On Saturday, I attended the funeral of Dr. Sylvan Witter, a world renown agronomist who taught at Michigan State University for 50 years, and did research around the world on a wide variety of scientific and agricultural related topics. This post is dedicated to Dr. Witter, an energetic and honest scientist, perhaps the best gardener in the world, and a friend. He was born January 17, 1917, and died January 20, 2012, he was 95 years old, and very active up until the final few months of his life.
Sylvan received his doctorate in horticulture from the University of Missouri-Columbia. In 1946 he moved to East Lansing, Michigan. While at Michigan State University he became a Professor of Horticulture, Associate Dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and Director of the Agricultural Experiment Station. Sylvan and Maurine spent two years in Belize on assignment from USAID and traveled the world in connection with his professional duties.
His professional honors and achievements include two honorary doctorates, election to the Horticulture Hall of Fame by the American Society for Horticultural Science, over 750 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles, and several books, including Feeding a Billion: Frontiers of Chinese Agriculture. He was an untiring spokesman for the promise of agricultural technology to eliminate world hunger, and made numerous trips to every continent except Antarctica as an invited speaker and advisor.
Dr. Wittwer did his own research, and proved or disproved the "research" of many others. He worked and published in the former Soviet Union, China, Asia, North and South America...and he took on the Climate Change fanatics, and rebuked their nonsense with research and strong science.
Among his other findings, from his own research, Dr. Wittwer proved that CO2 was entirely beneficial to the planet, to the environment, to plant growth and food production. He advocated increasing CO2 worldwide, if it could be done, because food production goes up dramatically when CO2 is increased. This action alone would virtually eliminate world hunger; food production would increase that much.
"CO2 is an essential component of life on this planet, without CO2, there would be no life here. Noted Agronomist Dr. Sylvan Wittier, who has studied crops and the effect of increased levels of CO2 on all plant life, states emphatically that increased levels of CO2 produces more growth (more food), more plant growth (trees, etc), and produces no adverse consequences. CO2 is not a pollutant and it’s intellectually dishonest to state that. From an agronomy standpoint, there is no known negative to increased levels of CO2."
Dr. Wittwer wrote a book, "Feeding A Billion," in cooperation with Chinese agricultural scientists. He was a highly respected and welcome guest in China because of his lack of bias and politicized nonsense that accompanies so many other so-called American scientists. Wittwer simply went to the heart of the matter, how can we feed more people? how can we increase food production? and for the Chinese, how can we feed ourselves? One undergirding (certainly not the only) component of his conclusions, was to increase CO2 to the food crops, and productivity increases dramatically. This can be done in the greenhouse, and in other ways. But if the Climate Change crowd are correct, and CO2 is increasing, he says we ought to find out why it is increasing, and work to increase it further--the world and it's people would be far better off.
Dr. Wittwer disproved many false theories, including the false notion that CO2 is a harmful pollutant to the environment and should be reduced in the atmosphere at any cost. Indeed, he was an advocate for more CO2, although he knew it was not possible to manipulate global CO2, but if it were, he would advocate it.
