October 5, 2016 – I received the following from the David Suzuki Foundation. It was entitled “Carbon dioxide: Pollutant or plant food?” Some climate change deniers argue that more, not less carbon dioxide is good for the planet. That the unintended benefit of our industrial society would mean a further greening of the planet. Well far be it from me to disagree. I will let David Suzuki explain the fallacy of the argument.
Life evolved to live within limits. It’s a delicate balance. Humans need oxygen, but too much can kill us. Plants need nitrogen, but excess nitrogen harms them, and pollutes rivers, lakes and oceans. Ecosystems are complex. Our health and survival depend on intricate interactions that ensure we get the right amounts of clean air, water, food from productive soils and energy from the sun.
Climate change deniers either willfully ignore or fail to understand this complexity — as shown in their simplistic argument that carbon dioxide is a beneficial gas that helps plants grow and is therefore good for humans. Industry propagandist Tom Harris of the misnamed International Climate Science Coalition writes, “Grade school students know CO2 is not pollution; it is aerial fertilizer.” He adds, “Increasing CO2 levels pose no direct hazard to human health.” The unscientific Heartland Institute-ICSC study he references claims, against all evidence, “Carbon dioxide has not caused weather to become more extreme, polar ice and sea ice to melt, or sea level rise to accelerate.”
It’s a facile argument, designed to downplay the seriousness of global warming and its connection to CO2 emissions and to promote continued fossil fuel use. Deniers like Harris and Patrick Moore in Canada extol the virtues of burning coal, oil and gas.
It’s deliberate deception, rather than an outright lie, as most plants do require CO2 to grow. But overwhelming scientific evidence shows that, along with other greenhouse gases, CO2 causes ocean acidification and fuels climate change, putting humans and other life at risk.
Even its benefit to plants is more complicated than deniers let on. As the website Skeptical Science states, “Such claims fail to take into account that increasing the availability of one substance that plants need requires other supply changes for benefits to accrue. It also fails to take into account that a warmer earth will see an increase in deserts and other arid lands, reducing the area available for crops.”
A Stanford University study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, illustrates the claim’s lack of scientific validity. After observing plants grown in California over 16 years, under altered CO2, nitrogen, temperature and water levels, researchers concluded that only higher nitrogen levels increased plant growth, while higher temperatures hindered the plants. A study in Nature Climate Change concluded that a 1 C temperature increase will cause wheat yields to decrease by about five per cent, and a French study found higher temperatures negatively affected corn crops.
Another study, published in Science, examined the complexity of CO2 uptake by plants. It found only those associated with particular types of fungi in their roots can take advantage of increased CO2, because the fungi regulate nitrogen plants obtain from soils. Plants such as coniferous trees that associate with ectomycorrhizal fungi can derive benefits from higher carbon dioxide levels, but plants associated with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, such as grassland vegetation, can’t. The Imperial College London researchers cautioned that even plants that can take advantage of higher CO2 levels could be harmed by other climate change impacts, such as increased temperature and ozone concentration. Climate change–related droughts and flooding also hinder plant growth.
Burning fossil fuels, creating emissions through industrial agriculture, and destroying “carbon sinks” like wetlands and forests that sequester carbon are already affecting the planet in many ways detrimental to the health and survival of humans and other life.
No matter what inconsistent, contradictory and easily debunked nonsense deniers spread, there’s no denying climate change is real, humans are contributing substantially to it and it will be catastrophic for all life if we do little or nothing to address it immediately.
Recently, 375 U.S. National Academy of Sciences members, including 30 Nobel laureates, published an open letter stating, “We are certain beyond a reasonable doubt … that the problem of human-caused climate change is real, serious, and immediate, and that this problem poses significant risks: to our ability to thrive and build a better future, to national security, to human health and food production, and to the interconnected web of living systems.”
The evidence is clear and overwhelming: Rapid increases in CO2 emissions are not beneficial. It’s past time we started conserving energy and shifting to cleaner sources.
Dr. Suzuki’s statements about me and ICSC are wrong.
Suzuki is the same “scientist” who can’t figure out how nuclear power generation works.
Putting “scientist” in quotes I gather is an attempt by you to suggest that David Suzuki has no academic credentials that show that indeed he is a scientist. Suzuki graduated from Amherst College in 1958 with an Honours BA in Biology. He received his PhD in zoology at University of Chicago in 1961. He has worked at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory where he was a research associate. He a faculty member and Professor Emeritus at UBC in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Wrong, fool. It’s an indication that although trained as a scientist, Suzuki doesn’t act like one. And by all outward indications, he doesn’t think like one, either.
But what else might one conclude about somebody who doesn’t really have any credentials in the physical sciences (of which biology & zoology don’t count)? He has no academic credential that supports his (self-)presumption of expertise in physics, or more-specifically, atomic physics or climate.
Tom Harris is a mechanical engineer and has been doing public relations for the International Climate Science Coalition. H e has a B. Eng and M. Eng in thermofluids and energy sciences. I cannot find any reference to where he received his degrees even on his biography page or from his course history at Carleton University in Ottawa.
Your non-responsive deflection is irrelevant. The “article” comes from junk-scientist Suzuki.
Tom Harris file
Scholars and Rogues
Tom Harris – hypocritical peddler of deceitful climate change editorials
https://scholarsandrogues.com/2015/02/16/tom-harris-hypocritical-peddler-of-deceitful-climate-change-editorials/
Dialogues on Global Warming
Tom Harris – Paid Shill
href=http://dialoguesonglobalwarming.blogspot.ca/2015/07/tom-harris-paid-shill.html
DeSmogBlog
http://www.desmogblog.com/tom-harris
Center for Media and Democracy Sourcewatch
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tom_Harris_(Canadian_engineer/PR_specialist)
Carleton University scandal
In 2012, Tom Harris taught a “climate science” course at Carleton University that was riddled with errors and lies.
Climate Change Denial in the Classroom
(Official CASS critique of the Harris’ Carleton U. course, detailing 149 erroneous claims.)
http://carleycenten.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/CASSREPORTClimateChangeDenialintheClassroom.pdf
CBC News: Climate change skeptic’s university course criticized
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/climate-change-skeptic-s-university-course-criticized-1.1161341
Maclean’s: Professor criticized for course denying climate change – Tom Harris dismisses 142 “corrections”
http://www.macleans.ca/education/uniandcollege/professor-criticized-for-course-denying-climate-change/
The Guardian: Heartland associate taught ‘biased’ climate course at Ottawa university
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/28/heartland-associate-climate-scepticism-ottawa-university
DeSmogBlog: Fake Heartland “Scientist” Infiltrates Canadian University
http://www.desmogblog.com/fake-heartland-scientist-infiltrates-canadian-university
SkepticalScience: Tom Harris’ Carleton University Climate Misinformation Class
http://www.skepticalscience.com/tom-harris-carleton-university-climate-misinformation-class.html
David Suzuki: Climate change denial isn’t about science, or even skepticism
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/blogs/science-matters/2012/03/climate-change-denial-isnt-about-science-or-even-skepticism/
Open Mind (analysis of some of Harris’ false teachings)
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/in-the-classroom/
Deeper background
http://deepclimate.org/2009/12/08/in-the-beginning-the-national-post-terence-corcoran-and-tom-harris/
http://deepclimate.org/2009/12/10/bali-2007-revisited/
http://deepclimate.org/2012/03/08/tom-harris-heartland-and-the-2007-bali-open-letter-to-the-u-n/
http://mikedesouza.com/2012/09/27/feds-discreet-about-foreign-funding-of-climate-skeptics/#more-17
http://web.archive.org/web/20040606164640/http://www.apcoworldwide.com/content/bios/harris.cfm
High school / middle school lesson plan
Today you can find on Harris’ own ICSC website a “lesson plan” for “high school / middle school”, which is fundamentally based on something Harris knows is a lie (unless he just rejects the scientific method outright, which is also a possibility), namely, that there is a “great debate” among climate scientists about whether increases in solar intensity have been mainly responsible for our planet’s ongoing global warming. This is completely false, unless you consider it a “great debate” when one side is nothing but a group of cranks, crackpots, megalomaniacs and thieves in numbers a child could count. Bottom line: Harris taught lie after lie to vulnerable college students in the service of his fossil-fool masters, and now he is pushing for the opportunity to corrupt younger minds.
attacked by an the anonyous eco-troll, cunudiun, citing sources set up to discredit anyone who dares dissent from the climate religion. Yes, that is convincing – NOT.
Tom Harris makes the unsupported assertion that “Dr. Suzuki’s statements about me and ICSC are wrong.”
Mr. Harris claims cunudiun’s criticism of his statement are wrong not because of the content of cunudiun’s criticism but because of their source.
Mr. Harris can’t or won’t defend his past statements.