It is also good news if you love cucumbers,
lettuce or just like to look at flowers. C02 is a natural fertilizer for
plants, which allows them to grow faster, larger, produce greater yields
and to live in drier climates. Warming of the climate is also good for
plants. Warmer temperatures stimulate plant growth and provide longer
growing seasons. Perhaps most importantly, more plant life provides more
food for animals. All of which benefits human health, prosperity and
happiness particularly if you like a little carne-asada with your salsa.
In addition to an abundance of food, there are other economic and
societal benefits to “global warming.” A 2006 study showed that the
“reduction of wintertime mortality would be several times larger than
the increase in summertime heat-stress related mortality.” Economist
Thomas Gale Moore calculated that “if temperatures were 4.5 degrees
Fahrenheit warmer in the U.S., 41,000 fewer people would die each year
from respiratory and circulation diseases.”
in order to stop the earth from warming climate alarmists are like the
Blues Brothers on a “mission from God” to save the planet by reducing
levels of man made C02. It is one of the great ironies of the climate
alarmists’ claim to superior virtue (to say nothing of intelligence) to
that of climate realists: If they are successful in stopping the earth
from warming (pause for laughter) they may limit the production of
foodstuffs. And in their rush to transform the world economy in order to
lower concentrations of a gas essential for human life, they are
actually enacting policy that is actually detrimental to the poor and
wanting. This is, of course, is bad news if you are destitute and
hungry.
Consider the alarmists push to adopt bio fuels as a replacement for
fossil fuel.
Bio fuels require a considerable amount of bio mass (the plant material
converted to fuel) and that requires a lot of acreage. In order to avoid
man-made global warming, the European Union decided to replace 5.75% of
its fossil fuel usage with bio-fuels by 2010 and increase that amount by
another 8% by 2015. In order to reach this target, Europe would have to
use 14-27% of its agricultural land to reach this 5.75% target. Meeting
the target requires significant imports from countries like Brazil and
Indonesia.
What is the problem with poorer countries exporting bio mass to
wealthier nations? Nothing if you don’t care if poor people eat. Even
farmers in Indonesia want the best price for their crops. So when
growing bio mass is more profitable than food, guess what they grow? The
scarce farm land in these developing countries is used to produce fuel
instead of food, which reduces the amount of food thus driving up the
price.
We are not immune from market forces here in America . Jeff Rubin, a
chief economist at CIBC World Markets, a bank based in Ottowa, Canada
writes, the “diversion of an ever-increasing share of the American corn
crop from human consumption and livestock feed to energy production is
putting steady and unrelenting pressure on food prices.”
All this is not to say that bio fuels are bad or that there is no role
for them to play in any comprehensive energy plan. Research in making
ethanol production truly affordable by turning common garbage products
into fuel is extremely promising. However, any energy policy that claims
to be concerned with the poor and starving would not focus on policy
that rations energy in order to avoid producing C02, but would instead
be directed at increasing our capacity to create abundant, low-cost
energy. Indeed our industrial and technological civilization depends
upon it.
Dr. Willie Soon, chief science advisor at the Science and Public Policy
Institute, writes that if through the misuse of “science and through
misguided public fear and hysteria, mankind significantly rations and
restricts the use of hydrocarbons, the worldwide increase in prosperity
will stop. The result would be vast human suffering and the loss of
hundreds of millions of human lives. Moreover, the prosperity of those
in the developed countries would be greatly reduced.”
So much for the alarmists’ moral mandate!
Tragically, so much suffering all for the sake of reducing a completely
natural, life essential atmospheric trace gas that has no causal effect
on the natural life beneficial warming of the planet.
I say put on some sun glasses, have a margarita and pass the chips
and salsa.
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