The Great Carbon Boom

By Published on October 19, 2015

On the eve of the UN climate summit in Paris, all delegates would be well advised to reflect on how the story of man-made global warming debate started.

Svante Arrhenius, winner of the 1905 Nobel Prize, hypothesized over a century ago that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) due to fossil fuel consumption would warm the world. He also hypothesized that higher CO2 levels would stimulate plant growth. These, he reasoned, would reinforce each other and increase the biosphereโ€™s productivity to the benefit of mankind.

Halting the increase in CO2 concentrations abruptly, or reducing them, would immediately halt or reverse improvements in plant growth rates, increasing hunger and habitat destruction. On the other hand, any consequential change in warming would happen much more slowly. Thus, any reductions in CO2 emissions would deprive people and the planet of the benefits from CO2 much sooner and more surely than they would reduce any costs of warming.

Read the article “The Great Carbon Boom” on business.financialpost.com.

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