OPINION By Craig D. Idso, Ph.D.
In his State of the Union address, President Obama advocated an energy policy aimed at reducing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), which he claims are causing catastrophic changes to the earth’s climate and “harming western communities.” In his policy prescription, the president advocates a combination of increased regulation of the energy and transportation industries and more government spending on research designed to bring low-carbon-emitting sources of energy, i.e., so-called renewables, to market. He considers those actions to be the only viable options “leading to a cleaner, safer planet.”
But the president’s concerns for the planet are based upon flawed and speculative science; and his policy prescription is a recipe for failure.
With respect to the science, Obama conveniently fails to disclose the fact that literally thousands of scientific studies have produced findings that run counter to his view of future climate. As just one example, and a damning one at that, all of the computer models upon which his vision is based failed to predict the current plateau in global temperature that has continued for the past 16 years. That the earth has not warmed significantly during this period, despite an 8 percent increase in atmospheric CO2, is a major indictment of the models’ credibility in predicting future climate, as well as the president’s assertion that debate on this topic is “settled.”
Numerous other problems with Obama’s model-based view of future climate have been filling up the pages of peer-reviewed science journals for many years now, as evidenced by the recent work of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, which published a 1,000-page report in September highlighting a large and well-substantiated alternative viewpoint that contends that rising atmospheric CO2 emissions will have a much smaller, if not negligible, impact on future climate, while generating several biospheric benefits.
Concerning these benefits, atmospheric CO2 is the building block of plant life. It is used by earth’s plants in the process of photosynthesis to construct their tissues and grow. And as has been conclusively demonstrated in numerous scientific studies, the more CO2 we put into the air, the better plants grow. Among other findings, they produce greater amounts of biomass, become more efficient at using water, and are better able to cope with environmental stresses such as pollution and high temperatures.
The implications of these benefits are enormous. One recent study calculated that over the 50-year period ending in 2001, the direct monetary benefits conferred by the atmospheric CO2 enrichment of the Industrial Revolution on global crop production amounted to a staggering $3.2 trillion. And projecting this positive externality forward in time reveals it will likely bestow an additional $9.8 trillion in crop production benefits between now and 2050.
By ignoring these realities, Obama’s policy prescription is found to be erroneous. The taxation or regulation of CO2 emissions is an unnecessary and detrimental policy option that should be shunned. Why would any government advocate to increase regulations and raise energy prices based on flawed computer model projections of climate change that will never come to pass? Why would any government advance policy that seeks to destroy jobs, rather than to promote them? Why, in fact, would they actually “bite the hand that feeds them?”
We live in a time when half the global population experiences some sort of limitation in their access to energy, energy that is needed for the most basic of human needs, including the production of clean water, warmth, and light. One-third of those thus impacted are children. An even greater portion finds its ranks among the poor.
As a society, it is time to recognize and embrace the truth. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Its increasing concentration only minimally affects earth’s climate, while it offers tremendous benefits to the biosphere. Efforts to regulate and reduce CO2 emissions will hurt far more than they will help.
Idso is lead editor and chief scientist for the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change.
Source: The Hill via Bob Ferguson, SPPI.
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I reality he’s pushing Agenda 21. Further executive orders will be issued before he goes.I wish more folks would read the Agenda 21 document on the UN website as it explains why this nonsense is happening,not just in the USA, but worldwide.
Always nice to read a clear, cogent comment.
Dr. Idso, a great response. I’m afraid I’m cynical when it comes to the President’s environmental beliefs. Although he relies on “scientific” models to make his anti-carbon case, I don’t believe he understands or cares about the science nor do I believe he has critically examined the bases for his statements. I rather believe that so-called climate change and carbon pollution is simply a political vehicle. People like you keep me believing it’s worth responding.
Thanks
The notion that CO2 is a pollutant is truly beyond the pale of any sort of rational discussion.
It is so grossly absurd to call the No. 2 ingredient of life (only water precedes it in the hierarchy of basic life substances) a pollutant, that doing so demonstrates any number of evils: a deadly misanthropy, even a hatred of life itself; a willingness, even the intention, to do harm, inflict pain, and commit waste; serious mental disorders, including sociopathy and paranoia; an impaired capacity to reason, expressed in an inability to comprehend the obvious, let alone think critically; and the most profound ignorance imaginable.
All AGW belief is subject to these attributes at least to some degree, as is any other evil messianic ideology, and der Fuehrer epitomizes them.
Thanks, Dr. Idso. In my calculations in a previous post, I calculated current benefits of the CO2 plant enrichment at a third of a trillion per year. Looking at it, I see that I used information from your website to do my calculations, viz:
So yes, our different calculations come up with similar answers—and that’s just from plants. As I said in closing my previous post:
Finally, my thanks for all that you and your family have done in this long, protracted struggle for scientific transparency and honesty. Your web site has been one of my main resources for years, it’s a grand compendium of the research.
All the best,
w.
Bob Greene says:
January 30, 2014 at 7:29 pm
I’m afraid I’m cynical when it comes to the President’s environmental beliefs.
Do you recall Obama’s statements about the warming over the last 5 and 10 years and how Lord Monckton proved him wrong? And do you know how his people could not back up his statements on this matter? I do not think it is a coincidence that global warming was not mentioned.
Of course, a little help from above such as the polar vortex may have helped as well.☺
Well stated and I would like to echo the comments above about your website and all your good work. The POTUS is “out to lunch” with regard to science in general, but especially when it comes to “climate change.”
It’s not about the climate or saving humanity from the scourges of the weather. It’s all about the control of the population; where they live, where and how they travel, etc. The climatists are misanthropist pure and simple.
I’ve been reading and contributing to the Idso’s http://www.CO2Science.org website for years and it is my go to site if I need a study on just about anything climate related. Thanks [to] them for all their great work.
Reblogged this on Head Space and commented:
Calling out the procto-scientist
Geez, I wish I could proofread. “Thanks to them for all their great work.” , it should have read.
Dear Dr. Idso and family –
Thank you all for your long-term efforts to keep the focus on factual data about paleoclimate and the positive effects of CO2 on plant physiology.
I have also relied extensively on your databases and reference compilations to clarify my arguments and to rebut nonsense proclamations of warming-alarmists.
As a geologist, I’ve always known that alarmism about CO2-driven global temperatures is bogus – – because earth has experienced far greater atmospheric conditions in the past – – and always recovered. Climatic tipping points do not exist, period.
Thanks for your persistence and integrity
POTUS comments in the SOTU were all politically driven. 5 years ago we were optimistic about the change in leadership in the country and the promises made. Now we know the promises were hollow and the implementation destructive, whether it was “green” energy, think Solyndra, or the ACA. I, like 90% of the country, did not watch the SOTU and will not watch a future one from this president.
Co2 sequestration nothing like wasting energy on a non solution to a non problem.
Once the energy is expended it is gone ,,,,
And to think these fools think!
Thank you Dr. Idso. Not only do I visit your site but also I bought your book The Many Benefits of Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment. Good stuff! – both the book and the CO2.
Robin W.: I also wish that people would people would take a look at Agenda 21. I didn’t watch the State of the Ruin address but went to a Mises Canada meet where the subject of discussion was none other than Agenda 21.
Since they won’t “help” at all, you can just omit that last phrase entirely.
Box of Rocks @ur momisugly 8:16
I think that Winnie the Pooh thinks, thinks thinks more than Obama does.
Chad Wozniak
January 30, 2014 at 7:34 pm
Well said.
TomE says:
January 30, 2014 at 8:15 pm
“ . . . we were optimistic about the change in leadership . . .”
“we” ?
It becomes increasingly clearer why social democratic Norway gave the Nobel peace prize to Obama in 2009?
“”extraordinary efforts” to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
“Obama is the fourth US president to have been awarded a Nobel Prize (after Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter, with Vice President Al Gore also being a recipient, with Carter and Gore’s honors happening after leaving office).”
?
Obama’s assertions and “solutions” are illogical and counter productive.
Even IF CAGW’s ECS projections were actually greater than 2C, any honest cost/benefit analysis shows the economic devastation of CO2 taxes, CO2 sequestration, draconian CO2 EPA emission regulation and expensive/inefficient alternative energy wind/solar/bio-fuel projects, would far exceed the projected negative climatic impacts.
If politicians, environmentalists and scientists truly believed CO2 was a problem, then they would advocate the rapid development/deployment of Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs), which would generate energy 10 TIMES cheaper than their crazy solar/wind/bio-fuel solutions and would generate ZERO CO2 and ZERO amounts of other REAL pollutants like SO2, NO2, O3, CO, Pb, Hg, etc.
In my opinion, when China’s first test LFTR goes online next year, the pressure on Western countries to quickly adopt LFTR energy will make the whole CAGW hypothesis moot, since LFTRs are the cheapest, cleanest, safest and most abundant form of energy that exists and failure to catch up to China’s LFTR program would be economic suicide.
It’ll be interesting how this all plays out. Regardless, CAGW is a dead issue for two reasons: 1) because the CAGW hypothesis is disconfirmed by empirical evidence OR 2) CO2 emissions will be greatly reduced as LFTRs replace fossil fuels as the world’s primary source of energy and hydrocarbons.
Either way, CAGW toast.
Glad to hear from Dr. Idso here at WUWT. Thanks for all your work on the Biology of CO2.
” Why would any government advance policy that seeks to destroy jobs, rather than to promote them? Why, in fact, would they actually “bite the hand that feeds them?”,
Exactly the same thoughts crossed my mind as I began to see my city destroyed using the excuse of these terrible earthquakes.
Today I took my aunt to a large site in the CBD. This has been created by the absolute flattening of a number of city blocks. This is where the new sports stadium and complex that no one wants will be situated. The land all compulsorily ‘purchased’ by the government at firesale prices.
Even my 85 yr old Aunt wondered where the parking would be. The site is large but not big enough to accommodate parking for more than 5000 visitors.
Well this an Agenda21 complying plan. There will be no parking. Because its in the CBD, everyone will be within walking distance. In my view the tax payers and rate payers are going to pay for an empty stadium and massive traffic jambs.
Of course there are now doubts about whether there are enough funds. Surprise surprise, there is a disaster recovery going on, money is short as are outside investors.
Watch this space, will this agenda 21 experiment work?
One thing is certain, overall this will destroy jobs.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
Dr Idso,
I would go further to say that the President’s actions in attempting to reduce Carbon Dioxide endanger the American People and may not be constitutional. There is an implied right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the declaration of independence and the president by attempting to reduce the food supply and reduce the temperature so more “Polar Vortexes” freeze America (after all, the ultimate aim is to return to the Pre-industrial CO2 level of the Little Ice Age) is putting American in danger of death by starvation. Attempting to drive the climate back towards a temperature only 0.7 degrees below now (not much margin there) which killed half of Europe is dangerously foolish. By his action he is attempting to deprive certain people of the right to life.
Whilst I agre with the general thrust of Dr Idso’s post, quoting the value of plant production does not actually prove that the quantity has in fact increased. Better to quote figures in tons or yields per hectare. The last is preferable since the tonnage may increase simply by putting more land under the plough.
By either of my preferred measures, 2013 was a record year for grain production.