Win, Uncle Tom Sowell is the best commentator I have come across. jewishworldreview.com I have yet to find something with which I disagree. That's a pretty good record. [Maybe there have been a couple of minor things but more in the nature of omission than actual error].
Uncle Al [Green$pan] is another great commentator. I have yet to come across something he says that I disagree with, though he was slow in realizing just how important the productivity gains have been and will continue to be.
Uncle Sam lacks intelligence [I see they are getting a new intelligence agency and that's an excellent idea] but overall does an excellent job and has therefore attracted my investments.
Uncle Tom is right about CO2, H2O, other greenhouse gases and hot air out of politicians and self-anointed wacko econuts.
The greenhouse gas business is simple. There's no need for fancy computer models. Conventional brain models do just fine. Computer models can't even figure out the weather tomorrow morning, so they don't have a chance of figuring out the weather 100 years from now. Greenie econuts, like other cult leaders, like to wave shrouds and claim direct connection to the supernatural using mystical computer models. Don't believe them unless your thinking aligns with theirs.
Don't let a slogan or a climate 'scientist' do your thinking for you.
Here's how it works.
Once upon a time, long, long ago, there were animals, trees, spiders, dung beetles, caterpillars, cetaceans, sharks, hagfish, tyrannosaurs and trilobites happily eating each other [dead or alive] and each others' excrement such as CO2 and poop.
Long, long before that, there were no beasties which walked, crawled, swam or flew. Plants covered the planet.
Eons before that, the plants weren't even there and simple cells were battling for survival.
One day, a pretty smart plant patented chlorophyll and that began a very long chain of events which has caused no end of grief. Until then, the planet was very pleasantly warm and there was little violence.
Pretty soon, the green mass spread across the world, filling the air with oxygen, which causes a LOT of problems because it's so chemically reactive [think forest fires for example].
But a bright young fella patented the idea of using oxygen to burn sugars to provide energy for running around and flying, not to mention keeping warm. That really got things hopping. A vast variety of beasties filled all ecological niches.
Pretty soon, there was a kind of balance - plants breathed out oxygen and beasties breathed it in and breathed out carbon dioxide. However, plants were quite skilled at getting CO2 even at very low concentrations [they had to, to survive, because their neighbours were busy inventing better and better CO2 absorption systems].
While plants and beasties were playing their games, a kind of vast Calvin Ball, there was a little influence called gravity. Despite their best endeavours, one way or another, in the wild, crazy and violent game of Calvin Ball, they all ended up, one by one, dead, eaten, pooped out or otherwise lying on the ground, on the sea bed, in a swamp.
Those who fell on the ground were mostly recycled by carrion groupies. But plenty were buried in swamps and sediment or at the bottom of the ocean. Those who landed at the bottom of the ocean were carried along on the oceanic floor conveyor belt and subducted into the earth.
The swamp funerals resulted in coal, which is in vast profusion in huge, mass, unmarked graves which have lain untouched for eons [though some of course are eroded and washed into the oceans where they join the subduction process].
The subductions result in gas fields and oil fields or, much more fun, volcanoes. Yes, the bodies of those who died eons before are the fuel for the big bangs of Mount Vesuvius, Krakatoa and the even bigger bangs of Taupo [which people are crazily still living right next to].
But the volcanoes and erosion processes can't keep up. The atmosphere has been stripped of CO2, converted to plants and beasties and deposited in permanent graveyards. The planet has been dying since life began. What was a seething mass of life is now a struggle for survival in a very thin CO2 atmosphere with ice-ages now a regular fixture.
Our job is to bring that carbon back to life and avoid another ice-age.
Unfortunately, a lot of that carbon ended up as limestone. That's tougher to recycle but we can do a bit. A bit is better than nothing.
Farmers try to grow crops and one of the problems with crops is lack of food in the air. They even build glass houses and burn gas to enrich the air with CO2.
That's okay for rich farmers, but those who can't afford glass houses struggle by outdoors. They could grow a lot more and quickly if they could get more CO2 in the air.
Meanwhile, the heroic oil drillers and coal miners are bringing the bodies out of the graves and the power stations and cars are delivering the carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere in a vast recycling effort. This is on a par with the invention of chlorophyll.
Life is being restored to its natural state. Plenty of it and lots to eat. Warmer too, which is nice. Humans and most living things need heat and keeping warm is a problem. That's why polar bears, cats, and rabbits have fur. Birds like it warm too. Penguins snuggle their eggs up on their feet, hiding them inside their feathers. Snakes sunbathe. Warm is good.
One thing that people worry about is TOO warm. Runaway greenhouse effect and cooking of the earth. That's silly and can't happen. The reason why is that all that carbon in the graveyards used to be alive and playing Calvin Ball. So we know that the earth's system can handle a LOT more life and a LOT more CO2.
Filling the air with CO2 is like trying to fill a leaky tank. The more we fill it, the faster it leaks out. We'll find that we can raise CO2 to a certain level and then it'll be soaking into the oceans, plants and beasties will proliferate and we'll be farting against thunder or pissing in the ocean [to use a self-explanatory colloquialism].
Even if we are able to warm things up a bit and the sea level rises, so what? If sea levels rise 10 metres or 30 metres over 100 years, that's trivial compared with what's going to happen when the next bit of space rock splashes down. We need only look at the craters on the moon to see that there are plenty of them.
The earth is mostly oceanic, so the probability is that we'll get a splash. That'll make everyone forget about the greenhouse effect. Those splashes happen often. Much more often than ice-ages. There is one coming in 2003, so do NOT buy beachfront property. Don't live in Taupo either! That's going to be a very, very big bang.
Mqurice |
