Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

The Big Chill
Wall Street Journal ^ | 9 June 2008 | Pete DuPont

Posted on 06/09/2008 5:16:58 AM PDT by shrinkermd

Two years ago a Time magazine's cover warned us about global warming: "Be Worried . . . Be Very Worried."

First, though, does the world's climate change from time to time? Of course it does. Sometimes it warms, and sometimes it cools. Is it rapidly warming now, threatening our way of life? No. It is neither warming nor cooling. The average of four recent climate temperature studies show that over the past 10 years, the planet has warmed only 0.047 degree Celsius, less than 1/20th of a degree.

The Senate's global warming bill began by capping greenhouse gas emissions and reducing them each year, from 5.8 billion metric tons in 2015 to 1.7 billion in 2050. A Heritage Foundation study calculates that such reductions would cost more than 600,000 jobs a year through 2028 (900,000 in both 2016 and 2017), and the Environmental Protection Agency estimates the annual economic losses at $1 trillion to $2.8 trillion by 2050. Electricity prices would rise about 44% by 2030, and gasoline prices by more than 50 cents a gallon. Existing coal-fired plants, which provide about half of our electricity, would be shut down, requiring nuclear generation capacity would have to expand by more than 150%, to 1,982 billion kilowatt-hours from the current 782 billion, by 2050. That is a good idea--nuclear plants are virtually pollution-free--but doubling the number of them has zero chance of happening in a country that has not started construction of a new nuclear plant since 1977.

Then comes modern socialism: The government would offer "allowance" permits to emit greenhouse gasses. Initially about half the permits would be auctioned off to businesses, which Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) says would raise about $3.3 trillion by 2050--money the federal government would give away to favorite constituencies.

(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: congress; globalwarming

1 posted on 06/09/2008 5:16:58 AM PDT by shrinkermd
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd

Latest Weather Channel Headline:
GORE’S GLOBAL FLATULENCE MAY BE CHILLING!


2 posted on 06/09/2008 5:26:23 AM PDT by rusureitflies? (OSAMA BIN LADEN IS DEAD! There, I said it. Prove me wrong.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd

Wow, after reading the whole article I have to grudgingly give the watermelons some credit. What stealthy way to gain control of an economy.


3 posted on 06/09/2008 5:28:31 AM PDT by Red Dog #1 (Up is down and down is up...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd

Good article by Mr. DuPont, but I don’t think that he goes far enough. This is not a move toward a socialist government, we are close to having that now. This is a move toward a facist government, in its original meaning, so that the government would control all the means of production, but would leave ownership in the hands of business. Mussolini would be proud.


4 posted on 06/09/2008 5:33:24 AM PDT by centurion316 (Democrats - Supporting Al Qaida Worldwide)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd
It is neither warming nor cooling. The average of four recent climate temperature studies show that over the past 10 years, the planet has warmed only 0.047 degree Celsius, less than 1/20th of a degree.

I wouldn't dismiss this so casually. Why, at this rate, we could warm by almost half a degree in only a century. Even Al Gore admits that it's a crisis that threatens our very survival.

5 posted on 06/09/2008 5:35:09 AM PDT by RogerD (Educaiton Profesionul)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd
Here's what's really causing the Big Chill and destruction of global warming. Leading democrats (particularly Hillary and Shumer) are trying to keep it quiet, bieng afraid to reveal the true source:


Give it to me baby!

6 posted on 06/09/2008 5:38:08 AM PDT by Jeff Head (Freedom is not free...never has been, never will be. (www.dragonsfuryseries.com))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd
...does the world's climate change from time to time? Of course it does.

Think "ice age".

7 posted on 06/09/2008 5:38:55 AM PDT by The Duke (I have met the enemy, and he is named 'Apathy'!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Jeff Head
Well I WAS just about to have breakfast. I could have gone the rest of my life without seeing that. LOL

Is that Terry Macauliff getting turned on in the background?

8 posted on 06/09/2008 5:47:52 AM PDT by Poison Pill
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd

If liberals complain about global warming, then I suggest them to watch Ice Road Truckers on History Channel.


9 posted on 06/09/2008 5:51:22 AM PDT by MinorityRepublican
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Poison Pill

I had not noticed that...but, yes, I believe it is.


10 posted on 06/09/2008 5:55:43 AM PDT by Jeff Head (Freedom is not free...never has been, never will be. (www.dragonsfuryseries.com))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: RogerD
"...It was going to be "more cost effective" to place these people in "community care" and finally, cheapest of all to just let them roam the streets. I hate to say it, but as governor of CA, Ronald Reagan was probably responsible for many innocent people in California being killed (usually in particularly gruesome ways) by the mentally ill, because he simply opened the doors and dumped these people onto the streets.

Yes, I thought everyone had forgotten. I remember this quite well. At the time, anyone differing with official government policy was thought to be a fascist psychiatrist who was trying to keep the mentally ill in the hospital because of financial concerns.

When Ronald Reagan became President Reagan, he then tried his best to end SSI (social security supplemental income) for the mentally ill. This was the only real, consistent resource many serious and persistently mentally ill had. The pressure from both the left and right was enormous and this was dropped.

11 posted on 06/09/2008 6:19:01 AM PDT by shrinkermd
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd
When Ronald Reagan became President Reagan, he then tried his best to end SSI (social security supplemental income) for the mentally ill. This was the only real, consistent resource many serious and persistently mentally ill had. The pressure from both the left and right was enormous and this was dropped.

You talk like Reagan was on a jihad against the mentally ill. I don't know about the California incident, but as a program, SSI has been outrageously easy to defraud. I remember seeing an investigative report on some program or other many years ago describing how SSI is used as a supplemental welfare check by able-bodied (and able-minded) people. The program focused on one rural community where the vast majority of the residents were getting what they referred to as "crazy money". If that's the reason Reagan was going after SSI, he was right to do so.

12 posted on 06/09/2008 6:30:05 AM PDT by Constitutionalist Conservative (Global Warming Heretic -- http://agw-heretic.blogspot.com)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd

A question I have never seen to be satisfactorily answered: WHY is any increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere a bad thing?

Right now, the amount of CO2 by volume in the atmosphere is on the order of 0.04%. That is about one twenty-fifth of one percent. One percent of ANYTHING is not very much, and if there is only one twenty-fifth of that number, it is a LOT smaller. If that were all you were getting as interest on your investment at the bank, you would see how exceedingly small that number was. That is $400 back on every $1,000,000 invested annually. Even an oil company would not accept that low of a return.

Yet ALL of our plant life that depends on photosynthesis, relies entirely on that 0.04% of carbon dioxide. That is, in fact, the margin that sustains life at all on this planet. Even if this figure of 0.04% were doubled or tripled, there would be no adverse effect on animal life.

Plant life, however, would benefit greatly. Young plants, the heaviest consumers of atmospheric CO2, grow much more vigorously in a carbon dioxide-enriched atmosphere. Incidently, older trees, with only minimal percentage added to their growth annually, turn out to be net CO2 emitters, as they consume more oxygen in maintaining their vitality than they produce during the growing season. So harvesting of mature forests is not the unmitigated evil it is made out to be by the environmentalists.

Speaking of which, either we harvest the forests, and put the sequestered carbon (as wood, cellulose and various lignins) to good use, or the whole storehouse is destroyed by fire, as the fuel is consumed by wildfires that tear through old and neglected “natural” forests.

Returning to the process of photosynthesis, in which the chemical equations is something like like:

6 CO2 + 6 H2O ==> C6H12O6 + 6 O2

The O2 is what we BREATHE. The atmosphere is made up of some 20% of O2 (most of the rest, some 78%, is nitrogen).

In the primeval earth, neither oxygen nor nitrogen existed as free elements. They were all bound up in water vapor, carbon dioxide and ammonia. The other major atmospheric constituent at the time was methane, which in the absence of elemental oxygen, is a relatively stable compound.

One of the major changes to earth’s atmosphere happened when an organism appeared, that could crack off the oxygen in the carbon dioxide and water molecules, and form carbohydrates plus free oxygen. People have no idea how destructive this free oxygen was to the environment. As the percentage of oxygen increased, the methane was effectively changed into water and carbon dioxide, further feeding the process. At the same time, ammonia was reduced by the presence of oxygen to water and free nitrogen. As is known to anyone who takes the trouble to look it up, the presence of methane and ammonia are even lower than carbon dioxide, methane being about 0.000017% and ammonia, something like “trace” amounts only.

This tiny margin of carbon dioxide is what PRESERVES life on this planet, and attempts to artificially reduce what is already a sparse amount, could in fact endanger that Al Gore calls the “delicate balance”.

Now if anybody wants to go after a “greenhouse gas”, the most important one of all is water as it exists in the form of water vapor. Water vapor is highly variable, making up, at any given time, anywhere from 1% to 4% of the composition of the atmosphere as a whole. It is at the lowest figure over the driest desert that can be imagined on this planet, and the higher figure is in a steaming tropical rain forest. Typically on a warm summer day, in the temperate zone, the percentage is about 3%, on the edge of being just bearable and comfortable.

Here is the real engine that drives planetary heating and cooling. Water as liquid has just about the highest content of heat (as calories) per a specific mass, of any common substance, and in fact, the term “specific heat” is measured against that of water. The mass of water in earth’s gravitational field is one gram per cubic centimeter, and the measure of specific heat is the amount of heat required to raise the measured temperature of that one gram of water one degree on the Centigrade scale. This amount of heat is defined as “one calorie”. It take one hundred calories of heat to warm up one gram of water from 0 degrees C. to 100 degrees C.

Now on both ends of the scale, something strange happens. Water changes from one phase to another, from water to ice, or from water to water vapor, as steam. To convert one gram of water to one gram of ice, the water gives up, not one calorie per gram, but some EIGHTY calories. This is a lot of heat to lose all at once. Once the water is frozen into ice, it still continues to lose heat as it grows colder, but only at rate of half a calorie per degree per gram.

Up at the other end, where water converts 100% to steam, each gram of water requires some FIVE HUNDRED FORTY calories of additional heat per gram, to complete the phase change. One gram of steam has a great deal more volume than one gram of water, incidently, but steam is fully compressible, back almost to the liquid state. unlike water which is relatively incompressible.

Now at any given point below boiling, but above freezing, there is some of the heat being taken up as the water evaporates to water vapor. Which is why sweating cools the human body, as the perspiration dries in the breeze.

This is the mechanism that warms or cools the earth, NOT carbon dioxide. Water vapor, carrying the requisite 540 calories per gram, is lifted up to heights of 40,000 feet, where the heat is radiated OFF into space, and the water begins to condense, first as visible clouds, then into larger and larger droplets until it falls as precipitation.


13 posted on 06/09/2008 7:30:51 AM PDT by alloysteel (The Obamajesty exerting its Obamagic. What nirvana, what bliss!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd

I think that we should, as a group, support their efforts to “destroy America”, if not in any tangible way. But change the language of their arguments to what they really mean.

That is, call what they are doing what it actually is. No more pretenses from them. Take off their masks.

“America must die so that the planet will live”.

“Only by destroying our economy can we prevent climate change”.

“You don’t need a car. That is why $10 gas is good”.

“You have too much money. You need to pay more in taxes”.

“Socialism is more important than the lives of you and your family”.

“The world would be a better place without people”.


14 posted on 06/09/2008 8:18:37 AM PDT by yefragetuwrabrumuy
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd; Delacon; TenthAmendmentChampion; Horusra; CygnusXI; Fiddlstix; Timeout; Entrepreneur; ..
 



Calculate your one-day Carbon Belch !

15 posted on 06/09/2008 9:21:14 AM PDT by steelyourfaith
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd
This was the only real, consistent resource many serious and persistently mentally ill had. The pressure from both the left and right was enormous and this was dropped.

It is and was also the only real, consistent resources many drug addicts and alcoholics had to continue their habits. It was one of the biggest scams of the 80's and 90's (maybe still today). Get a compliant shrink to diagnose you as bipolar or depressive, declare you disabled, and get $1800 a month plus subsidized housing the rest of your life. Then lay back and light one up. A non-trivial portion of the population of the Hollywood area lived like that in the 80's and 90's.

16 posted on 06/09/2008 9:37:27 AM PDT by ModelBreaker
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd

Latest Weather Channel Headline:
GORE’S GLOBAL FLATULENCE MAY BE CHILLING!


17 posted on 06/09/2008 11:38:46 AM PDT by rusureitflies? (OSAMA BIN LADEN IS DEAD! There, I said it. Prove me wrong.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd

If liberals complain about global warming, then I suggest them to watch Ice Road Truckers on History Channel.


18 posted on 06/09/2008 11:51:44 AM PDT by MinorityRepublican
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd

If liberals complain about global warming, then I suggest them to watch Ice Road Truckers on History Channel.


19 posted on 06/09/2008 11:54:48 AM PDT by MinorityRepublican
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson