Global Warming

I have to disagree with a recent letter from Dr. Pfeiffer regarding global warming. He credits C02 as the cause, and blames Alabama Power for most of it. He uses an appeal to authority, "The Supreme Court" and compares it’s importance to the shooting of JFK. A bit over the top on both counts.

First of all, C02 is not a pollutant regardless of what the Supreme court says. It is necessary for life to exist. We exhale it, as does every other form of animal life on the planet. All the plant life on the planet need it to survive. Animals exhale it, plants take it in. So if we eliminate it, all life would die. We need it in the atmosphere. It is a natural and necessary gas, not a pollutant.
Second, the earth was much warmer than today during a period spanning the years 800 - 1300 AD. This was known as the Medieval Warm Period. During this time the Vikings colonized Greenland. They traveled the north Atlantic which was free of ice. They established permanent settlements, and grew crops where it is too cold today. The population exploded in Europe due to the excellent growing seasons, and decreased death rates. It was the best of times thanks to nearly five hundred years of good weather with warm temps. The point here is to recognize that during this time there were NO power plants. No automobiles, no factories producing C02. Yet it was warmer than today. A thinking person would have to conclude that C02 and auto’s are not causing the earth to warm. It is a natural cycle. The production of C02 actually follows the warming, not the other way around.

This period ending abruptly. From the 1300's to approximately 1850 the earth experienced what is called "The Little Ice Age". Surface temps fell by several degrees, and the Viking settlements had to be abandoned due to ice and snow and persistent crop failures. The European continent experienced famine and hard times for several hundred years during which time millions died. Again, man and his power plants were not the cause. Beginning in the 1800's the earth resumed it’s warming. Which has continued from the last major ice age that ended about 10,000 years ago. Been warming ever since, with some set backs here and there.

The amount of warming is greatly exaggerated by folks like Mr. Gore and a willing yet ignorant national news media. Scare tactics make good copy. But when you check the facts you find that from 1880 to 2005, global surface temps have increased by only .7 degrees. And that wasn’t straight up. It never is. From 1880 to 1940 temps increased .4 degrees. From 1940 to 1980 they actually went down .2 degrees. Yet this was a time of our most rapid industrialization. Then from 1980 to 2005 temps increased again by .4 degrees. During the last two years surface temps have again decreased slightly.

So, the point is this. Over time, the earth and the sun conspire to change the climate. Man’s influence on the system is absolutely negligible. The termites of the world put more C02 into the atmosphere than we do. I am no fan of the power company, and yes, they should do all they can to insure clean air. But cause global warming? Nope, they didn’t do it, and neither did my jeep.

Common Sense
What has happened to people’s ability to reason? We have become a people willing to believe anything we see or read. Instead of asking if a story could possibly be true, we run around repeating the doom and gloom picture the pundits paint for us. We repeat the statistics with sincerity to our friends, never questioning the source, or the truth of the story. I think the need to fill 24 hours a day with news has promoted a phenomenon I call, "Might be News". Hundreds of stations competing for attention are willing to promote any sensational idea to get viewers. As in "Millions Homeless", news at 11 pm. If that many were homeless, there would be a bum every ten feet all over the country. It isn’t so.

Another big lie is that we are ruining the environment, polluting the water and damaging the air. Maybe at one time we were, but not now. In the 50's when I was a boy, any trip to a large city would get you dirty. I remember visiting New York and looking up at the large buildings, only to get soot in my eye with each upward glance. The Hudson River was so thick you could walk across it. It was devoid of life.

In the 60's, Mobile Alabama smelled so bad that it was embarrassing to have out of town visitors. The drive north on highway 43 was so polluted with chemical smells that it literally made you gag. Mobile Bay was an oily dark toxic soup, and not fit to fish or swim in. Now, the air all over America is much cleaner than it was back then. Even though we drive more today than 40 years ago, we pollute less. Mobile doesn’t smell anymore either. You can see porpoises in the bay, and catch fish in those waters. The Hudson River is no longer toxic. Fact is, you can swim in it. It’s that clean. Same thing for the Great Lakes. As for the woods and vegetation, there are more trees in America now, than when Daniel Boone was alive. More deer too. It’s true, look it up. We are not running out of trees and wild life is flourishing. Even the Caribou in Alaska are doing well. They actually like the pipeline. It’s warm all the time and they congregate underneath it. It hasn’t hurt them in any way, and has actually helped more young Caribou survive to adulthood.

The U.S. has done more in the area of cleaning up the environment than ANY other country. Our industries are the cleanest in the world, and getting better every year. We should be proud. Our news organizations should tell it. Our citizens should know it. We have done very well as a people, and as a country to be admired.

Yet, when you watch the 24 hour news shows they never tell the facts. They blindly repeat any tale from whatever group has the latest forecast of doom. The latest is, "We are running out of oil." Nonsense! The western U.S. and Canada have oil tar sands, and oil in shale rock. Together they equal not billions, but trillions of recoverable barrels of oil. On a recent 20 / 20 show, John Stossel reported that the Canadian Tar Sands have enough oil to power the planet for 100 years. Let me say that again. "One hundred years." We also have oil in the gulf, oil in the rocky mountains, oil in Alaska, and yes, even in Alabama. The waters off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts hold vast quantities, but lobbyist from those states have managed to convince congress to extend the ban on drilling anywhere off the east and west coast. Thousands of miles of potential, going unused. The excuse is that we might have a spill, and ruin the coast of Cape Hatteras or Cape Cod, where old Kennedy lives. It should be noted that modern drilling procedures are so good, that even in Hurricane Katrina, there were no oil spills in the Gulf. The only U.S. waters where drilling is allowed.

When oil was $30 a barrel, it was too expensive to drill and process oil from difficult locations. So we didn’t. But now at $90 a barrel, it is economically reasonable to go after it. And we should. At the same time, we must keep looking at new technology. We can and will do both in a manner that won’t hurt the environment.

These scare tactics come from the folks who think that nothing new will come along, and that in X number of years the world will end. Katie Couric said so. Must be true.

It reminds me of a story that appeared in a New York paper at the beginning of the last century. The columnist stated with all certainty that because of the rising population of horses in the city, a disaster loomed on the horizon. According to experts, the city would be ankle deep in manure in just 15 years if laws weren’t passed to restrict the use of horses in town. Well, it didn’t happen. Who knew, or could guess, how quickly the horse would be replaced by Mr. Fords new contraption.

Every disaster scare is always backed by data from the past. It fails to account for the never-ending genius of people who invent new things as the need becomes apparent. Or more accurately, as they find a way to make a profit. Necessity is said to be the mother of invention. Not so. Actually it is the lure of profit. Profit is a very good thing.

Another big lie is the end of life as we know it due to global warming. I saw Mr. Gore the other night proclaiming that as the ice sheets melt, sea levels will rise twenty feet. I don’t think so. Try this. Fill a glass with ice, then fill it with water. Now mark the water level on the glass, and let the ice melt. After the ice melts, mark the water level again. It stayed the same, or might have gone down just a little, didn’t it? Since about ninety percent of sea ice is in, or under the water, melting all of the sea ice at the north and south pole, would not cause the oceans to rise twenty feet. They would rise very little, if any. Most of the Arctic Ocean (North Pole) is sea ice, with the bulk of it actually in the water. You would need all the ice in the world to melt at the same time to have a rise of twenty feet. The good news is that not all the glaciers are melting. There is actually a net gain of the land based ice and snow at the poles. . But for some reason the folks at CBS only repeat stories about the glaciers that are shrinking. The Greenland Ice Sheet is most often mentioned. A recent Danish Study proved that the Greenland Ice Sheet has been shrinking steadily for the last 100 years. Your car, or your grill, didn’t cause it.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The earth has cycled between warm periods and cold periods hundreds of times in the past million years, and nothing we do will change or effect it one way or the other. One big volcano has more influence on the earths climate in a few hours than all the cars driven around the globe in a years time. The sun cycles between high and low output periods, and I just read where the inner magnetic core of the earth itself has been on the move since 1831. It is still moving, and causing the magnetic north pole to shift at the rate of 25 miles a year. Compared to all that, we just don’t have that much influence. We like to think we do, but we really aren’t that strong.

Remember the hole in the ozone. Well it was always there. It goes through natural cycles, and now it has gotten smaller again. CNN didn’t report that. We didn’t make the ozone hole. We didn’t make it bigger, and we didn’t make it smaller. It just happened. They said we did it with spray cans, and people believed it. In the 50's, polio was to kill us all. Then the Russians and the "A" bomb would destroy our world. Next came the population bomb, causing wide spread starvation by the year 2000. Oh yea, in Y2K all the computers were going to crash. Planes would fall from the sky, the power would go off, and trucks would not be able to deliver food. Now it’s global warming and bird flu. If we escape that, some asteroid will kill us all. I don’t think so.

When you see some story on the tube- - stop. Ask yourself who wants me to believe that, and why. Usually you will find some group with an agenda trying to justify more funding. So the next time some news story says that the world is ending and it’s your fault, just have a good laugh and crank up the AC, you deserve it.

Oh, one more thing. That gas "guzzler" I drive actually gets better mileage than any of the cars I drove in the 60's, 70's, or 80's. It doesn’t pollute as much either. So even though it’s bigger, it is more environmentally friendly. The grand children love it, so I would have no reservations telling them about all the progress we have made as a people, and as a country to be admired. There are people who want you to believe that the United States is a bad country. Don’t believe it. We give more to charity, help more poor, feed more people, and have saved more people from tyrants than any other country in history.

We are the good guys. Somebody needs to tell CNN, and Katie about it.