CO2 Coalition: Time to Play Offense

“The CO2 Coalition invites you to take a look at our newly renovated website at www.CO2Coalition.org. Our white papers, scientific research and economic analysis are easier than ever to find and use.”

The intellectual case against climate alarmism is strong and growing stronger. But how best to summarize the state of knowledge about carbon dioxide emissions and CO2 atmospheric concentrations, not only its warming effects, other things the same, but also CO2 fertilization?

Enter a new group, the CO2 Coalition, a 501(c)(3) foundation founded last year to educate “thought leaders, policy makers, and the public about the important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy.”

The CO2 Coalition seeks to engage thought leaders, policy makers, and the public in an informed and dispassionate discussion of climate change, human’s role in the climate system, the limitations of climate models, and the consequences of mandated reductions in CO2 emissions.

The following is from the Coalition website:

In carrying out our mission, we seek to strengthen the understanding of the role of science and the scientific process in addressing complex public policy issues like climate change. Science produces empirical, measurable, objective facts and provides a means for testing hypotheses that can be replicated and potentially disproven. Approaches to policy that do not adhere to the scientific process risk grave damage to the economy and to science.”

The debate about global warming and climate change has shifted from genuine scientific exploration to a campaign demonizing CO2. The use of energy, the primary source of human CO2 emissions, have played an essential role in the economic progress and improved standard of living that has been experienced in many nations since the Industrial Revolution.

The mission of the Coalition is to demonstrate with science-based facts that:

• CO2 is a nutrient that is essential to life. CO2 at current levels and higher enables plants, trees, and crops to grow faster and more efficiently. It is essential for life.

• Just as we require oxygen for life, our economy requires energy, often described as the oxygen or lifeblood of the economy. Energy must be abundant, reliable, and reasonably priced for an economy to achieve robust and sustained growth.

• Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a natural and beneficial constituent of the atmosphere.  By volume percentage, 99% of dry air is nitrogen (78%) and oxygen (21%). Most of the rest is argon (0.93%), with carbon dioxide amounting to only 0.04%, but slowly increasing. Even smaller amounts of other gases, neon, helium, methane etc., make up the remainder.

• Atmospheric CO2 is essential to life on earth, since plants use sunlight to combine CO2 molecules from the air with H2O molecules to make carbohydrates (for example, sugar) and other organic compounds. In the process, oxygen molecules (O2) are released to the atmosphere. At CO2 levels less than 150 ppm (parts per million), most plants stop growing. Over most of the history of multicellular life on earth, CO2 levels have been three or four times higher than present levels. Current CO2 levels of 400 ppm are still much less than optimum for most plant growth.

• Air also contains water vapor (H2O), from as much as 7% in the humid tropics to less than 1% on a cold winter day. Human exhaled breath typically contains 4% to 5% CO2 and about 6% H2O.