Scientist
CO2 Good for Planet
By Kristen Inbody
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
Steward, the author of the best-seller “Sugar Busters,” recently published
“Fire, Ice and
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.”