Category Archives: crop yields

Secrets That Global Warming Alarmists Don’t Want You to Know—Part 5—Global Greening.

Posted on May 12, 2021 | 2 comments

This is the fifth posting of a series listing things that the alarmists and the mainstream media do not want made public.  At the top of this posting is a link to the preceding postings.

To hear the global warming alarmists, carbon dioxide (CO2) is poison.  It is on a mission to destroy the Earth.  It is a pollutant that must be stopped.  There are some people convinced that if fossil fuels burning was completely stopped, there would be no more CO2 anywhere.  The alarmists do not want you to know how beneficial CO2 is.    

“Carbon is the backbone of life on Earth. We are made of carbon, we eat carbon, and our civilizations—our economies, our homes, our means of transport—are built on carbon”.  That is a quote from NASA’s posting, the Carbon Cycle.

POISON

Let us begin by disposing of the myth that CO2 is a poison.   Do you know that every time you exhale, your breath contains about 40,000 parts per million (ppm) CO2.  That contrasts with air you breathe that has a concentration of about 415ppm.    

MAN-MADE CO2 IS A SMALL FRACTION OF THE CARBON CYCLE

The NASA chart below tells the story of the CO2 from manmade sources, and natural source. The natural sources are in white and the man-made sources are in red.  The numbers are gigatons of carbon presumably because the form that carbon assumes in this chart might not always be in the form of carbon dioxide **.  

According to this chart, five of the nine manmade gigatonnes of carbon are removed from the atmosphere.  The “greening” of the Earth’s surface is attributable to an increase in atmospheric CO2, that would explain the “Net terrestrial uptake shown on the chart.

\

 Into Atmosphere Man MadeFossil Fuels, Concrete etc.    9-5    GtC/Y
           inPlantsRespiration   60
           inSoilRespir & Decomp    60
           inOceanRespir & Decomp    90
Out of AtmospherePlantsPhotosynthesis &Biomass    120 + 3
           outOceanPhotosynthesis      90+ 2
 Atmosphere Net          In214 G tC/Y

 
Atmosphere NetOut210 GtC/Y 

GtC/Y is gigatonnes of carbon per year.   (1 gigatonne =billion tonnes.) (1 tonne =2205 pounds)

** CO2’s  molecular weight is 44 because it is made up of 12 from carbon and 32 from two oxygens.   Thus, the gigatonnes of CO2 are larger than the fraction of carbon (C)  numbers shown on the chart. 

The most accurate number on the chart is probably the net increase in the atmosphere as it is considered well mixed.  Measurements of atmospheric CO2 concentration are made frequently and in several places around the globe. 

It is likely, that the fossil fuel, etc.  number is the next most accurate number on this chart. Emission sources are reasonably known so a fairly good estimate can be made.  The other numbers may be swags (Scientific Wild Ass Guess).

The amount of manmade CO2 relative to the amount of natural CO2 is quite small.  It is about 4% of the total.

 CROP PRODUCTION SETS RECORDS DUE TO INCREASED ATMOSPHERIC CONCENTRATION OF C02.

                                  Trend in Annual Average Leaf Area   2000 to 2017

Satellite images show that plant cover has become lush all over the world. This increase in green biomass worldwide is equivalent to a new green continent twice the size of the US.

Gregory Wrightstone provides us with a summary of the greening.

 It has been long known that increasing CO2 benefits plant growth through the CO2 fertilization effect. Recognizing the benefits of this, greenhouses often increase CO2 to 1,500 ppm. Research from laboratory studies by the Center for the Study of CO2 and Global Change has documented that a 300 ppm rise in CO2 levels would increase plant biomass by 25 to 50%. This significant boost in plant productivity, along with a boost from lengthening growing seasons, means that we are better able to feed a hungry planet.

An additional significant benefit from this increasing CO2 fertilization is that the plants have smaller stomata (pores) and have lessened water needs. Less water used means that more stays in the ground and is leading to increased soil moisture across much of the planet and a “greening” of the Earth. According to NASA, up to 50% of the Earth is “greening,” in part due to higher CO2 levels. This increased soil moisture is a primary cause for the long-term decrease in forest fires and droughts worldwide.

A group of scientists from Australia,  focusing on the southwestern corner of North America, Australia’s outback, the Middle East, and some parts of Africa studied satellite imagery by teasing out the influence of carbon dioxide on greening from other factors such as precipitation, air temperature, the amount of light, and land-use changes. The team’s model predicted that foliage would increase by some 5 to 10 percent given the 14 percent increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration during the study period. The satellite data agreed, showing an 11 percent increase in foliage after adjusting the data for precipitation, yielding “strong support for our hypothesis,” the team reports.

In addition to greening dry regions, the CO2 fertilization effect could switch the types of vegetation that dominate in those regions. “Trees are re-invading grass lands, and this could quite possibly be related to the CO2 effect,” Donohue said. “Long lived woody plants are deep rooted and are likely to benefit more than grasses from an increase in CO2.”

And food crops are setting new records in addition to its record forecast for global wheat production in 2021, the FAO said it’s expecting a new and higher estimate for world cereal production in 2020, now seen at 2.76 billion tonnes, a 1.9% increase from the previous year, lifted by higher-than-expected outturns reported for maize in West Africa, for rice in India, and wheat harvests in the European Union, Kazakhstan, and the Russian Federation.

“ … the global wheat out turn is seen at a record, while maize is placed at the second largest ever and barley at the highest in a decade,” the report said.

 

The leader in studying CO2 effects on plant growth is the CO2 Science Organization. One of their studies is as follows:

“The Positive Externalities of Carbon Dioxide: Estimating the Monetary Benefits of Rising Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations on Global Food Production.”

I have picked out one page of the study, titled

“Historic Monetary Benefit Calculations and Results”

 The first step in determining the monetary benefit of historical atmospheric CO2 enrichment on historic crop production begins by calculating what portion of each crop’s annual yield over the period 1961-2011 was due to each year’s increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration above the baseline value of 280 ppm that existed at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

 To summarize what they did was begin with the wheat body mass and yield that occurred in 1961 and what it would be 50 years later using the CO2 growth factor.  The atmospheric CO2 concentration went up during those 50 years by 37.4 ppm.  They did account for the factors such as new improvements in the wheat seed, the amount of planting of during those years for example. This was to make sure that only the CO2 enhancement part would be used to determine the money benefits.  The resultant value of 4.35% indicates the degree by which the 1961 yield was enhanced above the baseline yield value corresponding to an atmospheric CO2 concentration of 280 ppm. They also used constant dollars for the study.

Table 3. The total monetary benefit of Earth’s rising atmospheric CO2 concentration on each of the forty-five crops listed in Table 1 for the 50-year period 1961-2011. Values are in constant 2004-2006 U.S. dollars.

 . 

As can be seen from Table 3, the financial benefit of Earth’s rising atmospheric CO2 concentration on global food production is enormous. Such benefits over the period 1961-2011 have amounted to at least $1 billion for each of the 45 crops examined; and for nine of the crops the monetary increase due to CO2 over this period is well over $100 billion. The largest of these benefits is noted for rice, wheat, and grapes, which saw increases of $579 billion, $274 billion and $270 billion, respective.

Yes, the monetary benefit of all the crops, is $3,170,050,955,544.  $3+trillion.

This report also calculates what the benefit would be by 2050.  That sums up to $9.765 trillion.  The full report can be seen by clicking this link. 

These results will be rehashed when this series discusses the Social Cost of Carbon.

The following, recent study found that the greening was playing a “beneficial role of the land carbon sinks……”

A new study finds rising CO2 concentrations (and warming) have driven the rapid increase in Earth’s photosynthesis processes, or greening.

CO2-induced planetary greening leads to an enormous expansion of Earth’s carbon sink.

By 2100 this greening-sink effect will offset 17 years of equivalent human CO2 emissions.

This easily supersedes the effect of the Paris Agreement’s CO2-mitigation policies.

In a break from the deflating global news of viral infections and rising death rates, a groundbreaking new study (Haverd et al., 2020) affirms the “beneficial role of the land carbon sink in modulating future excess anthropogenic CO2 consistent with the target of the Paris Agreement” via the fertilization effect of rising CO2.

There has been a 30% rise in global greening since 1900. CO2 fertilization is the “dominant driver” of these greening trends, with an additional positive contribution from climate warming.

When CO2 levels double (to 560 ppm), this CO2-fertilization-greening effect is expected to increase to 47%.

Growth in the land’s carbon sink – absorbing excess CO2 emissions – will reach 174 PgC by the end of the century.”

This is the equivalent of eliminating 17 full years of human CO2 emissions.”

There are still some government groups and alarmists that are denigrating the crops produced by the CO2 greening effect.    

“In their Summary for Policymakers issued in 2014, the UN intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledges that the planet has greened, but they say that major crops that 1C above preindustrial levels will negatively impact yields, further they say that thereafter median yields will be reduced by 0 to 2% per decade”.

We are 7 years down the road, and the greening and crop records just keep rolling in despite this forecast by the IPCC.

 “We analyzed the impact of elevated CO2 concentrations on the sufficiency of dietary intake of iron, zinc and protein for the populations of 151 countries using a model of per-capita food availability stratified by age and sex, assuming constant diets and excluding other climate impacts on food production. We estimate that elevated CO2 could cause an additional 175 million people to be zinc deficient and an additional 122 million people to be protein deficient (assuming 2050 population and CO2 projections). For iron, 1.4 billion women of childbearing age and children under 5 are in countries with greater than 20% anaemia prevalence and would lose >4% of dietary iron.”

Don’t you like how these experts think they can detail the numbers of people that will be harmed. They are not good at this.  Never do these IPCC types ever find anything but doom for any theory but theirs.

Now for a quote from the distinguished skeptic, Judith Curry

“And Prof Judith Curry, the former chair of Earth and atmospheric sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, added: “It is inappropriate to dismiss the arguments of the so-called contrarians, since their disagreement with the consensus reflects conflicts of values and a preference for the empirical (i.e., what has been observed) versus the hypothetical (i.e., what is projected from climate models).

“These disagreements are at the heart of the public debate on climate change, and these issues should be debated, not dismissed.”

NASA has not hidden this information, but the alarmists and the mainstream media have done their best to prevent you from seeing it. 

No matter how they try to eliminate CO2 it just keeps making life more livable.   It is part of the energy making process in plants and animals. without which we would all die.  The mass starvation predicted by the alarmists as the world’s population ballooned, did not happen because CO2 increased the food supply.

From a recent Dr. Roy Spencer blog:

Seldom is the public ever informed of these glaring discrepancies between basic science and what politicians and pop-scientists tell us.
Why does it matter?
It matters because there is no Climate Crisis. There is no Climate Emergency.
Yes, irregular warming is occurring. Yes, it is at least partly due to human greenhouse gas emissions. But seldom are the benefits of a somewhat warmer climate system mentioned, or the benefits of more CO2 in the atmosphere (which is required for life on Earth to exist).
But if we waste trillions of dollars (that’s just here in the U.S. — meanwhile, China will always do what is in the best interests of China) then that is trillions of dollars not available for the real necessities of life.
Prosperity will suffer, and for no good reason.“

Now take this to your children to read.

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Climate Alarmism, CO2, CO2 positive feedback, crop yields, IPCC, photosynthesis, Phytoplankton

Are Our Political Leadership Ignorant Of Global Warming Science?

Posted on October 13, 2020 | Leave a comment

Is the inherent ignorance of global warming science in our political leadership leading us over the cliff?  A posting on WattsUpWithThat by Dr Tim Ball tells us that, with the exception of President Trump, these leaders are weak, ignorant, and pandering  .  Ball’s views are as follows:

World Leaders’ Ignorance About Climate Change Continues Despite Simple, Obvious Evidence.

 Guest Blogger / May 18, 2019 Guest opinion Dr. Tim Ball “

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization.” Arnold Toynbee

Until Trump, and very obviously with his exception, weak, ignorant, pandering, people lead the western nations. They want leadership positions but with no intention of doing the job, or, for that matter, any talent to do it. We are a long way from Toynbee’s “last product of civilization.” Worse, we are moving further away every day. What can you say about America, supposedly the most advanced civilization in the world, with a regular TV program about 600-pound people in prime time? Is that filling leisure intelligently? What can you conclude about western leaders listening to and, worse, heeding Swedish teenager, Greta Thuneberg about climate change who claims she can see carbon dioxide in the air? This skill may be because she is a 16- year old child who, regrettably, has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Asperger’s Syndrome. We know this because her mother, who needs for child abuse, told us so in the family book ‘Scenes from the heart. Our life for the climate.’ Historically, it was a child who pointed out that the emperor had no clothes. Now the ill-informed, used and abused, children are pointing out the emperor is wearing a cloak of green.

None of this is surprising as the world moves past madness into insanity. A US Senator, Elizabeth Warren, is running for President. This after admitting she claimed a nonexistent native heritage to jump the line at Harvard Law School and to get called to the Bar. There is another Senator also a lawyer, Richard Blumenthal, sitting on the Judiciary Committee where he cynically sits in judgment of other people’s truth and credibility. He claimed involvement in live combat in Vietnam when he was never even in the country. How can such exposed and admitted liars continue to retain positions of power?

Sadly, it is easy, have you watched debates and proceedings in any legislative body from the US Congress, through the British Parliament and beyond. It is a zoo of childish one-upmanship and petty name-calling, but what makes it worse is they think it is clever. No wonder the ratings of all such bodies are so low.

The major reason for the problem of poor leadership is that natural leaders, who are born, not nurtured, know the populace is not ready to be led. They also know that anybody who steps forward to lead immediately becomes the target of a media who believes its divine function is to destroy anybody and everybody. Understandably, they are not prepared to put their heads on the media chopping block. The impact on society is more than the loss leadership. This creates a vacuum that is almost immediately filled by people who want to lead but have nothing but ambition. These people want the job but lack the skills. They say whatever you want to hear or what they think you want to hear. The sincerity is as thin as the ability. Most of these are the people that Daniel Boorstin identified as being famous for being famous. They are so shallow that they are more vulnerable than most to misinformation and false stories that can become the basis of a political campaign. The biggest of these is the human-caused climate change issue. They, along with everybody else, didn’t understand it, but they deliberately exploited it. Everybody thought climate change was a problem, they didn’t care because it was a superb political opportunity.

A Yale University test on climate titled “American’s Knowledge of Climate Change” proved it. The test was designed to find out

from a national study of what Americans understand about how the climate system works, and the causes, impacts, and potential solutions to global warming.

The test given to 2030 American adults resulted in catastrophic results. A full 77% of them achieved a grade of only D or F (52%). I know from 50 years of talking to and dealing with politicians at all levels that their knowledge is as bad. In one way it is worse because politicians take stronger, more definitive positions that preclude an open mind.

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Posted in AGW, Climate Alarmism, Climate Models, CO2, crop yields, Environment, fossil fuels, President Trump

Michael Shellenberger Exposes Global Warming Alarmists

Posted on September 8, 2020 | 1 comment

The man-made global warming eco-alarmists are composed of a cabal of scientists and bureaucrats that use scare tactics to frighten the public into supporting them.  Their objective is to destroy capitalism and replace it with Marxism.  This is fact, not opinion. Their leadership have repeatedly said that their movement is not about environmentalism. To accomplish their objective, for years they have been making predictions designed to frighten the general populace.  The literature is filled with predictions of the apocalypse that have never happened.  One of their most recent one is that the world is doomed in something like 12 years if we do not empower them to do the things they say need to be done.  To these eco-alarmists, the cost of their plans is not an issue.

Why am I highlighting Shellenberger as he is not the only one that has challenged them? First, Shellenberger is a certified environmentalist. He was Time Magazine’s “Hero of the Environment”. He has testified before Congress as an expert and he was invited to be an expert reviewer of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) next Assessment Report.  A summary of his background can be found by clicking here.

Secondly, despite what you may have read, skeptics are not the recipients of large sums of money.  The eco-alarmists are recipients almost all the money spent on global warming.  Anyone that does not toe the line, endangers the alarmist’s incomes.  There are few scientists that are willing to sacrifice their jobs by openly speaking out. Shellenberger insists that he believes in the man-made theory of global warming, but he cannot sit by and let the alarmist poison the scientific dialog. That is unacceptable.

I think that he represents many scientists that do not agree with the alarmists but are afraid to speak their mind.  Perhaps Shellenberger’s example will encourage others to follow his lead.   A Skeptic, on the other hand, might not be able to instill the needed courage.

I have purchased Shellenberger’s book. It is powerful.  I recommend it.  He has developed an outline of his book and the following are excerpts:

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Posted in AGW, Al Gore, Climate Alarmism, Climate Models, crop yields, Electricity, Electricity from Coal, End of the Earth, Environment, fossil fuels, Global Temperatures, Ice Melt, IPCC, Nuclear Energy, radical environmentalists, Renewable Energy, Sea Ice, Sea Level, Storms/hurricanes, warmer prediction fails

Fisking Of The Posting “If Trump And GOP Don’t Understand Climate Change, The Don’t Deserve Public Office.”

Posted on August 27, 2018 | Leave a comment

The following fisking is of an article posted on CNN Opinion, by Jill Flipovic  on August 21 2018 titled “If Trump and GOP don’t understand climate change, they don’t deserve public office:.

I have added comments to Ms Filipovic essay in red.

The Trump administration’s latest efforts to undo more of Barack Obama’s efforts to slow climate change come as no surprise. Nothing gets this President more excited than trying to undo his predecessor’s legacy.

But his proposed new EPA rules — tagged with the laughable misnomer the “Affordable Clean Energy” rule — are not just vindictive, they are dangerous. The administration wants to allow coal-burning power plants to emit more deadly carbon and to give states greater leeway to allow big-money companies to pollute. The new rules would replace the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which is aimed at reducing carbon emissions.  

Several things wrong here. First “deadly carbon” is an ignorant thing to say.  Does she not know that virtually every living thing is composed of carbon?   The globe is greening due to the increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2).  Wheat and corn fields are becoming more productive as atmospheric  CO2 increases.   Secondly, her ignorance shows.  She is wrong if she thinks shutting down US coal plants will have any effect on the planet.  Using the warmers own formula for calculating the effect of reduced CO2 emissions by a shutdown US coal plants,  shows that any temperature decrease will be too small to be  measurable.
Thirdly the emission of CO2 from US coal plants is pretty small compared to China.  Her rant is  missdirected.  China is  adding a new coal plant every week. And guess who gave the Chinese  permission to continue doing this until 2030 —none other than forward looking savior Barak O.   Obama thinks we should close our coal plants down but its ok for the Chinese to keep building them.  Not just China , world-wide construction of coal based plants is on the rise.  Coal sales are on the rise.

The proposal reflects a longstanding and fundamentally damaging idea in right-wing politics: That climate change is a matter of opinion, not fact, and that people who have no interest in the facts still deserve to hold political office. 

It is obvious, she belongs to the church of unending climate catastrophes.  If she would look at actual recorded temperatures versus the computer PREDICTION, she might come down off her high horse. Paraphrasing the last sentence, Those who hold catastrophic climate change based upon religious beliefs  do not deserve to write ignorant opinion pieces.

The deluded perspective is not confined to America’s Republican Party. Conservatives in Australia have also latched on to the theory that climate change is debatable, and that efforts to fight it are a liberal conspiracy against big business.

 Well, Germany, and other European countries are increasing their CO2 emissions.  The third world is increasing their CO2 emissions. The Paris Agreement is a scam.  This is evading Ms. Filipovic.  She lives in a world of make believe.  Perhaps that shows that only the US and Australia are not hiding under the covers.

The GOP has long been in the pocket of polluters, who have who have made clear that they are quite comfortable destroying the planet for our children and grandchildren in return for getting rich now. The party has helped to make this denialism politically feasible by systematically undermining the public. 

Once again Ms Pilipovic seems to be ill informed.  What President Trump is doing is to make electricity affordable.   Go look at the reports from England and Germany, two nations that have gone head over heals in renewable energy, about the poor people that are dying because they can no longer afford electricity.  Every intelligent person knows that the people that will suffer the most as energy prices go skyrocketing are the poorest people among us. 

That the new Trump rules will cost thousands of lives — 1,400 every year by the EPA’s own admission — doesn’t seem to matter to this President and his GOP enablers, who put corporate profits first, ahead of citizens’ health. In this, they are joined by a base that seems willing to accept any lie, indignity or even undermining of health and life.

When you read about the deaths of 1400 every year, you may wonder where that came from.   Ms Pilipovic may know but my guess is that she doesn’t.  The Obama EPA knew that the coal plant CO2 emissions were insufficient to justify the “Clean Power Plant” plan.  They needed something else. So, they settled on 2.5-micron particles.  Too small for you to see, but they postulated that people are breathing them in and dying.  They had a problem.  All the test they had run as well as other groups outside of the EPA never found that the 2.5-micron particles were killing people.  So, they got a group of “scientist” to run these tests again.  Guess what.  They found out that it was a serious situation.  Two things are fishy here.  The first that they would not publish their test data.  Of course, no one could disprove their results without access to their data.   BUT the EPA accepted the results.  A new bill has been passed saying that the EPA can no longer use “secrete science”.  And the group of scientists that did this secrete science have amassed over $20, 000,000 doing studies for the EPA.  They know who is buttering their bread.

It’s a sad state of affairs — but also a real and growing threat to a country experiencing wild weather mood swings, the largest wildfires in recorded history, floods, droughts and on and on.

The bible of the warmers is the IPCC reports.  These reports have consistently said that the “wild weather “is not a function of climate change.

In any reasonable universe, those who deny basic scientific facts that connect this grim reality to humans’ role in global warming would be deemed unfit to hold office.

Here we go again. Who is unfit to hold office is the catastrophic global warmers. Get this, James Hansen, the god father of the catastrophic global warming movement says their theory is all wrong.   Click here to read.

Imagine a congressman who questioned whether gravity was real, or a senator who insisted the earth was flat. We would rightly say that they’re intellectually deficient, and that their bizarre theories mean they probably shouldn’t be making vital decisions that affect millions of Americans (not to mention billions more people around the world).

Is this a mistake on her part?  Normally people would say Representatives and Senators not congressmen and senators.

But somehow climate change falls in a different category (along with, among a majority of evangelical protestants, for example, a disbelief in evolution).

This seems to be religious bias.  I was told that liberals never sank that low.

It’s one thing to be ignorant — and, to be sure, many non-climate-change-denying Americans don’t understand the basics of climate change either. But most Americans also don’t understand the details of how a bill becomes law, how our court system works, or how the national budget gets set — all things we expect of our nationally elected officials.

I think we have shown who are the Ignorant ones.

Politicians should similarly be expected to understand the basic science of climate change, and to listen to the scientific experts instead of seeking out the few outliers who confirm their own half-baked beliefs.

Oh yes, such people as Al Gore and Bill Nye are the biggest half baked, maybe only unbaked catastrophic global warmer educators.

Of course, Trump has appointed a series of cronies and amateurs to his cabinet, and he himself holds the highest office in the land, with zero previous experience for the job, zero intellectual curiosity, and zero ability to train his attention on just about anything other than Twitter and Fox News.

Gosh he only amassed several billions of dollars in his business career.  Of course  Barak Obama’s experience as a community organizer made him much more qualified than Donald Trump. (sarc)

Again, showning who the ignorant one is.

His presidency makes full mockery of the theory that those in charge should know anything at all. And with this latest green light to polluters and contaminators, all of us are again paying the price for that unapologetic greed and ignorance.

Repeat.

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Al Gore, Alternative Energy, Bill Nye, China, Climate Alarmism, Climate Models, CO2, Coal, crop yields, EPA, IPCC, Paris Agreement, President Trump, Storms/hurricanes

The Ice Age’s combined horrors – intense cold, permanent drought and CO2 starvation

Posted on July 14, 2017 | Leave a comment

The New York Magazine posted, “The Uninhabitable Earth” by David Wallace-Wells. Some observers think that this posting is so bizarre that it must be a parody; meant to be something like a posting on the ONION. 

I have been planning to discuss some information about CO2.  When I read Part V of Mr. Wallace-Wells essay subtitled “Unbreathable Air”, I had to make it part of the discussion to illustrate why some consider the New York Magazine’s posting is  a parody.  Wallace-Wells notes:

“Our lungs need oxygen, but that is only a fraction of what we breathe. The fraction of carbon dioxide is growing: It just crossed 400 parts per million, and high-end estimates extrapolating from current trends suggest it will hit 1,000 ppm by 2100. At that concentration, compared to the air we breathe now, human cognitive ability declines by 21 percent.

Where is he getting his information?  Let’s look at what experts have to say about CO2 .

CO2 is an asphyxiant gas and not classified as toxic or harmful.  The American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienist say that the TLV is 5,000 ppm.  The Threshold Limit Value (TLV) is the level which a worker can be exposed to day after day for a lifetime without adverse effects. Concentrations up to 1% (10,000 ppm), will make some people feel drowsy according to some sources.  Levels of 70,000 to 100,000 may cause suffocation.    So, Wallace-Wells’ value of 1000ppm is truly a laughable statement.  Perhaps anyone who reads the         “Uninhabitable Earth”  will experience a cognitive decline of 21%.

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Posted in AGW, Climate Alarmism, CO2, crop yields, Environment, Famine, Global Temperatures, Ice cores, Ice Melt, Sea Level

CO2 And Climate Change Science–Part 2: A Summary Of The Science

Posted on March 10, 2017 | Leave a comment

The website CO2 Coalition has a post titled “Climate Change: A summary of the Science”.  It one of the best summaries I have come across lately.  It is fairly long, so I could do my usual and summarize it, but there is virtually nothing in it that I would want to skip over.  So, I will not deprive the reader. I will put it in, in its entirety.  I hope that my posting yesterday will fill in any blanks you may have otherwise had.

cbdakota

==========================================================

News 26 Feb, 2017

Climate Change: A Summary of the Science

The climate change science is settled, but not how the climate alarmists want you to think.

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Posted in AGW, chemistry, China, Climate Alarmism, Climate Models, CO2, crop yields, Environment, fossil fuels, Global Temperatures, Media Bias, Ocean Acidification, photosynthesis, Sea Level, Solar Activity, Storms/hurricanes, Sun, sun and climate, The Pause

Administrator cbdakota Issues EPA Mission Statement

Posted on January 6, 2017 | Leave a comment

°If cbdakota were appointed the EPA Administrator, he might begin his work issuing this statement:

I thank President Trump for my nomination and the vote approving the nomination.

Our mission will be that the EPA continues to protect the environment and at the same time does not stifle our Nation’s productivity.

secret-epa-scienceOur initial review of the EPA has found some activities, regulations and guidance documents that need to be critically assessed, cancelled or expanded.  The following are several of the items that illustrate the issues we uncovered and our plan to deal with these issues:

Endangerment Finding:

The Endangerment Finding (EF) needs to be re-evaluated, revised and updated using current science.  The EF is largely based upon the IPCC pre-2007 climate science, making it more than 10 years old.  Furthermore, the projections of temperature, sea level and other variables do not match the actual measured temperature and sea level data. These EF projections greatly overstate the size of the changes thus putting into question the amount of endangerment.

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Posted in AGW, Climate Alarmism, Climate Models, CO2, CO2 positive feedback, crop yields, Drought, Environment, EPA, Global Temperatures, Government Regulations, IPCC, Sea Level, Storms/hurricanes, The Pause, Tornados, US Manufacturing Companies, warmer prediction fails

Drain The EPA Swamp-Part 1- Social Cost of Carbon

Posted on December 27, 2016 | 1 comment

3swamp-1The Trump administration has formed a team charged with making recommendations for changes to the EPA. This action is needed because gone are the days when the EPA followed the legislation written by Congress.  Good things were accomplished by the EPA.  But now the EPA has over stepped it authority. The EPA task is to administer the law, not make it. For example, it has developed criteria to justify their own efforts, often invites “friendly lawsuits to expand their activities, and uses “secret science” to justify their regulations:

The following are some of the areas that the team need to address, in my opinion:

  • Social Cost of Carbon
  • Secret Science
  • Peer Reviewed Studies
  • Friendly Law Suits
  • The Endangerment Finding
  • Research Grants
  • Last Minute Regulations

 

Social Cost of Carbon

The Federal Departments are charged with providing the benefit that results from their regulations. The EPA’s decided that their benefit would be a calculation that they call the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC). Their SCC calculates the economic damage per ton of CO2 emissions. They form the SCC by considering all the bad things they say are going to happen if atmospheric CO2 continues to increase.  Sea level rise, terrible weather, crop failures, mass migrations.  These outcomes are predictions made by their computer models.   One thing we know about the computer model’s predictions is that they have consistently overstated the temperature rise and the sea level rise.  These two drive the cost side of the equation.  Thus, all their regulatory schemes are supposed to prevent these costs.   But the EPA fails to include the benefits of additional atmospheric CO2. One thing we know for sure is the increased atmospheric CO2 has resulted in a profound greening of the globe.  Food crop production has increased dramatically as CO2 is the primary food for plants.  The gentle global warming that has taken place has been beneficial as well.

Another problem with the SCC is the discount rate used by the EPA is unrealistic in the view of many economists.  The Federal Government’s Office of Management and Budget(OMB) believes a in different discount rate. When using OMB discount rate, the EPA cost estimates are reduced by 80% and is some cases cause the cost to be negative. And where the calculation goes negative, the increased atmospheric CO2 results in a benefit, not a cost.

 

Using these flawed computer predictions makes this calculation unsuitable for policy making.  Further, the benefits that are actually known (not computer predicted) are not included thus making the calculation even more useless. And lastly the discount rate chosen by the EPA would not likely be used by most economist.

Social Cost of Carbon calculation currently used by the EPA should be drained from the swamp.

Unfortunately, many new regulatory rules have been enacted based upon the social cost of carbon.  One survey found that between May 2008 and August 2014, some 68 major rules were sanctioned by the SCC.   This is an issue the new team should address.

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, carbon tax, chemistry, Climate Alarmism, Climate Models, CO2, crop yields, Environment, EPA, Global Temperatures, Sea Level, warmer prediction fails

GMCs—Part 2—Are They “Frankenfoods”?

Posted on November 3, 2016 | Leave a comment

 

The benefits are numerous but even so, there is considerable opposition to Genetically Modified Crops (GMC).  Is this opposition science based or is based upon intuition/emotion?  My previous posting “Genetically Modified Crops–Part 1—Are They Beneficial?  enumerates the substantial economic and environmental benefits and the scientific studies that have concluded that GMCs are as safe as unmodified crops.

Corn grows near a barn . MADATORY CREDIT Ken Kashian

Corn grows near a barn . MADATORY CREDIT Ken Kashian

The Scientific American posting by Stefaan Blancke titled “Why People Oppose GMOs Even Though Science Says They Are Safe” gives us some answers .    

The author says:

“ Psychological essentialism, for instance, makes us think of DNA as an organism’s “essence” – an unobservable and immutable core that causes the organism’s behaviour and development and determines its identity. As such, when a gene is transferred between two distantly related species, people are likely to believe that this process will cause characteristics typical of the source organism to emerge in the recipient. For example, in an opinion survey in the United States, more than half of respondents said that a tomato modified with fish DNA would taste like fish (of course, it would not).

Essentialism clearly plays a role in public attitudes towards GMOs. People are typically more opposed to GM applications that involve the transfer of DNA between two different species (“transgenic”) than within the same species (“cisgenic”). Anti-GMO organizations, such as NGOs, exploit these intuitions by publishing images of tomatoes with fish tails or by telling the public that companies modify corn with scorpion DNA to make crispier cereals.”

The author says that intuitions about purposes and intentions also have an impact on people’s thinking about GMO.  

“In the context of opposition to GMOs, genetic modification is deemed “unnatural” and biotechnologists are accused of “playing God”. The popular term “Frankenfood” captures what is at stake: by going against the will of nature in an act of hubris, we are bound to bring enormous disaster upon ourselves.”

“GMOs probably trigger disgust because people view genetic modification as a contamination. The effect is enforced when the introduced DNA comes from a species that is generally deemed disgusting, such as rats or cockroaches. However, DNA is DNA, whatever its source. The impact of disgust explains why people feel more averse towards GM food than other GM applications, such as GM medicine. Once disgust is elicited, the argument that GMOs cause cancer or sterility, or that they will contaminate the environment, becomes very convincing and is often used. Disgust also affects moral judgments, leading people to condemn everyone who is involved with the development and commercialization of GM products. Because people have no conscious access to the emotional source of their judgments, they consequently look for arguments to rationalize them.”

 

The author concludes his thoughts on intuitions and emotions with this:

“The impact of intuitions and emotions on people’s understanding of, and attitudes towards, GMOs has important implications for science education and communication. Because the mind is prone to distorting or rejecting scientific information in favour of more intuitive beliefs, simply transmitting the facts will not necessarily persuade people of the safety, or benefits, of GMOs, especially if people have been subjected to emotive, anti-GMO propaganda”.

In researching this topic, I find that the anti-GMC folks have an issue with Glyphosate.  Glyphosate is a herbicide.  Many of us have used Monsanto’s ROUNDUP to control weeds in our lawns and gardens.  Its big application is in controlling weeds in crop farming.  Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup.  Roundup is a very popular herbicide and is used on crops of all kinds to kill weeds.  It must be applied on the foliage and is not useable as a pre-emergence herbicide.  This limited the use of glyphosate until companies developed  genetically engineered crops that were tolerant to glyphosate.  It can now be sprayed on the crop plant and the chemical acts as a pre-emergence herbicide as well.  Major food safety bodies have concluded that “glyphosate is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans from exposure through the diet”.

 

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Climate Alarmism, crop yields, Ecosystems, Environment, photosynthesis

Genetically Modified Crops–Part 1—Are They Beneficial?

Posted on October 30, 2016 | 2 comments

Genetically modified crops (GMC also known as GMO) are plants that have their DNA modified by the addition of other sourced DNA. This is done to impart additional characteristics to the plant so as to reduce their vulnurability to attacks by certain viruses, insects, and molds, for example. This ability has made GMCs in demand world-wide .

According to Wikipedia:

Between 1996 and 2015, the total surface area of land cultivated with GM crops increased by a factor of 100, from 17,000 km2 (4.2 million acres) to 1,797,000 km2 (444 million acres).[2] 10% of the world’s arable land was planted with GM crops in 2010.[3] In the US, by 2014, 94% of the planted area of soybeans, 96% of cotton and 93% of corn were genetically modified varieties.[4] Use of GM crops expanded rapidly in developing countries, with about 18 million farmers growing 54% of worldwide GM crops by 2013.[1] A 2014 meta-analysis concluded that GM technology adoption had reduced chemical pesticide use by 37%, increased crop yields by 22%, and increased farmer profits by 68%.[5] This reduction in pesticide use has been ecologically beneficial, but benefits may be reduced by overuse.[6] Yield gains and pesticide reductions are larger for insect-resistant crops than for herbicide-tolerant crops. Yield and profit gains are higher in developing countries than in developed countries

SAFE FOR PEOPLE

Is the use of GMCs safe? From  Wikipedias we learn that:

There is a scientific consensus[7][8][9][10] that currently available food derived from GM crops poses no greater risk to human health than conventional food,[11][12][13][14][15] but that each GM food needs to be tested on a case-by-case basis before introduction.

DEVELOPMENT HISTORY

Lets go back for some history related to hybrid crops. Past, modifications to crops:

Continue reading →

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Posted in AGW, Climate Alarmism, crop yields, Drought, Ecosystems, Environment, Famine, photosynthesis