…to global greening. Thoughts from Matt Ridley:
Suppose I am right and our grandchildren find that we were greatly exaggerating the risks, and underestimating the benefits of CO2.
Suppose they do indeed experience carbon dioxide levels of 600 parts per million or more, but do not experience dangerous global warming, or more extreme weather, just a mild and decelerating increase in global average temperatures, especially at high latitudes, at night and in winter, accompanied by spectacular global greening and less water stress for both people and crops.
Does it matter that our politicians panicked in the early 2000s? Surely better safe than sorry?
Here’s why it matters. Our current policy carries not just huge economic costs, which hit the poorest people hardest, but huge environmental costs too.
We are encouraging forest destruction by burning wood, ethanol and biodiesel.
We are denying poor people the cheapest forms of electricity, which forces them to continue relying on wood for fuel, at great cost to their health.
We are using the landscape, the rivers, the estuaries, the hills, the fields for making energy, when we could be handing land back to nature, and relying on forms of energy that nature does not compete for – fossil and nuclear.
But there is a further reason why it matters. Real environmental problems are being neglected. The emphasis on climate change as the pre-eminent environmental threat means that we pay too little attention to the genuine environmental problems in the world.
We bang on about ocean acidification when it is overfishing and run-off that is most hurting coral reefs.
We misdiagnose climate change as the cause of floods when it is land drainage and urban development that is the cause.
We claim climate change as the cause of extinctions, when it is invasive species that disrupt and damage ecosystems and drive out rare species.
We say climate change is a threat to air quality, when it is climate policy that has hindered progress in improving air quality.
We talk about losing seabird colonies to warming seas and then build wind farms that slaughter the birds while turning a blind eye to overfishing.
Here’s why I really mind about the exaggeration: it has downgraded, displaced and discredited real environmentalism, of the kind I have devoted part of my life to working on.
I have worked on wildlife conservation projects in India, Pakistan and elsewhere. Climate change is the least of the problems facing birds like the western tragopan, the lesser florican, the cheer pheasant and the grey phalarope, rare species that I once studied and published peer-reviewed papers about.
The climate obsession has used up money and energy and political will that could have been used for getting rid of grey squirrels, for protecting coral reefs, for preventing deforestation and overfishing, for weaning the rural poor in Africa off bushmeat and wood fuel.
Yes.
I wrote earlier today that I don’t worry about increased concentrations of plant food in the atmosphere. This is part of the reason why.
There is a known, strong positive-feedback mechanism in the form of CO2 emission from soils with increased temperature.
The reason that atmospheric CO2 has not “run away” from this temperature-stimulated emission of CO2 from soils is that this effect is balanced by a comparably strong absorption of CO2 by plants with increased CO2 concentration.
On account of this “greening”, the strong response of plant life to increased CO2, an effect that has to be there to counteract the temperature-stimulated emission of CO2 from soil in order to match the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 over time, a number of conditions follow.
One is that only about half of the increase in CO2 from the pre-industrial concentration of 280 ppm to the current value that is exceeding 400 ppm is attributable to emissions resulting from human activity — the other half is the result that it has warmed during the 20th century.
A second is that the residence time of our bulk additions of CO2 to the atmosphere is much shorter than what you get otherwise. It is in the 10’s of years rather than 100’s of years. Were we to go “carbon free” and were global temperature to return to the early 20th century value, CO2 would in a short number of decades return to 280 ppm.
The third is that the thing to concentrate on is the soils and the management of crop and pasture lands. There are practices that can greatly reduce the emission of CO2 from soils, increasing the amount of topsoil instead of steadily losing it. Freeman Dyson speculated as much, and there is independent corroboration of this by people working on soil remediation.
So don’t focus all efforts into covering the land with solar panels and wind towers — work on agricultural practices to restore the soils and the rest follows.
“hit the poorest people hardest”
That’s what the greenies and leftists (but I repeat myself) want.
In the hope the poor (and non-white) will die to “save the planet.” (Can’t expect the self-anointed to do it, can we?) 🙁
I wish scientists would just add the words, “we think” to their theories. After all, they are just theories. Most scientists I know find this difficult.
This hubris will never be learned because people are people. It would behoove scientists to look at the Inquisition with more objectivity towards their own behavior.
Another thing to consider is that the use of fossil fuels has allowed most of humanity to transition away from using wood for cooking and heating, meaning that less trees have been cut down and more trees are allowed to grow.
Saw an article recently that showed satellite photos of the change in Europe over the last 50 years or so. The link is proving impossible to search for on google as any of the search terms returns a bazillion results about the impending apocalypse.