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The Plain Truth about Glorious Carbon Dioxide
Guest Column | By Alan Caruba | January 5, 2009
Okay, children, let’s all sit up straight at our desks. We are going to begin 2009 with a lesson about carbon dioxide (CO2).
Why do we need to know about CO2? Because the President-elect, several of his choices for environmental and energy agencies, the Supreme Court and much of the U.S. Congress has no idea what they are talking about and, worse, want to pass legislation and regulations that will further bankrupt the United States of America.
Do I have your attention now?
For the purpose of the lesson, I will be borrowing heavily from a paper on CO2 written by Robert A. Ashworth. It requires some understanding of science, but anyone with a reasonable education and common sense should be able to read it on their own. Ashworth is a chemical engineer.
Suffice it to say that if any of the nitwits babbling about CO2 and global warming ever went to any of the several dozen excellent websites that provide accurate scientific data and analysis, they would cease from their abusive manipulation of the public and perhaps find honest work.
To begin at the beginning: at the heart of the global warming hoax is the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. While it purports to represent the views of thousands of scientists, it does not. As Ashworth notes, “Most scientists do not agree with the CO2 global warming premise. In the United States 31,072 scientists, including the author, have signed a petition rejecting the Kyoto global warming agreement.” An additional 1,000 scientists are being verified to be added to the list. Thousands more exist who find the assertion the CO2 will destroy the Earth totally absurd.
Here’s what you need to know: if an increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) is directly related, i.e. causes changes in the Earth’s temperature, there would be a direct correlation between the two. As CO2 rose, we would see a comparable rise in the Earth’s temperature. This correlation does not exist.
Global warming liars, however, insist that CO2 builds up on the atmosphere over a 50 to 250 year period, but this is untrue. “Every year around April, increased CO2 absorption by plants in the Northern Hemisphere starts reducing the CO2 in the atmosphere,” notes Ashworth, “and the reduction continues until around mid-to-late August when plants start to go dormant.”
“It is clear that nature reacts very fast in its consumption of carbon dioxide.” Farmers call this the growing season, followed by the harvest season, followed by snow and cold during which nothing grows. Modern civilization, beginning about 5,000 years ago, is predicated on the ability to provide food to both humans and livestock, all based on these obvious seasonal cycles.
The ancient Egyptians and Mayans understood the seasons, but they are apparently too difficult a concept for today’s many ex-politicians, some PhD’s, United Nation’s flunkies, and high school teachers.
Warming and cooling cycles are well known throughout human history, reaching back to the days of ancient Rome. There were Viking settlements in Greenland because they arrived in warmer times. By 1410 the place froze up. Shakespeare lived during a Little Ice Age when the Thames would freeze too. The man-made emissions of CO2 had nothing, zero, to do with these climate events.
The IPCC, however, with its agenda to tax and control energy use that produces CO2, is not based on either the obvious or more complex science involved. Its “data” is the invention of computer models that are deliberately manipulated to produce false results which, in turn, can be announced and repeated worldwide.
In March 2008, The Heartland Institute brought together more than 500 climatologists, meteorologists, economists, and others for two days of seminars and addresses that totally destroyed the IPCC’s lies. It will do so again for a second time, March 8th-10th of this year in New York City. Suffice it to say that the mainstream media did it best to ridicule or ignore the event and will no doubt do so again.
Here, then, is a fundamental fact about CO2 you need to commit to memory. “Nature absorbs 98.5% of the CO2 that is emitted by nature and man.” Nature is a totally self-regulating mechanism that dwarfs any mindless effort to “control” the amount of CO2 produced by coal-fired utilities, steel manufacturers, autos and trucks, and gasoline fueled lawn mowers, not to forget fireplaces where logs glow or just about any human activity you can name, including exhaling two pounds of the stuff every day!
“Further,” says Ashworth, “no regulation by man is necessary because CO2 is not a pollutant; it is part of the animal-plant life cycle. Without it, life would not exist on Earth. Increased CO2 in the atmosphere increases plant growth, which is a very good thing during a period of world population growth and an increasing demand for food.”
“Taxing carbon,” Ashworth adds, “would do absolutely nothing to improve the climate but would be devastating hardship to the people of the world.” For example, U.S. Representative John Dingell’s plan to tax carbon would add 13% to the cost of electricity and 32% to the cost of gasoline; just what we need during a Recession that threatens to become a Depression.
Dr. Tim Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg, recently asked, “How many failed predictions, discredited assumptions and evidence of incorrect data are required before an idea loses credibility? CO2 is not causing warming or climate change. It is not a toxic substance or a pollutant.”
It is time to rebuke everyone attempting to foist the global warming hoax and carbon taxes on the United States and the rest of the world. It is time let Congress and the White House know that Americans will not be ruled by laws that have no scientific merit.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Alan Caruba writes a weekly column, “Warning Signs”, posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center. His book, “Right Answers: Separating Fact from Fantasy”, is published by Merrill Press.
Guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.
8 Comments | Post a Comment
I believe mankind is most certainly polluting the air, the land and the sea and, ideally, I hope that mankind might also be able to abate those pollution problems before they become irreversibly destructive to all of us.
However, the atmospheric pollution which is ostensibly leading to “global warming”, and is ostensiby being caused primarily by CO2, resulting primarily from the burning of fossil fuels (and, apparently, other organics), would, if true, clearly seem be a worldwide problem contributed to, in varying degrees, by most countries on Earth.
Therefore, I believe any effort to curb the problem would have to be worldwide, also, and would obviously have to include the worst offenders. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be the international unity of purpose necessary for any abatement effort have a positive and significant effect at this time.
So, I wouldn’t support a costly effort just in the U.S. to ameliorate the problem - when even bigger countries, like China and India, may, in fact, be among the worst offenders. On the other hand, if the U.N., or the leaders of several of the larger countries, can generate uniform, worldwide, support to cooperatively engage in an acceptable, effective, cost-sharing abatement effort, I would certainly support it.
P.S.
Post #2 seems to be inferring that carbon DIoxide is the lethal agent people are breathing in during the course of committing suicide in a closed garage with a car’s engine running. I believe it’s the breathing in of carbon MONoxide from the car’s exhaust that’s the direct cause of death in that situation.
To: TK
I’m one of those people who wants conclusions based upon fact. Your example, doesn’t answer the question “Is Global Warming caused by Mankind and can Mankind reverse Global Warming via Carbon Offsets?” Talking down to people may make you feel superior but to others it makes you out to be the fool.
There’s no use talking facts to anyone who has been thoroughly brain-washed by the global warming propagandists, people who have no facility for questioning their assertions even when they are told directly that many scientists openly doubt global warming theories. Thus fact-based science is usually anathema to them (One is continually dismayed at the number of Americans who are completely deficient in science!). Even the term “fool” is wasted on such people. The only worthwhile argument against the emitters of carbon dioxide would be those concerning air pollution, but that gets into overpopulation, and no politician in his right mind will seriously take on overpopulation. Besides, any real effort at population control is a multigenerational problem. Besides being extremely complicated and politically hazardous, it takes thirty years to begin to show real progress in any program of population control; furthermore, what politician is going to worry about something which will not show immediate results, something so far ) into the future (at least relative to his or her political career) when he or she will probably be long gone from the political scene. Besides are not the shrewder and more ambitious politicians sufficiently inspired by the “Gore” example, where, in spite of the numerous sophomoric lies and gross hyperbole of his “Inconvenient Truth,” Gore has made a fortune and gained international fame [or infamy to many of us and in all probability in the eyes of posterity], as well as a Nobel Prize?.
Interesting article. While I won’t jump on the bandwagon of those who claim, such as the author, that global warming is a hoax, I try to see this situation from both standpoints. Global warming is happening, that is a fact. We can see this with our own eyes. Central PA winters have become progressively milder from the early 1980’s. Our river barely freezes over now as compared to years past. There is evidence of global warming that plenty of scientists have provided us. But what is the cause? Natural cycle of earth or CO2? While I recognize that our earth does show evidence of heating and cooling cycles, how can we compare other data from prior centuries to now? With the rise of industrialization and the use of fossil fuels, environmental pollution has become an issue which was veritably unknown in days long past. It is my contention then, that while CO2 and other pollutants may not be a direct cause of the global warming issue, they are at some level contributing to this problem. I have scoured the internet and have read far too many articles on this issue. Some scientists agree on Co2 as being the catalyst for global warming, while many other scientists deny its effects. So then, with all of this conflicting information and published research, who do you believe?I
Will S. I go along completely with your well-reasoned comments. My major objection to the Global Warming argument is its “PC” nature, i.e., the seeming censorship and often extreme reaction to opposing viewpoints. I do like some aspects of the actions concerning Global Warming as they attack air pollution; no matter what one thinks or believes about Global Warming, there is little doubt about the deleterious effects of air pollution.
CTR, Post 6;
Extremist partisanship based solely on ideological difference has been an especially counterproductive and destructive force in the governance of this country over the past 15 years.
Nevertheless, it is still an amazement that human-caused “air pollution”, and/or possible “global warming” arising from it, has become an ideologically-politicized issue. It seems to go WAY beyond “PC”-ness.
If it hadn’t been Al Gore who raised the issue to prominence, both the GOPers and Treehuggers would probably have ignored it. (???)
Blind partisanship and rockheaded narrow-mindedness have made both major political parties completely irrelevant on many significant issues.
BS, Post 9;
I believe my original comment to you was in regard to your obnoxious and offensive response to “Ladytexan” after she simply wished you a “Merry Christmas”.
From that point, you have gone way beyond obnoxious and offensive - to total loutishness.
Because of your unacculturated and hysterical namecalling and constant insults, I have absolutely NO interest in you, your self-proclaimed intelligence and experiences, nor in your life story, nor in your opinions, nor in ever responding to your inane posts addressed to me. Sticks and stones, Ace!
However, should you continue your posting on any issue in this forum where you continue to run amok with your verbal abuse as you are wont to do, I may choose to point out your shortcoming in that regard in a post of my own - pointing simply to your obnoxiousness and offensiveness - and enjoining the object of your hysterical tirades to simply ignore you as someone who apparently has, at the very least, some serious personality defects.
Rant and rave all you want.
I have no interest in you nor in anyone like you.
January 6 at 10:20 am | #1 | Link
It is amazing to me that these so-called ‘scientific’ studies seem to know nothing of the scientific method, which can be summed up with three steps - Observe, hypothesize, test