I don’t need belief in an apocalyptic global warming future to see the need for recycling. That fear-based advertising campaign no longer works on me. It’s common sense that drives my need to “go green”.

If you really want to make a greener planet, perhaps we could talk about the military industrial complex, and how wars across the globe for profit pollute vastly more so than any family of 3 in a mini-van. We can’t even track the spending of our taxes now, so how is another tax going to help the planet? Anti-War is inherently pro-green.
Or perhaps we could talk of the 24/7 global shipping vessels which run continuously, the combined polluting output in one week being greater than all humans driving in a year?
Speaking of shipping vessels, they transport the goods from country to country, so that we can have inexpensive merchandise from a country where labor is cheaper.
Oh yeah, is anything made in America anymore? Not much, because jobs were shipped overseas, to maximize profit. NAFTA caused that debacle to explode, leading us to the pitfalls in economics and jobs that we see today. NAFTA was pushed to the forefront by none other than climate fear-monger Al Gore himself. (Irony, I voted for him in 2000.) His work with NAFTA actually caused more pollution than before.
Maybe he’s trying to make amends now, but I personally doubt it. Causing a panic and raking in money afterward is the action of a mafia boss, which most politicians are beginning to look like.

I’m not green because of any of the reasons I am told to “believe” in. I’m green because evolved animals do not destroy that which keeps them alive. Do your own research. Don’t blindly follow self-appointed millionaire messiahs, the tendency these days is to be led off a cliff. Nobody is going to save you but yourself.

Peace

The reality is if CO2 is reduced we are worse off as the plants suffer. Something must be done to protect the plants from fanaticism.

There is no evidence CO2 is causing global warming or climate change but that is the basis for the slur and the proposed actions. As usual little thought is given to the direct and collateral damage such as the economic impacts from increased taxes and cost of doing business. No thought is given to the damage to nature. So you have the paradox of environmentalists screaming to reduce CO2 to save the planet, while putting all life in jeopardy by killing the plants. It is blind faith. But this is not surprising because the great problem of environmentalism as a religion is the failure to do full and proper cost/benefit analyses. For example, all you ever hear about are the down sides to warming when there are actually more up sides. One major downside rarely mentioned is the impact on plants of reduced CO2 levels.

Extreme environmentalists consider plants and animals more important than humans. Ron Arnold, Executive Vice-President of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, said, “Environmentalism intends to transform government, economy, and society in order to liberate nature from human exploitation”
David Graber, a research biologist with the National Park Service said, “Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, are not as important as a wild and healthy planet.” “Until such time as Homo Sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.”

Getting rid of everyone permanently solves the problem – David Foreman former chief lobbyist for the Wilderness Society says the optimum number is zero. Ingrid Newkirk of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said, “Mankind is a cancer; we?re the biggest blight on the face of the earth.” “If you haven’t given voluntary human extinction much thought before, the idea of a world with no people in it may seem strange. But, if you give it a chance, I think you might agree that the extinction of Homo Sapiens would mean survival for millions if not billions, of Earth-dwelling species, Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.”

In a dramatic twist the virus Graber awaits and the reduction to zero may be the campaign of environmentalists, both moderate and extreme, to reduce CO2. It is a fascinating and perverse unintended consequence. All climate policy is designed to reduce atmospheric CO2, but that is not what the plants would vote for. Plant producers have added CO2 to enclosed growing environments for 100 years to enhance growth. Extensive research shows the beneficial effects including a significant increase in biomass including roots, size of the plant and yields. Another benefit is a reduction in the amount of water used. As CO2 levels increase the stomata (pores on the leaf) partially close thus moisture loss (transpiration) is reduced.

The current atmospheric CO2 level is reportedly 380 ppm. Plant growth slows at 220 ppm and stops at 150 ppm. Most plants grow 2 to 3 times faster in 1200 to 1500 ppm, but the optimum range is 800 to 1000 ppm. This means plants are malnourished under current conditions. Environmentalists and governments have abandoned the plants in the false belief a reduction of CO2 would stop global warming. It is time to defend the plants from these misguided people. The obvious solution is to seek power of attorney for the plants to vote on their behalf against any attempts to reduce atmospheric CO2. This way we can satisfy another old proverb and stop them being killed by kindness.

Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is a life gas exhaled by all animal life and inhaled by all plant life, who then exhale oxygen which all animal life inhales and so on. The planet's levels of C02 have been 20 times as high in the past. At present our atmosphere is C02 deprived. The more c02, the more plant growth which is why this planet was once a virtual eden. Carbon dioxide levels increase after temperature increases not before. At present the planet is in a cooling cycle and we will start to see Co2 levels come down as the oceans cool and absorb more C02.

Simply reducing CO2 levels does nothing to reduce real pollution. It does nothing to clean up our streams and rivers from dangerous mercury contamination. It does nothing to prevent sewage from polluting our drinking supplies. It doesn’t fix holes in the ozone layer, nor does it stop landfill chemicals from leaching into ground water. Even if CO2 levels plummeted in the next 20 years, we’d still have pollution problems.

The next issue is does warm air or cold air carry more moisture. We all know that, warm air carries more moisture so when it is warm there is more rain and when it is cold there is less. We can see that because we had more rain when it was warming. This current cold cycle is expected to cause more drought.

Please save us from reporters who do not have a clue as well as presidents who don't have a clue. The environmental lobby does know and has a reason for their actions. Its called money.

Thank you for your reply. I understand your zeal in defending your position, and I respect your passion for standing up for what you see as a just cause.

I will try to present some more thoughts on why I will just as passionately defend my skeptical position. I just as zealously believe that your negative evaluation of the human situation is incorrect.

The arguments in your main article, and reiterated in your response, are a mix of Malthusian fears that have been touted for just about as long as man could think. The arguments have been proven false for just as long. For example, paraphrasing Malthus, mankind was producing just enough food to feed the overcrowded planet back in 1800. At that time there were 1 billion humans alive, and we were using up all of the available agricultural resources just to scrape by. The end of civilization was near.

The same argument is voiced today by a loud crowd of concerned people (mostly comfortably fed ones), since we are still producing just enough food to feed the 6.7 billion people on the planet. There is a reason for this constant theme: we will always produce “just enough” to get by, since it would be downright silly to produce any more. In reality we do indeed produce much more than necessary if we look at the waste that our modern food supply system dispenses.

Even considering the levels of starvation in our world’s population, in these times due more often to local political cruelty than to any limitations on carrying capacity, we humans have done an unbelievable (to Malthus et al.) job at generating new resources whenever our population has needed them. We have always achieved these great advances through our creative conversion of the earth’s cornucopia of resources.

The chicken little argument always sees the end of resources just around the corner. Human intelligence, creativity and survival instincts on the other hand just keep furnishing new resources. That has always been true across the board.

I don’t buy the finite resources fear argument. For much of our past we humans used a finite resource, wood, for a good many of our necessities. Our English forebears tore down every trunk in sight in order to heat their homes, cook their food, build their houses and build their armada. They passed on to their future generations (you and me!) a terrain that was stripped of this precious resource, leaving us in peril of freezing, starving or dying at the hands of foreign invaders. Pretty cruel of the old folks, leaving us to fend for ourselves.

Now, are the English dying from these blights today? No, somebody along the road of progress simply discovered a replacement for the trees in our basket of needs. In fact, somebody discovered a miraculous burning rock that heated hearths and homes for centuries. Coal is only one example of humans adapting to their environment. We may use up every last ton of coal in our quest for progress and comfort; future generations will only read about how we used to burn rocks to stay warm!

I welcome an explanation for the reasoning that we should not deplete the earth’s resources on the basis that they will no longer be available for future generations. The evidence shows that we will be surprised at the solutions that our clever children will invent as a replacement for our exhausted fuels.

You may argue that coal pollutes, kills people and creates misery through all that junk it spews into the air. But once again, we humans have shown our creative side in this regard: as we grow soft and content we also get downright pretentious in our expectations for comforts and for the quality of our lives. As a result, since our populations grew sick and tired of dark mid-days in places like Pittsburgh and Manchester they worked to clean up the environment. Our progress in life expectancies results from our environmentalism as much as from our modern medicines.

We as a race have never had it so good. We have never been so well off as a population. We are pretty clever when it comes to adapting to new challenges. Oh, and nobody has yet demonstrated in any convincing way that we are heating up the planet.

Are there problems in our human race? You bet! So let’s spend our time and effort resolving the real problems instead of wasting precious resources on false prophesies.

You have presented great points in your comment. My views in the article seemed negative because I argued for action to be taken right now instead of waiting for few more decades. The changes I talked about are inevitable, sooner or later we would have switch over to renewable and clean energy sources.

We all know that fossils fuels are not inexhaustible and the IEA has predicted that oil production would peak within the next ten years. There are many reasons why we had food crisis and can see a repeat of the same at a bigger scale in future. Decade long droughts, changing weather systems like El Nino and shortage of water.

I disagree with Mr. Klaus' fear that actions to bring to about a change in the systems we use today would bring catastrophic consequences. If coal and other fossils fuels kill then just replace it or mitigate its ill effects (as you said), but the long-term solution would be to move on to the cleaner energy systems, which are inexhaustible and sustainable.

I presented the point about economic growth as a result of investments in green technologies because this economic recession has given us an opportunity to revamp our economic systems and build new ones around cleaner and sustainable energy systems. This is inevitable and by not taking action now we are just delaying it.

1. I mentioned Australia's heat wave because some readers talked about Britain cold wave, my point was that if you are considering weather systems in one part of the world you must look at the other parts as well. Now, climate is a bigger thing compared to weather and I didn't give those examples in support of global warming. Global warming cannot be proved (or disapproved) on the basis of weather conditions.

2. Now i want everyone to read this. I DID NOT WRITE THIS ARTICLE TO DEFEND GLOBAL WARMING. I'M NOT HERE TO SAY YES WE HAVE GLOBAL WARMING AND SKEPTICS SHOULD LEAVE THEIR BELIEFS AND START BELIEVING IN IT. My point is that even if some of us don't believe in the phenomenon we can still work together to improve our environment, to use clean fuels.

3. You talked about food crisis and high oil prices, why not kick oil and other fossil fuels out of the picture. It is absolutely fine that you and many others (like Mr. Klaus) do not believe in global warming but I think we should agree that at some point we have to replace fossils fuels with renewable energy sources – i believe that time is now, you can think otherwise.

4. The purpose of my article is that we don't need to agree if global warming is true, what we need is urgent action to move from fossil fuels to renewable energy. The world leaders who don't believe in global warming should not tie their skepticism to inaction in investing in green technologies. As I mentioned above there are many other highly significant advantages of investing in green technologies.