Walter van Laack

The chief benefit from rising atmospheric CO₂ levels is an undeniable increase in planetary green leaf cover, now clearly visible from space. This fresh greening covers an area twice the size of the continental United States - yet it remains ignored by the institutional forces driving a narrative of climate emergency, and largely overlooked in the mainstream media. Data from NASA’s MODIS satellite instruments tells the real story. Rather than triggering global collapse, the rise in CO₂ sparked a massive expansion in the green canopy, stimulating agricultural yields (some cereal crops up by 280%) and natural ecosystems alike. This 'CO₂ fertilisation effect' occurs as plants perform photosynthesis more efficiently while losing less water through their stomata. Meanwhile, the global economy has been severely disrupted by a 40-year campaign built on forecasts of environmental doom from anthropogenic CO₂. This trace gas is not a climate control knob. It is the fundamental driver of biological photosynthesis and oxygen production. These campaigns, led by UN activism, demand a rapid, forced transition away from hydrocarbon energy. Yet wind and solar cannot supply the dense baseload power required for steel production and heavy industry. Hydrocarbon fuels still provide 82% of global primary power. This entire transition is justified under the warning that CO₂ emissions are leading the planet to the brink of catastrophe - with the total cost of this pointless pivot estimated at a staggering $275 trillion. Earth's geological history, paired with empirical satellite data, reveal a completely different reality: CO₂ is a powerful agent of biological enrichment. Its capacity to drive runaway global warming faces steep, immovable physical limitations. A critical pillar of atmospheric physics is how the warming effect of CO₂ continually reduces along a sliding logarithmic curve. The first 100 ppm of CO₂ exert the greatest impact on capturing outgoing infrared radiation. But as concentrations rise, absorption bands rapidly saturate. Each subsequent doubling of CO₂ yields an ever-smaller increment of radiative warmth. The concept of a runaway warming feedback loop loses its theoretical foundation under actual atmospheric conditions, where the 'rate of warming' diminishes progressively. Yet this debunked narrative is routinely recycled to fuel panic. Annual COP climate summits over the past thirty years also endlessly amplify this agenda of fear, functioning largely as high-end junkets for global elites. In geological terms, atmospheric CO₂ is in long-term decline - a fact carefully airbrushed from IPCC worst-case scenarios. During the Cambrian period, atmospheric CO₂ peaked as high as 7,000 ppm. Even with those immense concentrations, there was no global boiling; instead, it marked the greatest explosion of biological diversity in Earth's history. During the Last Glacial Maximum (26,000 to 19,000 years ago), CO₂ levels plummeted to roughly 180 ppm - dangerously close to the 150 ppm threshold below which most C3 plant life starves and dies. From a long-term evolutionary perspective, modern levels hovering above 420 ppm represent a vital, partial recovery from a geologically recent carbon drought, rather than a precursor to apocalypse. Today’s global average temperature sits at approximately 15°C. In the context of the history of complex life on land, this is remarkably cold. Earth’s baseline historical temperature average was closer to 24°C, characterised by ice-free poles and expansive, highly productive ecosystems. Our current global average actually reflects a colder-than-average ice age regime. Global climates are not controlled by trace gases. They are driven by massive, slow-moving astronomical, oceanic, and tectonic forces - such as Milankovitch orbital cycles or the shifting configuration of continents blocking equatorial ocean currents.

For every leaf pulling down carbon, there are endless miles of mycorrhizal fungi weaving an underground logistics network through the soil profile. The Earth has 3.04 trillion individual trees, roughly 400 trees for every person on Earth, and around 80% to 90% of all plant and tree species form this mutual partnership. While NASA’s satellite data tracks the Taiga marching north, it misses the silent biological exchange working beneath the frost and leaf litter. Estimates suggest roughly 250,000 plant species partner with about 50,000 species of fungi. There are around 73,300 distinct tree species worldwide. Russia has the most trees (641 billion), followed by Canada (318 billion), Brazil (302 billion) and the United States (228 billion). The world has 380,000 documented plant species, and the majority - about 260,000 species - produce seeds. Plants supply fungi with sugars and carbon produced via photosynthesis, since fungi cannot make their own food. In return, thread-like mycelium networks forage deep into the soil for vital water, phosphorus, and nitrogen to deliver back to the root systems. Nature sidesteps the soil bottlenecks predicted by computer models because the soil itself is a living, decentralised energy marketplace. Trees pump excess carbon sugars from elevated atmospheric CO₂ down into their root systems. They trade sugars with fungi and microbes. In return, the fungi act as an underground mining and delivery service. They tap into deep mineral pools for the nitrogen and phosphorus that roots cannot reach on their own. Earthworms drive the mechanics of the system, aerating the earth and recycling organic matter into the nutrient-dense humus that feeds the growth above. But without mycorrhizal fungi, soil is just sterile geology; with them, it functions as an active biological recycling plant. Climate narratives often paint the planet as a fragile system on the edge of failure. But look at the astonishing symbiosis between a root, a fungal network and an earthworm. It reveals a self-regulating, highly resilient natural architecture. The planet isn’t just surviving higher CO₂ levels; its converting carbon into the currency needed to fuel the networks below our feet. The nitrogen bottleneck may exist in a spreadsheet, but underground, the energy trade routes are wide open. Against this vibrant, multi-layered genius of the living soil, the modern carbon agenda appears oddly sterile. It reduces the immense, self-directed architecture of the biosphere down to a simple liability on a global ledger. While international summits broker complex financial mechanisms to police carbon through COP summits, the earth is already deploying it - quietly turning atmospheric surplus into living roots, fungal networks and rich topsoil. Nature requires neither central planning, spreadsheets nor green subsidies. The planet’s inbuilt resilience is already written into its biology.