Save the Planet: Support Global Warming

We've become so accustomed to hearing carbon dioxide portrayed as the worst threat to life on this planet since the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, that it's easy to forget one simple biochemical fact:  Carbon dioxide is what plants breathe.

When a person is gravely ill, what do you do to attempt to keep them alive?  You give them pure oxygen.  Carbon dioxide is the equivalent for plants.  A moment's thought raises a question that strikes to the heart of global warming alarmism: Can it be that higher carbon dioxide levels are actually good for plants, and thus good for Mother Nature?

The Financial Post reports that NASA scientists using satellites have been tracking the total global amount of vegetation in both area and density, and compared it to the carbon dioxide levels.  The results are shocking.

They found that over a period of almost two decades, the Earth as a whole became more bountiful by a whopping 6.2%. About 25% of the Earth's vegetated landmass -- almost 110 million square kilometres -- enjoyed significant increases and only 7% showed significant declines. When the satellite data zooms in, it finds that each square metre of land, on average, now produces almost 500 grams of greenery per year.

Urbanization destroying the environment?  The rain forests being bulldozed?  No food, no fresh air, all paved under?  Totally, completely, irredeemably false.  The exact opposite is true: there are more trees, more grasses, more flowers, and more fauna of every kind living on them, than there were twenty years ago.

Now why might this be?

Their 2004 study, and other more recent ones, point to the warming of the planet and the presence of CO2, a gas indispensable to plant life. CO2 is nature's fertilizer, bathing the biota with its life-giving nutrients. Plants take the carbon from CO2 to bulk themselves up -- carbon is the building block of life -- and release the oxygen, which along with the plants, then sustain animal life. As summarized in a report last month, released along with a petition signed by 32,000 U. S. scientists who vouched for the benefits of CO2: "Higher CO2 enables plants to grow faster and larger and to live in drier climates. Plants provide food for animals, which are thereby also enhanced. The extent and diversity of plant and animal life have both increased substantially during the past half-century."

We've long argued that the earth is not necessarily warming, and that the proposed solutions are grossly expensive for any benefits they might deliver.  This study should represent the final nail in the coffin for Al Gore's global warming scare:

Increased carbon dioxide levels are good for the environment.

What's more, even global warming itself would be good for plants (within reason).  Thought question: is there more greenery in Antarctica where it's cold, or in the tropics where it's not?

Throughout the administration of the Devil Incarnate, George W. Bush, the amount of trees, flowers, and pretty birds all over the world has increased, but don't expect anyone to give him any credit for it.

The "solutions" proposed by the environmental extremists and their supporters in politics and the media are not merely solutions to non-problems; not merely ineffective against the supposed problems themselves; but are in fact destructive of the very ecology they claim to adore.  Their only purpose can be human poverty and repression for its own sake.

The environmentalists and politicians certainly wouldn't be thanked by the plants that have so enjoyed the carbon dioxide increases.  As the Financial Post article concludes,

Amazingly, although the risks of action are arguably at least as real as the risks of inaction, Canada and other countries are rushing into Earth-altering carbon schemes with nary a doubt. Environmentalists, who ordinarily would demand a full-fledged environmental assessment before a highway or a power plant can be built, are silent on the need to question proponents or examine alternatives.

Ah yes.  It's time to demand a objective environmental impact statement from those who would destroy our economy based on nothing more than their own fantasies combined with a thirst for political power.