Discussion: (118 comments)
Comments are closed.
The public policy blog of the American Enterprise Institute
View related content: Carpe Diem
From an op-ed in today’s WSJ titled “In Defense of Carbon Dioxide” by Harrison Schmitt, an adjunct professor of engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an Apollo 17 astronaut, and a former U.S. senator from New Mexico; and William Happer, professor of physics at Princeton University and a former director of the office of energy research at the U.S. Department of Energy:
Of all of the world’s chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than carbon dioxide. Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a dangerous pollutant. That’s simply not the case. Contrary to what some would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity.
The cessation of observed global warming for the past decade or so has shown how exaggerated NASA’s and most other computer predictions of human-caused warming have been—and how little correlation warming has with concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. As many scientists have pointed out, variations in global temperature correlate much better with solar activity and with complicated cycles of the oceans and atmosphere. There isn’t the slightest evidence that more carbon dioxide has caused more extreme weather.
We know that carbon dioxide has been a much larger fraction of the earth’s atmosphere than it is today, and the geological record shows that life flourished on land and in the oceans during those times. The incredible list of supposed horrors that increasing carbon dioxide will bring the world is pure belief disguised as science.
HT: Dwight Oglesby
Comments are closed.
1150 17th Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036
© 2015 American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research