Environment
Scientific Report Pours Cold Water On Major Talking Point Of Climate Activists
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
The purveyors of climate doom will not tolerate the good news of our planet thriving because of modest warming and increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. However, a recent scientific paper concludes that an optimistic vision for Earth and its inhabitants is nonetheless justified.
Widely accepted data show an overall greening of Earth resulting from a cycle of natural warming that began more than 300 years ago and from industrialization’s additions of CO2 that started in the 19th century and accelerated with vigorous economic activity following World War II.
Also attributed to these and other factors is record crop production, which now sustains 8 billion people—ten times the population prior to the Industrial Revolution. The boost in atmospheric CO2 since 1940 alone is linked to yield increases for corn, soybeans and wheat of 10%, 30% and 40%, respectively.
The positive contribution of carbon dioxide to the human condition should be cause for celebration, but this is more than demonizers of the gas can abide. Right on cue, narrators of a planet supposedly overheating from carbon dioxide began sensationalizing research findings that increased plant volume results in lower concentrations of nutrients in food.
“The potential health consequences are large, given that there are already billions of people around the world who don’t get enough protein, vitamins or other nutrients in their daily diet,” concluded the The New York Times, a reliable promoter of apocalypse forever. Among others chiming in have been The Lancet, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the National Institutes of Health.
Of course, such yellow journalism lacks context and countervailing facts —elements provided in “Nutritive Value of Plants Growing in Enhanced CO2 Concentrations” published by the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia.
Any deficiency of nutrients from the enhancement of plant growth by elevated carbon dioxide “are small, compared to the nutrient shortages that agriculture and livestock routinely face because of natural phenomena, such as severe soil fertility differences, nutrient dilution in plants due to rainfall or irrigation and even aging of crops,” says the paper.
And while there is evidence of marginal decreases in some nutrients, data also show that higher levels of CO2 “may enhance certain groups of health-promoting phytochemicals in food crops” that serve as antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds, says the paper, which lists seven authors and more than 100 references. The lead author is Albrecht Glatzle, a member of the Rural Association of Paraguay and a former international researcher of plant and animal nutrition.
Among other points made by the paper are the following: Throughout a majority of geological history, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have been several times higher than today’s, which are less than optimum for most plants; atmospheric warming from even a quadrupling of CO2 concentrations would be small compared to natural temperature fluctuations since the last glacial advance more than 10,000 years ago.
Having virtually no scientific basis, the “green” movement’s hostility to carbon dioxide seemingly ignores the gas’s critical role as a plant food. As the paper notes, “CO2 is the only source of the chemical element carbon for all life on Earth, be it for plants, animals or fungi and bacteria — through photosynthesis and food chains.”
The so-called greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide— perversely exaggerated to support climate fearmongering— is a life-saving temperature moderator that keeps Earth from freezing over.
The obvious benefits of CO2 is “an embarrassment to the large and profitable movement to ‘save the planet’ from ‘carbon pollution,’” write the authors. “If CO2 greatly benefits agriculture and forestry and has a small, benign effect on climate, it is not a pollutant at all.
More CO2 is good news. It’s not that complicated.
Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist; executive director of the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Va.; author of “Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know” and “A Very Convenient Warming: How modest warming and more CO2 are benefiting humanity” and a co-author of “Nutritive Value of Plants Growing in Enhanced CO2 Concentrations.”
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Environment
Left-wing terrorists sabotage German power plant, causing massive power outage
From LifeSiteNews
90,000 people were without electricity in Berlin on Saturday after radical environmentalists attacked a gas power plant supposedly to ‘protect the earth.’
A left-wing extremist group has claimed responsibility for an attack on the power grid that caused a massive blackout in Berlin.
On Saturday morning, around 45,000 homes and 90,000 people in southwest Berlin were without electricity after perpetrators set a fire on a power line supplying a gas power plant in the Lichterfelde district.
During the cold and snowy weather in Berlin, many households were without power and heating for days. According to BILD, the 97-year-old Ingeborg Esser was among those who had to sleep in a heated gym because her apartment was too cold.
In a letter published online on Sunday, the left-wing extremist “Vulkangruppe” (Volcano group) confessed to carrying out the attack in the name of saving the climate.
The group described the attack as an “action for the common good.” The State Criminal Police Office told the German news outlet Tagesspiegel that it considers the letter to be authentic. The Vulkangruppe, founded in 2011, has also carried out other acts of eco-terrorism in recent years, including two attacks on the Tesla Gigafactory in Grünheide, located to the east of Berlin.
“We successfully sabotaged the gas power plant in Berlin-Lichterfelde last night,” the letter stated. “The attack on the gas power plant is an act of self-defense and international solidarity with all those who protect the earth and life.”
The group, apparently motivated by the belief of impending doom due to the “climate crisis,” said, “There were power outages in the wealthier districts of Wannsee, Zehlendorf, and Nikolassee.“
”Power outages were not the goal of the action, but rather the fossil fuel industry,” the group claimed. “We apologize to the less affluent people in southwest Berlin.”
However, they added, “Our sympathy for the many villa owners in these neighborhoods is limited.”
The Vulkangruppe repeatedly blamed “the rich” for allegedly destroying the planet.
A prolonged power outage affecting private households was “neither intentional nor calculated,” the group wrote.
“We are also trying to put an end to species extinction” and the “exploitation of the earth,” the left-wing extremist group said.
According to Tagesspiegel, the operator Stromnetz Berlin expects that the power supply in the districts of Nikolassee, Zehlendorf, and Wannsee will remain interrupted until Thursday.
Berlin’s mayor Kai Wegner, from the Christian Democrats (CDU), said on Sunday, “This is not just arson or sabotage. This is terrorism.”
“We will place a high priority on prosecuting this crime. We want to catch these perpetrators,” Wegner stated.
“It was a left-wing extremist group that once again attacked our infrastructure and thus also threatened the lives of people, of elderly people who may need ventilators, of families with small children.”
The Vulkangruppe also claimed responsibility for an attack on Berlin’s power grid in September that caused a three-day power outage in Adlershof, in the district of Treptow-Köpenick.
Agriculture
The Climate Argument Against Livestock Doesn’t Add Up
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Livestock contribute far less to emissions than activists claim, and eliminating them would weaken nutrition, resilience and food security
The war on livestock pushed by Net Zero ideologues is not environmental science; it’s a dangerous, misguided campaign that threatens global food security.
The priests of Net Zero 2050 have declared war on the cow, the pig and the chicken. From glass towers in London, Brussels and Ottawa, they argue that cutting animal protein, shrinking herds and pushing people toward lentils and lab-grown alternatives will save the climate from a steer’s burp.
This is not science. It is an urban belief that billions of people can be pushed toward a diet promoted by some policymakers who have never worked a field or heard a rooster at dawn. Eliminating or sharply reducing livestock would destabilize food systems and increase global hunger. In Canada, livestock account for about three per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada.
Activists speak as if livestock suddenly appeared in the last century, belching fossil carbon into the air. In reality, the relationship between humans and the animals we raise is older than agriculture. It is part of how our species developed.
Two million years ago, early humans ate meat and marrow, mastered fire and developed larger brains. The expensive-tissue hypothesis, a theory that explains how early humans traded gut size for brain growth, is not ideology; it is basic anthropology. Animal fat and protein helped build the human brain and the societies that followed.
Domestication deepened that relationship. When humans raised cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens, we created a long partnership that shaped both species. Wolves became dogs. Aurochs, the wild ancestors of modern cattle, became domesticated animals. Junglefowl became chickens that could lay eggs reliably. These animals lived with us because it increased their chances of survival.
In return, they received protection, veterinary care and steady food during drought and winter. More than 70,000 Canadian farms raise cattle, hogs, poultry or sheep, supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs across the supply chain.
Livestock also protected people from climate extremes. When crops failed, grasslands still produced forage, and herds converted that into food. During the Little Ice Age, millions in Europe starved because grain crops collapsed. Pastoral communities, which lived from herding livestock rather than crops, survived because their herds could still graze. Removing livestock would offer little climate benefit, yet it would eliminate one of humanity’s most reliable protections against environmental shocks.
Today, a Maasai child in Kenya or northern Tanzania drinking milk from a cow grazing on dry land has a steadier food source than a vegan in a Berlin apartment relying on global shipping. Modern genetics and nutrition have pushed this relationship further. For the first time, the poorest billion people have access to complete protein and key nutrients such as iron, zinc, B12 and retinol, a form of vitamin A, that plants cannot supply without industrial processing or fortification. Canada also imports significant volumes of soy-based and other plant-protein products, making many urban vegan diets more dependent on long-distance supply chains than people assume. The war on livestock is not a war on carbon; it is a war on the most successful anti-poverty tool ever created.
And what about the animals? Remove humans tomorrow and most commercial chickens would die of exposure, merino sheep would overheat under their own wool and dairy cattle would suffer from untreated mastitis (a bacterial infection of the udder). These species are fully domesticated. Without us, they would disappear.
Net Zero 2050 is a climate target adopted by federal and provincial governments, but debates continue over whether it requires reducing livestock herds or simply improving farm practices. Net Zero advocates look at a pasture and see methane. Farmers see land producing food from nothing more than sunlight, rain and grass.
So the question is not technical. It is about how we see ourselves. Does the Net Zero vision treat humans as part of the natural world, or as a threat that must be contained by forcing diets and erasing long-standing food systems? Eliminating livestock sends the message that human presence itself is an environmental problem, not a participant in a functioning ecosystem.
The cow is not the enemy of the planet. Pasture is not a problem to fix. It is a solution our ancestors discovered long before anyone used the word “sustainable.” We abandon it at our peril and at theirs.
Dr. Joseph Fournier is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. An accomplished scientist and former energy executive, he holds graduate training in chemical physics and has written more than 100 articles on energy, environment and climate science.
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