Not The Onion: Wall Street Journal Hits ‘Rock Bottom’ With Inane Op-Ed Urging ‘More Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide’

I have read that some fundamentalists are getting science degrees, not because they love to learn, but in order to be able to propagate their anti-scientific notions. Their degrees allow them to publish in scientific journals, and to gain credibility with the public.

I guess the WSJ thinks that if someone has hypothermia, it would be helpful to put them in a tub of boiling water.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/05/13/1994871/not-the-onion-wall-street-journal-hits-rock-bottom-with-inane-op-ed-urging-more-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide/

By Joe Romm on May 13, 2013

“Nowadays, in an age of rising population and scarcities of food and water in some regions, it’s a wonder that humanitarians aren’t clamoring for more atmospheric carbon dioxide.”

No, it’s not The Onion. It’s The Wall Street Journal editorial page, which nowadays is much the same thing.

Once again, the country’s leading financial newspaper is recycling long-debunked myths from disinformers with PhDs posing as climate scientists — in this case, Harrison H. Schmitt and William Happer, “In Defense of Carbon Dioxide: The demonized chemical compound is a boon to plant life and has little correlation with global temperature.”

But what nefarious forces have been demonizing CO2? Let’s see:

IMF Chief (2/13): ”Unless We Take Action On Climate Change, Future Generations Will Be Roasted, Toasted, Fried And Grilled”
World Bank Report (11/12): “A 4°C [7°F] World Can, And Must, Be Avoided” To Avert “Devastating” Impacts
Wall Street Journal (1/13): “More Droughts, Floods, Extreme Weather Expected With Warming Climate”

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The entire piece is devoted to one of the most risible logical fallacies pushed by the deniers — that because CO2 stimulates plant growth, lots more CO2 must be great for plants. It’s like arguing that because humans need water to live, floods must be a great thing.

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You may remember Schmitt and Happer as 2 of the 16 authors of a 2012 WSJ op-ed who were labeled “dentists practicing cardiology” by 3 dozen top climate scientists. As Media Matters explains:

Neither Have Written Peer-Reviewed Climate Research.
Journal Does Not Disclose Happer Is Chairman Of Industry-Funded Institute

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From the comments

Anyone who thinks about this for a moment will soon realise that CO2 is only part of the equation relating to crop productivity, and may not be the limiting factor as per Liebig’s Law. Much good that CO2 will do if your field is dried up completely, flooded out, leached of all its minerals or your crop damaged by heat.

A better analogy is a growing child – the kid needs protein, carbohydrate , fats, vitamins and minerals. Just deciding to shovel in more vitamin D won’t necessarily make the child grow better especially if this leads to a poorer intake of other more limiting factors.

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A chemist friend in Citizens Climate Lobby, Rick Knight, shared this with CCL. It seemed worth sharing here.

Saying CO2 is plant food is like saying oxygen is human food. So if 21 percent oxygen (the concentration on earth today) is good for us, wouldn’t it be great if we could raise it to, say, 33 percent? That would be an increase similar to what you get by raising CO2 from 285 to 450 ppm.

But living in a 33 percent oxygen atmosphere would dramatically increase the risk of fire all around us. We would not be able to use paper at all because of this risk. Driving would be impossible because your car engine would explode. Trees would spontaneously combust in the hot sun. But none of those would matter for very long, because your body would start to suffer serious damage to the central nervous system, lungs, eyes, blood, kidneys, and gonads.

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As far as the “More CO2 is better,” BS goes, I like to use the salt analogy. Humans need salt to survive. If you don’t get enough salt, you’ll get sick and can die. But too much salt will kill you.

What you need is the right amount of salt. That proper amount has a range — your taste buds and cravings will tell you as you approach the limits — but it must stay within that range for you to remain healthy. And if it goes way out of the range, you die.

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That’s true of a lot of things. You can die of dehydration or of “water intoxication”. You can starve to death or die of morbid obesity.

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Murdock bought the WSJ so he would have it as a major mouthpiece to spread lies. Murdock is a proven and long term liar. He is also a proven greed monger and a war monger. When the entire cost of his reign as Media king of the world gets added up, he will be in the ranks of Hitler and Stalin of the modern era.
No, in the end his propaganda will cost millions of lives.
Once the Murdock empire bought the WSJ, I ceased to read a word of it, when I had read it for years beforehand.
That an article as stupid as the one referred to above can even get published in the WSJ in the year 2013, we have proof that certain business interests and radical fundamentalist religious nuts still hold a vast share of the media propaganda apparatus. And do not kid yourselves, the USA media is by and large a giant propaganda hoax. It does not deliver news, it delivers mind control. The media I grew up with as a kid is long since dead, now it is the liars and greed mongers of the Murdock type who push the media agenda. It aims to benefit a tiny, tiny, tiny minority of rich power brokers and militarist mad men.
History will judge, it will call our generation criminal in it’s greed and stupidity.