CO2 - The Good News, a scientific report by past IPCC member

[GYre0ePJhZ]

This report from The Global Warming Policy Foundation "addresses the question of whether, and how much, increased carbon dioxide concentrations have benefited the biosphere and humanity by stimulating plant growth, warming the planet and increasing rainfall sheds very interesting statistics on the debate on global warming and CO2 emissions. From the summary (my bolding):

• Empirical data confirms that the biosphere’s productivity has increased by about 14% since 1982, in large part as a result of rising carbon dioxide levels.

 

• Thousands of scientific experiments indicate that increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in the air have contributed to increases in crop yields.

 

• These increases in yield are very likely to have reduced the appropriation of land for farming by 11–17% compared with what it would otherwise be, resulting in more land being left wild.

 

• Satellite evidence confirms that increasing carbon dioxide concentrations have also resulted in greater productivity of wild terrestrial ecosystems in all vegetation types.

 

• Increasing carbon dioxide concentrations have also increased the productivity of many marine ecosystems.

 

• In recent decades, trends in climate-sensitive indicators of human and environmental wellbeing have improved and continue to do so despite claims that they would deteriorate because of global warming.

 

• Compared with the benefits from carbon dioxide on crop and biosphere productivity, the adverse impacts of carbon dioxide – on the frequency and intensity of extreme weather, on sea level, vector-borne disease prevalence and human health – have been too small to measure or have been swamped by other factors.

 

• Models used to influence policy on climate change have overestimated the rate of warming, underestimated direct benefits of carbon dioxide, overestimated the harms from climate change and underestimated human capacity to adapt so as to capture the benefits while reducing the harms.

 

• It is very likely that the impact of rising carbon dioxide concentrations is currently net beneficial for both humanity and the biosphere generally. These benefits are real, whereas the costs of warming are uncertain. Halting the increase in carbon dioxide concentrations abruptly would deprive people and the planet of the benefits of carbon dioxide much sooner than they would reduce any costs of warming.

 

Very interesting facts that should have impact on the public discourse on CO2, but Breitbart reports that:

 

Professor Myles Allen of the University of Oxford admitted there were some benefits from increased levels of carbon dioxide, but nonetheless said Dr Golkany’s (the author of the report) assertions had “Stalinist overtones”.

He told the Sunday Times: “… I worry about the Stalinist overtones of adding up the losses and benefits and deciding humanity as a whole will benefit from global warming. Drowning Bangladeshis might not be reassured by higher crop yields in Ukraine.”

 

In other words, we are reading the opinions of a concern troll.

Other sources:

• The Global Warming Policy Foundation press release.
• Who The Global Warming Policy Foundation are.

[st434u]

Plants need CO2 to live and grow. The more they have, the better. And it takes really high CO2 concentrations in the air before it becomes toxic for us or other animals. So it's not a problem.

 

Other gases that are produced by burning fossil fuels may be a problem, like carbon monoxide, and many others. But not CO2.

 

In any case, global warming is unlikely to have much to do with CO2 levels, and in any case, for most of the world, a small rise in temperature means higher productivity, lower energy consumption and more biodiversity in wild areas and a larger net biomass overall. What most of the world really should be concerned with is when global temperatures go down, and they will, sooner or later.

[Torero]

If professor Myles Allen is so affected by drowning Bengalese, why is he not taking action and preventing them to be drowned by building dikes?

 

The floodings of the delta are not the result of CO2 (we exhale it every second, this "pollutor" ) but of policies to have many people living in areas that belong to nature; the natural interplay of sea and river; a delta.

[AccuTron]

Good to see a grudging move towards honesty.  The Myles guy is clearly clueless.  CO2 has been rising for 18,000 years, and man has nothing to do with it beyond the truly trivial.  Temp has been rising since a low point around 1850, well before power plants.  Find the money/ego trails for Myles....

[TheRobin]

Well, to be fair, using utalitarian ethics isn't what we should be ending up, just because it works in our favour for once. I mean, assuming the assumption is correct, and people would lose their homes cause of an increase in ocean levels and if you can directly trace that increase to CO2 increase, then I think it's a good point to make, that you can't just say "greatest good for the greatest number" and ignore the destruction of people's houses property and possibly lives. In the same way that you can't just tear down houses to build a highway, even if it meant that every else profits from it.

[Thomasio]

In the same way that you can't just tear down houses to build a highway, even if it meant that every else profits from it.

 

And just who would prevent an anarchic society from doing just that?

Isn't the main idea of anarchy that everyone may do whatever he likes and doesn't that include building a road anywhere you like?

I'm not sure whether or not I understood it right, but if I got the point, then an anarchy means there is noone protecting the rights of an individual, power, especially money power rules, where the only hope of libertarians is the belief that a completely free society would abandon all selfishness and everyone would respect the needs and wishes of the weak.

 

But to get to the topic, I never understood why they would try to blame CO2 for anything.

I agree to some of the alarm, where pollution really poisons the world, but CO2 never was part of the problem.

To my mind they could have taken nearly any toxic byproduct of oil combustion and they would have been right to warn about the dangers, but CO2 doesn't qualify there.

They could have requested almost all the same things, renewable energy and all that, to reduce emissions of carbon monoxide or something like that and they would have been right, but CO2 makes no sense there.

The fact they try with CO2 anyway just tells me, some incredibly greedy jerks don't care whether or not we poison the planet, all they want is tax us for breething.

[dsayers]

Isn't the main idea of anarchy that everyone may do whatever he likes and doesn't that include building a road anywhere you like?

 

Anarchy is the acceptance that humans do not exist in different, opposing moral categories. So no rulers. Person A would not build a road through person B's property because they accept person B's property rights as well as reject their own superiority to person B.

 

anarchy means there is noone protecting the rights of an individual

 

Other way around. Systems predicated on humans existing in separate moral categories violate the property of the individual. Anarchy means EVERYBODY is protecting the right of the individual.

 

power, especially money power rules

 

Money is stored value. It provides the ability to provide value to others right now while deferring the decision on what value you'd like to receive in exchange or to accumulate for the ability to trade for things of greater value. As an inanimate object/concept, it has no power in itself. In existing systems with rules, money only appears to have power because of the shared delusion that people exist in different, opposing moral categories. So if you trade with those who have this imaginary power, you will influence that power by proxy. So here, you're actually referring to the State, which is not present in anarchy.

 

where the only hope of libertarians is the belief that a completely free society would abandon all selfishness and everyone would respect the needs and wishes of the weak.

 

Here, "selfishness" is a weighted word, meant to invoke a specific emotional reaction in lieu of a rational case being made. When you eat, you are engaging in the selfish act of sustaining your self. Selfishness is not problematic until you violate the property of another person. At which point the aggression is the problem, not the selfishness.

 

Also here, "needs and wishes of the weak" proposes an unchosen positive obligation, which can never be ethical. We already know that people help each other, so the proposition that we need to violate property rights to provide for those who can't/won't provide for themselves is inaccurate. It also ignores the empirical evidence that coercion used to provide this also serves as incentive to NOT achieve at the expense of other people. Making those who are stolen from the weak, not the people who the wealth is being forcibly transferred to.

[GYre0ePJhZ]

Well, to be fair, using utalitarian ethics isn't what we should be ending up, just because it works in our favour for once. I mean, assuming the assumption is correct, and people would lose their homes cause of an increase in ocean levels and if you can directly trace that increase to CO2 increase, then I think it's a good point to make, that you can't just say "greatest good for the greatest number" and ignore the destruction of people's houses property and possibly lives. In the same way that you can't just tear down houses to build a highway, even if it meant that every else profits from it.

I do agree with you in a general sense. In this case, however, using utalitarian ethics is merely applying the same standards that global warming advocates generally use as a justification to infringe upon our liberties. I would suggest that if the results of this report is not taken into consideration, they are clearly exposing their biases (whatever they may be). From this I think you could make a reasonable case for that they do not really care about utilitarian ethics applied to humanity as a whole or the environment. And I think there is value in that.

 

I am also curious whether Professor Myers has been in the media protesting the so-called Stalinists in the global warming advocate camp. Although I do not know, my guess is that he has not.