Guest post by Steve Goreham
Originally published in The Washington Times
December 7, 2009 is a date that will live in infamy. Not only in memory of the attack on Pearl Harbor, but the day the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared carbon dioxide to be a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.
The 52-page EPA Endangerment Finding can be summarized simply. The agency concluded that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases emitted by US industry and vehicles were causing dangerous global warming. The EPA stated that these gases “…threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.” The agency relied on studies by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations, the U.S. Global Climate Research Program, and the National Research Council.
That ruling is bizarre. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is an invisible, odorless, harmless gas. It does not cause smoke or smog. The rising visible plumes from the smokestacks of a power plant are not CO2. That’s condensing water vapor. We can’t see carbon dioxide.
The EPA ruling failed to include nature’s largest greenhouse gas, water vapor. Scientists estimate that 75 percent to 90 percent of Earth’s greenhouse effect is due to water vapor and clouds. As any eighth-grade chemistry student learns, burning hydrocarbon fuel produces both carbon dioxide and water vapor. When natural gas (methane) is burned, two water vapor molecules are produced for each carbon dioxide molecule. Since water vapor is a greenhouse gas produced by human industry, the EPA should declare water a pollutant by its own logic.
Rather than being a pollutant, CO2 is green! Carbon dioxide is plant food, a compound essential for plant photosynthesis. Hundreds of peer-reviewed studies show that higher levels of atmospheric CO2 cause plants to grow faster and larger. Wheat, orange trees, pine trees, hardwood trees, prairie grasses, and even poison ivy thrive in higher levels of CO2.
Plants grow larger root systems, produce more seeds and vegetables, and bloom larger flowers with more CO2. Tree wood density increases. Plants grow better in poor soil and drought conditions with higher levels of atmospheric CO2. In fact, if we wanted to put one compound into the atmosphere that would be great for the biosphere, carbon dioxide is that compound. Yet, almost every university and company now tracks the size of its “carbon footprint” and tries to reduce carbon emissions.
But isn’t it true that too much of anything can be bad for the environment? Yes in the case of real pollutants such as carbon monoxide or lead, but carbon dioxide is a harmless compound that is common in nature. The 2007 IPCC Carbon Cycle Model estimated that the atmosphere contained 750 billion tons of carbon in the form of CO2 with an additional 38,000 billion tons of carbon dissolved in the oceans. Mankind adds a comparably small 6 billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere each year.
The current atmospheric level of 394 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide is actually somewhat on the low side. Dr. William Happer of Princeton University points out that atmospheric CO2 reached several thousand ppm in past ages. Geological evidence shows that life flourished during those past times of high CO2.
Over 190 nations are currently gathered in Doha, Qatar, attempting to negotiate a global treaty to restrict carbon dioxide emissions. Future generations will regard the early 20th century as an age of climate foolishness.
Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the new book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“sophocles says:
December 8, 2012 at 11:02 pm”
It’s not a pollutant, it’s a by-product of consuming oxygen, or in short, living.
LOL, stupid yanks just outlawed life.
I’m now spitting venom, nasty people down at the EPA who by their own website and graph show the worst heatwaves in the US to be in the 1930s with no trend in the following 70 years.
anyway , all you have to ask them is- as a pollutant should we try and eradicate co2 completely. .
What about the greenhouses that pump it up to 1000ppm.
Matt says:
December 9, 2012 at 12:28 am
Gee Matt, sorry we’re boring you, pal. If you are bored with all of this, go and get stimulated elsewhere then. You can see the effects of Ebola. You can see the effects of CO2. Except that the latter effect is not as you so snidely state. A snide, I’ll guess, that was meant to assuage your ennui at the boring lot in here. Perhaps as an exercise to help with your atrophy, show us the warming and its catastrophic effects!
duncanmackenzie says:
December 8, 2012 at 6:15 pm
blah blah blah.
might as well blame nixon – no reasonable reading of the clean air act would have allowed them to avoid declaring co2 a pollutant.
iirc, the finding they made was the mildest outcome they had available.
Bullshit. As pointed out in the main article, if one declares CO2 a pollutant then by the SAME logic one must declare H20 a pollutant as well, because burning natural gas (methane) produces two water vapor molecules for each carbon dioxide molecule.
Maybe you can reconcile this contradiction for us, Duncan “blah blah blah” MacKenzie?
OssQss says:
December 8, 2012 at 9:02 pm
I have a challenge for the blog.
Find one thing that you possess, use, or consume that does not have some type of linkage to fossil fuel.
Really, take a look around and find one!
Can you?
The EPA’s Endangerment finding is exactly that,,,, A Pearl Harbor,,,,,,,,,, but focused on your standard of living, and nothing more.
Does it matter?????
You decide in the end.
——————————————–
Trueness.
Man is destroyer, and most especially the men who are destroyer are men and women who will endorse the hated Bush.
Al Gore’s nothing less than a murderer. He jacked world energy markets because he was BORED and because he was ANGRY, and he MADE a MOVIE of himself DOING IT so he could BASK in the HILARITY he believes, he pulled off.
He used the opportunity of the tight political security and times, to hold the world hostage to his energy – shortage terror/mass markets manipulation. HIS FUNDAMENTAL INHERITED FORTUNE is from the OIL BUSINESS.
His company Occidental oil has more oil holdings than all but two or three companies in the WORLD: they aren’t, in the U.S. because their U.S. holdings are in Alternative Energy, and they’re the oil mega-company that holds a LARGER percentage of it’s energy portfolio as ALTERNATIVE ENERGY than any OTHER
oil company
on earth.
He held the American System at gunpoint: the Americans’ security forces were fighting war on real terrorists and Al Gore operated a heist, using the Americans’ fear of POLITICAL VIOLENCE or FOMENT breaking OUT.
“MAYBE it’s a GOOD thing that… i LOST the ELECTION and was maybe… MAYBEee…..
(WINK-wink) (translated “If we say we REALLY BUHLEEEve IT AINT CRIME is it?”
STEERED by POWER on HIGH to DISCOVah
that IF you don’t PUT
my POLICIES into EFFECT
in SPITE of THE ELECTION,
a LOT of PEOPLE
could
LOSE all they OWN
or even
DIE.
“People could *D*I*E* if YOU don’t GO AHEAD and buy MY products (alternative energy)
and
put MY policies IN PLACE,
REGARDLESS
of the ELECTION.”
That’s what the definition of TERRORISM is:
to CREATE FEAR of LOSS of PROPERTY
or LIFE
to STEER
POLITICAL
and MARKET PROCESSES
with an end to eventually, altering policy decisions.
When IslamoFascists destroyed all that monetary value they made promise to destroy more until we were BANKRUPTED. They discussed between themselves, derailing people’s economic lives, to punish them for their political decision making.
That is why manipulating markets is part of terrorism and security oriented policy regulation.
This is crime,
it always was crime,
and Al Gore while the biggest of the criminals, isn’t first.
The first one(s) were the guys running the “The Tropopause, the Tropopause, that Magically Potentially asPLODING TROPoPAUSE…” scam.
No?
Yes. Hansen told Congress in ’89 that ‘the measurements are just too precise, and highly complex’
regarding the measuring of atmospheric infrared. The measurement of infrared, and the tropopause’s transmission of light.
The tropopause blocks a lot of infrared that’s incoming, it’s a shell of almost, purely carbon dioxide that floats above the earth due to a coincidental weight/distance/gravity issue. The convective engine of water expanding greatly hence sifting upward as per classical thermo-gravitational dynamics, at high speed, pulls other molecules near the rising water, up, too; the gases are caught in the upward flow process, as dust, birds, insects, aerosols, yada-yada are;
and, when everything shakes out at the top, and the uprushing mixture has it’s water, high percentage it is, radiate off heat energy into space, contract back down to a solid, falling again as ice, until yada, YADA, ad nauseum,
well – when this whole water-as-phase-change-refrigerant, dumps all that heat and plummets back down, it’s dragging force on molecules around it of course, reduces a lot; and the oxygen, and nitrogen – they spin around and, some of them are lost into space but mostly, the two of the settle back into their individual movement at that altitude, wafting back, to fill in the vacuum, in the space where the water molecules contracted hundreds of times, back into ice; and then of course promptly started plummeting downward – leaving the space where they’d been, utterly empty.
When this shake-out occurs, among the gas molecules left in suspension, the weight of carbon dioxide is such that, it lays on the top of all the really dry oxygen and nitrogen, in a… kind of cool balance, between mass, gravity, and molecular sizes: it’s the gas equivalent of a bug, running on a water puddle.
Well, when this “weather scamming for BIG bucks through gubmunt signts’ started, there was Goddard Institute of Space-odie-ology right there, backing it up. “Yew kin trust this sh**, it’s fer REEL!” lied the devil. It wasn’t real, it was draino, and American science injected it into it’s arm.
Now, we’ve got Al Gore making Americans sorry they didn’t elect him, and he’s got the Goddard Institute of Spacie-Odie-Hansen-ology
propping him up.
For big bucks.
Let me explain this to ya in case you good folk aren’t really following the American Government’s Weather Scam.
The air you breathe out is now classified as a pollutant by the EPA so when you breathe out, you’re in danger of violation of government regulation and it might decide
to use the paramilitary might, of American armed force – designed to keep Islamic suicide bombers feeling like the room feels stuffy, and ‘strangely suspicious of’
every move he makes.
How do you feel every time you breathe out now?
Thank Spacie-Odie-Jim-Hansen and Al Gore for making the oil you don’t buy from him, and the coal you don’t buy from him,
the target of as immediately feasible government shutdown as possible?
It’s nothing more or less than gigantic organized crime by people.
That’s the reason it seems like
nothing more or less than gigantic organized crime by people.
Most precisely, by government employees.
Richard,
Getting rid of CO2 would warm the planet as net energy outflows to space would be reduced. Even the IPCC recognise this as far as the Stratosphere is concerned. Unfortunately they do not believe in the existence of steam engines, internal combustion engines, jet engines or firearms all of which depend upon the gas laws and the First Law as do global temperatures. Perhaps this is why they and the UN and Obama and the EPA and the BBC are trying to eradicate the evidence?
Personally I suspect they will do a big “FAIL” on firearms but I’m sure that will help with the UN’s depopulation targets.
Co2 is not the problem, and has never been the problem. The problem is the money to be made from making other people think co2 is the problem…
Combine that with the ease now with which NGOs and governments can get into bed with other, with zero accountability and traceability, and you have a recipe for a most potent form of blinkered thinking and enlightened self interest going.
If one approaches this from the position that human life is a scourge on the planet, then CO2 is bad because it supports human and other oxygen consuming life thru the mechanisms mentioned in the article.
And that, my friends, is precisely the position taken by environmentalists. In a very real sense they are genocidal maniacs.
“Infamy, Infamy, they’ve all got it In-for-me!”
Sorry but someone had to say it………..I’ll get my coat.
Matt says:
December 9, 2012 at 12:28 am
“Yes, I get it – CO2 is not a ‘dirty’, sooty or (generally) toxic substance etc., it is all harmless in and by itself. Now what? Could it be that the DEFINITION of pollutant that is being applied here must then obviously be one to include substances that are harmful beyond the above definition of something directly toxic/harmful. — Say, like harmful effects through global warming…?”
There has been no global warming for the past 16 years; the assumption that CO2 causes global warming rests on computer models that have failed. If I write a wrong computer model that shows bad effects of an arbitrary activity in a 100 years, will you stop doing that activity?
Good example of a boneheadedly wrong computer simulation: Sagan, nuclear winter.
http://www.textfiles.com/survival/nkwrmelt.txt
Made him a ton of money through TV shows.
I nominated Lisa Jackson and the EPA for the Darwin Awards.
Maybe Boehner should agree to some tax hikes for the rich in exchange for defunding the UN and EPA. It certainly would put Obama in a bit of a pickle to reject that offer.
Not only did the SC say (in Massachusetts v. EPA) that it was within EPA’s power to decide whether of not CO2 is a pollutant, the court said that if EPA decided it was a pollutant, by issuing an endangerment finding, they had the authority to regulate it. I would note in the Connecticut v. AEP case that the court explicitly said that they make no judgment on whether or not CO2 causes global warming.
Tulipmania of the C17th was more sensible – at least they were selling *something*:
http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_17/b3678084.htm
“…. Soon after, the tulip market crashed utterly, spectacularly. It began in Haarlem, at a routine bulb auction when, for the first time, the greater fool refused to show up and pay. Within days, the panic had spread across the country. Despite the efforts of traders to prop up demand, the market for tulips evaporated. Flowers that had commanded 5,000 guilders a few weeks before now fetched one-hundredth that amount. “
Starzmom, your note that “the court said that if EPA decided it was a pollutant, by issuing an endangerment finding, they had the authority to regulate it.” is interesting. The 1992 Report on Environmental Tobacco Smoke was thrown out as invalid in 1998 by Judge William Osteen. Osteen’s ruling itself was later declared null however, not because any of its content was wrong, but simply because the EPA’s Report was not formally considered to be a “regulatory action” — and thus was not subject to court rulings!
It might be worth looking into this particular aspect of the CO2 work by the EPA: Is it “regulatory” and thus subject to court examination? If it’s *not* regulatory, does it appear that it was deliberately presented in that way to avoid court examination? Other than my note above on the one EPA ruling I don’t know anything about the legal arena such things play in, but it seems possible that the two might relate in some way.
– MJM
The SC was monumentally, and historically wrong to give the EPA the green light on declaring C02 a “pollutant”. This was essentially an assault on the Constitution, and threatens our economy, our way of llfe, and, by virtue of lowering living standards, the actual lives of those least able to afford to lose any more. Once freedom is given up, it is very difficult to get it back.
Law is one of the few highly paid professions that is science-math free….hence science illiterates can rise to power and force non science “findings” on the under educated masses. The 5-4 decision shows that even the nitwits with black robe disease can hardly agree. Their ignorant default possition is to ALWAYS side with the government as the source of all truth. Government is a malignant growth that has been allowed to metastasis under Supreme Court quackery.
It is ironic that billions of dollars are being advocated to reduce the emission of a gas which is essential to life on this plant. We are carbon based life forms.
Commercial greenhouse inject CO2 into the greenhouse to increase yield and to reduce growing times. Increased atmospheric CO2 has and will cause the biosphere to expand and will result increased productivity and yield from food crops. A doubling of atmospheric CO2 for example results in a roughly 40% increase in yield of cereal crops.
http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/facts/00-077.htm
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is an essential component of photosynthesis (also called carbon assimilation). Photosynthesis is a chemical process that uses light energy to convert CO2 and water into sugars in green plants. These sugars are then used for growth within the plant, through respiration. The difference between the rate of photosynthesis and the rate of respiration is the basis for dry-matter accumulation (growth) in the plant. In greenhouse production the aim of all growers is to increase dry-matter content and economically optimize crop yield. CO2 increases productivity through improved plant growth and vigour. Some ways in which productivity is increased by CO2 include earlier flowering, higher fruit yields, reduced bud abortion in roses, improved stem strength and flower size. Growers should regard CO2 as a nutrient.
C3 plants (trees, cereal crops, and shrubs) lose roughly 50% of the water they absorb due to transrespiration (loss of water from the plant’s stomata.) When CO2 rises C3 plants produce less stomata which reduces water loss in the plant.. This results in more water at the root of the plant which enables synergistic bacteria on the roots to produce more nitrogen byproducts which increases plant growth.
A higher level of atmospheric CO2 enables plants to make more effective use of water and enables the plant to survive in regions of low water such as deserts. Higher levels of atmospheric CO2 are beneficial to biosphere.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/05/030509084556.htm
Greenhouse Gas Might Green Up The Desert; Weizmann Institute Study Suggests That Rising Carbon Dioxide Levels Might Cause Forests To Spread Into Dry Environments
The Weizmann team found, to its surprise, that the Yatir forest is a substantial “sink” (CO2-absorbing site): its absorbing efficiency is similar to that of many of its counterparts in more fertile lands. These results were unexpected since forests in dry regions are considered to develop very slowly, if at all, and thus are not expected to soak up much carbon dioxide (the more rapidly the forest develops the more carbon dioxide it needs, since carbon dioxide drives the production of sugars). However, the Yatir forest is growing at a relatively quick pace, and is even expanding further into the desert.
Plants need carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, which leads to the production of sugars. But to obtain it, they must open pores in their leaves and consequently lose large quantities of water to evaporation. The plant must decide which it needs more: water or carbon dioxide. Yakir suggests that the 30 percent increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide since the start of the industrial revolution eases the plant’s dilemma. Under such conditions, the plant doesn’t have to fully open the pores for carbon dioxide to seep in – a relatively small opening is sufficient. Consequently, less water escapes the plant’s pores. This efficient water preservation technique keeps moisture in the ground, allowing forests to grow in areas that previously were too dry.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6036529.ece
“There is no doubt that the enrichment of the air with CO2 is increasing plant growth rates in many areas,” said Professor Martin Parry, head of plant science at Rothamsted Research, Britain’s leading crop institute.
TREES and plants are growing bigger and faster in response to the billions of tons of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by humans, scientists have found.
Researchers in Germany recently discovered that wheat grown in similar conditions would produce up to 16% more grain.
Possibly too many negative (or positive?) ions?
Or (sarc) too much CO2? There’s an amusing short story of the aftermath of a person’s sitting on an air-conditioning unit in a wine cellar packed with people in Lawrence Durrell’s story, “Stiff Upper Lip”. (In the book of that name, here: http://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Upper-Lip-Lawrence-Durrell/dp/0525209816/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1355071716&sr=1-1&keywords=Stiff+upper+lip The Kindle version is only $4. Here’s an excerpt describing the effects:
The bill/law is titled, “The Clean Air Act.” The congresspeople who voted for it thought they were voting for clean air. Many among the majority would not have voted for allowing restrictions on CO2, which is clean. The dissenting opinions on the Supreme Court pointed that out. So it’s relevant that CO2 is not dirty.
“That ruling is bizarre. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is an invisible, odorless, harmless gas. It does not cause smoke or smog. The rising visible plumes from the smokestacks of a power plant are not CO2. That’s condensing water vapor. We can’t see carbon dioxide.”
How do the facts the CO2 is invisible and odorless have any bearing on whether or not is it harmless?
Banning the light bulbs didn’t save the planet. CAFE standards have not saved the planet. Wind power has not saved the planet. Nuclear power has not saved the planet. Biofuels have not saved the planet. Energy taxes in many different varieties have not saved the planet. Why would anybody believe that more taxes and regulations will save the planet? At the same time the government approved auto industry will give you a 0% loan to buy a monster truck or SUV. The government supported mortgage industry will give you loan at record low rates to build another oversized house which will cost you a fortune to heat or cool. The government continues to pour resources into the war industry. Isn’t war bad for the planet? Saving the planet is smokescreen to cover up the desires of the evil elites who want more power and control. Mores taxes on the poor and more power for the rich.
mbw says:
December 9, 2012 at 9:28 am
“How do the facts the CO2 is invisible and odorless have any bearing on whether or not is it harmless?”
It is better than harmless. It is plant food. We eat better now because of a higher concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. All 7 billion of us humans and the animals too.