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Scientist says CO2 ‘good for planet’
http://www.codyenterprise.com ^ | Sept 22, 2009 | By Kristen Inbody

Posted on 09/21/2009 9:12:15 PM PDT by Maelstorm

There’s good news on the global climate change front: All that carbon dioxide blamed for global warming is actually good for our planet, says Cody scientist and writer Leighton Steward.

“The earth’s atmosphere needs more carbon dioxide,” he said at a recent Rotary Club meeting. “That ought to get everyone’s attention.”

The CO2 level now is about 385 parts per million. It’s been as high as 7,000 during the earth’s history. *

“Climate is always changing,” he said. “You should never expect climate at an equilibrium, and history shows it’s not.”

More CO2 means better crops and forests, Steward says, but not necessarily a warmer planet since other factors play a bigger role in heating the planet.

“This relates directly to the food supply,” he said. “Green is good, and CO2 is very green.”

CO2 boosts plant growth, making them larger, faster-growing and more drought tolerant with better roots. Steward calls that good news in a world with a growing population.

“When you’re deciding what ought to be done, think about what this could do for mankind,” he said.

Taking CO2 back to pre-industrial levels would degrade habitats and push people into starvation, Steward said.

“CO2 is not a pollutant. It’s the stuff of life. I can’t find anything that’s not beneficial,” he said. “This comes from thousands of studies – mainly from the agricultural community, and these are not casual observers.”

Spending billions and enacting draconian restrictions to fight a “pollutant” that’s not a pollutant isn’t helping anyone, he said.

“If we let our factories continue to manufacture, that’s not necessarily bad and might be good,” he said. “We (pro-CO2 groups) are greener than all the green organizations lobbying to reduce CO2.”

It’s a message scientists across the world are trying to promote, and Steward cited numerous studies.

When he started researching climate change four years ago, Steward found there are 18 “drivers” of climate change, including things like variation in the shape of the earth’s orbit, sunspots and the magnetic effect of the sun.

CO2’s ability to trap heat declines logarithmically, so a great deal of the gas makes a big difference, but as the level dips the difference it makes drops exponentially.

That means doubling the current concentration of CO2 would only make a .2 degree difference, he said.

If CO2 was a significant factor in global warming, temperatures would have risen – as modeling predicted – instead of declining since 2001.

“It’s hard to argue with that,” he said. “They did not predict in any of their models that it would be cooling.”

Since the Industrial Revolution, people have pumped CO2 into the atmosphere and temperature has generally risen, though not always.

“These are natural trends,” he said. “Look at the magnitude of climate variation. Huge swings of 10, 15, 20 degrees.”

Former vice president Al Gore got facts wrong in his documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” Steward said.

“Clearly things were absolutely false in some cases and misleading in other cases,” he said.

For example, Gore said the earth was warming at an unprecedented rate. However, in the 1920s and ’30s, the temperature increase was more dramatic, Steward said.

Contrary to Gore’s findings, cyclone and tornado strength is actually down now, says Steward, a geologist and retired energy industry executive. He is a trustee at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center and lives on the North Fork and in Texas.

Steward, the author of the best-seller “Sugar Busters,” recently published “Fire, Ice and Paradise” on climate change.

This summer, he organized a non-profit organization, “Plants Need CO2,” with the mission, “To educate the public on the positive effects of additional atmospheric CO2 and help prevent the inadvertent negative impact to human, plant and animal life if we reduce CO2.”

More than half the contributions to his group are from the coal industry, he said. CO2 is released during the burning of fossil fuels, among other sources.

“I’m not getting a penny for doing this,” he added. “It’s just something people of the earth ought to know.”


TOPICS: Front Page News; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: carbonisgood; co2; global; globalwarming; warming; waroncarbon
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To: coconutt2000

When confronted with Gorebal Warming fear, I bring up the fact that around 1000 AD the Vikings grew grain in Greenland (which is now under permafrost). Then I ask them about the shrinking ice caps on Mars.


21 posted on 09/21/2009 9:46:55 PM PDT by Grizzled Bear ("Does not play well with others.")
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To: Maelstorm

And to think...0bama is shaking in his boots about getting scolded about this at the U.N. in PA. in a few days because we are not ahead in the carbon footprint green crap con game. NEWSFLASH TO 0BAMA: The world hates us no matter what we do, stop selling us out!!!


22 posted on 09/21/2009 9:47:08 PM PDT by Dubya-M-DeesWent2SyriaStupid! (Obama, the first ever 3 in a half year, lame duck TOTUS)
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To: HiTech RedNeck
It’s really difficult for man to out-heat, or out-cool, Mother Nature.

Mother Nature is really HOT!!! And way COOL too :)

23 posted on 09/21/2009 9:48:53 PM PDT by Mr_Moonlight
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To: TigersEye; June K.
Carbon is the essence of all life on Earth, and when mixed with Oxygen does quite a few wonderful things also ...

Now, if we could only get rid of that dreaded DiHydrogen Monoxide menace (H20) all would be right in the world ...

/sarc off (of course)

24 posted on 09/21/2009 10:04:16 PM PDT by Mr_Moonlight
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To: Maelstorm
The oxygen/carbon dioxide cycle, i.e. photosynthesis, used to be basic high school freshman biology. I always wondered why nobody seemed to wonder what effect reducing carbon dioxide levels would have on plant growth...
25 posted on 09/21/2009 10:07:30 PM PDT by ArmyTeach (Sprit of '76)
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To: Mr_Moonlight
I know it's the basis of life. When I first heard, on the radio, that CA had imposed fines for polluting with too much CO2 from cars, back in the '90s, I thought it was simply a broadcaster's mistake. I thought he must have meant carbon monoxide.

When I learned a short time later that they really did mean CO2 I just shook my head. Even with only a high school education in chemistry and biology I knew it was fence-post stupid to call CO2 a pollutant.

26 posted on 09/21/2009 10:14:02 PM PDT by TigersEye (0bama: "I can see Mecca from the WH portico." --- Google - Cloward-Piven Strategy)
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To: Maelstorm

Intelligence and common sense have no place in a society run by bloomin idiots.


27 posted on 09/21/2009 10:24:27 PM PDT by taraytarah
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To: Maelstorm

CO2, is Carbon dioxide. Plants need it to make food with. Oxygen is used to digest the food the plans make. Without carbon dioxide, no plants.


28 posted on 09/21/2009 10:37:49 PM PDT by television is just wrong (one bad ass mistake America!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
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To: television is just wrong

CO2, is Carbon dioxide. Plants need it to make food with. Oxygen is used to digest the food the plants make. Without carbon dioxide, no plants. No plants, NO US.


29 posted on 09/21/2009 10:40:36 PM PDT by television is just wrong (one bad ass mistake America!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
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To: coconutt2000; All

all young growing plants say:

C02, its whats for supper !

coco, et al, get ahold of the video “The Great Global Warming Swindle”. its available on amazon, but apparently now takes some time to get a copy... i got 3 last Christmas for me & family.

i highly recommend this film. its all facts & contains some extra excerpts from interviews w various experts including one who was an iccp contributor at one point. he had to threaten a law suit to get his name off their contributor list. also a co-founder of greenpeace states that living things are abundant & thriving where its warm & very limited where there is frost. frost kills. compare animal population densities at Sao Paulo Brazil to Antarctic research stations.

it was available on revver.com as a downloadable or watch on site movie... its there now but there website gave me an error & wouldn’t load it...

good hunting.


30 posted on 09/22/2009 12:23:49 AM PDT by Psalm_2 (Break up your fallow ground, For it is time to seek the LORD Until He comes..Hos10:12)
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To: coconutt2000

its on youtube

“The Great Global Warming Swindle”


31 posted on 09/22/2009 12:28:57 AM PDT by Psalm_2 (Break up your fallow ground, For it is time to seek the LORD Until He comes..Hos10:12)
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To: rabscuttle385; Little Bill; IrishCatholic; Normandy; According2RecentPollsAirIsGood; ...
Thanx rabscuttle385 !

 


Beam me to Planet Gore !

32 posted on 09/22/2009 1:45:38 AM PDT by steelyourfaith ("Power is not alluring to pure minds." - Thomas Jefferson)
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To: coconutt2000
you know what throws off libs more then anything. Tell them we are still in an ice age specifically a short 10k year warm period in the early stages of an ice age. Then ask.. why are we worried about warmer weather during an ice age?

they will think you are nuts but it is true.
http://www.epa.gov/gmpo/edresources/pleistocene.html

The EPA gives numbers when we will be 'officially' back into glaciation but we will be totally screwed long before that. first signs of glaciation will be world wide drought more so then noticeable cold weather.

33 posted on 09/22/2009 1:48:05 AM PDT by Steve Van Doorn (*in my best Eric cartman voice* 'I love you guys')
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To: Maelstorm

CO2 is plant food.


34 posted on 09/22/2009 1:49:58 AM PDT by ctdonath2 (Mr. Obama, I will not join your plantation.)
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To: Steve Van Doorn
Great catch.

From the site:

There is debate in the scientific community about what caused the glaciers to advance and retreat, but current theory attributes it to astronomical causes. Because of variations in the earth's orbit, average summer and winter temperatures change with time. There are periods when winters are colder and summers hotter, followed by periods when winters are warmer and summers cooler. The latter are thought to produce glacial advances, because the cooler summers are not adequate to melt all of the previous winter's snow. The result is that snow and ice begin to accumulate from one winter to the next. During periods when summers were warmer, and winters cooler, the glaciers are thought to have retreated. During the Pleistocene epoch, two or more centers of glaciation in Canada probably joined to form one large sheet of ice.

No mention of people causing glaciers to advance or retreat. They must have forgotten the obligatory "human caused global warming" phrase.

35 posted on 09/22/2009 3:28:32 AM PDT by 1010RD (First Do No Harm)
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To: Maelstorm; OKSooner; honolulugal; Killing Time; Beowulf; Mr. Peabody; RW_Whacko; SideoutFred; ...
Image and video hosting by TinyPic

FReepmail me to get on or off

Ping me if you find one I've missed.



36 posted on 09/22/2009 3:31:25 AM PDT by xcamel (The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it. - H. L. Mencken)
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To: American Constitutionalist
The Global Warming hoax is nothing but population control at best, and genocide at worst.

Always has been. Especially population control of countries that are not communist or socialist. ....and those overpopulated warlord-run countries... keep sending in diseases too but just can't seen to wipe out those vermin sub-humans. Worse than cockroaches, they are.

37 posted on 09/22/2009 3:43:37 AM PDT by USCG SimTech (Honored to serve since '71)
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To: Maelstorm

The Warmers should be kissing the feet of CO2 rather than declaring it a poison.


38 posted on 09/22/2009 4:34:37 AM PDT by wolfcreek (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsd7DGqVSIc)
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To: Maelstorm

The Warmers should be kissing the feet of CO2 rather than declaring it a poison.


39 posted on 09/22/2009 4:34:47 AM PDT by wolfcreek (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsd7DGqVSIc)
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To: Maelstorm

The Warmers should be kissing the feet of CO2 rather than declaring it a poison.


40 posted on 09/22/2009 4:35:36 AM PDT by wolfcreek (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsd7DGqVSIc)
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