Dr. Craig Idso, Carbon Dioxide Specialist

June 3—Below are excerpts from a March 23, 2017 interview with Dr. Craig Idso, conducted at the Heartland Institute’s 12th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC-12). Dr. Idso is the founder of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; of the American Geophysical Union; of the American Meteorological Society; and of the CO₂ Coalition.

Dr. Craig Idso

Dr. Craig Idso: There are three main benefits which result from increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere: The first is that it increases plant productivity for biomass of the plant. On average, what we see is that for a doubling of CO₂, something that’s going to happen by the end of this century, most are herbaceous plants, non-woody plants like crops and things like that, will experience anywhere from a 25% to a 55% increase in biomass per yield. And that’s a phenomenal result and that’s something that’s going to happen just because we raise the CO₂ concentration and nothing else. . . .

Second is that higher CO₂ concentrations help increase the plant’s water use efficiency. Again, a doubling of CO₂ allows plants to use about half as much water as they need to produce the same amount of tissue, so that is another phenomenal benefit.

And then the third benefit is that higher CO₂ concentrations help to ameliorate environmental stresses. So if you have a stress from hot air temperature, maybe low light, low levels of soil fertility, those sorts of things, if you have higher CO₂ concentrations, the higher levels tend to reduce or lessen that stress, if not completely ameliorate it under a doubling of CO₂.

You put all those three benefits together, and what you get is a tremendous benefit to the biosphere, to the growth. And we’re seeing that already: We see it in tree-ring cores, you can look at how their water use efficiency has improved over time, and we see anywhere from 35% to 40% increase already, as the CO₂ concentration has increased by about 40%....

So the satellites have been up measuring reflectivity of vegetation, over the entire globe ever since about the early 1980s. And what they find consistently, whether they’re focusing on a particular region of the globe or the globe as a whole, you get anywhere from about 6% to 15% increase in biomass in that period of time.... The globe as a whole, or in total, is actually in a better off condition now than it was when those measurements began....

I did the first approximation to determine what is the net monetary benefit on crop production globally, in the past and then also projected into the future, and what I found was that over the 50-year period from 1961 to 2011, it amounts to about $3.2 trillion on the global economy, a phenomenal benefit. And then, projecting that forward in time, as the CO₂ concentration is going to continue to rise, from about 2012 to 2050, we expect it to be about $10 trillion to the economy.

And that’s just really scratching the surface, because you could look at studies—for example, I’ll take rice, where there’s a number of genotypes of rice, and scientists have looked at, for example—in one study I’m thinking of—they looked at 16 different genotypes of rice, and how those genotypes responded to a doubling of CO₂, and they received values that ranged from about zero all the way to a whopping 265%. So, if governments and scientists focused on those specific genotypes that we received the greatest increase in biomass per unit of CO₂ rise, and then grew them, we could have this phenomenal increase in agriculture and have no problem in feeding the planet in the future.

Based on the controlled greenhouse studies, Dr. Idso has been able to determine that the rising CO₂ levels in recent decades have increased agricultural crop yields by over $3 trillion—more food and more efficient agriculture production.

And another benefit—which is a big irony, in a certain sense—is the effects of higher CO₂ levels on plant water use efficiency. You actually get a highly significant boost for certain plant species in their ability to produce more biomass with less water use. This has rather interesting implications for drier regions in particular, where water is the limiting factor in plant growth. And now, all of a sudden, with higher concentrations of plant food in the atmosphere, CO₂, they can grow in regions they couldn’t grow in before; they can be healthier in regions they couldn’t be healthy in before. And you just take a look at places we’ve had water issues—like California—and we have our crazy governor in California, running around pretending he’s the world leader on CO₂, when his state is actually benefiting from the fact there’s been higher CO₂ levels in the context of the recent droughts. The ironies are just all over the place.

A Top-Down, Imperial Policy

You’ve really got to ask yourself, why are none of these basic scientific facts even being added into the discussion about effects of CO₂ rise? All you hear are these flimsy scare stories, presented by the media as if they were scientific facts, but basic, unambiguous scientific data and studies demonstrating the positive effects of CO₂ rise are completely left out of the discussion. People need to let that irony sink in.

Let’s talk about reality. For decades, Helga and Lyndon LaRouche have warned you, the whole global warming issue is not really about global warming. That’s just the latest scare story certain people have grabbed onto and pushed to bolster a Malthusian ideology (before global warming it was ozone holes, and overpopulation, and global cooling).

In 2015 Executive Intelligence Review released an updated report exposing the forces pushing this climate change scare, “Global Warming Scare Is Population Reduction, Not Science,” which details the origins, not just of the climate-change scare, but more broadly, of this whole environmentalist movement, demonstrating that it comes from an oligarchical, Malthusian ideology. Look at the climate issue in that context.

The Founding Fathers of the Environmentalist Movement Prince Philip Prince Philip 1930s—His siblings married into pro-Nazi aristocratic families in Germany. 1933—He studied under the Nazi race-science curriculum in Germany. Late 1930s—He maintained a secretive relation with the pro-Nazi king of England (Edward VIII) after the king was forced to abdicate. 1961—He became the United Kingdom President of the World Wildlife Fund from 1961 to 1982. 1981—He was president of International World Wildlife Fund 1981-1996. 1996—He became President Emeritus of the World Wildlife Fund. Sir Julian Huxley Sir Julian Huxley 1937—He was vice-president of the British Eugenics Society 1937 to 1944. 1948—After the world was exposed to the horrors of Hitler’s eugenics program, Huxley continued to promote the development of eugenics as the first director of UNESCO (placing a call in support of eugenics in UNESCO’s founding document). 1958—He became Sir Julian Huxley upon being knighted by the Queen. 1959—He was president of the British Eugenics Society from 1959 to 1962. 1961—He was a co-founder of World Wildlife Fund. Prince Bernhard Prince Bernhard 1930s—He was a member of the Nazi SS, then worked with a special Nazi SS Intelligence Unit in IG Farbenindustrie. The Nazi concentration camp/slave-labor system was later pioneered there. 1936—He resigned from Nazi SS to marry the future Queen Juliana, signing his resignation, “Heil Hitler!” Hitler sent congratulations to their wedding. 1940s—He was director of KLM airlines during the time that the airlines were covertly flying Nazi war criminals out of Germany and into Argentina to escape prosecution, 1961—He was co-founder of the World Wildlife Fund. 1961-1976—He was president of the World Wildlife Fund. 1970—He founded “The 1001: A Nature Trust” to organize financial support for the funding of the environmentalist movement.

Just look at the founders of the modern environmentalist movement, the people who created the entire structure that pushed this whole environmentalist movement globally. Just highlight the top figures: Sir Julian Huxley, a lifelong proponent of eugenics, who was head of the British Eugenics Society. After World War II, after Hitler’s horrific war crimes and crimes against humanity were exposed, along with their connection to eugenics, Huxley still promoted eugenics in his position in the UN, as the head of UNESCO at the time. Prince Philip, whenever he gets the chance, talks about how terrible population growth is, and the fact that population growth is the number one problem on the planet. He has said that if he could be reincarnated, he’d like to come back as a deadly virus to reduce world population. That’s his view, that’s his belief-system. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands was actually a Nazi, and then worked for Nazi intelligence (and there are credible accusations that he helped Nazi war criminals escape after World War II).

These people came together and started the environmentalist movement in the immediate post-World War II period, and in the ’50s and ’60s it started to take off. This is the ideology behind this. It’s not about the debates you see on the media, about this claim or that claim on supposed science of CO₂. If you really want to understand the issue, it’s this oligarchical, Malthusian ideology that’s been campaigning for generations against economic development, against population growth, against the development of so-called Third World nations. These are people who have said we cannot allow the world to rise to the living standards of America and the West. Think of Obama traveling to Africa, telling students in Africa, if you all had air conditioning and cars the planet would boil over, so that’s not an option for you.

Dump the Past, Get into the Future

And that’s the issue. Despite what many may believe, the Paris Climate Accord is an expression of the old Malthusian, geopolitical paradigm—it’s the past—and what we’re seeing emerging with everything around China’s New Silk Road/Belt and Road Initiative (and its recent breakthrough leadership forum) is the future. So Trump’s dumping of this climate change issue is completely coherent with the fight to get the United States to break from this old geopolitical, zero-sum game, Malthusian paradigm, and get into building the future again.

Energy is certainly critical. Mr. LaRouche has defined the next steps: Concentrate on fusion and on nuclear fission as needed for the time being. The key is not only utilizing existing infrastructure for energy sources such as coal and natural gas, but developing the future energy sources that are going to do much more than allow moderate growth in energy use. What kind of energy production will enable nations around the world to come up to the same per capita energy use that we have in the United States now? What will support even higher levels, including in the United States? How can we dramatically increase the total energy-flux density of the entire global economy? That’s the future. The entire history of the development of mankind has always been intimately connected with, and tied to these kinds of increases in energy-flux density. That’s got to be the next step in development.

With China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the world is moving in that direction, and if the U.S.A. joins that process, we can secure this shift—this can’t be stressed enough. We are on the verge of a global, historical paradigm shift, this provides the perspective of the end of a geopolitical system. We have to get Americans to understand the depth of this ongoing revolution, and the importance of the United States jumping on board with this, immediately. If you now get the United States on board with Russia and China, and the nations allied with them, that’s it. We can have the future, we can create the future we want with that alliance.