▪️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/
As with the leftist freak out over “banned books” this is not banning books, it’s still easy to get Harry Potter and bookstores should be able to limit whatever books they want for whatever reason. But not only does it show a double standard, the rationale is far less justifiable than removing certain content from school libraries. At least there the justification was the content of certain books are inappropriate for children, clearly not every book should be available in a school library. Here, there’s no argument about the content they just don’t like the author’s politics!
Because news came out about his letter to the FBI, revealing he was a nutcase. The letter was rambling and incoherent, claiming he was trained by the US military off the books, and that Walz had instructed him to kill Amy Klobuchar so he could run for Senate. None of it made any sense (Walz is not running for Senate) and none of the assassinations made any sense, even in a diabolical way.
Nearly all of his hit list was Democrats (including Walz) and abortion clinics, but he was supposedly working for Walz?! Plus, one of the guys he killed wasn’t even on his list, and others were no longer in office or deceased. None of it makes sense from any coherent angle.
Basically, it appears the guy was mentally ill and neither the left or right can use the incident to push their agendas anymore, so the story was dropped.
This is so dumb. First, this means LA began as Spanish land founded to support Spanish missions (i.e. colonialism). Which contradicts their entire premise. But the reality is that Los Angeles is a quintessential American city.
▪️When the US acquired California in the 1840s, LA was a small town of less than 2,000 people. It was basically nothing. It became large only after the gold rush and the railroads completed in the 1870-80s, which brought thousands of new settlers and a booming commercial center.
▪️But LA had a major issue limiting its growth, no water. It wasn’t until Mulholland found a water source and built an aqueduct down from Northern California that LA had the infrastructure to grow into a major city.
▪️Then, a combination of oil, real estate and the film industry caused it to boom in the early 1900s. Post WWII, industries like aerospace continued its spectacular growth. Calling this “Mexican land” is a brain dead take. Neither the Mexicans, Spanish nor ...
