| Carbon Dioxide -- The Miracle of Food What is food? The essential materials for life are food, water and oxygen. Of the three, food is required in the largest quantity. Almost all food is carbon dioxide, either consumed directly by plants, or indirectly when animals and humans consume plants. We do not think of ourselves as subsisting almost entirely on carbon dioxide -- we eat meat, fruits and vegetables. But the animals we eat grew and lived on plants, typically grass. Likewise, fruits and vegetables are plants, as are the trees that cover the earth. And plants consume almost entirely carbon dioxide for food. It is true that humans, animals and plants require very small quantities of other essential material. We call ours vitamins and minerals. We call what the plants need nutrients or fertilizer. But while these materials are important, the quantities required are insignificant to life, compare to the carbon dioxide. So it is fair to say that the food used by all living things, to grow and to live, is carbon dioxide. People are incredibly ignorant of this fundamental fact -- that food is carbon dioxide. The reason is that it has not been important until now. We do not consume carbon dioxide directly, do not go to the store and get. And, more importantly, when we grow plants we do not provide the carbon dioxide they consume. They take it out of the air. The food is free! We may work very hard to provide the water and the nutrients the plants need, as well as sunlight and protection from extreme temperature, but the food is free and we have nothing to do with providing it. So for millions of years people have grown and consumed plants and animals without knowing what they were eating. This fundamental fact was only discovered in modern times, and we still don't understand the process very well. Even today, most people have no idea that their food, and the food all the plants and animals that cover the earth, is carbon dioxide. But the existence of food at all is a miracle. Carbon dioxide is not abundant in the air. In fact it is very rare. Only about one molecule in 3000 in the air is carbon dioxide. So the billions of people on earth, pus the untold trillions or quadrillions of plants and animals, are all growing and living on a rare gas. That is the miracle of food. Table of Contents Carbon Dioxide -- The Miracle of Food. Introduction to the Greening Theory. The Green Revolution: feeding the global population. Technology and the Green Revolution. Government Policy Toward Carbon Dioxide: why is it negative? A Huge Hole in the Climate Change Science. The USDA Should Lead Greening Research, but it is doing nothing. Outline of a Greening Effect Benefit and Risk Assessment. |