Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 12/29/2008 10:17:47 AM PST by CampusKing
"If 2008 was the year global warming was disproved, 2009 may be the year that the agenda of radical environmentalism is laid to waste."
"As ALG News has reported, the scientific “consensus” around man-made global warming has unraveled like an old ribbon. And now, the economic “consensus” around it may be starting to unwind as well."
(Excerpt) Read more at alg31blog.timberlakepublishing.com ...
More tax on energy, my electric bill doubled last month already for no apparent reason!
“It was especially interesting for me to see how little expenditure it requires to lead credulous humanity around by the nose.” Albert Einstein ... From “The Warburgs” by Ron Chernow, page 283
One of the biggest problems we ‘deniers’ face is that few real facts are ever given by the AGW crowd. This is intentional, of course. For instance, they throw around labels like ‘green’ and ‘clean’ but never define them. It can be demonstrated that the atmosphere is ‘cleaner’ today that it has been in decades (in the U.S.), if not centuries (parts of Europe). How can something like CO2, necessary for life itself, be labeled ‘dirty’? It boggles the mind.
I’ve come up with (what I think is) a simple, understandable-by-anyone concept to explain why folks should stop being ‘afraid’ of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere.
Here’s the line of thinking:
Question1:
What are the molecules that compose air? Name them in order of most-to-least abundant. [By the way, few folks will get any of this right without looking it up.]
Answer:
Nitrogen, Oxygen, Water, Argon, Carbon Dioxide, and Other.
Question2:
If you take a random (or average) sampling of 10,000 molecules of air and assume that each molecule is worth a penny, approximately how much would each of the different components of the air be worth?
(Note: 10,000 pennies is the same as $100.00. If you couch the discussion in dollars and cents rather than, say, PPM - folks will have an easier time grasping the numbers. Even a second grader understands completely the difference between a $20. bill and 4 pennies.)
Answer:
Nitrogen: $77.00
Oxygen: $20.00 (animals NEED this to live)
Water: $ 2.00 (this is the ‘real’ GHG)
Argon: $ 0.95 (that’s right, 25x the amount of CO2)
CO2: 4 cents (plants NEED this to live)
Other: 1 penny
Question3:
As you’ve heard, Humans have pumped MASSIVE amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, yet it only makes up 4 cents of the entire $100.00 of the atmosphere. (That’s 4 CO2 molecules per 10,000 air molecules). How much of these 4 cents worth of CO2 has been added by Humans?
Answer:
1 penny. (280ppm to 380ppm)
Question4:
Let’s say that Humans had subtracted a penny’s worth of CO2 from the $100.00 worth of our entire atmosphere, instead of adding CO2. Would there be any impact?
Answer:
Plants would be severly impacted and dying.
There are many more points that can be made, you get the idea. Feel free to steal the concept, if you find it useful...
save!
cheee wrote:Your figures are a bit off. I'm not sure, but you might be doing it by mass (weight), though it doesn't look right for that even.
Answer:
Nitrogen: $77.00
Oxygen: $20.00 (animals NEED this to live)
Water: $ 2.00 (this is the ‘real’ GHG)
Argon: $ 0.95 (that’s right, 25x the amount of CO2)
CO2: 4 cents (plants NEED this to live)
Other: 1 penny
By volume (which would be your molecule count), for dry air, it should be:
Nitrogen (N2) $78.08
Oxygen (O2) $20.95
Argon (AR) $0.93
Carbond Dioxide (CO2) $0.03
Other $0.01
I've left out water (H2O) because it's so variable. Water content is highly dependent on air temperature, as well as on humidity. The relationship is fairly complex. If you specify a temperature and a relative humidity, H2O content can be calculated. And additional H20 will pull a few cents from the Nitrogen and Oxygen "budget" to keep your total at $100.00.
from the article:This assumes that the new administration, the Dems in the congress and the propaganda ministry (what we used to call the media) want economic growth.
Suddenly it is not so fashionable to save the planet. It may become more important to restore economic growth than to strangle energy output.It’s simple, really. If financial capital was the lifeblood of the economy, energy is its food. And without it, or if it costs too much, nations the world over would be unable to sustain their peoples. The American people were given a powerful lesson on what energy price shocks can feel like this past summer, and they will not be eager to pay that price again.
Unfortunately, they don't want economic growth. They want "green jobs" and they want to "save the planet" from "anthropogenic climate change."
It's about power for them. It's not about growth, economics, science or even the real world environment. If we were actually allowed to produce our way to economic growth, we wouldn't need their nanny state to take care of us. Besides, they can always blame the economic mess on Bush for at least the next 3 years or so (maybe more).
We could put thousands to work immediately, and make lots of money selling our oil and coal on world markets. It won't happen because the Democrats would rather "save the planet" than grow the economy. And the believe they have a "mandate" from the election results.
RE: the costs of going green.
Most of us produce the vast majority of our own, personal “carbon footprint” heating water, heating dwellings, and travelling. Simple enough, eh? Stay home, don’t wash, shiver. Save the planet.
Ive gone to great lengths to cut down on my carbon footprint. I no longer take showers, I quit my job so I dont use gas and buy instead of grow my own pot, to cut down on electricity. And there are still so many things to do. I still use a refrigerator, so I invested in salt to cure my meat, and use leaves from trees instead of toilet paper. (which rather uncomfortable living in PA in January)
You’re correct in both your numbers and your commentary.
One rarely sees water included in any listing of the components of air. I think that’s a mistake ... it’s important that folks realize that it’s both significant and far more prevalent than CO2. I chose 2% for water since it’s in the middle of the range most often stated.
I’ve not seen a specific overall average ‘percentage of water in the atmosphere’. While it might not be easy to come by, I’d bet it’s fairly constant when averaged over the whole globe.
Also, I intentionally used very ‘round’ figures. I originally came up with this as an exercise for Jr. High School aged Girl Scouts (my wife leads a couple of troops). The idea was to give them $99. of monopoly money plus a dollar’s worth of change and see how closely they could get to the actual numbers. When they later see the ‘real’ level of CO2 in the atmosphere ... well, it’s something they’d be likely to remember.
Anyway, thanks for the response ...
This quote from an environmentalist shows why global warming is still being pushed by the government despite evidence against it:
“Yes, the survival of the species takes precedence over strict adherence to the Constitution...”
His answer to the question “Does global warming justify the government taking on powers and authority not granted to it by the Constitution?”
Big Brother sees global warming and the alleged threat to humanity as a way around the Constitution, plain and simple.
Do you have a cite for that?
Very good! I have seen this done abstractly, but people UNDERSTAND $100!
I have another item to add.....
ALL of the fossil fuel reserves, known and unknown, contain carbon that was in the atmosphere. We only know a portion of the fossil fuel reserves and of that we have only burned some of it.
If we have only burned a portion of the known reserves, and there remains carbon to be found, then we have only put a small amount of the carbon back into the atmosphere.
If the world survived when ALL that carbon was in the atmosphere, it will certainly survive the small amount we are putting back.
To take it a step further, if the earth is recovering carbon by plant and animal growth, the amount of carbon permanently released is smaller than the enviro-mentals would have us believe. Yes, somewhere there is a coal mine or oil well that is being depleted. But somewhere else, there is a considerable amount of carbon being stored for a future coal mine or oil well. Hence the "1 penny out of $100" human related rise of carbon in the atmosphere since the industrial age began.
This assumes that the rise in CO2 is due to man, which may not even be the case.
Funny.....
.....I thought this was about saving the PLANET, not a species. They can't even get that right. Man will survive.
The guy who posted it is an irrationaly selfish @$$hole with an ego that dwarfs Russia. I felt the need to point out to him that, since the decision isn’t his alone, he’s not in a position to answer it, but decided it wasn’t worth my time.
OK, thanks. I misunderstood; I thought this was something you found in a publication. Since the enviroweenies aren’t a particularly bright lot, he was probably just repeating another’s thoughtless ramblings. We’ll probably hear this line a few more times.
Very true ... there was a huge concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere at one time. A number of ‘CO2 sinks’ have brought the atmospheric levels to CO2 to historically very, very small levels.
The Chemical Engineer in me sees this as an equilibration of reactions among ocean CO2 levels, our CO2-consuming biomass, and other less important ‘sinks’.
With our industrialization and subsequent release of the CO2 that had been previously captured into fossil fuels, we can (and have) produced a small increase in CO2 levels. This cannot and will not last, since the ‘CO2 sinks’ sill exist and will uptake CO2 at ever increasing levels.
Let me make one last comment in a different direction.
If our politicians were really interested in a strong America and keeping our real enemies at bay, they would immediately move to drill/mine/construct energy-producing facilities of the proven kind (oil/coal/natgas/uranium). This is what we did for 3/4 of the 20th century - arguably the ‘American Century’.
This is an infrastructure play what would truly create jobs, ignite the economy, keep America strong and our enemies weak. There is no downside to such a program of making ourselves both energy-rich and energy-independent, unless you’re a politician looking to control more and more of our lives. THAT is the real shame in what is happening with our energy policy. Green Jobs to create mostly useless windmills and solar panels will be wasted money to be re-paid by our children’s children...
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