unless the cost to do so competes with other important needs. But too much pursuit of such things is driven by a baseless concern to decrease CO2. And for what good scientific reason?

Lets come back to our senses and refuse to be cowed any further by all this insane alarmism over such things as natural variations in climate. It is not due to our economic activity and use of energy. There is absolutely no sound reason for slowing or halting the human enterprise.