The Rate Debate Slowing



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CO2 Good - Water Wars


CO2 key to preventing water wars and famine

Sherwood, Keith, and Craig Idso et al 2010 (Craig, PhD in geography @Arizona State, M.S. in Agronomy from U Nebraska) The World's Looming Food and Water Shortage http://co2science.org/articles/V13/N49/EDIT.php

This water deficiency, according to Hanjra and Qureshi, "will lead to a food gap unless concerted actions are taken today." Some of the things they propose, in this regard, are to conserve water and energy resources, develop and adopt climate-resilient crop varieties, modernize irrigation, shore up domestic food supplies, reengage in agriculture for further development, and reform the global food and trade market. And to achieve these goals, they say that "unprecedented global cooperation is required," which by the looks of today's world is an even more remote possibility than that implied by the proverbial wishful thinking. So, on top of everything else they suggest (a goodly portion of which will not be achieved), what can we do to defuse the ticking time-bomb that is the looming food and water crisis? We suggest doing nothing. But not just any "nothing." The nothing we suggest is to not mess with the normal, unforced evolution of civilization's means of acquiring energy. We suggest this, because on top of everything else we may try to do to conserve both land and freshwater resources, we will still fall short of what is needed to be achieved unless the air's CO2 content rises significantly and thereby boosts the water use efficiency of earth's crop plants, as well as that of the plants that provide food and habitat for what could be called "wild nature," enabling both sets of plants to produce more biomass per unit of water used in the process. And to ensure that this happens, we will need all of the CO2 that will be produced by the burning of fossil fuels, until other forms of energy truly become more cost-efficient than coal, gas and oil. In fact, these other energy sources will have to become much more cost-efficient before fossil fuels are phased out; because the positive externality of the CO2-induced increase in plant water use efficiency provided by the steady rise in the atmosphere's CO2 concentration due to the burning of fossil fuels will be providing a most important service in helping us feed and sustain our own species without totally decimating what yet remains of wild nature.


CO2 Good - Disease


Increased CO2 emissions key to curing a laundry list of diseases

Craig and Keith Idso and Idso (Craig, PhD in geography @Arizona State, M.S. in Agronomy from U Nebraska) 2012 Here's to Your Health! ... Courtesy of Carbon Dioxide http://co2science.org/articles/V15/N18/EDIT.php



At the turn of the last millennium, when our father was still an actively-working researcher, he and five colleagues grew common spider lily (Hymenocallis littoralis) plants out-of-doors at the U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory in Phoenix, Arizona. This they did for two consecutive two-year cycles, within clear-plastic-wall open-top chambers that had their atmospheric CO2 concentrations continuously maintained at either the normal concentration, which at their urban site was about 400 ppm, or at an enriched level of 700 ppm. Then, at the ends of each of the two-year periods, they harvested the bulbs produced by the plants and measured their biomass, along with the concentrations of several substances they contained that had previously been proven to be effective in fighting various human maladies. In doing so, they found that the 75% increase in the air's CO2 concentration resulted in a 48% increase in aboveground plant biomass and a 56% increase in belowground bulb biomass. In addition, the extra CO2 also increased the concentrations of five bulb constituents that possessed anti-cancer and anti-viral properties. These substances are listed in table below, along with the percentage increases they each exhibited, which when considered in their totality yield a mean increase of 12%. And combined with the 56% increase in bulb biomass, the net result was a mean active-ingredient increase of 75% due to the 75% increase in the air's CO2 concentration. What is especially exciting about these findings is that the substances the six scientists studied have been demonstrated to be effective in fighting a number of debilitating human diseases, including leukemia, ovary sarcoma, melanoma, brain cancer, colon cancer, lung cancer, renal cancer, Japanese encephalitis, yellow fever, dengue fever, Punta Tora fever and Rift Valley fever, as reported (with pertinent supporting citations) in their paper. Furthermore, there is reason to believe that many other such substances in other medicinal plants may also be benefited by atmospheric CO2 enrichment. See, for example, Health Effects (CO2 - Health-Promoting Substances: Medicinal Plants in our Subject Index. This larger body of work also points to the tantalizing possibility that there may be a number of still other health-promoting substances in the tissues of the foods we regularly eat that may additionally have their concentrations enhanced by the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 concentration. And indeed there are, as may readily be seen by perusing the items archived under Health Effects (CO2 - Health-Promoting Substances: Common Food Plants in our Subject Index. And these findings lead to our speculation that the ever-lengthening life-span of people all around the world may well be due, at least in part, to the historical - and still ongoing - rise in the air's CO2 content. So here's to our health ... and the health of our children's children ... courtesy (in part) of the atmosphere's steadily rising carbon dioxide concentration; for if the world's climate alarmists can attribute nearly everything bad that happens nowadays, to the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content, surely we can point out a possible benefit or two. And the potential benefit we describe here is a huge one.


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