Global Climate Change
Speaker: H. Leighton Steward
Chairman, PlantsNeedCO2.org Foundation
Biography:
Leighton Steward is a Geologist, Environmentalist, Author, and former Executive in the energy industry. He spent 25 years of his career in New Orleans, first with Shell in managing their offshore division lease sales in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s and then becoming CEO of LL&E in 1989 until 1997. He has been chairman of the U. S. Oil and Gas Association, the Natural Gas Supply Association, and the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association. Mr. Steward also represented the Independent sector of the energy industry on both Republican and Democratic Presidential Missions to the former Soviet Union, Turkey, and Pakistan. He currently serves on the boards or board of visitors of EOG Resources, the Southwest Research Institute, MD Anderson Cancer Center, the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, and he is Chairman of the Institute of Earth and Man at SMU. He is twice Past Chairman of the Audubon Nature Institute and was Chairman of the National Wetland Coalition for 10 years. Mr. Steward has been presented with API’s Gold Medal for Distinguished Service, IPAA’s Carney Cochran Award, AAPG’s Public Service Award, and the API’s 25 Year Club’s Distinguished Leadership Award. He has written about the nation’s disappearing wetlands (Louisiana’s National Treasure), global climate change (Fire, Ice, and Paradise), and even nutrition and health (Sugar Busters), the latter having become a New York Times No. 1 Best Seller. His current interests are the benefits of CO2 to humanity and the plant and animal kingdoms and the misplaced blame on CO2 for causing global climate change.
Abstract:
The science regarding the impact of man-made carbon dioxide (CO2), or of CO2 in general, in causing global warming has not been settled. The speaker will present educational illustrations relating to the factors that influence climate change to a greater or lesser degree. From these factors and other climate related illustrations, the audience can draw its own conclusions on what is causing climate change although the speaker will share his own opinions. The interactions of factors that affect climate change are very complex but a few major conclusions stand out. There are at least 18 climate drivers (causes) of climate change. Changes in the Earth's temperatures have been shown to precede changes in CO2 levels by several hundred years. A cause does not follow an effect. CO2's capacity to trap additional heat radiated from the Earth's surface declines very rapidly, logarithmically, as CO2 levels increase so additional CO2 being added today is having very little effect on the Earth's temperatures. Empirical evidence, the ultimate test of a hypothesis does not support a significant role of CO2 in causing climate change and therefore the hypothesis that CO2 is causing global warming is false. Additionally, the speaker will present concise evidence, summarized from thousands of peer reviewed studies, that adding more CO2 to the Earth's atmosphere would be very beneficial to humanity and the plant and animal kingdoms. You will find that your industry, inadvertently, has played a major role in the recent "greening" of the Earth and that you have become "greener" than those that claim to be so "green" but insist that we try to lower the atmospheric CO2 levels.