"John Galban" wrote in message
oups.com...
On Apr 6, 3:49 pm, Larry Dighera wrote:

However, it is immaterial to me whether man-made C02 is the root cause
of climate change or not. Regardless of the cause, it's going to be a
different planet if global warming continues.

Of course it is. Nobody denies that it has been getting warmer for
the last 30 yrs. That data is irrefutable. It is also irrefutable
that in the 30 yrs. before that, it was getting steadily cooler (hence
the "global ice age" scare in the 70s). The Vikings were once
farming on what is now permafrost and an icecap. After that, there
was a mini-ice age that lasted hundreds of years. It's always a
different planet.

If it's immaterial to you that CO2 is the cause, then I'm missing
the point here. The people who want to spend trillions to "fix" the
CO2/global warming problem aren't actually going to "fix" anything.
That doesn't concern you? Now if someone can come up with a way to
turn the sun down a few degrees, then it might be worth spending the
money. On second thought, that would probably open some other can of
worms. The planetary weather system is far too complex for anyone to
understand all of the variables that go into its operation.


Regarding the environmentalists' concern over CO2, here are some facts
nobody argues with:





1. Atmospheric pressure is about 15 psi (pounds/in./in.).



2. Earth's radius is about 4,000 miles.



3. CO2 constituted about 0.04 per cent of the atmosphere in 1950--.



4. CO2 now constitutes more like 0.06 per cent of the atmosphere.



From #2 we calculate that the Earth's surface area is 0.8 billion billion

square inches. And from #1 that the atmosphere weighs 11.9 billion billion
pounds. This is 6 million billion tons. Now take fact #3; 0.04 per cent is
2,400 billion tons of CO2. Half (the change since 1950) is 1,200 billion
tons. Let's call this fact #5:



5. There were 2,400 billion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere in 1950; 3,600
billion tons now, give or take a psi or two--.



6. Human activity currently releases 6 billion tons of CO2 per year.



7. Non-human activity (oceans, trees, Pinatubo, Mauna Loa, etc.) releases
200 billion tons of CO2 per year--.



Now compare fact #5 with fact #6. Simple division tells you that if every
molecule of human-released CO2 at the current rate of production stayed in
the atmosphere, it would take another 200 years for the post-1950 change to
be matched. Or looking at it backward, since minus 200 years takes us back
to before the Industrial Revolution, it means that if every CO2 molecule
from every factory, car, steam engine, barbecue, campfire, and weenie roast
that ever was since the first liberal climbed down out of a tree right up
until today was still in the atmosphere. It still wouldn't account for the
change in CO2 since 1950.



Fact #7 has been going on for a long time, a lot longer than any piddling
200 years. Comparing #5 and #7 means it takes about 12 yearsfor the average
CO2 molecule to be recycled back out of the atmosphere.



Given the above, here are some conclusions that nobody can argue with and
still claim to be a reasoning creatu



8. Human activity, carried out at the present rate indefinately (more than
12 years) cannot possibly account for more than 6 per cent of the observed
change in CO2 levels.



9. Entirely shutting off civilizationor even killing everybodycould only
have a tiny effect on global warming, if there is any such thing--.



That leaves two questions that no one knows how to answer:



Q-1. Why do all these supposedly educated, supposedly sane people want to
end civilization?



Q-2. Since humanity can't possibly be causing the CO2 level to go up, isn't
it time to start wondering about what is?



L. Van Zandt, Professor of Physics,

Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana