Greenpeace Founder Discusses His Personal History, The History Of Earth's Climate, And Why We Should "Celebrate Carbon Dioxide" | Eastern North Carolina Now

 Publisher's note: The author of this post is Dr. Roy Cordato, who is Vice President for Research and resident scholar for the John Locke Foundation.

 In this lecture to the Institute of Mechanical Engineers delivered this week, Patrick Moore, ecologist as well as founder and long time leader of Greenpeace, argues that the planet has actually been in a long term (50 million year) cooling trend; that long term temperature records (hundreds of thousands of years) suggest that planetary warming causes increases in atmospheric CO2, not the other way around; and that over shorter and longer periods, including over the past 20 years, there is no empirical correlation between atmospheric CO2 and increasing global temperatures. And if that's not enough contrarianism for one talk, he argues that, looking at the course of atmospheric history, we are actually in a period of dangerously low concentrations of naturally generated CO2 (from volcanoes and the like). He credits the burning of fossil fuels with adding millions of years to the existence of life on earth. He argues that this is because CO2 concentrations are in a long term decline, and if they were to fall below 150 ppb (parts per billion) plant life would not be sustainable. We are now at about 400 ppb, which is up from 280 ppb in pre-industrial times, an increase he "credits" to human induced CO2 emissions. He also argues that, as far as vegetation and plant growth is concerned, the optimal level of atmospheric CO2 is about 2000 ppb.

 This lecture is packed with paleo-climatological history along with arguments about our current climate conditions and the contemporary view of CO2 as a dangerous pollutant, all based on that climate history. Regarding his claims, Moore concludes by issuing a challenge:


 Apart from all of this, as I noted Moore gives an interesting history of his experiences with Greenpeace going back to the organization's founding in the 1970s as a group that was primarily concerned about nuclear weapons and issues of war and peace. As Moore states:


 The last straw for Moore was their campaign to ban chlorine in the 1980s.


 This speech, given by a scientist who has seen the environmental movement as both an insider and an outsider, is a fascinating read and I highly recommend it.

 By the way, if you would like to respond to his challenge, send it to him, not to me.


 The 2015 ozone season began on April 1 and, as I have been doing since this newsletter was started, each week during the ozone season this newsletter will report how many, if any, high ozone days have been experienced throughout the state during the previous week, where they were experienced, and how many have been recorded during the entire season to date. (Note: ground level ozone, which is what we are reporting on, is often called "smog.") According to current EPA standards a region or county experiences a high ozone day if a monitor in that area registers the amount of ozone in the air as 76 parts per billion (ppb) or greater. The official ozone season will end on October 31. All reported data is preliminary and issued by the North Carolina Division of Air Quality, which is part of the state's Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Thus far this season there have been 5 high ozone days recorded on any of the state's 42 monitors. Three occurred on June 25 and two on August 5.

 The table below shows all of North Carolina's ozone monitors and the high reading on those monitors for each day of the 7-day period, October 5-11.