NOTE: This op-ed is apparently too hot for some editors to handle. Late last week it was accepted and posted on politix.topix.com only to be abruptly removed some two hours later. After several hours of attempting to determine why it was removed, I was informed the topix.com editor had permanently taken it down because of a strong negative reaction to it and because of “conflicting views from the scientific community” over factual assertions in the piece.
Fortunately, some media outlets recognize a vigorous scientific debate persists over humanity’s influence on climate and those outlets refuse outside efforts to silence viewpoints that run counter to prevailing climate alarmism. My original piece follows below.- Craig Idso
Guest essay by Dr. Craig D. Idso
The release of a United Nations (UN) climate change report last week energized various politicians and environmental activists, who issued a new round of calls to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Some of the most fiery language in this regard came from Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who called upon Congress to “wake up and do everything in its power to reduce dangerous carbon pollution,” while Secretary of State John Kerry expressed similar sentiments in a State Department release, claiming that “unless we act dramatically and quickly, science tells us our climate and our way of life are literally in jeopardy.”
Really? Is Earth’s climate so fragile that both it and our way of life are in jeopardy because of rising carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions?
In a word, no! The human impact on global climate is small; and any warming that may occur as a result of anthropogenic CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions is likely to have little effect on either Earth’s climate or biosphere, according to the recently-released contrasting report Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts, which was produced by the independent Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).
This alternative assessment reviews literally thousands of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles that do not support and often contradict the findings of the UN report. Whether the subject is the effects of warming and rising CO2 on plants, animals, or humans, the UN report invariably highlights the studies and models that paint global warming in the darkest possible hue, ignoring or downplaying those that don’t.
To borrow a telling phrase from their report, the UN sees nothing but “death, injury, and disrupted livelihoods” everywhere it looks—as do Senator Boxer, Secretary Kerry, and others. Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts demonstrates that life on Earth is not suffering from rising temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels. Citing reams of real-world data, it offers solid scientific evidence that most plants actually flourish when exposed to both higher temperatures and greater CO2 concentrations. In fact, it demonstrates that the planet’s terrestrial biosphere is undergoing a great greening, which is causing deserts to shrink and forests to expand, thereby enlarging and enhancing habitat for wildlife. And much the same story can be told of global warming and atmospheric CO2 enrichment’s impacts on terrestrial animals, aquatic life, and human health.
Why are these research findings and this positive perspective missing from the UN climate reports? Although the UN claims to be unbiased and to have based its assessments on the best available science, such is obviously not the case. And it is most fortunate, therefore, that the NIPCC report provides tangible evidence that the CO2-induced global warming and ocean acidification debate remains unsettled on multiple levels; for there are literally thousands of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles that do not support a catastrophic, or even problematic, view of atmospheric CO2 enrichment.
Unfortunately, climate alarmism has become the modus operandi of the UN assessment reports. This fact is sad, indeed, because in compiling these reports, the UN either was purposely blind to views that ran counter to the materials they utilized, or its authors did not invest the amount of time, energy, and resources needed to fully investigate an issue that has profound significance for all life on Earth. And as a result, the UN has seriously exaggerated many dire conclusions, distorted relevant facts, and omitted or ignored key scientific findings. Yet in spite of these failings, various politicians, governments, and institutions continue to rally around the UN climate reports and to utilize their contentions as justification to legislate reductions in CO2 emissions, such as epitomized by the remarks of Senator Boxer and Secretary Kerry.
Citing only studies that promote climate catastrophism as a basis for such regulation, while ignoring studies that suggest just the opposite, is simply wrong. Citizens of every nation deserve much better scientific scrutiny of this issue by their governments; and they should demand greater accountability from their elected officials as they attempt to provide it.
There it is, that’s my op-ed. It’s what some people apparently do not want you to read. While the over 3,000 peer-reviewed scientific references cited in Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts are likely more than sufficient to establish scientific fact in a court of law, they are not sufficient to engage the real climate deniers in any debate. The rise in atmospheric CO2 is not having, nor will it have, a dangerous influence on the climate and biosphere. But don’t take my word for it, download and read the report for yourself (available at www.nipccreport.org). Compare it with the UN report. You be the judge!
Dr. Craig D. Idso is the lead editor and scientist for the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).
So, why don’t you guys really show Mosher up and provide the answer to his question? You could have already done that in the time it took to type what you did, and showing that he is wrong will be much more effective than trading insults! The point he makes is quite reasonable and deserves a decent response.
On McKinsey’s vision it is not just clean technology. In October 2013 they issued a report on the 7 domains they think can be managed by governments and cooperative businesses better using Big Data. The interest in clean technology loves the data being thrown off.
Once again an excuse for public sector centric decision making. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/conclusion-now-enacting-the-long-sought-planned-economy-and-society-via-the-open-data-initiative/
There is no need to make this personal in reference to Steven Mosher. He co-authored the Crutape Letters, busted Peter Gleick, and holds the discussion to a stringent level of ethics and clarity. That he appears to be harsher on skeptics than he is on the true believers, and has in this case tried to saddle the skeptics with proving a negative, keep it in perspective. He is one of the best minds in this grand discourse.
drumphil….because the reverse is obvious…
How did those clowns deduce from no evidence that there would be any effect…..
There is zero evidence that global warming even exists.
drumphil,
Steven is asking skeptics to prove a negative: That just because alarmist hype has been wrong so far, we must still take alarmists seriously because they might be right some day.
That is the trick Paul Ehrlich and gang have made themselves rich off of for going on fifty years. That should be beneath the dignity of anyone who is serious.
drumphil says:
April 20, 2014 at 7:02 pm
So, why don’t you guys really show Mosher up and provide the answer to his question? You could have already done that in the time it took to type what you did, and showing that he is wrong will be much more effective than trading insults! The point he makes is quite reasonable and deserves a decent response’
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The detailed answer is in the report itself The general answer is given numerous times, most recently five minutes before your post. Moser gets called a troll because of his hit and run general comments, and his hubris style of lecturing, as well as his insults, “clowns” to well documented PHD studies.
blackadderthe4th,
“we have taken the levels from 280ppm to 380ppm (not current levels) so that is a difference of 100ppm…or 1 part per 10,000, but people have said how come, can 1 in 10,000 have any effect what so ever. But if we take a moderately large male they weigh 100Kg which is 100,000 grams, so 1 part per 10,000 of that is 10grams… if you were to give that person…10 grams of morphine they would be dead…so you can see the argument that’s given, the change in co2 level is only 1 in 10,000, so minuscule is a ridiculous argument… it is very easy to…with small forces]’
The analogy suggesting morphine is to the human body as CO2 is to the atmosphere would only make sense if your body had a natural morphine level of 8 grams and you increased it by 2 grams to 10 grams.
A better analogy would be to find a trace mineral in the human body that is needed for health and one that the human body was deficient in to start with(as 280 ppm CO2 was in our atmosphere).
I’ll help. How about magnesium which in an average human has a mass fraction of around 500/1,000,000 of that humans weight. For simplicity, lets call it 500 parts per million of the trace mineral. There are obviously differences in how the body uses magnesium and ranges for optimal health vs the relationship our planet has with CO2 but again, for simplicity we want to increase the level 25% from some level less than optimal. What should be the before and after levels for a good analogy here?
Magnesium levels are normally measured in mg/dL with an acceptable range of 1.8-3.0 mg/dL and optimal levels from 2.4-2.8 mg/dL.
If we are talking about the response by our biosphere to CO2, the acceptable “normal” range could be estimated at 300 ppm to 2,000 ppm. Less than 300 is very detrimental to plants and above 1,500 also becomes detrimental.
The optimal range is from around 900 to 1,500 ppm.
http://www.organicagardensupply.com/environmentclimate/co2-enrichment-for-indoor-gardening/
Atmospheric CO2 has increased from a deficient 280 ppm to a an acceptable but still far less than optimal level of 400 ppm.
Using magnesium in the human body, for an analogy, we would be deficient to start with, below 1.8 mg/dL at 1.7 mg/dL. Increasing the level by 25% get’s us into the acceptable range at 2.1 mg/dL but still below optimal levels of 2.4-2.8 mg/dL.
Boosting magnesium levels even higher than that, would contribute BENEFITS to that persons body/health, not kill them, just as additional increases in atmospheric CO2 will benefit vegetative health, plant growth and for animals, world food production.
With respect to the warming from the increased CO2, we have a massive disagreement between estimates, ranging from modest/beneficial up to catastrophic and using the above example is not as clear for temps but what is obvious is that even the most exaggerated, high end projection of temperature increase, has very little in common with the drug morphine in the human body.
I used the effect of CO2 on plants in the example because it pertains to the KNOWN law of photosynthesis and irrefutable effects at various levels…………just like it is known from medical science what levels of magnesium are acceptable and optimum for the human body and how it effects our bodies.
@Steven Mosher
You antics bring to mind a Thomas Huxley quote:
The great tragedy of science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
The atmosphere is provably cooling the oceans and radiative gases are cooling the atmosphere.
Yet again, if that were so, your theory would be born out by ERBE and other data. Instead they show the EXACT OPPOSITE. Data trumps theory, but, unfortunately, not dogmatic allegiance to a pet belief system.
Lol, and I just noticed that Fred Singer is a lead author. Same guy that produced “scientific reports” for the tobacco industry.
“Steven is asking skeptics to prove a negative:”
He is only asking them to prove what they claim.
“The rise in atmospheric CO2 is not having, nor will it have, a dangerous influence on the climate and biosphere.”
Spent some more time reading the report, and I think that Mosher is right. They haven’t done the necessary analysis and statistics necessary to support their claims.
Now, they may actually be right, but just being right, and having good evidence isn’t enough if you are writing a report to explain what it is you think, and what evidence you have for it. The conclusions put forth by the OP go further that what the evidence they present covers.
Craig- do you still receive $11,600 per month from the Heartland Institute? Doesn’t this represent a conflict of interest?
The human ability to ignore contradictory data is difficult to underestimate.
Models diverge from measurements, even when the measurements are ‘adjusted’ in an attempt to fit the models.
Contradictory papers are ignored. Those who don’t fall in line get called deniers. There are even calls for punishment of those who disobey.
It’s not about science. It’s about humans.
RACookPE1978 says:
April 20, 2014 at 4:19 pm
Today’s (Obama’s) military is subject to prizes and promotions and money WHEN THEY PROMOTE the Obama administrations propaganda – most specifically the Obama’s administration’s policies and climate change and on homosexual relations. When today’s military does say anything against the Obama administrations policies – remember, the America they sworn to protect and defend? … Well, those military members are promptly and immediately fired. The programs and bureaucracies that don’t toe the Obama administration’s lines and lies about climate change? They get defunded. The admirals and generals who promote climate change? They get promoted and re-hired – as the examples you cite.
Thus, does it means ANYTHING when a “military” so-called expert claims anything with respect to “climate change”? Does it mean ANYTHING when the USAF spends more on “ecological fuel” than any other bureaucracy on the face of this planet?
No. And you are a propagandizing fool to further that propaganda.
A military kills people and breaks things, regardless of temperature. They adapt. A general worrying about AGW is a general taking up space and wasting money. Let him do it as a civilian.
Damn, forgot to separate the text again. Last paragraph mine.
drumphill,
Have the predictions of the AGW consensus held up under the test of time?
No. The consensus was clear: By now we would be much warmer. We aren’t. The slr would be noticeably increasing. It isn’t. Taht we would nothave >17 years of pause. We are. That there would be a troposphere hot spot. There isn’t. That Himalayan glaciers would be melting away, along with Greenland. Neither are. Oh, that’s right: Skeptics pointed out the idiotic nature of the Himalayan glacier claim and some consensus scientists finally caught on years later. That storms would be worse and more frequent. They are neither.
So we are reasonable in pointing this out and saying that the consensus offers nothing to think they will be less wrong in the future.
And your repeated reliance on the fallacy of confusing the messenger (and misrepresenting the messenger) only confirms a certain aura of dimness about you.
Gee, you should release that as a report. It’s all clear now!!
Claiming someone else is wrong is not the same as doing the work necessary to provide strong support for your own conclusions.
““The rise in atmospheric CO2 is not having, nor will it have, a dangerous influence on the climate and biosphere.””
That was the claim. It’s a big claim.
Steven Mosher says:
April 20, 2014 at 8:48 am
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Mosh if you need to start calling people names it is because the facts are not on your side. Otherwise you would only need to argue the facts.
I’ve personally seen close on 60 years of global warming. This is almost all the warming that the IPCC tells us is due to human CO2 emissions.
When I was a kid be had headlines all the time about crop failures and famines. And the population was less than 3 billion.
Now today the population is 7 billion and we seem to be doing a pretty good job of feeding them. After 60 years of global warming.
So Mosh,it looks to me like the evidence that global warming is a good thing is staring you in the face.
Now as to the future, how do we know that it won’t cause a problem in the future? We know this because the best indicator of future performance is past performance. Global warming so far has been mostly beneficial, so the only reasonable conclusion is that this will also hold in the future.
Yes there will be winners and losers, and some people will be worse off. And if you only count those people worse off in your study global warming will look bad. But if you add in the winners, the large fraction of the extra 4 billion people we could not have fed without global warming, you end up with a whole lot more winners than losers.
But you might say, “too much of a good thing is bad”. However, we have the paleo record to answer this. The earth’s average temperature has remained within very narrow limits for the past 600 million years even with very much higher CO2 levels than are possible if we burned all the fossil fuel reserves on earth. The reason is of course water. We simply cannot physically arrive at too much of a good thing.
drumphil says:
April 20, 2014 at 8:19 pm
““The rise in atmospheric CO2 is not having, nor will it have, a dangerous influence on the climate and biosphere.””
That was the claim. It’s a big claim.
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Well supported by literally hundreds of studies on the benefits of added CO2, well supported by the hundreds of failed projections of alarmist that have failed to materialize, and well supported by historical studies of times when CO2 was far higher.
BTW Mr Drumphil, the statistics are there. Literally hundreds of studies and thousand of field experiments showing the benefits of CO2. As for the statistics showing the lack of harm. No increase in hurricanes, sever storms, droughts, fires, floods, sea level rise, crop failures etc. So the statistics on the realized harm are virtually zero, and the benefits are profound and extensive.
Right, so, therefore you know that there wont be any negative effects in the future no matter how much C02 rises?
I would suggest that the belief that this is true is inversely proportional to actual expertise in climate science, and that that this is true even on this forum.
drumphil says:
April 20, 2014 at 8:44 pm
Right, so, therefore you know that there wont be any negative effects in the future no matter how much C02 rises?
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What and you /know/ there will be catastrophic effects, do you?
In fact nobody /knows/ anything because the inference is inductive, not deductive, probability not certainty. But the probability most definitely favours those who predict no dangerous side effects from increasing co2 levels (the inference being based on past observations, not future imaginings).
OMG Mosher. Where in the hell does the IPCC come up with these idiotic catastrophic climate projections to the year 2100. Where is the testing of these projections. There is none. It’s pure B.S. They do not follow the scientific method in any way shape or form. The true climate clowns, including you, are the IPCC. Get the %#!* outa here with your B.S. propaganda. I am sick and tired of your B.S. While you idiots continue to shriek your warmist alarmism, mother nature continues to make fools of you and your Chicken Little blatherings. How many years on no warming is it going to take? 25 years? 50?