One of the moments I recall from my grammar school years occurred in the fifth grade, which is now nearly 60 years ago. We had a school event in the autumn of that year that was called Arbor Day, with an assortment of speakers stressing the importance of all people doing their best to limit pollution and clean-up existing pollution problems.
The highlight of the day, at least for me, was a presentation on carbon dioxide (CO2). The science teacher who spoke described CO2 as, first, a protector of life of all kinds on earth by helping to keep the atmosphere’s temperature livable for the earth’s population. Second, that CO2 is an indispensable building block for all life on earth, as well as for the increased “greening” of the world to ensure the reliable and ample growth of grains and other foodstuffs, meaning that the more CO2 there is in the atmosphere, the more all peoples on the earth will be able to grow better quality and more bountiful crops. This has always been true, it is a hard and irrefutable scientific fact. In short, the more CO2 in the atmosphere the better and more nutritiously the earth’s peoples are fed.
That Arbor day’s presentation ended with a marked emphasis on the importance of planting and nurturing as many trees as possible, as they are master CO2 producers. Needless to say, Bill Gates is calling for the destruction of millions of acres of trees. Again, the main theme of that Arbor day was that without plentiful CO2 in the air, human and all other life on earth would end.
Today, the climate-change hucksters are loud and well-spoken individuals who endlessly defend the indefensible and, frankly, murderously anti-science position that claims that CO2 is a poisonous danger to all people, and that if CO2 is not eradicated from the atmosphere — along with the destruction of much of the world’s forests — life on earth will eventually disappear. In other words, the Climate Changers position on CO2 is 100-percent inaccurate and an anti-science lie. They and other so-called scientific and medical experts often arrogantly claim that they “own the science” and that is true. The science they own — at least that on climate change — is a death-dealing science they invented and are delivering to be used against all non-elite human beings on earth. The science they own — and claim to be “settled” — should be more accurately titled “The Universal and Massive Population Reduction Strategy.” These scientists, their funders, and the elites to whom they answer are dedicated not to improving the earth’s environment and so the quality of human life — except for their own lives, of course — but, rather, they are bent on annihilating the great bulk of humanity with their so-called settled, anti-science science.
Now, I readily admit that my scientific knowledge is no more than average, if that. Fortunately, a good friend of mine sent me the article that is appended below. The scientist-author who is the subject of this article, Dr. Indur Goklany, is an acknowledged climate expert, as well as “a 35-year veteran of the global warming (now climate change) debate. This presentation of Dr. Golkany’s science-based argument is compelling, and just as importantly it puts paid to the claims of such Climate-Change fraudsters as Biden, John Kerry, Justin Trudeau, all EU leaders, nearly all major universities, the media, the UN, the World Economic Forum, the Nobel gang and other prize-givers, and the American and European climate academics who supply the foregoing with the fake-science needed to support their murderous climate lies in exchange for substantial “research grants”. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospherics Agency (NOAA) lends these criminals a hand by altering historical climate records to make it appear that the corrupted data supports the lies that are dominant in what the political and scientific climate-change gangsters and cretins like Obama call the “settled science” of climate change.
Fossil Fuels Are the Greenest of Energy Sources
by Gregory Wrightstone, 26 September, 2022; https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/09/26/fossil-fuels-are-the-greenest-of-energy-sources/
A 35-year veteran of the global warming debate says fossil fuels are the “greenest” of energy sources. In a recently published paper, Dr. Indur Goklany notes that carbon dioxide emissions from industrial activity and transportation have increased plant growth and that fertilizers and pesticides derived from fossil fuels have boosted crop yields so that more food can be produced on less land.
“Contrary to the claims of proponents of the Green New Deal and Net Zero, fossil fuels are the greenest fuels,” says Goklany. “First, uniquely among energy sources, fossil fuel use emits CO2, which is the ultimate source of the elemental building block, carbon, found in all carbon-based life — virtually all life on Earth.”
Referencing several studies, Goklany reports that up to 50 percent of global vegetated areas became greener between 1982-2009 and that 70 percent of the greening has been attributed to carbon dioxide emitted by the burning of fossil fuels.
Overall, Goklany credits 87 percent of the greening to fossil fuels. In addition to CO2 emissions, nitrogen deposition from fossil fuel-derived fertilizers and modest warming of the climate together account for another 17 percent of the greening, he says.
One researcher found that global leaf area had increased by 5.4 million square kilometers between 2000–2017, an area equivalent to the Amazon rain forest. Another reported global tree cover had grown by 2.24 million square kilometers from 1982–2016 through reforestation of former agricultural lands rendered surplus by improved farm productivity and of former deserts.
“Use of fossil fuel technologies has enabled human beings to spare 20.4 percent of global land area (GLA) for the rest of nature,” said Goklany, the author of several books and a former U.S. delegate to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “This exceeds both the habitat lost currently to cropland (12.2 percent of GLA) and the global cumulative area currently reserved or identified as conservation areas (estimated at 14.6 percent of GLA).”
In other words, the amount of land preserved from conversion to agriculture because of fossil fuel-related productivity increases is 25 percent larger than the North American continent, said Goklany.
Increased agricultural productivity has allowed cropland in many areas to revert to forest or other non-agricultural use, he said. For example, between 1990 and 2020, forests in the U.S. and Western Europe increased 2.4 percent and 10.1 percent despite population increases of 30 percent and 11 percent, respectively.
Making coal, oil and natural gas even greener is their relatively small footprint for power production, says Goklany. To generate the same amount of electricity as fossil fuels, solar would need more than three times as much land; wind, five times as much; and hydropower, 25 times as much.
Finally, the International Energy Agency notes that solar and wind energy typically require more metals and minerals than their fossil fueled counterparts. A typical electric vehicle, for example, requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car. An onshore wind turbine takes nine times more mineral resources than a natural gas-fired plant, while offshore wind requires 15 times as much as gas.
Dr. Goklany’s analysis underscores that policies forcing the replacement of fossil fuels with solar panels and wind turbines are counterproductive, exacerbating some of the very problems attributed to global warming. Specifically, they would increase global hunger and reduce biodiversity. Even if such an energy transition would “improve” the climate — which it won’t — the remarkable benefits of carbon dioxide for humanity and the rest of nature are too great to risk negating. Moreover, coal and natural gas are by far more economical and reliable as power producers.
If any technology is to be favored by policy makers for electrical power generation, Dr. Goklany suggests, that it probably should be nuclear power because of its relative overall cleanliness. Even then, planners would be well advised not to put all their eggs in one basket. Nuclear-heavy France currently is working on mechanical problems at multiple plants in the midst of an energy shortage being solved in part with fossil fuels. In any case, fossil fuels are currently indispensable for manufacturing fertilizers and pesticides that are critical to producing adequate food supplies at reasonable prices.
This commentary was first published at Real Clear Energy, September 26, 2022, and can be accessed here.
Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist; executive director of the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Va.; and author of “Inconvenient Facts: The science that Al Gore doesn’t want you to know.
