“Radical environmentalists have misled people about the green greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. The indoctrination of school curricula, the ignorance of the public, and the well-crafted lies of the radical environmentalists have wrongly demonized CO2.”
Today, some people portray carbon dioxide (CO2) as an enemy of the earth. We hear negative things about it in almost every aspect of life, including in schools, TV shows, and the mainstream media.
But is CO2 really a villain?
I was a little kid when I first came to know that in photosynthesis plants inhale CO2 and exhale oxygen. I also understood why plants shrivel and die with too little of it but grow better and better as CO2 levels rise. That’s why CO2 is not a pollutant.
Twenty-five years later, the truth about CO2 has not changed, but some people unabashedly claim that CO2 levels threaten earth’s biosphere. So, to understand why it’s mistaken to call the increase in atmospheric CO2 ‘dangerous,’ let’s check some facts.
Carbon dioxide is an invisible, colorless, odorless gas that is indispensable to life on earth. It is the elixir of life. Without it, life as we know it would be impossible.
An integral part of our environment, 98 percent of all CO2 is in the oceans and land (soil and plants). The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is just 2 percent. Of that 2 percent, nature put about 57 percent there, and humans about 43 percent.
In the interglacial periods of the distant past, atmospheric CO2 concentration—on the order of several thousand parts per million (ppm)—was much higher than it is today. It plummeted during ice ages to about 180–200 ppm, drastically reducing plant growth. In the roughly 20,000 years since the last ice age, CO2 concentration rose to about 280 ppm before the Industrial Revolution, but even then plant growth remained poor. The increase in CO2 concentration to about 400 ppm today is not harmful. Far from it, it has been tremendously beneficial for plants and, because we depend on plants for food, animals and humans.
Increased CO2 concentration is directly proportional to plant growth rates. Many important plant species show marked increase in their growth patterns when CO2 concentration increases.
In fact, in the 28 years in between 1982 to 2009, the increase in CO2 led to a significant increase in vegetation growth. That included increased the growth of major food crops like rice, wheat, and maize. Much of our current ability to produce record crop yields can be credited to increasing CO2 levels.
The benefits of CO2 and the role it plays to sustain life on earth are obvious. So why is there a war on CO2?
Some scientists blame CO2 for what they claim is a dangerous rise in global average temperature (GAT). But GAT has cycled up and down, sometimes with intervening periods of stasis, for the past 2000 years, while for the first 1750 years CO2 concentration has remained stable and for the last 250 years, including the last 50, it has risen steadily. This lack of strong correlation implies that CO2 cannot be the primary driver of GAT.
Also, some scientists estimate that burning all economically recoverable fossil fuels would raise GAT by only about 1.2˚C, far too little to be dangerous and probably instead beneficial.
Those vilifying CO2 as the main reason for a dangerous increase in GAT are misled by faulty computer climate models that overestimate its warming effect.
Sad to say, they are now misleading the public and policymakers. While doing so, they have also buried the undeniable benefits of CO2. The benefits for world agriculture from increased CO2 are estimated to be about $140 billion a year. This benefit is projected to increase in next three decades.
Radical environmentalists have misled people about the green greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. The indoctrination of school curricula, the ignorance of the public, and the well-crafted lies of the radical environmentalists have wrongly demonized CO2.
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Vijay Jayaraj (M.S., Environmental Science, University of East Anglia, England), Research Associate for Developing Countries for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, lives in Udumalpet, India.
My latest book, ‘Human Caused Global Warming, the Biggest Deception in History’.
Available on Amazon and Indigo/Chapters.
My SLAPP lawsuit to silence me comes to trial on Feb 20, 2017,
Dr Michael Mann vs Dr Tim Ball.
http://www.drtimball.com
Thank you Dr. Ball. Will get the book !
A great article with great timing.
Thanks.
[…] Continue Reading on Master Resource. Vijay Jayaraj Vijay Jayaraj (M.S., Environmental Science) is the Research Associate for Developing Countries for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. He currently lives in Udumalpet, India. […]
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So I’ve heard this before about plants/trees not really breathing out CO2 like we were told.
I’m looking for more information on this.
Good article.
Where is the debate ?
I feel the EPA is out of control and is out of touch with common sense.
When I have to pay $400 for installing two windows because the primer when the window was initially installed had lead in it…. something is wrong.
When we close a power plant because of CO2 emissions with no better replacement… something is wrong.
We are letting a few radicle “environmentalists” push a harmful agenda that has not been approved by common sense debate.
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Great article. I would like to add this because numbers are important. CO2 is .04% of the of the atmosphere making it a trace gas. If we were in a stadium of 100000 people 99960 would be Oxygen, nitrogen and other trace gases leaving just 40 CO2. The models of climate change greatly exaggerate any effects of warming and are at odds with physics. Specific heat principles are clear, there is insufficient mass of CO2 to cause any change. One thing that old people like me know is that when I was young the sky was literally dark with shoot from the coal and oil we burned in home furnaces. Go to China or Korea today to see what it like then. I believe as the western world cleaned up the pollution we saw slight warming from that explaining the start and stops. I’m all for more efficient cars and power production but shirking are modern society for nothing. Thanks for your truthfulness and I hope that you and other scientist can get the truth out.
Excellent article and simply put for the average audience, yet technical enough to accurately convey the subject matter – very well done.
I’d like to add one thing regarding the driver of GAT: whether political or innocent, discussions regarding GAT and global warming seem to overlook the most obvious driver of GAT – that big nuclear reactor in the sky, the Sun. If anything, a greater man-made driver of GAT would likely be concrete & asphalt, which act as big heat batteries, powered by the sun, that then give back out the stored heat in the afternoon so much so that local weather is affected – the local urban climate effect, “thermals” over urban areas (aviation meteorology term), etc. An honest history of meteorological data indicates a direct correlation of warmer periods to solar activity (increased solar flares, sun spots, etc.).
If only this could be taught in schools instead of extinction rebellion paranoia. It’s interesting and ironic that, Vijay Jayaraj ms . Enviromental Science. University of East Anglia reports from the same university, [UEA] that gave the IPCC the incorrect data for their models on global warming which started this whole climate change alarmism. In the UEA’s defence, when they realised that their data was wrong they sent an email to the IPCC telling them to hold off on their projections however the IPCC decided to go with what they had. The IPCC did email back to the UEA telling them to keep quiet about the corrected data but unfortunately the email was sent to the wrong address and the cat was out of the bag. This did not deter the IPCC and their projections continually do not tally with reality. The lie continues.