Have atmospheric CO2 concentrations really become too high?

With atmospheric CO2 concentrations reaching the 400 ppm level, the media and a number of scientists have set off the alarm bells, claiming “record high levels” of CO2 had been reached, and that the planet is on the verge of an overdose. Is this really true?

It appears that some 200 million years ago when CO2 levels were 4-5 times present levels, the period that saw the rise of giant fern forests--and then continued a slow decline until recent pre-industrial time.

http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/07_1.shtml

Also to quote another readily available online source,

“Note that at high CO2 concentrations, such as 800 ppm, plants thrive. But as CO2 levels fall off, growth rates really start to plummet once they fall below 500 ppm. History shows that the Earth sustains much more life, i.e. is much greener and fruitful, when CO2 levels are higher, i.e. in the vicinity of 1000 ppm,”  which is two and a half times the present levels  and a level humans are unlikely to reach given their limited stock of fossil fuels. See more on this at :

http://notrickszone.com/2013/05/17/atmospheric-co2-concentrations-at-400-ppm-are-still-dangerously-low-for-life-on-earth/#sthash.OPZILJ5y.dpuf”

Some have suspected that there is a political and economic agenda behind the alarm of rising carbon dioxide levels. The developed countries have been used to cheap energy sources. It has been at the foundation of their development but now as other parts of the world begin to develop and consume fossil fuels at increasingly large rates such fuels are getting depleted and they would like to curtail the use of such fuels in developing countries by raising alarm bells.

However whatever be the actual scenario and whatever be the propaganda or research in this direction, use of cheap fossil fuels will decline only when so dictate costs. There is still an extremely low energy use per capita in the developing world and it is bound to increase in order to feed its currently partly malnourished population with help of the cheapest available energy sources. Any carbon cap can only be on a per capita basis and not on a country basis. It takes energy to produce, store and distribute food to every human mouth that needs it. It takes a certain amount of cloth to clothe every human and it is produced with the use of energy (unless one lives like the guys in my novel  - Nude besides the Lake, available widely at online outlets); and it takes a certain amount of bricks and cements to house every family. The counting and accounting can therefore only be on a per mouth and capita basis and not per country basis. Those worried about increasing emissions may draw solace from the fact that fossil fuels are a limited resource and their supply on the planet is reducing whereas there has been a reduction in cost of solar PV energy in recent years. The focus of the world must therefore remain on reducing these costs further and encouraging it through tax relief and grid linked systems where every individual home can contribute to power generation. 

A second area to focus on is to accelerate attempts to increase tree cover on the planet that has become extremely depleted over the last one and a half centuries. Increasing trees and forests will benefit all life and act as a productive carbon sink. This time around if food producing trees are selected it will help feed the increased population on the planet. Some including this author suspect that global warming and climate extremes are more directly related to this forest loss rather than increased CO2 as discussed in earlier posts of this blog.