▪️I saw this FB “fact check” in my feed today. I consider Alex Epstein to be pretty solid on his claims, but was curious why the fact checkers thought this was “partly false” so clicked on the link, which takes you to a USA Today article. Which is a total train wreck and laughable.
▪️First, they agree with Alex’s point that increased CO2 stimulates plant growth. After all, CO2 is plant food. But they quote experts saying there’s a limit to this. What’s the limit? The article never says, because it would undermine their entire point and sham “fact check.”
▪️Alex never says there’s no limit to the fertilizer effect, that is a red herring, his graphic clearly states “well into the thousands of parts per million.” Currently, the earth is near a historic low in CO2, going from 0.03% (280 ppm) in 1850 to 0.04% (420 ppm) today.
▪️Plant life flourished on earth when CO2 levels were far higher, in the thousands of ppm. The earth was far more lush and green (and warm) in the age of dinosaurs, what do you think fed the giant animals? And we couldn’t reach those CO2 levels now if we tried.
▪️In their fact checking attempt, the USA Today article says plants are “substantially compromised" when CO2 levels reached a certain point. But when you click the link of their cited study, it only looks at one crop (winter wheat) and basically confirms Alex’s point.
▪️Their cited study found that increased CO2 levels “dramatically enhanced winter wheat growth through the CO2 fertilization effect.” This benefit was reversed above ~900ppm, which seems to be the optimum winter wheat level. Note, that’s more than double the current CO2 levels today!
▪️Meanwhile, Alex cites a study in his book showing substantial tree and crop yield increases for a variety of plants under a 300 ppm increase of CO2. Which is a more realistic level if CO2 emissions went unchecked through 2100.
▪️The article then tries to argue that CO2 increase doesn’t help plants because it causes global warming and could change the weather. But this is special pleading and ignores the fact that the earth was much more tropical and green when it was warmer. It also ignores they just admitted CO2 increase does help plants!
▪️No one is arguing that CO2 can increase plant growth ad infinitum, but the fact is that the small increase expected from human causes will be good for overall plant growth. That doesn’t mean there are also potential negative effects of climate change, but the inability for the climate catastrophists to ever acknowledge any potential benefits of climate change shows their total lack of objectivity on the subject.
Here’s the link to the “fact check”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2023/02/03/fact-check-excess-co-2-harms-plants-more-than-helps-them-experts-say/11128639002/
▪️The left keeps using this meme but they don’t actually believe it. If you believe SNAP subsidizes companies to pay below a “living wage” this implies that if you take food stamps away they would suddenly pay a higher, “living” wage. So why not get rid of food stamps, then?!
▪️Except they know, and everyone knows, this isn’t true. Wages are set by supply and demand, not some mythical “living wage” metric. Absent food stamps there would actually be downward, not upward, pressure on wages, because the reality is food stamps subsidize the poor to not work as much as they might otherwise need to.
▪️Without SNAP, some low income people would need to work more hours to make ends meet, increasing the availability of low-skilled labor and lowering wages (all else being equal).
▪️Plus, we all know the left loves and supports food stamps. Which means, by this meme’s logic, they love to subsidize corporate profits. But they don’t really, they just think this ...
▪️Wait, this is the guy libertarians and the new right rave about being a great historian?! This sounds like a clueless meme from The Other 98%, except they wouldn’t add in the bizarre defense of feudal lords. Feudalism didn’t deprive peasants of their livelihoods for abstract goals? This is total fantasy.
▪️Amazon employs 1.55M, so this is less than 2% of their workforce, although these cuts will be to corporate, which employs 350k, so 8.5% of that. The CEO says there is an excess of bureaucracy at Amazon, and AI can automate certain repetitive tasks. Also, much of the cuts will be to HR, which is expected shrink by 15%, yay. Managers and HR are peasants now?
▪️I don’t know the inner workings of Amazon, and neither does Darryl, but this seems to be normal management practice to keep a company efficient and competitive. Given the immense size of Amazon the numbers look large, but far bigger shakeups happen all the time in the private sector. Apparently, under the new ...
▪️This statistic is just made up. The reality is that there hasn’t been a real study on this since 2013, when Pew did a poll. They found that Democrats were actually more than twice as likely as Republicans to report ever using food stamps (22% vs 10%).
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/07/12/the-politics-and-demographics-of-food-stamp-recipients/
▪️Obviously, those percentages could have changed over the past decade, but it’s very likely that Dems still receive more SNAP benefits. Certainly, without an actual study or poll the claim should be thrown out, as it wildly contradicts a previous study.
▪️The meme probably comes from a 2024 analysis by Social Explorer, which found that 78.7% of US counties with the largest increase in SNAP since 2010 voted for Trump in 2020. But that tells us nothing about the actual number of Republicans (or Democrats) who are receiving benefits, just county-wide trends.
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