October 31, 2023
One of the hottest issues occurring these days is the debate over whether we are harming the planet and threatening human life by burning fossil fuels and adding dangerous amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
There are many people on each side of this debate, including scientists. The more frequently expressed point of view in the media is the climate catastrophe side. But to add a strong opinion to the other side of that argument, the following information from Patrick Moore is offered.
Moore is a co-founder of Greenpeace, a Canadian environmentalist who previously served as president of Greenpeace Canada and director of Greenpeace International.
In a video produced by Prager University, he presented his position. “All life is carbon based. And the carbon for all that life originates from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
“All of the carbon in the fossil fuels we are burning for energy today was once in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide before it was consumed by plankton in the sea and plants on the land. Coal, oil and natural gas are the remains of those planktons and plants transformed by heat and pressure deep in the Earth’s crust.
“In other words, fossil fuels are 100 percent organic, and were produced with solar energy. Sounds positively green.
“If there were no carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere, the Earth would be a dead planet. Period. Talk about catastrophic climate change. Take away CO2 and you’d have it.
“And yet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has deemed this essential ingredient for life a pollutant. But how can something that makes life possible be bad?”
He went on to say that “carbon dioxide is a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas which is an indispensable food for all living things. Can you have too much of it? In theory, yes. That’s what climate alarmists say is happening now: CO2 levels are getting too high.
“Are they right? Well, if we look at the big picture, we find something surprising. For most of the history of life on Earth, carbon dioxide has been present in the atmosphere at much higher levels than it is today.”
Continuing, Moore said that “From a big picture perspective, we’re actually living in a low carbon dioxide era. The optimum level of CO2 for plant growth, for example, is four to five times what is currently found in our atmosphere. That’s why greenhouse growers worldwide actually inject additional CO2 into their greenhouses.”
That certainly is not a common perspective on CO2 and the environment.
Ian Plimer is a geologist and professor emeritus at the University of Melbourne. He spoke at the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Challenge, a conference for climate change deniers. According to The Australian newspaper, in closing his speech, Plimer stated that "They’ve got us outnumbered, but we’ve got them outgunned, and that’s with the truth."
An online video produced after the conference shows Plimer saying, “No one has ever shown that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming. Never been shown.
“And if it could be shown, then you would have to show that the 97 percent of emissions which are natural do not drive global warming. Game over.
“We are dealing with a fraud. That’s a scientific fraud from day one. We hear the propaganda that increases of the gas of life, a trace gas in the atmosphere, will bring a disaster. And that we will have runaway global warming.
“Sorry, folks. We’ve known for 200 years from chemistry that it’s the exact inverse. When we drill into ice we have chemical fingerprints that tell us what the temperature was, and we have little bits of trapped air [to examine]. And we can show that when we had natural warming, some 650 to 6,000 years later we had an increase in carbon dioxide.
“It’s not carbon dioxide that drives temperature, it’s the exact inverse. Another fraud.”
Godfrey William Bloom is a former British politician who served as a Member of the European Parliament. His position on the argument is one that often arises when governments attempt to do something that many disagree with.
“Isn’t this really just about the state being able to get its hands in ordinary people’s trouser pockets to still get more tax from them,” he asked. “Isn’t this all about political control? Isn’t all of this about politics and big business?
“The whole thing’s a sham, this bogus hypothesis, this ridiculous nonsense that manmade CO2 is causing global warming. Enough, please, before we damage irrevocably the global economy.”
It is crucial to recognize the need for carbon dioxide to sustain life, and also that it is possible to have too much of many things. But, if it is possible to have too much carbon dioxide, how much is actually too much? And, are we really there, yet?
This argument is not going to be resolved anytime soon. Both sides of the issue have strongly held positions. And neither side seems ready to give in to the other.
But it is important to have as many different ideas about important topics as possible so that after considering all relevant points, good decisions can be made.
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