Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore took a jab at the climate change movement Monday with a study arguing that far from endangering life on Earth, increased greenhouse gas emissions may be saving it.
Mr. Moore, a Greenpeace turncoat who now challenges the catastrophic climate change narrative, said in a treatise that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere dipped so low about 18,000 years ago that plant life was threatened.
“All life is carbon-based and the primary source of this carbon is the CO2 in the global atmosphere,” Mr. Moore said in his executive summary. “As recently as 18,000 years ago, at the height of the most recent major glaciation, CO2 dipped to its lowest level in recorded history at 180 ppm, low enough to stunt plant growth.”
At about 150 ppm, plant life dies due to carbon dioxide starvation, he said in his paper, “The Positive Impact of Human CO2 Emissions on the Survival of Life on Earth,” released Monday by the Canada-based Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
“It is calculated that if the decline in CO2 levels were to continue at the same rate as it has over the past 140 million years, life on Earth would begin to die as soon as two million years from now and would slowly perish almost entirely as carbon continued to be lost to the deep ocean sediments,” according to the summary.
“The combustion of fossil fuels for energy to power human civilization has reversed the downward trend in CO2 and promises to bring it back to levels that are likely to foster a considerable increase in the growth rate and biomass of plants, including food crops and trees,” the study says.
As a result, said Mr. Moore, “Human emissions of CO2 have restored a balance to the global carbon cycle, thereby ensuring the long-term continuation of life on Earth.”
A senior fellow at the Frontier Centre, Mr. Moore has long been a burr in the side of Greenpeace, which has accused him of exploiting his ties to the international environmental group to cash in as a “paid representative of corporate polluters.”
Greenpeace has also said that while Mr. Moore “played a significant role in Greenpeace Canada for several years, he did not found Greenpeace.”
His defense of the importance of rising carbon dioxide at an October global warming conference drew a heated reaction from the anti-skeptics website Hot Whoppers.
“He thinks that pouring waste CO2 into the air is saving humanity and the planet. He’s nuts. (In case you haven’t figured that out for yourself.),” said the website in an Oct. 16 post. “Or you might prefer to think of him as one of those despicable disinformation propagandists.”
Anthony Watts, who runs the widely read skeptics’ website Watts Up With That, described the study as “a sensible and practical take on the issue.”
Mr. Moore’s 2013 book “Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout” details his experience as Greenpeace Canada president and Greenpeace International director.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.