The Climate Surprise

The climate surprise
by William Happer
The brief reports assembled here summarize
talks at the conference The Climate
Surprise: Why CO Is Good for the Earth.
The Conference, jointly organized by The New
Criterion and the CO Coalion, took place at
the Princeton Club in New York on March ,
. The CO Coalion is a new and independent
non-profit organizaon established in
to educate thought leaders, policy makers, and
the public about the vital contribuon made
by carbon dioxide to our lives and our economy.
Coalion members include climate sciensts,
physicists, engineers, and economists of internaonal
stature. More informaon about the
coalion’s goals and membership can be found
at its website, cocoalion.org.
The mission of the Coalion is to
present scienfic evidence showing
that the trace atmospheric gas carbon
dioxide or CO is a nutrient that
is essenal to plant life. CO is not a
pollutant. Increasing CO levels will
enable plants and agricultural crops to
grow more efficiently and to be more
drought resistant.
Moreover, observaons show that
warming from doubling the amount
of CO in the atmosphere is going
to be about degree Celsius, much
less than predicted by most computer
models, and beneficial to the world.
The CO Coalition is in favor
of cost-effective regulation of the
energy sector to minimize real environmental
harm. But it notes that CO released by
combuson of fossil fuels is actually a benefit
to the world, not a pollutant. Energy
sources like fossil fuels, nuclear power, hydropower,
wind power, or solar power should
be selected on the basis of cost, convenience,
dependability, and ability to minimize real, as
opposed to imaginary, environmental harm.
With proper equipment to remove genuine
pollutants, like fly ash, oxides of sulfur and
nitrogen, volale organic compounds, and so
on, the stack emissions of fossil fuel power
plants are similar to those of human breath,
as shown in Figure .. Humans and other
Figure 1.1: The main components of the exhaust gas of a modern power
plant are similar to the components in human breath. Humans and other
living things must emit large amounts of CO2 to survive. They have a very
large “carbon footprint,” which is a benefi cial part of the cycle of life.
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