This study looks at the pos­i­tive envi­ron­men­tal effects of car­bon diox­ide (CO₂) emis­sions, a top­ic which has been well estab­lished in the sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture but which is far too often ignored in the cur­rent dis­cus­sions about cli­mate change policy.

All life is car­bon based and the pri­ma­ry source of this car­bon is the CO₂ in the glob­al atmosphere.

As recent­ly as 18,000 years ago, at the height of the most recent major glacia­tion, CO₂ dipped to its low­est lev­el in record­ed his­to­ry at 180 ppm, low enough to stunt plant growth. This is only 30 ppm above a lev­el that would result in the death of plants due to CO₂ starvation.

It is cal­cu­lat­ed that if the decline in CO₂ lev­els were to con­tin­ue at the same rate as it has over the past 140 mil­lion years, life on Earth would begin to die as soon as two mil­lion years from now and would slow­ly per­ish almost entire­ly as car­bon con­tin­ued to be lost to the deep ocean sediments.

The com­bus­tion of fos­sil fuels for ener­gy to pow­er human civ­i­liza­tion has reversed the down­ward trend in CO₂ and promis­es to bring it back to lev­els that are like­ly to fos­ter a con­sid­er­able increase in the growth rate and bio­mass of plants, includ­ing food crops and trees.

Human emis­sions of CO₂ have restored a bal­ance to the glob­al car­bon cycle, there­by ensur­ing the long-term con­tin­u­a­tion of life on Earth.

This extreme­ly pos­i­tive aspect of human CO₂ emis­sions must be weighed against the unproven hypoth­e­sis that human CO₂emis­sions will cause a cat­a­stroph­ic warm­ing of the cli­mate in com­ing years.

The one-sided polit­i­cal treat­ment of CO₂ as a pol­lu­tant that should be rad­i­cal­ly reduced must be cor­rect­ed in light of the indis­putable sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence that it is essen­tial to life on Earth.

PS185 – Moore-Positive-Impact-of-Human-CO2-Emissions_CF1