Canada's carbon dioxide 'comedy of errors' a total capitulation to climate change dogma

PM's summit speech shows Parliamentarians have come full circle on climate change rhetoric

By Dr. Tim Ball and Tom Harris,

www.nrsp.com

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Echoing his environment minister's increasing assertions of future climate catastrophe, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has now labeled "the fight against climate change, perhaps the biggest threat to confront the future of humanity today."

"Obviously, if we really want to stop climate change, all the big emitters need to step up to the plate and must accept real targets," Harper told his audience at the EU-Canada Summit in Berlin on Monday. Calling the G8 meeting "the perfect opportunity – to develop a new universal consensus on how to prevent global warming", the PM demonstrated, perhaps more than ever before, that when it comes to climate change, the extremists have won the PR war inside Canada's House of Commons.

This total capitulation to political correctness didn't happen overnight. Rather, it was the result of a decade-long, behind the scenes battle in Parliament in which sensible voices were gradually squeezed out of the debate entirely. What is being said in the House of Commons about carbon dioxide (CO2), the greenhouse gas of concern in most schemes to 'stop climate change', is a national disgrace and deserves broad public exposure.

You have to go a long way back in Hansard, the official records of House of Commons debates, to find the last time MPs from any party consistently made sense when speaking about carbon dioxide (CO2). Taking their lead from David Suzuki and Al Gore, Parliamentarians continually blame this benign gas for causing global warming, some even referring to it as 'pollution'. NDP MP Joe Comartin's October 24, 2002 assertion that "The reality is that carbon dioxide is part of smog." stood for over four years as the most memorable CO2 gaffe in Parliament's long history of blunders on the issue.

However, on January 31, 2007, London Liberal MP Sue Barnes' challenged Comartin for the honour of the Commons' most absurd CO2remark ever when she accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper of "misleading Canadians" when he wrote in 2002 that "Carbon dioxide...is a naturally occurring gas essential to the life cycles of the planet".

Instead of defending Harper's statement as obviously correct, Environment Minister John Baird attacked the Liberals for not reducing CO2emissions when they had the chance, a highly misleading tactic he uses still. Harper himself reinforced the notion that CO2 is a problem and equivalent to a pollutant when he said in the same debate, "Our carbon dioxide emissions are the worst [in the developed world], and so are our sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions. The leader of the Liberal Party should stop denying the science."

In Commons debates the following day Opposition Leader Stéphane Dion demonstrated his total lack of perspective when he continued Barnes' line of attack. "On the science of climate change, the Prime Minister even went so far as to question the role of carbon dioxide as a contributing factor, insisting that carbon dioxide was essential to life," Dion told Parliament. "Water is also essential to life, but that information is no relief to a man who is drowning."

Bloc Quebecois statements have merely added to the confusion leading many observers to conclude that most MPs have either completely forgotten their grade school science, or hope most Canadians have.

As a refresher for politicians who apparently need it - not all do; some recognize that much of today's CO2 climate change rhetoric is nonsense but are either muzzled by their parties from saying so or find it to their political advantage to repeat alarmist propaganda - here is what science actually says about this benign gas.

As we have written often in the Canada Free Press, CO2 is not currently a major climate driver. Even if CO2 concentration doubles or triples, the effect on temperature would be minimal. The relationship between temperature and CO2 is like painting a window black to block sunlight. The first coat blocks most of the light. Second and third coats reduce very little more. Current CO2 levels are like the first coat of black paint. Computer climate models get around this by assuming that a highly questionable hypothesis is correct, namely that small increases in temperature due to large CO2 rises cause more evaporation and the subsequently higher concentration of water vapor (the major greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere will cause further temperature rise. More likely, the resultant increased cloud cover will drive temperatures down.

Although it is improbable that humanity can greatly alter atmospheric CO2 levels, MPs must understand that CO2 is not a pollutant and threatens neither us nor the environment. CO2 is essential to life on Earth as plants 'breathe in' CO2 and 'breath out' oxygen while animals inhale oxygen and exhale CO2. Research shows plants function best with CO2 levels between 1,000 and 1,200 parts per million (ppm). Greenhouses inject CO2 to reach these levels and achieve significantly higher yields as a result. This suggests that plants evolved to suit levels around 1,000 ppm and are CO2 starved at today's 385 ppm. In fact, at 200 ppm plants begin to suffer and at 120 ppm they start to die.

Based on experiments by Mayeux et al. (1997), U. S. Department of Agriculture research scientist Sherwood Idso calculated that the approximately 100 ppm increase in CO2 in the atmosphere over the past century and a half would have resulted in an increase in average wheat yield throughout the world of about 60%. That's because higher CO2 makes plants grow faster.

The National Centre for Public Policy Research asserts, "Based on 800 scientific observations around the world, a doubling of CO2 from present levels would improve plant productivity on average 32% across species. Controlled experiments have shown that:

• Tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce average between 20% and 50% higher yields under elevated CO2 conditions.

• Cereal grains including rice, wheat, barley, oats and rye average between 25% and 64% higher yields under elevated CO2 levels.

• Food crops such as corn, sorghum, millet and sugar cane average yield increases from 10% to 55% at elevated CO2 levels.

• Root crops including potatoes, yams and cassava show average yield increases of 18% to 75% under elevated CO2 conditions.

• Legumes, including peas, beans and soybeans, post greater yields of between 28% and 46% when CO2 levels are increased."

It has also been found that higher CO2 levels enhance the health-promoting properties of food and increase the effectiveness of plant constituents that protect against various cancers and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.

Finally, elevated levels of CO2 cause decreased water loss in plants as the stomata (pores) on leaves shrink and exhale less water. This makes plants more efficient users of water at higher CO2 levels, a characteristic especially important in drought stricken regions.

But what about Dion's assertion that we can effectively 'drown' in CO2?

It is true that there are levels at which CO2 becomes toxic for plants and humans. But this is the same for all substances, even, as Dion expostulated in the Commons, water. The recent death of a woman in California from drinking too much water illustrates 16th-century chemist Paracelsus' comment that toxicity is in the dosage. But contrary to the perception created by Dion, CO2 levels have to be very high indeed to be toxic. Humans can tolerate CO2 at 4,500 ppm for periods of time, and it is not until the air's CO2 concentration reaches approximately 15,000 ppm (Luft et al., 1974; Schaefer, 1982) that serious health impacts become apparent. That would be approximately 40 times greater than current levels of 385 ppm and more than double the highest CO2 level in the past half billion years. Idso suggests that burning the entire supply of fossil fuels in the crust of the earth would raise CO2 by a factor of ten, and that is still only a quarter of that required to directly threaten human health.

Dion's implication about direct threat to human health from increasing CO2 is therefore nonsense. Seen in that light, Liberal MP Julian Reed's October 8, 2002 House of Commons statement may indeed trump even Comartin and Barnes as the dumbest statement ever by a Parliamentarian about CO2:

Yes, they will die, simply because, if the room was "filled with carbon dioxide", there would be no oxygen. Reed's statement was misleading grandstanding, a tactic all too common over the past decade and one that is largely responsible for today's situation where dogma dominates all Commons' climate debates and scoring 'green' points is the only goal.

Harper concluded his summit speech by telling his audience that, working with Germany, Canada is "devoted to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and stopping global warming."

This was precisely what Jean Chrétien said in 1997 and later in 2002. Rhetorically, we have come full circle. The Conservative approach to the impossible goal of stopping climate change may be like hitting ourselves in the head with a two by four in comparison with Kyoto's lead pipe but the outcome is similar – billions will be wasted, the targets will not be met and the public's trust in government will erode still further while real environmental problems remain improperly addressed.

There is only one way out of this dilemma – Harper must call for immediate unbiased hearings into the science of climate change, something that has never happened in Canada. Then the public and the media will better appreciate what many MPs already know - the massive uncertainties and gross contradictions in this, the most complex science ever tackled by man, leads to only one rational conclusion: Canada must announce its official withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol in February 2008, the earliest date at which we can legally do so.

Finally putting the Kyoto decade behind us, Canada can then set an example to the world by starting to base environmental policy on a proper assessment of real, unbiased environmental science. Our children deserve no less.