Yesterday a new book arrived in my mail. Climategate: A Veteran Meteorologist Exposes the Global Warming Scam is by Brian Sussman, who for over twenty years served as the San Francisco area’s most celebrated science reporter and meteorologist, receiving honors from the Associated Press, Radio and TV News Directors’ Association, National Education Association, and National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. In 2001, Sussman left his position as TV meteorologist to become a talk show host, and his program on KSFO-AM has become one of America’s top-rated radio shows.
Sussman’s years as a broadcast journalist combine with his abilities as a scientist to produce a book that laymen intimidated by more technical treatments can handle well but that still conveys excellent factual information.
One example of the clarity with which he writes is his quick summary of the benefits of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere:
Research gathered by Michigan State Unviersity professor emeritus of horticulture, Sylvan H. Wittwer, indicates that with a tripling of CO2, roses, carnations, and chrysanthemums experience earlier maturity, have longer stems and larger, longer-lasting, more colorful flowers with yields increasing up to 15%. Rice, wheat, barley, oats, and rye perform yield increases ranging to 64%. Potatoes and sweet potatoes produce as much as 75% more. Legumes, including peas, beans, and soybeans, show increases to 46%. The effects of carbon dioxide on trees, which cover one-third of Earth’s land mass, may be even more dramatic. According to Michigan State’s forestry department, trees have been raised to maturity in months instead of years when the seedlings were raised in a tripled CO2 environment.
Remember that the next time somebody talks about the Armageddon rising CO2 will cause. Its minuscule effect on temperature (doubled CO2 perhaps raising temperature, after feedbacks, by about 0.5 degree C, and mostly near the poles, at night, in winter) pales into insignificance compared with its beneficial effect on plants—and, through them, on all the rest of life on Earth.
