Paris climate talks this week descended into madcap all-night negotiations, as delegates desperately tried to salvage some kind of agreement beyond empty promises to do something sometime about what President Obama insists is the gravest threat to our planet, national security and future generations.
He gets far more energized about slashing energy use than about Islamist terrorism, even after the Paris and San Bernardino butchery. Determined for once to lead from upfront, he took a 500-person greenhouse gas-spewing entourage to the City of Light, to call for preventing increasing droughts, floods, storms, island-swallowing rising acidic ocean levels and other disasters conjured up by alarmist computer models.
Legally binding carbon dioxide emission targets were too contentious to pursue. So was modifying the concept of “differentiated responsibilities.” It holds that countries that historically caused the recent atmospheric carbon dioxide build-up must lead in cutting their emissions, while helping developing countries eventually do likewise, by pouring trillions of dollars in cash and free technology into the Green Climate Fund for supposed climate change adaptation, mitigation and compensation. Developing countries had insisted on that massive wealth redistribution as their price for signing any binding document.
Although China now emits far more CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHG) than the USA or EU, it refused to fast-track reducing those emissions. China and wealthy petro-states also opposed paying into the Climate Fund. Other major bones of contention were likewise never resolved.
Thus, in the end, what we apparently got out of Paris is voluntary emission caps, voluntary progress reviews, no international oversight of any voluntary progress, and voluntary contributions to the Fund.
Of course, the entire climate cataclysm mantra is based on the claim that carbon dioxide has replaced the solar and other powerful natural forces that have driven climate change throughout Earth and human history. Now, merely tweaking CO2 emissions will supposedly stabilize climate and weather systems.
President Obama fervently believes this delusion. He will likely use the voluntary Paris gobbledygook to say America somehow has a “moral obligation” to set an example, by de-carbonizing, de-industrializing and de-developing the United States. Thankfully, Congress and the states will have something to say about that, because they know these anti-fossil fuel programs will destroy jobs and living standards, especially for poor, working class and minority families.
The impacts would be far worse than many news stories and White House press releases suggest. Those sources often say the proposed climate treaty and other actions seek GHG reductions of 80% below predicted 2050 emission levels. The real original Paris treaty target is 80% below actual 1990 levels.
That means the world would have to eliminate 96% of the greenhouse gases that all humanity would likely release if we reach world population levels, economic growth and living standards predicted for 2050. The United States would likely have to slash it CO2 and GHG reductions to zero.
Moreover, current 2050 forecasts already assume and incorporate significant energy efficiency, de-carbonization and de-industrialization over the next 35 years. They are not business-as-usual numbers or extrapolations of past trends. Further CO2 reductions beyond those already incorporated into the forecasts would thus be increasingly difficult, expensive, and indeed impossible to achieve.
As we explain in a MasterResource.org analysis, there is a strong positive relationship between GDP and carbon-based energy consumption. Slashing fossil energy use that far would thus require decimating economic growth, job creation and preservation, and average per-person incomes. In fact, average world per capita GDP would plummet from a projected $30,600 in 2050 to a miserable $1,200 per year.
Average per capita GDP in 2050 would be less than what Americans had in 1830! Many futuristic technologies would still exist, but only wealthy families and ruling elites could afford them.
That would be catastrophic for jobs, health and welfare in developed countries – and lethal to millions in poor nations, who would be denied the blessings of electricity and fossil fuels for decades to come. That is indefensible, inhumane and immoral. And for what?
Mr. Obama and the alarmists in Paris insisted that drastic GHG reductions will hold global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius (3.5 F) and prevent climate and weather disasters. Now some even claim that the upper safety limit is actually 1.5 degrees C (2.7 F), which would require even more draconian energy and emission cutbacks. Otherwise, Earth could become uninhabitable, they assert. Nonsense.
EPA’s own analyses suggest that its fully implemented Clean Power Plan would bring an undetectable, irrelevant reduction of perhaps 0.02 degrees Celsius (0.05 F) in average global temperatures 85 years from now – assuming carbon dioxide actually does drive climate change.
In the Real World, climate changes regularly, and recent climate and weather trends and events are in line with historic experience. In fact, average global temperatures haven’t risen in nearly two decades; no category 3-5 hurricane has struck the USA in a record ten years; Greenland and Antarctic ice are at record levels; and still firmly alkaline sea levels (8.1 pH) are rising at barely seven inches per century.
Many scientists believe the sun and other powerful natural forces may soon usher in a new era of colder temperatures, regardless of whether atmospheric CO2 rises above 0.40% (400 ppm). That would pose much greater threats to human health, agriculture and prosperity (and wildlife) than global warming.
We must never forget: Fossil fuels facilitated successive industrial revolutions and enabled billions to live better than royalty did a century ago, helped average incomes to increase eleven-fold, and helped average global life expectancy to soar from less than 30 in 1870 to 71 today.
Carbon-based energy still provides 81% of world energy, and supports $70 trillion per year in world GDP. It will supply 75-80% of global energy for decades to come, Energy Information Administration, International Energy Agency and other studies forecast. Carbon-based energy is essential if we are to bring electricity to the 1.3 billion people who still do not have it, and end the rampant poverty and lung, intestinal and other diseases that kill millions of people in poor countries every year.
Furthermore, thousands of coal-fired power plants are built, under construction or in planning around the world. China and India will not consider reducing GHG emissions until 2030, and even then it will be voluntary and dependent on how their economies are doing. That means atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will continue to climb, greening the planet and spurring faster crop, forest and grassland growth.
President Obama and the 40,000 climate alarmists gathered in Paris largely these inconvenient realities, and whitewashed the adverse consequences of anti-hydrocarbon policies. Even binding targets would have had minimal or illusory health, climate and environmental benefits.
Instead, they would have horrendous adverse effects on human health and environmental quality, while doing nothing to prevent climate change or extreme weather events. What alarmists wanted in Paris would have let unelected, unaccountable activists and bureaucrats decide which industries, companies, workers, families, states and countries win the Climate Hustle game, and which ones lose.
And it’s not just President Obama, who wants to slash America’s carbon dioxide emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025 – and 80% below 1990 levels by 2050! Every Democrat presidential candidate demands similar actions: Hillary Clinton wants one-third of all US electricity to come from wind and solar by 2027; Bernie Sanders wants 80% by 2050; Martin O’Malley wants 100% by 2050.
Obligating the United States to slash its fossil fuel use, and send billions of taxpayer dollars annually to dictators, bureaucrats and crony industrialists in poor countries would be disastrous. Thank goodness it did not happen. But we are not out of the woods yet.
The gravest threat to our planet are the people you see in the above picture, the dictators of this planet.
Ummm CO2 at 400 ppm is 0.04% not .4%.
@NielsZoo: Right. I noticed that too. I am glad he had 400 ppm along with the misprint. We all make those mistakes.
I make them ALL the time. I always tell my boss to run my calcs by another engineer before sending them to clients ’cause I’m paranoid I’m going to miss some dumb mistake in simple math.
@NielsZoo: It just gets worst after you retire. I was an engineer for a corporation so I know how you feel. It gets doubly bad when your eye sight starts to weaken. That is somewhat correctable with glasses but It seems like I can never get enough light to really see the detail in many tasks I attempt. I wonder how many other readers of this article recognized the mistake of 0.4% ? My guess is that most of the “Warmer Crowd” would believe a value of 40% CO2 in the atmosphere. Have a nice day.
An historian’s observation:
Totalitarianism has been an aim of elitists for over 150 years, first propounded by Clinton Roosevelt who predated Marx by several years. The US welcomed tens of thousands of communists after WW2, and they appear to now dominate the Democratic Party and many universities. Maybe the wannabe elites just hate the Industrial Revolution for giving humans a non-slave, non-serf lifestyle. They just used environmentalism as a vehicle for total control. If that fails, what will they use next?
Obama is an idealogue not an idiot. It’s never been about saving the planet. It’s always been about two things. Empowering and ensuring his select cronies have profit opportunities no matter how severe the cost to the rest of us. And control of everything as in the ism you choose to label his policies. The most appropriate labels are Communism, Fascism and Totalitarian.
Leave it to Obama to declare this slimmed down version of COP21 as a victory. It isn’t any different than his statements that the war on terrorism had been won prior to his last reelection. Now he says he has terrorism on the run. We know he is a liar on all counts. My concern about this agreement is that it opens the door for Obama to attempt to commit more funds to the climate change program by claiming that all nations agree that AGW is real and must be financed. I believe he will attempt to provide executive funding for it. The republicans must prevent any funding for this scam. Any funds that Obama succeeds in approving though deceptive slight of hand to the UN must be counter acted by congress by reducing the annual funding to the UN by an equal or more amount. It is time to put the UN in its place by limiting their power through the purse.
The agreement is a victory for the left/green elites. Note that UN client states do not have to reduce emissions – they are planning 2500 more coal fired power plants.
Meanwhile Western capitalist democracies responsible for just 1/3 of CO2 emissions have volunteered to reduce them AND contribute $100 Billion to those UN client states. Both the emission reductions and financial contributions will be ratcheted up over the years, tightening the noose around our economies. And our leaders signed up for this suicide pact!
Note, so called human CO2 emissions are dwarfed by natural emissions making up just 4% of the total. These are again dwarfed by the dominant ‘greenhouse gas’ – water vapour – responsible for 96% of the ‘greenhouse effect’. That is if you believe greenhouse theory. Real physicists don’t. The theory breaks several basic rules of physics. i.e. CO2 can’t warm the planet as claimed.
It was never about the climate – it was and is about giving the UN more power and about damaging capitalist based economies. And our leaders have capitulated. A gross failure of democracy – our leaders are more interested in following populist fads than governing in the interests of the people.
@G van Rijswijk: I agree totally.
The US historically has put most of the GHGs into the atmosphere. There is this thing called ‘history’ and ‘responsibility’ https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4561e9df583f01b7f4f26fd12f976a9adee97b026267189865d1020dddf4d748.jpg .
HTH
best,
D
You have been completely conned – like so many. Nature puts out 99.9% of ‘greenhouse gasses’. Whatever humans do is insignificant. One decent sized volcano puts out more GHGs than America has during its history. And dozens erupt every year – many under the oceans.
This all matters if the greenhouse gas theory of climate is valid. As a physics major, I and many thousands of scientists disagree. The theory breaks basic rules of physics and has never been proven. They just carry on as if it were true. Historians in the futre looking back at this will wonder how it was possible that such an obvious con could have lasted.
I’m sorry you can’t grasp the fact that the additional ~120ppmv of CO2 in the atmosphere that man has added since the start of the Industrial Revolution (~40% increase) is man-caused.
But I’ll take those points on offer now:
o Natural sources of CO2 are too big for human sources to matter [10 points]
o No greenhouse effect [50 points]
o Greenhouse effect violates thermodynamics (add 5 points for ‘demonstrating’ that it doesn’t work like a real greenhouse) [40points]
https://www.facebook.com/ClimateDenialistTalkingPointGame
best,
D
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/98b253adac8b9242ff62f3bbd09f7b5e495521ed192667e1b4cefab6f97c5c02.jpg
That matters when you assume that another 120ppm has an effect. Let’s first assume for the sake of this discussion that the GHG theory is correct and use that assumption as a basis. The dominant GHG is water vapour, leaving quite a small role for CO2 – even in the wavelengths CO2 absorbs, water dominates. This means that you soon get to a point where the the absorption capacity for CO2 is saturated – and adding more makes little difference.
Another way of looking at the issue is to use the climate sensitivity to CO2. IPCC estimates rhange from 1.5 t0 4.5 degrees C. Estimates by other scientists suggest that it is towards the lower end of the range or even lower.
A third way of looking at it is the geological and ice core record that shows CO2 concentrations as high as 3000ppm during a fully blown ice age.
More recent history suggests that half of the modern warming occurred during the first half of the last century, before CO2 concentrations were high enough to be considered the cause, and during the most recent 18 -19 years when they were high enough, the satellite record shows little or no warming.
Going back into history we have the Medieval Warm Period and the Roman and Minoan warm periods when temperatures were higher than they are now, without high levels of anthropogenic CO2.
So the evidence for the climate scare is very flimsy.
It has all been a very clever use of language.
Comically wrong when temperatures were higher than they are now aside,
Wow, a of points!
o Water vapor makes up 95% of the greenhouse effect [30 points]
o GHG’s are ‘saturated’ [25 points]
o CO2 much higher in past [10 points]
o CO2 can’t matter because it cooled from 1940-1970 [10 points]
o Global warming stopped in 1998, or other such cherry-picking of small time intervals (add 5 points for each time a single date with an anomalous event is used as the start date for when global warming stopped) [15 points]
https://www.facebook.com/ClimateDenialistTalkingPointGame
Best,
D
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d1695667086760df3c263faa7c971cdf43fd520b33d055cff3e98ba96ae7c421.gif
Correlation and causation? If it is CO2 causing temperature rises and not another factor such as the sun, why is it that other planets in the solar system show similar periodic temperature variations?
Just explain how
I did. Your game is lame.
Best,
D
Yes, correct point: all that “sustainability” has departed from principles and aims towards “global governance” – what else than totality! And, the climate frenzy is nothing else than a branch of so called, not real, sustainability, eventually, all power claimed and no responsibility taken. Simply give us your money, money, money, and we know best what to do with them – I was living forty+ years of my most productive life in totality and smell rat for miles!
You folks are lucky, you have only eleven months of this “disaster-ist” left before,hopefully,the American people can discard his entire regime and elect someone with some common sense. Americans are urged, depending on the outcome of the next election to claim,” free at last,free at last,thank God almighty, we’re free at last”.
Unless you screw it up again.
And to quote Me…
“The same electorate stupid enough to put Obama in the White House TWICE is probably dumb enough to put Hillary there, too.”
Been sayin’ that for many months now… stay tuned to that channel.
The real problem is polution, NOT global warming. I guess cleaning up the polution is NOT as sexy as climate change. If you have tried to breath in China you would understand that the problem is polution NOT climate change.
China could reduce pollution just by burning cleaner coal.
There has been an agreement, and even if it is non-binding, a tremendous effort will be made by gullible Western political leaders to abide by it. Those leaders will only stop doing this when they realize it is costing them votes. Unfortunately, the mainstream media and education system are brainwashing the older and younger public.
This agreement is very bad news indeed.
Yay! Polluters don’t have to pay and human health continues to worsen!
Best,
D
Is that why life expectancy in Developed Countries has something like doubled in the last hundred or two years?
Vote for Bernie and see what your ‘life’ becomes…
Soshelizt! Drink!
Nonetheless, airpocalypse in China and growing cardiopulmonary emergencies in Asia refute you.
Best,
D
You do a lot of drinking!
A lot of Denialist Drinking Game trigger words on this board…. *hic*
Best,
D
CO2 is not pollution. You have been brainwashed by their choice of language. We can’t exist without CO2. It is plant food and currently at historically low concentrations.
FYI, this is a scientifically illiterate troll who plays a silly points game, lies and misrepresents and baits to get an emotional reaction.
He plays a silly points game.
I’d suggest not replying to him. He’s has demonstrated that he doesn’t have the intelligence of a 12 year old.
I am happy to debate with you without name calling. Please come up with some facts to refute my comments. As for being illiterate – I have a science degree majoring in Physics and a masters degree in environmental law.
Sorry I wasn’t clear. I was talking about Dano2, not you.
I’ve edited my comment to be more clear.
You are just lashing out impotently because your hokum-filled comments can’t stand scrutiny.
Best,
D
CO2 is a pollutant. Educate yourself.
best,
D
CO2 is essential for life. It is what plants use to create sugars and starches and make oxygen. People growing food in greenhouses deliberately add more CO2 to increase yields. No CO2 and all life on earth would cease. It is an odourless, colourless, non-toxic gas. The climate change crowd have been successful in calling it ‘pollution’ for so long that people have started to believe it.
Water is essential to life. Try letting me hold your head under water for 15 minutes. The dose is the poison.
Best,
D
That is not because water is poisonous. It is due to the inability to take in air (oxygen) the same would happen if you were immersed in any liquid or gas.
Exactly. Thanks for understanding that your argument was faulty.
Best,
D
Do try it out, please.
I’m sure G begs to differ.
Best,
D
Explain how, or will you just keep repeating your mindless mantra.
You made that up. Shocking.
pollutant :: [puh-loot-nt]
noun
2. any substance, as certain chemicals or waste products, that renders the air, soil, water, or other natural resource harmful or unsuitable for a specific purpose.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pollutant
Then
Pollution, also called environmental pollution,
the addition of any substance (solid, liquid, or gas) or any form of energy (such as heat, sound, or radioactivity) to the environment at a rate faster than it can be dispersed, diluted, decomposed, recycled, or stored in some harmless form. The major kinds of pollution are (classified by environment) air pollution, water pollution, and land pollution. Modern society is also concerned about specific types of pollutants, such as noise pollution, light pollution, and even plastic pollution.
Although environmental pollution can be caused by natural events such as forest fires and active volcanoes, use of the word pollution generally implies that the contaminants have an anthropogenic source—that is, a source created by human activities.
http://www.britannica.com/science/pollution-environment
————————-
Then, specifically for regulatory and enforcement purposes in United States law:
42 U.S. Code § 7408 – Air quality criteria and control techniques
(a) Air pollutant list; publication and revision by Administrator; issuance of air quality criteria for air pollutants
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/7602
then follows
42 U.S. Code § 7602
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/7408
——————————
And then, next, we know in
Massachusetts v Environmental Protection Agency 549 U.S. 497 (2007) where twelve states and several cities of the United States brought suit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to force that federal agency to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) as pollutants.
——————————–
After which,
EPA issued an endangerment finding, stating:
Action
On December 7, 2009, the Administrator signed two distinct findings regarding greenhouse gases under section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act:
Endangerment Finding: The Administrator finds that the current and projected concentrations of the six key well-mixed greenhouse gases ??? carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) ??? in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.
Cause or Contribute Finding: The Administrator finds that the combined emissions of these well-mixed greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles and new motor vehicle engines contribute to the greenhouse gas pollution which threatens public health and welfare.
Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2009-0171.
[Emphases in original]
=======================
This is all the information you need to know on the general definition of a pollutant (CO2: any substance, as certain chemicals or waste products, that renders the air … harmful or unsuitable for a specific purpose), as well as the specific legal frameworks in the USA that define and regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act.
HTH
Best,
D
Stop messing with our CO₂! Don’t you dare keep messing with our food chain!!!
Planet Earth and its Inhabitants
Right on. A century ago when science was done by experimental results rather that flawed, faulty, falsified, failed climate models, scientists knew CO₂ was great for our food chain: http://sealevel.info/TheLiteraryDigest_1921-01-01_Fertilizing_the_Air.html
The “CO2 is a plant food so increased GHGs must be good for us” argument might sound appealing but is misinformed and misleading.
While increased CO2 may increase vegetation growth and yields
in some circumstances, CO2 isn’s always the limiting factor to growth. Crop production is influenced by complex relationships between temperature, precipitation, CO2, weeds, pests, and disease.The USDA Office of the Chief Economist did a thorough review of the scientific literature in 2013 and concluded that “continued changes by mid-century and beyond, are expected to have generally detrimental effects on most crops and livestock”.
To focus on a single positive effect of carbon dioxide is to ignore the broader picture of its full impacts.
As usual, we get irrelevant drivel and dishonest propaganda from you Ian.
There are NO empirically demonstrated net negative effects of CO2 on the animal or plant kingdom.
There ARE empirically demonstrated net positive effects.
Shaw(2002) was an outdoor real world study where several factors sere changed to represent what climate alarmists claim will be representative of a globally warmed environment, elevated temperature, CO2, precipitation, soil nitrogen. The test results showed an INCREASE in net plant productivity of 40%. And that includes effects of pests, weeds and disease and any other negative factors that you can dream up.
And the 2013 USDA ‘Climate Change and Agriculture in the United States: Effects and Adaptation’ report that you reference was based on climate MODEL projections from the flawed, faulty, falsified, failed climate models, which can’t accurately project global temperatures a even a few years in the future at even the 2% confidence level.
“we find that the continued warming stagnation of fifteen years, 1998-2012, is no longer consistent with model projections at even the 2% confidence level.” – vonStorch(2013)
And since the models are iterative, using the previous years projection as input for the next years projection, the error bands get wider and wider the further into the future that they project.
So the predictions of the USDA report are merely more of the false, scary predictions of the groupthink climate cult alarmists. Worthless rubbish.
More empirical real world data show that during what you climate alarmists say was the dangerous ‘human-induced’ climate of the last half of the 20th century, agriculture flourished, showing that increased temperature, increased CO2, changes in precipitation were hugely beneficial to crop production. Here are the real world changes in crop yields over the last half of the 20th century, and they DO include all the negative factors you moan about:
Maize(corn):Up 139%
Wheat: Up 134%
Rice: Up 104%
Barley: Up 83%
Rye/Oats: Up 69%
Millet/Sorghum: Up 57%
http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/ess/img/chartroom/219.gif
Oil palm fruits: Up 290%
Rapeseed: Up 164%
Cottonseed: Up 104%
Soybeans: Up 100%
Lindseed: Up 77%
Sunflower seed: Up 60%
Olives: Up 60%
Groundnuts: Up 48%
Sesame seed: Up 20%
Coconuts: Down 6%
http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/ess/img/chartroom/229.gif
Drybeans: Up 44%
Drypeas: Up 126%
Dry broadbeans: Up 87%
Chickpeas: Up 30%
Lentils: Up 46%
http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/ess/img/chartroom/239.gif
Potatoes: Up 42%
Sweet potatoes: Up 83%
Cassava: Up 181%
http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/ess/img/chartroom/249.gif
Sugarcane: Up 37%
Sugarbeets: Up 52%
http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/ess/img/chartroom/259.gif
Cabbages: Up 57%
Greenbeans: Up 38%
Greenpeas: Up 75%
Onions: Up 73%
Tomatoes: Up 106%
Melons: Up 47%
Watermelons: Up 132%
http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/ess/img/chartroom/269.gif
Peaches: Down 10%
Citrus fruit: Up 30%
Apples: Down 3%
Pineapples: Up 83%
Pears: Up 7%
Bananas + Plantains: Up 24%
Grapes: Up 76%
http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/ess/img/chartroom/279.gif
Coffee: Up 114%
Cocoa beans: Up 233%
Tea: Up 236%
http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/ess/img/chartroom/289.gif
You can read a non-biased, honest report on climate change here: http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/ccr2a/ccr2physicalscience.html
You know, the report that you criticized, but couldn’t point out a single erroneous thing in the report.
Comical inability to cite properly making me chuckle again, you can’t link a single chart there of yield increases to a paper that quantified % due to CO2 fertilization. Not one.
And disinformation site! Drink!
Best,
D
My dad and I were having discussions about oxygen and CO₂ long before I started Kindergarten. There are many natural cycles occurring on Planet Earth which are being taken for granted today. I’m sure there are at least a few more things about our planet which are yet to be discovered.
There is One who has stated that He set boundaries on the earth’s sea water so it will not rise past His predetermined specifications. Ever since the Great Flood, every rainbow is a reminder that He means what He says. How much do you, or any other human being, really know about our oceans and how they function? How much remains to be discovered about our atmosphere.
The biggest hindrance to further discoveries is not ignorance. The great hindrance-to-discovery-and-innovation in widespread operation today is caused by our imagining that we already DO know!
We are not the result of chance. Neither is our planet. All that we see, and all that we know about because of the faith-of-evidence, is the result of Great Architecture and Accurate Engineering. I have never seen a functioning computer program much less complicated than DNA ever come about by chance.
Let’s start treating our environment and ourselves intelligently by acknowledging the Great Intelligence who was here before we were.
Weeds consume CO2
Indeed they do. And more successful weeds may mean more competition with desirable plants and less successful crop yields. Canada thistle (actually and invasive weed introduced from Europe) is an example.
Likewise, rising temperatures associated with increasing CO2 can promote insect pest epidemics. For example the Mountain Pine Beetle has devasted huge areas of Western Canada and the US causing billions in economic losses. Directly attributable to subtle increases in temperature. The point is CO2 and temperature increases might be good for plant growth but growth and yield is a function of many other factors.
John Kerry said it at the Paris conference:
“… The fact is that even if every American citizen biked to work, carpooled to school, used only solar panels to power their homes, if we each planted a dozen trees, if we somehow eliminated all of our domestic greenhouse gas emissions, guess what – that still wouldn’t be enough to offset the carbon pollution coming from the rest of the world.
If all the industrial nations went down to zero emissions –- remember what I just said, all the industrial emissions went down to zero emissions -– it wouldn’t be enough, not when more than 65% of the world’s carbon pollution comes from the developing world.”
Now what does that tell you? It’s been a climate con all along!
The question is how do we now stop this runaway train heading to Morocco next year?