Wood Romances

This is part 1. My response to part 2 is here . John Stossel is at it again. He has released a new video of shoddy journalism catering to the partisan rhetoric of the Heartland Institute. In this video, Stossel claims that scientists don't actually agree about the risks climate change poses to humanity, and he promises to correct claims made by "activists and the media" by identifying seven of their myths and showing why they are wrong. He promises that that this will come in two parts, correcting three of these "myths" in this video, and presumably four in the next. In this post, I'd like to see how he did. I'll begin with looking at his rhetorical strategy, and then look at each of the three myths he covers in this video. Rhetorical Strategy: Dishonest Soundbites + Partisan "Experts" Stossel's strategy here is to show soundbites from people sharing on news stories, documentaries, comedy routines, adds, and YouTube videos that he wants us...

CO2 Coalition 's " Fact #8 " and " Fact #9 " want us to believe that more CO2 means more plant growth (Fact 8) and allow crops to feed more people globally (Fact 9). The claims here are not really new compared to other claims in this list of "facts," and we've already seen why these claims are misleading at best. We've seen in two posts ( here and here ) that increasing CO2 doesn't just cause greening through CO2 fertilization but also warming through the greenhouse effect. The latter increases heat stress for plants and limit their ability to make use of additional CO2 for photosynthesis. We've also seen here that CO2 Coalition just assumes that increases in corn yields are due to increased CO2 when the sources they cite actually attribute increases in crop yields to better hybrid corn and better technology. The logic of these facts is very similar. In "fact 9," we're shown a graph of grain production with CO2 and tempe...

CO2 Coalition 's " Fact #25 " claims that increasing CO2 causes moister soil. We're told that increasing CO2 concentrations means that plant stomata are open for shorter periods, so plants become more efficient (water use efficiency or WUE increases) and don't take as much water from soils. From this they claim that "CO2 fertilization has been linked to decreases in global fire, drought and heat waves." It's true that studies have shown that in some ecosystems, elevated CO2 has been linked to better water use efficiency (WUE) and improved soil moisture. But CO2 Coalition is being a bit selective in the information they present, even in the two examples they provide. In their first example, they cite research from CSIRO that showed that increasing CO2 has lead to a boost in green foliage in desert areas, but there are also secondary effects: "On the face of it, elevated CO2 boosting the foliage in dry country is good news and could assist forest...

CO2 Coalition 's " Fact 23 " claims that "CO2 increase is enhancing corn production" by a lot. This is such an astounding fact that CO2 Coalition devoted a whole sentence to defend its claim. "In the United States, corn production (bushels per acre) is steadily increasing as CO2 levels increase. This steady and continued increase cannot be explained simply by better technology." Here's the graph they show to support this from Nielson 2020 , which is an article posted on Purdue's website. The article says nothing about CO2. Instead, it says that corn yields were positively affected by several "miracles" that resulted in three stages of corn yields. Corn yields were stagnant from 1866-1936 until the rapid adoption of hybrid corn. Rapid adoption of double-cross hybrid corn by American farmers began in the late 1930's, in the waning years of the U.S. Dust Bowl and Great Depression. Within a very few years after that, the national yiel...