Gullible people, millions of them, have been deceived into thinking that global warming is bad. It isn’t.
This is a lesson worth learning as we pass another Earth Day. Earth Day was notable this year for Michael Moore’s unexpected documentary, in which he excoriates his fellow eco-fascists for their love affair with resource-destroying wind turbines and solar farms. Both require immense amounts of raw materials which have to be mined, and both are non-recyclable, meaning they have to be dumped in, well, dumps - you know, big giant heaps of garbage.
These are things of which Moore admitted to a lifetime of colossal ignorance. Well, now he knows better, but too bad for the birds that have blended to pulp by wind turbines and incinerated while in mid-air by solar farms.
The greens have spent enormous sums of money to convince us that the globe is warming catastrophically (it isn’t,) and that alternatives to fossil fuels must be found (they don’t.) Now the warming of the earth, if it’s even happening, is happening at quite modest and entirely non-dangerous rates.
But let’s assume the earth is warming. That would not be a bad thing at all. In fact, it would be terrific. For instance, far more people die from intense cold than intense heat, which, if you care about humans, is good for the people who get to live instead of freeze to death. Cold snaps kill ten times as many people as heat waves, so this means fewer people will die from extreme temperatures.
But a warming planet is great for other major reasons as well. It’s good, for instance, for people who like to eat, which is everybody on the planet. A warming planet means later first freezes in the fall and earlier last freezes in the spring, making for longer and more fruitful growing seasons. This means more plentiful and affordable food for people who don’t want to starve to death. As the grow-able season expands, farmers might even be able to squeeze in another harvest cycle.
Also, warmer temperatures expand agricultural zones toward the poles, which increases the geographic range of land where plants can grow, and that’s good.
The demon for the greens is CO2, which they blame for global warming. CO2 levels in the atmosphere have grown over the last several decades, crossing the 400-ppm threshold, which we were told would be catastrophic. It wasn’t.
In fact, the more CO2 in the atmosphere the better. CO2 is not a pollutant, like enviros want you to believe. It’s plant food, the very stuff of life for growing things. CO2 is required for photosynthesis; it’s an essential gas, necessary to sustain life on earth. The more CO2 in the atmosphere for plants to absorb, the better.
Doubling the concentration of carbon dioxide increases the growth efficiency of plants by 35 percent. In fact, horticulturalists pump CO2 into greenhouses to turbo-charge plant growth. CO2 is not our enemy; it is our friend.
In fact, because atmospheric levels of CO2 have increased, an aggregate area twice the size of the continental United States has greened up around the world in the last several decades. So, if you love the earth, you should want more CO2, not less, since it makes Mother Earth more fruitful and verdant.
CO2 is also good for everybody who likes to breathe, since plants take in CO2 and give off oxygen in return.
As Cal Beisner says,
"Societies have thrived the most—people have been better fed, clothed, housed, and have been healthier and lived longer—during warmer periods than cooler periods. During the Minoan, Roman, and Medieval Warm Periods, civilization flourished and population grew as death rates declined relative to birth rates. During the Little Ice Age, civilization struggled as people suffered from insufficient food, making them more vulnerable to disease. So remember, whatever harms might accompany some global warming, there are benefits, too. And we think they outweigh the harms."
The author may be contacted at bfischer@afa.net
