Posted on 05/29/2008 10:06:12 PM PDT by The_Republican
I'm not a global warming believer. I'm not a global warming denier. I'm a global warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can't be very good to pump lots of CO2 into the atmosphere, but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking through their hats.
Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems -- from ocean currents to cloud formation -- that no one fully understands. Which is why the models are inherently flawed and forever changing. The doomsday scenarios posit a cascade of events, each with a certain probability. The multiple improbability of their simultaneous occurrence renders all such predictions entirely speculative.
Yet on the basis of this speculation, environmental activists, attended by compliant scientists and opportunistic politicians, are advocating radical economic and social regulation. "The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity," warns Czech President Vaclav Klaus, "is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism."
If you doubt the arrogance, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming -- infinitely more untested, complex and speculative -- is a closed issue.
But declaring it closed has its rewards. It not only dismisses skeptics as the running dogs of reaction, i.e., of Exxon, Cheney and now Klaus. By fiat, it also hugely re-empowers the intellectual left.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
If I see anything green in my refrigerator that shouldn't be I toss it out.
That's because they fact not fancy.
When CO2 gets to .04% of the makeup of the Earths atmoshpere, I’ll start to worry. But we’d have to do a lot more work to get there.
Yep, CO2 isn’t even 1% of the atmosphere. We’re talking about destroying capitalism in order to remove one-hundreth of 1% of the air in the atmosphere which is where the ‘greenhouse gases’ exist. Irrational? Sounds like it to me.
Further, the basic scientific theory behind blaming CO2 for global warming is the "radiative forcing theory" and from Wikipedia itself: "The relationship between carbon dioxide and radiative forcing is logarithmic so that increased concentrations have a progressively smaller warming effect."
It seems to me that CO2 is not the real culprit here, if there even is a real culprit. It seems to me the real culprits are the global warming fanatics who spread fear and misinformation in order to advance their goal of returning all of civilization to the dark ages.
A policy highly to be recommended about the population at large...
Well, if it’s the green i can fold and put in my wallet...then i will agree with you....
You're arguing against yourself. This cycle functioned as such for millions of years, but now the burning of fossil fuels is introducing many millions of tons of additional CO2 into the cycle each year. It's not a stable situation.
Excellent point by CK.
“Yet on the basis of this speculation, environmental activists, attended by compliant scientists and opportunistic politicians, are advocating radical economic and social regulation. “The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity,” warns Czech President Vaclav Klaus, “is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism.” “
Actually they go hand in hand. Socialism is using environmentalism as a way to gain central control of our lives, and similarly environmentalism is using socialism to dictate people’s lives. This is the way for marxists to take over the country through the back door.
I tell you this global warming crap is way worse than opening the borders and giving amnesty to everybody. We have to rise up and fight them every inch of the way.
Evidence please? At most we are talking about 1 trillion and the issue of "recoverability" is a matter of the cost per barrel of extraction and the amount of water available. It takes 3-5 gallons of water to extract 1 gallon of oil from oil shale. Moreover, the cost per barrel may be higher than net capital investment of switiching to plug-in hybrids powered by wind and sipping the cheap oil of which there are probably 60 billion barrels in the US.
But it IS good. It would be BAD if there wasn't any CO2 being pumped in the air. All the plants would die. Pumping more CO2 into the air ensures healthy, lush green forrests producing lots of oxegen for us to breathe and burn, converting it back once again to CO2.
CO2 is NOT a pollutant. It's necessary element of the earth, a building block of all life.
What is shameful is that these so called "global warming" scientists have managed to convince the sheeple that co2 is a pollutant when it is NOT.
Wrong. increased co2 provides for the spreading of more abundant green growth. When levels fall too low, growth is inhibited. The more co2, the greener the earth becomes. It's self regulating.
Evidently not, since the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is increasing at a significant, not to say alarming, rate.
It is very interesting, though, that the CO2 concentration shows such a strong annual signal, decreasing sharply during the northern summer, and increasing during the northern winter. This raises a lot of questions in my mind which I never see addressed. It certainly seems to imply that land vegetation takes a dominant role in the consumption of CO2, but we are told otherwise. By the same token, it seems to imply that we should look to land vegetation to redress this seasonal imbalance. Hence my proposed "kudzu solution". But who listens to me?
That's only half of the story. The atmosphere on Venus is also 95% CO2 and it's hot enough there to melt lead!
So if a 95% CO2 atmosphere doesn't have any effect on the temperture of either of those two planets what effect will a 0.038% CO2 concentration have here on Earth besides nothing?
However, a better site for for this topic is:
Fortunately, most of the deposits in the U.S. are in oil shale as opposed to the tar sands in Canada. The Canadians have led the way with the extraction technology for heavy oil and the U.S. will benefit from their experience. In the Green River formation, it is estimated that only 1-2 gallons of water will be needed to extract 1 gallon of oil.
As for the capital costs, the Canadian experience is showing that although the initial Cap-ex costs are high, the maintenance and expense costs decline over time.
What needs to be kept in mind are several points: 1) This is the beginning of a relatively new technology, and as new advances are made, more oil will be recovered, 2) If even only 400 billion barrels are recoverable from the Green River formation in Utah, at long term costs of less than $30-40 per barrel, not only will this be profitable for the oil companies, but 400 billion barrels of oil is more than the estimated reserves of Saudi Arabia, 3) The oil companies seem to be committed to reducing the atmospheric release of as much CO2 as possible. In fact, there is discussion of sequestering some of the CO2 in the Permian Basin (eastern New Mexico and western Texas). The CO2 could also conceivably used in an enhanced oil recovery scheme as well:
Happy reading!
My thoughts as well!
"The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism."
Charles Krauthammer :
... For a century, an ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous knowledge class -- social planners, scientists, intellectuals, experts and their left-wing political allies -- arrogated to themselves the right to rule either in the name of the oppressed working class (communism) or, in its more benign form, by virtue of their superior expertise in achieving the highest social progress by means of state planning (socialism).
Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher's England to Deng's China, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty more rapidly than ever in human history.
Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual left was handed the ultimate salvation: environmentalism. Now the experts will regulate your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but -- even better -- in the name of Earth itself.
Environmentalists are Gaia's priests, instructing us in her proper service and casting out those who refuse to genuflect.
Nailed It!
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I'll give you a great deal, and you'll feel so good about saving our mother, earth.
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