I don't think anyone would argue that global warming doesn't occur. The real question is whether periods of warming or cooling are somehow caused by human intervention. Do the greenhouse gases produced by burning fossil fuels really create a significant greenhouse effect, trapping the warmth of solar heating in the atmosphere? Will you destroy the earth by driving your SUV? Will an electric car be better than the SUV? Maybe we should all walk, ride a horse, or ride a bicycle? But what about the extra carbon dioxide you or the horse will exhale when you or the horse exert yourself? These are all very good questions.
Cars used to exhale carbon monoxide. That had the environmentalists all worked up into a lather in the 1970's. You know CO is a poisonous gas that is emitted by your fireplace or gas furnace, and it will kill you if it isn't properly vented. Back in the early 1980's, General Motors engineers invented the catalytic converter that caused a chemical reaction to occur as the exhaust gases passed through it. This reaction converted the poisonous carbon monoxide to harmless carbon dioxide. In fact, carbon dioxide occurs normally in the Earth's atmosphere as does carbon monoxide. According to Wikipedia, carbon dioxide is the fourth largest component of the atmosphere with a proportion of 0.039445%. Carbon monoxide concentration is only 0.00001% of the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is not only harmless, but it is absolutely required to support plant life on the planet. Animals breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, whereas plants do the opposite. By the way, humans aren't the only animals on Earth, and they all exhale just like humans do.
Did anyone ever think that CO2 levels would possibly ebb and flow depending on the balance between plant and animal life on the Earth? If they have, I haven't heard it. Could it be that the population of all humans and other animals on Earth is continuously rising? The humans need more cleared space for buildings, roads, and farmland, so they cut down trees and clear away brush. That reduces the amount of plant life that is eliminating CO2 from the earth, while the CO2 production by the larger populations of animals breathing grows.
I've even thought about the times described in the Old Testament of the Bible where people are said to have lived to be 100's of years old. I used to really wonder how this could be. Were they counting years in a different way back then? Or maybe the atmosphere was very oxygen rich in those times, and people really didn't age as rapidly. Just a thought. Sorry for the digression.
Back to the global warming discussion at hand. Why do we spend billions of dollars trying to figure out how to power our homes and factories and cars without producing CO2? We could spend the billions planting trees everywhere and convert the CO2 to O2 in a totally natural way? In fact, if we really have global warming, isn't the atmosphere just a big self-limiting control system? Won't the warmer temperatures cause more evaporation. That produces more clouds and storms and rain. The extra moisture and warm temperatures will promote plant growth and remove CO2 from the atmosphere. The clouds will shade the Earth's surface from the sun rays and reduce global warming. (Oops, the tree huggers have classified water vapor as a greenhouse gas because it traps heat near the surface of the Earth. I guess they forgot that, while clouds might trap heat, they also prevent heating by blocking the suns rays from making it to the ground.)
In the 1980's, I remember hearing a lot about the aerosol propellants destroying the ozone layer. This was blamed for the rise in skin cancer occurrences. (I guess the rise in the popularity of sun tanning wasn't considered as having any part in this problem.) Now no one talks about the ozone anymore. Has the ozone layer rebounded and replenished itself, or is it just out of vogue to talk about the ozone these days? By the way, the lightning in storms produces ozone. If global warming causes more storms, that would help produce more ozone to replenish the ozone layer in the atmosphere.
Are we spending billions upon billions of dollars in a typical MessAPolitico? Most MessAPolitical solutions don't work, cost too much, or actually make things worse. Well this one is a big one that has all three elements represented. We're killing our economy with over-priced solutions to a problem that probably doesn't exist, and some of the solutions are making things worse.
There's more to cover on this subject. Stay tuned for more posts in the upcoming days. Have a nice warm day in the neighborhood!
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