Carbon Dioxide and Earth's Future Pursuing the ... - Magazooms

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problem in depth that the needed increase in agricultural productivity is not possible to
achieve, even with anticipated improvements in technology and expertise. With the help of the
ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content, however, Idso and Idso (2000) have shown that we should
be able -- but just barely -- to meet our expanding food needs without “bringing down the
curtain” on the world of nature in the process.
What Idso and Idso (2000) did, in this regard, was to develop and analyze a supply-and-demand
scenario for food in the year 2050. Specifically, they identified the plants that at the start of the
new century supplied 95% of the world’s food needs and projected historical trends in the
productivities of these crops 50 years into the future, after which they evaluated the growthenhancing
effects of atmospheric CO2 enrichment on these plants and made similar yield
projections based on the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration likely to have occurred by
that future date. This exercise revealed that world population would likely be 51% greater in
the year 2050 than it was in 1998, but that world food production would be only 37% greater if
its enhanced productivity comes solely as a consequence of anticipated improvements in
agricultural technology and expertise. However, they further determined that the consequent
shortfall in farm production could be overcome -- but only just barely -- by the additional
benefits anticipated to accrue from the aerial fertilization effect of the expected rise in the air’s
CO2 content, assuming no Kyoto-style cutbacks in anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
In light of the above, it is remarkable that many people actually characterize the ongoing rise in
the air’s CO2 content as the greatest threat ever to be faced by the biosphere, or that the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency has actually classified CO2 as a dangerous air pollutant. It is
also disturbing to hear some people claim that we must do now whatever it takes, at whatever
the price, to stop the upward trend in the concentration of this supposedly diabolical trace gas
of the atmosphere. Representatives of the nations of the world, for example, meet regularly to
consider the issue and talk of the moral imperative we have to do something about it. But as
they tilt at this greatest of all environmental issues ever to be created by the mind of man -- for
as demonstrated in the pages of this treatise it is by no means clear that it is, or ever will be, a
bone fide threat in the real world -- they also weaken our chances of successfully dealing with a
host of environmental problems that truly do vex us, such as the food security and extinction
threats described above. And there are a great many more threats that are literally crying out
for attention.
In the most recent World Energy Outlook Report (2010), produced by the International Energy
Agency, for example, the following is reported:
“Despite rising energy use across the world, many poor households in developing
countries still have no access to modern energy service. The numbers are striking: we
estimate that 1.4 billion people – over 20% of the global population – lack access to
electricity and that 2.7 billion people – some 40% of the global population – rely on the
traditional use of biomass for cooking.”
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