r/climatechange • u/srmcmahon • 5d ago

"retired plant scientist" claim

This was in a letter to the editor locally:

"There is no real evidence that global warming is due to atmospheric CO2. Controlled experiments indicate that the addition of CO2 in air up to 10,000 ppm have little or no effect on warming under atmospheric conditions."

Entire letter is here: https://www.inforum.com/opinion/letters/letter-co2-and-global-warming

I was going to write a comment. I think he might be talking about experiments where they added CO2 to experimental plant plots (but don't remember the mechanics). "Under atmospheric conditions"--means exactly what?

Can you help me out here? I have not figured out how to phrase a search that brings me to what he is referring to.

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u/srmcmahon 5d ago

Me again. Plant scientists around where I live are often employed by seed companies (talked to one in a bar once and learned about corn snap, which sounded eerie) and I am aware there have been plant studies re the claims that CO2 increases growth (to some extent yes, but they don't grow corn at 29,000 feet, at least not yet, and there can be detrimental effects as well). His use of the phrase "under atmospheric conditions" seems like a copout besides being vague, like he's trying to say that isolating gases as Lyndale did would invalidate things.

But I was hoping to get an idea of what controlled studies he's referring to (obviously not his own). I do know that all kinds of people who may indeed have scientific training (ranging from BS to PhD) in a variety of fields claim the expertise to deny global warming (which is what I call it, Frank Luntz be damned) and also that they are full of s***.

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u/PoolQueasy7388 5d ago

4th grade science class would help.

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u/srmcmahon 5d ago

You're missing my point.

I did, however, find this. D. R. Feldman, W. D. Collins, P. J. Gero, M. S. Torn, E. J. Mlawer, T. R. Shippert. Observational determination of surface radiative forcing by CO2 from 2000 to 2010. Nature, 2015; DOI: 10.1038/nature14240

Direct measurement of effect of CO2. And contradicts him.