1.
Textual Analysis Practice
a.
Read and analyse the following text. Identify the following aspects to complete the
table.
Topic of focus:
The text is about benefits of CO2
emissions.
Author’s stance/attitude:
Supportive , positive
Main argument:
CO2 emissions has positive effects despite
its harmful aspects.
Supporting ideas:
Evidence/examples
1- CO2 fertilization effect makes plant
grow better.
1- The satellite data shows that there is
increasment about %14 in green
vegetation.
2- ‘free- air concentration experiments’
have measured how much benefits
provided
3- According to a research , 3 to16 times
richer than present prosperity
2- CO2 emission has an agricultural
positivity and gain.
3-It provides a richer prosperity per
human being
Purpose/aim of the author:
Convincing the people for CO2 emissions
Positive effects of CO2 suppressed?
1. FRANCE'S leading television weather forecaster, Philippe Verdier, was taken off air last week
for writing that there are "positive consequences" of climate change. Freeman Dyson, professor
emeritus of mathematical physics and astrophysics at the Institute of Advanced Study in
Princeton, declared last week that the non-climatic effects of carbon dioxide are "enormously
beneficial".
2. Are these two prominent but very different people right? Should we at least consider seriously,
before we go into a massive international negotiation based on the assumption that carbon
dioxide is bad, whether we might be mistaken?
3. Yet the benefits of carbon dioxide emissions are not even controversial in scientific circles. As
Richard Betts of the Met Office tweeted last week, the "CO2 fertilization effect" - the fact that
rising emissions are making plants grow better - is not news. The satellite data show that there
has been roughly a 14 percent increase in the amount of green vegetation on the planet since
1982. In addition, hundreds of “free- air concentration experiments" have measured how much
increased carbon dioxide levels enhance crop yields in open fields, helping world agriculture: by
about $US140 billion a year.
4. An independent American scientist, Indur Goklany also points out that whereas the benefits of
carbon dioxide are huge and here now, the harms are still speculative and almost all in the distant
future. There has so far been - as the IPCC confirms- no measurable increase in droughts, floods
or storms worldwide, and no measurable impacts of the continuing very slow rise in global sea
levels. Besides, we, humans, can adapt to such a change easily by capturing the benefits and
avoiding the harms. According to a recent research, we will still be enjoying net benefits by the
end of the century, when the world will (it says) be three to 16 times richer per capita. The fastest
way to cut deaths from bad weather today is to make people richer, not to make weather safer.
5. As Goklany demonstrates, the assessments used by policymakers have overestimated warming
so far, underestimated the direct benefits of carbon dioxide, overestimated the harms from
climate change, and underestimated the human capacity to adapt.
6. With tens of thousands of activists and bureaucrats heading for a UN conference in Paris next
month, there is such strongly growing interest now in demonizing carbon dioxide that it will be
hard to change the world's mind.
7. Freeman Dyson laments that "scientific colleagues who believe the universal dogma about
carbon dioxide will not find Goklany's evidence convincing", but hopes that a few will try. Amen.
Adapted from Ridley, M. (2015, October 20). Positive effects of CO2 suppressed? The Timaru Herald. Retrieved January 15, 2019, from
https://www.pressreader.com/new-zealand/the-timaru-herald/20151020/textview