CO2 is Good for Oil Barons
So hard to tell when they’re kidding
An oily barron by the name of H Leighton Steward has launched another CO2 is Good for You campaign, completely reminiscent of the We Call it Life advertising series that destroyed what was left of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s credibility on climate change.
Take 30 seconds and check out the video. (Just be sure you are not drinking or eating anything or you’ll be a giggling, sputtering mess):
So earnest. So nearly real.
Funnier still is Steward’s contention in his biography that he’s an “environmentalist” (although you have to hope that the people at Audubon don’t find it amusing).
According to a great post compiled by the Unsuitablog, Steward is an oil and coal guy. He also appears to be one of those people who can believe anything that will protect his equity, irrespective of its relation to reality or its potential impact on the earth.
Or maybe he really is kidding. You have to hope.
Funny!
First, sorry about accidentally "down-rating" your post, it looked like a "next" button for a second.
Pretty hilarious video! They know their message is total bullshit, but they figure they'll dupe a few idiots anyway. Says a lot about their opinion of their own supporters...
I've noticed lately
that every year or so a whole new slew of trolls pops up, starting at "go" and working their way through every tired, discredited talking point to the bitter end. Then they slip away and start over again somewhere else under a new name. For example who is EdB anyway? And this Shooshmon character -- both of them are spouting stuff we dispensed with here a couple of years ago!
Anyway, maybe this is like that -- if they release this nonsense every couple of years in a new dress, they might pick up a new generation of doubters. Or at least waste alot of our time that we should be using more productively than trying to convince them of the science. THEY DON'T CARE about the science.
CO2 IS good!
I saw no problem with this video clip. If anything it understated the good that rising CO2 does and will continue to do so.
Here are a few facts;
1) CO2 promotes plant growth, it also improves water use efficiency allowing plants to grow in more arid areas.
Ainsworth, E.A. and Long, S.P. 2005. What have we learned from 15 years of free-air CO2 enrichment (FACE)? A meta-analytic review of the responses of photosynthesis, canopy properties and plant production to rising CO2. New Phytologist 165: 351-372.
Lioubimtseva, E., Cole, R., Adams, J.M. and Kapustin, G. 2005. Impacts of climate and land-cover changes in arid lands of Central Asia. Journal of Arid Environments 62: 285-308.
2)The Earth Is getting greener! Between 1982 and 1999 the general trend of vegetation change throughout the world has been one of increasing photosynthesis.Many of the areas of decreasing vegetation are the result of human activity, primarily deforestation and urbanization"
Young, S.S. and Harris, R. 2005. Changing patterns of global-scale vegetation photosynthesis, 1982-1999. International Journal of Remote Sensing 26: 4537-4563
Norby, R.J., DeLucia, E.H., Gielen, B., Calfapietra, C., Giardina, C.P., King, S.J., Ledford, J., McCarthy, H.R., Moore, D.J.P., Ceulemans, R., De Angelis, P., Finzi, A.C., Karnosky, D.F., Kubiske, M.E., Lukac, M., Pregitzer, K.S., Scarasci-Mugnozza, G.E., Schlesinger, W.H. and Oren, R. 2005. Forest response to elevated CO2 is conserved across a broad range of productivity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102: 10.1073/pnas.0509478102.
3) Deserts are shrinking- Over the period of time which has seen the largest increases in greenhouse gases and in which GCM models predict increasing desertification, the Sahara, has in fact, receded by over 300,000 km2.
Nicholson,S.E. 2001. Climatic and environmental change in Africa during the last two centuries. Climate Research 17: 123-144
Anyamba, A. and Tucker, C.J. 2005. Analysis of Sahelian vegetation dynamics using NOAA-AVHRR NDVI data from 1981-2003. Journal of Arid Environments 63: 596-614.
Some people may not like these facts, but they are facts and can be checked.
Here are some more facts!
"Here are a few facts"? ROTFLMAO. Let’s see... I want to make a contribution to the AGW debate that is JUST AS RELEVANT as Phlogiston’s...
Let’s try these. They’re all TRUE! You can look them up!
- Bananas are tasty.
- Cats can purr.
- Cheese comes from COWS! Somehow.
Clue: The direct biological response of plants to differing CO2 levels is fundamentally irrelevant to the response of the earth’s climate to same. People who present the "CO2 is good!" argument are either enthusiastic dupes or are trying to benefit politically by diluting public understanding of the topic.
P.S. Your references were a bit odd so I thought I’d check a few of them. Surprise! They appear to be merely copied from a denialist web site.
thats interesting
uh I'd say how plants respond to differing levels of CO2 is pretty damn important because there would be more CO2 in the atmosphere if there were less plants you idiot. And I don't know why anybody thinks that CO2 is inherently bad by itself. Pollution is bad, soot is bad but CO2 is an essential element. I've said before this movement would have been much more successful if they focused on reducing pollution overall but instead they targeted CO2 which was retarted.
"essential element"
Selenium is an essential element, too. Want to have five milligram? Just to be honest, that 5 mg will possibly kill you, and at the very least give severe side-effects. Heck, even water is toxic in the right dose.
Of course, the increase in plants has nothing to do with improved understanding of the ecosystem, and a lot of people actively trying to get more green all around. Right?
Please see my comment above
What you are forgetting is that balance is everything. Too much of a good thing can be a disaster. Would you care to sit in a room in which the atmosphere is 100% CO2 for an hour or so? Who would have thought we could ever destroy the cod stocks? The passenger pigeon? The buffalo? They were inexhaustible, but we managed to do it, bit by bit, mounting over the years. And then we started pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, just a little at first, but increasing over time. Who knew? There's a critical point where the cure becomes a poison, and sometimes it is counted in miniscule parts per million. They used to put arsenic into an over-the-counter tonic pill, because it caused shiny hair and bright rosy cheeks. And yes, I know this because I am an historian and have done primary research on the subject.
And also may I point out that using terms such as "idiot" and "retarted" (sic) does nothing to advance the discussion.
Fern Mackenzie
the climate system balances itself
I don't even know how to address your comment. Animals have always gone extinct and your comparison of extinction with global warming is useless. Fern do you realize that solar and wind energy are really just theoretical? Show me the car that runs on wind, show me the car that is solar powered. You wanna go with electric cars, thats fine but the electricity is gonna come from coal plants. Everyone has to wait for a new energy you cannot legislate it into existence. I want you now to make a prediction for what you think will happen in 20yrs if we do nothing to curb CO2 emissions. Just tell me what you think will happen.
Good quality political ad.
Good quality political ad. Makes me want to turn up the furnace and save the earth or something.
Also makes me wonder who is winning the hearts and minds with this whole thing. Is the pro CO2 lobby winning or losing?
It is not a question of who is winning
It is a question of doing science by honest rules..
And the alarmist team are in the penalty box for playing with ANOTHER broken hockey stick..
Kieth Briffa used 12 samples to arrive at his version of the hockey stick and refused to provide his data for years. When McIntyre finally got hold of it, and looked at the 34 samples that Briffa left out of his graphs, a stark message was displayed. McIntyre describes it today as one of the most disquieting images he’s ever presented.
see example of bogus science at http://www.icecap.us/
sure looks like overt fraud..
"Hiding data in science is equivalent to a company issuing it’s annual report and telling the auditors that the receipts are commercial in confidence and they would just have to trust them. No court of law would accept that, yet at the “top” levels of science, papers have been allowed to sit as show-pieces for years without any chance that anyone could seriously verify their findings. In science, getting the stamp of Peer Review has become like a free pass to “credibility”.
Honesty indeed.
All Steve McIntyre does is relentlessly search for ways to re-slice data to get the answer he wants. Exclude this, add that, apply a ’correction’ to the other and presto; "it’s a gubmint conspiracy!"
Giving Steve data simply unleashes a swarm of time-wasting and unfounded accusations, and maybe the correction of a typo. No wonder working scientists are reluctant to indulge him.
I don’t get this obsession with the "hockey stick" though. When the shouting over each "revelation" subsides, it’s factual basis remains. Are you new to the game and simply enjoying the pleasure of reciting denialist talking points?
However your association of www.icecap.us with bogus science is valid.
ah hominum attacks
I post science, you post personal attacks.
That is all this blog does.
No wonder Steve McIntyre gets worldwide attention and feedback,(watch for a Congressional Inquiry into the fraud Steve identified) and you get a couple of cool aid drinkers posting here.
"Science", huh?
All I see is a petulant rehashing of disproven arguments and a curious display of "hero" worship.
Fail.
I'm looking forward to the Congressional Inquiry though! Should be a hoot.
Congressional enquirey will cause heads to roll
The fact that the alarmist community has failed to include qualified statisticians in their "team" despite being called on it will cause heads to roll. It is about time that the deceit of the team" was stopped.
It might take a strong reversal of Democrats in next years mid terms to do it.. but it is coming.
gimme a break
yeah we point things out and then you just say oh it doesn't matter. I'll predict right now that the Northeast of the U.S. has a very cold winter because galactic cosmic rays are up 19% and the activity of the sun continues to be low. Of course galactic cosmic rays in this forum don't matter only the evil CO2.
Pollution:
The introduction of contaminants into an environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem.
Undesirable state of the natural environment being contaminated with harmful substances as a consequence of human activities.
Undesirable change in the physical, chemical, or biological characteristics of the air, water, or land that can harmfully affect the health, survival, or activities of human or other living organisms.
Pollutant:
A contaminant that adversely alters the physical, chemical or biological properties of the environment.
Too much of any substance in the wrong place or at the wrong time is a pollutant. More specifically, atmospheric pollution may be defined as the presence of substances in the atmosphere, resulting from man-made activities or from natural processes that cause adverse effects to human health, property, and the environment. (EPA)
Unwanted chemicals or other materials found in the air. Pollutants can harm health, the environment and property.
Substances that have a harmful effect on human and/or ecosystem health when present in high enough concentrations in water, air, or soil
Since adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause adverse and undesirable instability and change in the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of the atmosphere, ocean, and land that will harmfully affect the comfort, health, survival, and activities of human and other living organisms, then CO2 is obviously and most definitely a pollutant.
CO2 is Good!
Ben, the self-assured arrogance of environMENTALalists and Alarmists never ceases to amaze me.
There is a saying in Sport, that is also relevant to this debate-
"Play the ball and not the Man".
Something that you appear psychologically unable to do.
Now a bit of arrogance from me. I have a first degree and PhD in Plant Physiology from one of the top 3-ranked universities in the World. I have done research and published in the field of plant responses to environmental change.
Putting it bluntly I know a bit about plants and how they respond to elevated CO2- which apparently you do not, preferring to bury your head in the sand and mindlessly parrot "Denialist website".
As it happens I know some of the authors of these papers personally. So do yourself a favour, READ THEM and educate yourself in the reality of nature.
I am happy for the plants
They may thrive, as you point out, due to increased CO2 in the atmosphere, but how will they fare under metres of seawater? Or infested by beetles that can over-winter in the balmier climes? Or the funghi, mildews and other nasty little things that are working their way north? Have you checked out the shift in climate zone maps in this year's seed catalogues? What about the droughts that are becoming more intense and lengthy, turning forests into tinderboxes? Or the storms that are dumping record rainfalls in other areas? I doubt very much that the benefits of increased CO2 will outweigh some of these other effects of rising temperatures.
Your point may be valid as far as it goes, but it WON'T MATTER in the overall scheme of things.
Fern Mackenzie
Arrogance or bluff?
Degree(s) in Plant Physiology, eh? Let's have a name, institutions and dates please. YOUR name that is, not an identity you've picked using Google. Otherwise I'm going to assume that your line of argument proves that you actually don't have a scientific background.
So back to "the ball". The response of plants to CO2 is high-school biology and merely relates to idealised growth conditions. Touting this irrelevant factoid as a debating point in the AGW debate is facile. Fern's response to you captures that nicely.
and let's add some more complexity:
it has been shown that increased CO2
1. can alter the dominant species
2. can alter (negatively) the nutritional value of several important foodstuffs
Just a few studies/reports that indicate several problems with your simplification:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2002/december11/jasperplots-124.html
http://www.biology-online.org/articles/increased_co2_levels_mixed.html
http://www.agrowinginterest.com/presentations/Piacentini_Richard.pdf
Someone with a PhD in Plant Physiology should know this, or at least be able to see the 'finer' details and not make such sweeping generalisations.
Arrogance or Bluff?
Ben, I do not answer to you. If you do not wish to believe that someone who is well-educated can possibly not be a "true believer" that is your problem.
Femack, you erect a strawman. Of course 100% CO2 is lethal.
100% CO2 is 1,000,000 parts per 1,000,000 (PPM). This concentration of
CO2 is lethal, not because it is intrinsically toxic, rather 100% CO2
by definition means 0% oxygen. 100% nitrogen would have the same effect
and the atmosphere is 79% nitrogen.
Get real!
BY the way, current levels are about 380 ppm. So wee have a way to go yet.
And for inforrmation plants are quite happy at 5% CO2 , that's
50,000 ppm.
Alright - plants are fine at
Alright - plants are fine at any level of CO2 we can throw at them....
So we move on to other effects of AGW.
lets say worst case scenario, we manage to melt the ice caps and raise the Oceans 300 feet in about 2 or 3 hundred years.
A First assumption is that we can't cope with that. (could it be that insufficient GW and too much population is what we can't cope with?)
A Second assumption is that we can stop it if we want to and ...
A Third assumption is if we do stop GW in it's tracks the 9 Billion people that will be here in the future will do okay. (I really don't believe this one - mankind is doomed without any reference to climate whatsoever)
9 billion nutcases are too much for this planet to handle.
Back to the ball
So back to the ball, Ben "The response of plants to CO2 is high-school biology and merely relates to idealised growth conditions."
I'm afraid you are wrong again. If you actually read some scientific papers on the subject, rather than simply chanting "Denialist", you would find that plants grown unger stress respomd more positively to increased CO2, when compared with plants growing under unstressed conditions.
Breaking the Hockey Stick
Edb is absolutely right about the flawed science that underpins the Hockey stick reconstruction.
Ironically the damning evidence comes from the very data source that Briffa, Mann and the rest of the "Hockey Team" used.
Rashit M. Hantemirov* and Stepan G. Shiyatov (2002) A continuous multimillennial ring-width chronology in Yamal, northwestern Siberia. The Holocene 12,6 pp. 717–726
http://www.nosams.whoi.edu/PDFs/papers/Holocene_v12a.pdf
Checkout page 720 which shows how tree lines have moved SOUTH over the last 7000 years, reflecting DECREASING temperatures at the Northern tree line.
The Poo is starting to hit the fan for AGW.
sigh
The data on the treeline stops around 1500 AD.
Of course, the 'hockeystick-team' has also made reconstructions without ANY tree-rings as proxies and obtained the same result.
And to really hit the fan: the paleoclimatology reconstructions have little impact on AGW. At best, these reconstructions indicate that there SHOULD NOT BE ANY WARMING!
See blue, shout red.
So, how is a 7000 year natural cooling trend proof that the current abrupt warming trend is a fabrication? If anything it further supports the fundamental proposition that AGW is real and is overwhelming natural variation. To quote the actual paper you comically hold aloft as damning, "Recent warming is also clear, especially if it is judged to have commenced at the beginning of the nineteenth century." It's on page 723.
And yet somehow you conclude the opposite. More illumination of your claimed PhD "... from one of the top 3-ranked universities in the World."
You're just a big, steaming, pile of Fail.
See Blue, Shout Red
Dear, dear, Ben. Must I hold your hand at every step?
Next time before blogging, engage brain. If you had even bothered to turn to page 724, before been overcome with sweaty excitement, you would have read the paragraph in its entirety..
"Recent warming is also clear, especially if it is judged to have
commenced at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The low
interannual variability and the minimum occurrence of cold
extremes during the twentieth century argue that the most recent
decades of this long summer record represent one of the most
favourable climate conditions for tree growth within the last
four millennia."
The key words are "one of the most favourable climate conditions for tree growth within the last four millennia."
Not "the most", not "unsual", not "unprecedented". No "Hockey Stick", Just normal climatic variation.
Thanks, "Doc"!
You know what? I did read the whole paragraph! The bit I chose to quote is an accurate summary of it. Your self-defeating extension of the quote simply reinforces that.
The authors are undeniably stating that "the most recent decades" are the "most favourable" for tree growth of the last 4,000 years. Yet you read this to imply that the authors are making a case for normal climatic variation! The opposite, that the most recent decades are in fact unusual, seems much more in line with the logic of their statement.
I'm afraid your comment and your advice are a bit of an "own goal."
Thanks Doc
"ONE of the most favourable periods"- One. Not "the". No interpretation needed, or required.
Except a disingenuous one by you.
You are really very sad.
Well there you go...
Holy cow, you‘re right! It is "ONE of the most favourable". I did miss that. My bad.
I don‘t think the conclusion is changed though; the modern warming recorded in this tree-ring data is among a small number of "most favourable" periods and waving it off as ordinary natural variation is dishonest.