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President Obama used the mistaken terms “carbon pollution” SEVEN TIMES in this speech, and “carbon emissions” five times.
Language matters, President Obama so please stop using these rhetorical tricks.
Calling the gas “carbon” encourages people to think of it as something ‘dirty’, like graphite or soot. Calling CO2 by its proper name would help people remember that it is an invisible gas essential to plant photosynthesis.
We are actually near the lowest level of CO2 in Earth’s history. During a multi-million year period around 440 million years ago, CO2 was about 1400% (in other words, 14 times) today’s level while Earth was stuck in the coldest period of the last half-billion years. The climate models’ assumption that temperature is driven by CO2 is clearly wrong.
It is also important to recognize that commercial greenhouse operators routinely run their internal atmospheres at up to 1500 ppm CO2. This is more than four times 350.org’s Bill McKibben’s so-called safe limit. Yet there is no hint of any consequent temperature rise, while the plants inside grow far more efficiently than at the 400 ppm in the outside atmosphere. This is not surprising. Grade school students understand that CO2 is plant food and so anything but “carbon pollution” as the EPA Administrator wrongly labels it. In fact, CO2 concentrations in submarines can reach levels well above 10,000 ppm, thirty times the “safe” limit, with no harmful effects to the crew.
Obama is not fit to be president if he doesn’t know these basic facts. If he does know and is just tricking the public, then he is even more unfit to lead the USA.
Sad.
Tom Harris, B. Eng., M. Eng. (Mech.)
Executive Director,
International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC)
http://www.climatescienceinternational.org?
President Obama used the mistaken terms “carbon pollution” SEVEN TIMES in this speech, and “carbon emissions” five times.
Calling the gas “carbon” encourages people to think of it as something ‘dirty’, like graphite or soot. Calling CO2 by its proper name would help people remember that it is an invisible gas essential to plant photosynthesis.
We are actually near the lowest level of CO2 in Earth’s history. During a multi-million year period around 440 million years ago, CO2 was about 1400% (in other words, 14 times) today’s level while Earth was stuck in the coldest period of the last half-billion years. The climate models’ assumption that temperature is driven by CO2 is clearly wrong.
It is also important to recognize that commercial greenhouse operators routinely run their internal atmospheres at up to 1500 ppm CO2. This is more than four times 350.org’s Bill McKibben’s so-called safe limit. Yet there is no hint of any consequent temperature rise, while the plants inside grow far more efficiently than at the 400 ppm in the outside atmosphere. This is not surprising. Grade school students understand that CO2 is plant food and so anything but “carbon pollution” as the EPA Administrator wrongly labels it. In fact, CO2 concentrations in submarines can reach levels well above 10,000 ppm, thirty times the “safe” limit, with no harmful effects to the crew.
Obama is not fit to be president if he doesn’t know these basic facts. If he does know and is just tricking the public, then he is even more unfit to lead the USA.
Sad.
Tom Harris, B. Eng., M. Eng. (Mech.)
Executive Director,
International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC)
http://www.climatescienceinternational.org
That’s the Tom Harris we used to know! Abject denial as far as the eye can see, and nary a fact in sight.
Tom, it seems now that the tobacco money has run out you are specializing on fossil-fuel funded climate denial (http://www.desmogblog.com/tom-harris). You don’t know the basics of climate science. Sad.
Tom Harris… That’s pretty elementary level denier material you’re promoting there, stuff that’s been debunked a half million times before.
@tom
Repeating lies and falsehoods doesn’t make it any more truer, you know?
The use of the Wheel of Fortune picture is sweet irony given Pat Sajak is denier 🙂
http://www.cbc.ca/newsblogs/yourcommunity/2014/05/pat-sajak-labels-global-warming-alarmists-racists-gets-mocked-on-twitter.html
“Across the nation, carbon emissions for the first six months of the year were nearly 3 percent higher than during the same period last year, and about 6 percent higher than in 2012.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-carbon-emissions-tick-higher-obama-tells-un-we-have-to-do-more/2014/09/26/827f770e-45b1-11e4-b47c-f5889e061e5f_story.html?hpid=z1
This rise has been explained as a consequence of stronger economic activity?, and this points to one of the great contradictions in Obama’s policy. On the one hand, he’s committed to fighting climate change, on the other he’s committed to economic growth, and one might discuss whether the two are reconcilable. One aspect of this contradiction is the stepped up exploitation of American fossil fuel resources, which is couched in language of growth and U.S. energy independence. In a recent article, Michael Klare pointed to the following:
“Considering all the talk about global warming, peak oil, carbon divestment, and renewable energy, you’d think that oil consumption in the United States would be on a downward path. By now, we should certainly be witnessing real progress toward a post-petroleum economy. As it happens, the opposite is occurring. U.S. oil consumption is on an upward trajectory, climbing by 400,000 barrels per day in 2013 alone — and, if current trends persist, it should rise again both this year and next.”
Obama’s policies have largely supported this:
“In accord with his wishes, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced on July 18th that it would reopen a large portion of the waters off the Eastern seaboard, an area stretching all the way from Florida to Delaware, to new oil and natural gas exploration.”
“Here are some of the other measures recently taken by the administration to boost domestic oil production, according to a recent White House factsheet:
* An increase in the sales of leases for oil and gas drilling on federal lands. In 2013, the Bureau of Land Management held 30 such sales — the most in a decade — offering 5.7 million acres for lease by industry.
* An increase in the speed with which permits are being issued for actual drilling on federal lands. What’s called “processing time” has, the White House boasts, been cut from 228 days in 2012 to 194 days in 2013.
* The opening up of an additional 59 million acres for oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a disastrous BP oil spill in April 2010.”
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175889/
Because of increased oil supply and lower prices, Americans are driving more, and almost a third of new vehicle purchases are SUVs. According to EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2014 (p.MT33), total American emissions from oil exceed those from coal.
?For a number of years U.S. emissions were artificially kept down by transferring manufacturing to countries with lower production costs. Perhaps outsourcing has reached its limits, and can no longer contribute to lower U.S. emissions statistics.
Tom Harris: Grade school students understand that CO2 is plant food and so anything but “carbon pollution” as the EPA Administrator wrongly labels it. In fact, CO2 concentrations in submarines can reach levels well above 10,000 ppm, thirty times the “safe” limit, with no harmful effects to the crew.
Water is necessary for human life, but increasing the amount of water in your body by 30% would almost certainly have a severe impact on your health. Were it introduced to your lungs, it might well be fatal.
Your mention of CO2 concentration in submarines would only be relevant if someone had claimed 400 or 500 ppm could harm human health directly. No one serious has, I am sure. (At the other extreme, Christopher Horner in his The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism implies that CO2 is harmless to him at any concentration. See p. 69.)
Here are the facts you overlook in citing greenhouse conditions:
1. The operator of the greenhouse is sure to augment other nutrients his plants need (water, nitrogen, etc.) in proportion to the CO2. That is not guaranteed to happen in the outside atmosphere. Indeed, many areas that are now well-watered are projected to dry out.
2. The greenhouse operator also does not have to contend with rising temperatures affecting his plants. This is another way the planet as a whole differs from his glass greenhouse. You can easily look up the impact on crop yields of the European heat wave of 2003.
3. Not all plants benefit from extra CO2, and many that do are weeds. Some crops, while they may grow better, turn less of their growth into the parts that nourish us.
4. A few degrees of temperature rise can mean much more severe pest infestations on crops. Consider what’s happening to pine forests in the western U.S. and Canada.
I am happy to see the denier and tobacco charges since it demonstrates the depths to which are opponents will stoop. Of course both charges are nonsense.
The denier charge is wrong for obvious reasons.
The tobacco charge requires more info: DeSmogBlog told media that I had been a PR man promoting tobacco in the early 90’s. I explained to media who contacted me that I was working as an aerospace engineer at that time and had never promoted tobacco; in fact, at Transport Canada I had opposed smoking on long duration flights due to flight safety hazards and contributed to the in flight smoking ban.
DeSmogBlog staff apologized but the damage was done and I am still identified throughout the Web as the ‘tobacco guy’.
Tom, you claim that you did not promote tobacco and that desmogblog apologized for this claim. Where did desmogblog do so? This link ( http://www.desmogblog.com/tom-harris ) does not seem to support your claim.
DeSmogBlog had the apology on their Web site in an article entitled “Apology to Tom Harris” at http://desmogblog.com/news-alert-apology-to-tom-harris after I called them on their mistake. It not there now so why don’t you ask them why they removed it?
Tom, so now you’re a PR man promoting climate denial and the Heartland Institute’s brand of free-market solutions. Which is why “The ICSC aims to help create an environment in which a more rational, open discussion about climate issues emerges, thereby moving the debate away from implementation of costly and ineffectual “climate control” measures.
When do we get to the more rational discussion? The one that reflects the actual science, and not a bunch of ideological claptrap.