We find it both amusing and disturbing that some people are absolutely certain they know what is right for the world without investing any effort whatsoever in a serious search for truth, especially when the subject in question is as complex and confounding as the CO2-climate issue, about which some of the world's most knowledgeable scientists cannot agree.  This latest diatribe, for example, presupposes that the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content is in fact "burning up our planet."  But how does our spiritual advisor know that?  We are confident it is not because he has spent a lifetime studying the subject; for if he had, we would surely have crossed paths long before now.  Hence, we must presume his "knowledge" of the subject is not data-driven.  If it were, he would likely have known it was significantly warmer than it is currently during all four of the previous interglacials, when there was a heck of a lot less CO2 in the air than there is now (see our Journal Review Nearly Half a Million Years of Climate and CO2).  And what does that fact say about CO2 and temperature?  Scientists argue about it; but nearly all would probably be agreed that it certainly says nothing to confirm what our self-anointed seer suggests.

Then there's the "chicken and egg" question.  In the many instances of what some global warming advocates misleadingly call the "lockstep" changes in CO2 and temperature that have been documented to have occurred over this half-million-year period (and earlier times as well), it is instructive to consider "what came first," since cause must surely precede effect.  And if one looks at the scientific data, rather than merely divining the answer, it is invariably temperature that is seen to rise or fall first (see the many examples of this phenomenon that are documented in our Subject Index under the heading CO2-Temperature Correlations); and this observation suggests - if anything, for correlation alone proves nothing - that it is temperature that causes CO2 to respond, and not vice versa.  Now, is this tentative conclusion natural?  Or is it unnatural?  Spiritual or unspiritual?  Whatever one calls it, it is, simply, the closest approximation to the truth that one can deduce at the present time.

"You have chosen to steal your children's planet from them," our antagonist says.  How so?  By championing the most well-established fact of the entire CO2-climate debate and reporting that literally thousands of laboratory and field experiments have established beyond any doubt whatsoever that more CO2 in the air creates more numerous and more robust plants that can provide more food to support greater numbers of animals, as well as humans?  No way.  We're not stealing our children's planet from them; we're trying to reclaim it for them.  And for all the rest of the biosphere as well!  In fact, we truly feel we are "greener" than any organization on the face of the earth.  Seeking the best for life, in all its wonderful variety and complexity, is what we're all about; and maintaining - or even enhancing - ecosystem diversity and vitality is the thought that drives us, day and night, to do what we do.  And what is that?  It is to sing the praises of carbon dioxide.  After all, life on earth is based on carbon, so much so, in fact, that scientists refer to us, and all our biospheric relatives, as carbon-based lifeforms.  And the much-maligned CO2 molecule is the primary raw material that our vegetative cousins extract from the air to provide themselves, and us, with what makes all the members of the biospheric family what we are.  That's as natural as it can be; and, if you will, as spiritual as it can be.

For all this, however, we are accused of "convincing people that the crude technologies we employ for our personal convenience are more important than the living planet which we depend upon" and of "saying it is okay to waste and consume for short term convenience."  Hogwash!  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Nowhere have we ever said, or even implied, such things.  And to say we are working "for the interest of industry profit" is a blatant misrepresentation of the facts, i.e., what in less polite conversation would be called a lie.  No, we are working solely for the interest of the biosphere and the welfare of all the many lifeforms of which it is comprised.

This is not to say, however, that we know the truth of all matters related to the global change debate, nor that we will not make a misstep now and then in our interpretation of the available evidence.  Indeed, we lay no claim to any special source of knowledge that is not available to anyone else on the planet, nor do we pretend to possess superlative powers of discernment, as do so many of our detractors.  No, we just look at the data like everyone else does (or should) and do our level best to decide what they mean.

So who holds the moral high ground in the CO2-climate debate?  We'd like to think we do; but the self-righteous overconfidence born of thinking of oneself in that light can be a blinding and dangerous influence, and we therefore proceed with much trepidation and introspection, as we continually evaluate and reevaluate the mountains of new evidence that become available almost daily, courtesy of the great scientific effort that is focused on resolving this most complex of environmental issues.  As for our spiritual antagonist, he falls short as well.  His heart may be in the right place, as are the hearts of many people on both sides of the controversy; but the relation of his head to the rest of his body is a far different matter.  This is not to say he is not a rational person.  He may, in fact, be even more brilliant than we, which is, however, not saying a whole lot, for we're both pretty much your run-of-the-mill scientists.  No, it is neither self-proclaimed virtue nor innate intellectual capacity that determines morality in this debate; rather, it is knowledge of the truth and how one acts upon that knowledge.  Ergo, the great importance, firstly, of obtaining scientifically-confirmed facts and, secondly and subsequently, of exercising character; for without a knowledge of the truth, what good are good intentions?  They will lead you to do evil as well as good if you know not the true workings of the systems in question.

Clearly, we would all do well to seriously examine the scientific basis for what we believe about CO2 and its potential for evoking global change - both good, as in stimulating biospheric productivity, and bad, as in catastrophically warming the globe - by asking ourselves these two things: First, what do we truly know - and not know - about these subjects?  And second, what are we doing on the basis of what we know or don't know?  When our lives are over and our actions evaluated in the perfect hindsight the historians of tomorrow will surely possess, our "morality" with respect to the CO2-global change issue will be determined by how truthfully we answered these two questions.  May all of us approach this weighty responsibility with the seriousness and brutal honesty it truly deserves, that our descendents will one day look back with pride and thanksgiving upon the actions we took, when the future of the earth once truly did "hang in the balance."