Warming a farm program?

Editorial in the Wichita Eagle (Kansas.com): A western Kansas lawmaker this week repeated an argument making the rounds among Holcomb coal-fired plant boosters: Carbon dioxide is good for Kansas crops. That's a switch: Now global warming deniers are actually promoting it as a farm program?

Sunflower Electric Power Corp.' s plant expansion was denied by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment due to concerns about the 11 million tons of carbon greenhouse gas emissions it would produce annually. Not to worry, said Rep. Larry Powell, R-Garden City. "One of the really good things about CO2 is that plants perform better under stress (drought, etc.) with increased levels of CO2," he wrote in a letter this week to the state's newpapers.

Powell said that "carbon dioxide makes up just 1.9 percent of the total" of global greenhouse gases, so "just how important can it be, compared to water vapor, which makes up 97 percent of the total and is constantly fluctuating?"

These are naive, misinformed arguments at best. It's true that carbon dioxide, at certain levels and in some scenarios, could help plant growth. But the actual situation is much more complex, scientists say. A recent study by the Bush-funded Climate Change Science Program found that the buildup of carbon dioxide in North America is at levels three times beyond what plants can usefully absorb. It was "far from clear" that increased levels of CO2 have led to "terrestrial carbon uptake and storage or will do so over large areas in the future."

What's more, scientists point out, plants need water to survive, too, and global warming could dry up water supplies in some areas and damage crops, no matter the level of carbon. Scientists already have identified western Kansas as a prime candidate for long-term drought from climate change.

As for the claim that water vapor is 97 percent of greenhouse gases: That's a "commonplace untruth," according to the respected climate scientists at the Web site RealClimate.org. Powell cited research by brothers Keith and Craig Idso, known for their close ties to the Western Fuels Association, a cooperative of coal-fired utilities (including Sunflower) that in the past has paid them well to sow climate change skepticism.

On the eve of the next round of international climate talks in Bali, some 150 leading global businesses -- including DuPont, General Electric, Coca-Cola and Shell -- called the evidence for human-caused climate change "overwhelming" and asked for mandatory, binding regulations to reduce carbon emissions. Many corporate leaders now realize that global warming is not good for business. Coal-fired global warming is a bad bet for saving the farm, too.