Global Warming Update
March 13th, 2008 at 12:05am Mark Noonan
Global warming zealotry as a threat to liberty - Vaclav Klaus in The Australian:
A WEEK ago, I gave a speech at an official gathering at Prague Castle commemorating the 60th anniversary of the 1948 communist putsch in the former Czechoslovakia. One of the arguments of my speech, quoted in all the leading newspapers in the country the next morning, went as follows: Future dangers will not come from the same source. The ideology will be different. Its essence will nevertheless be identical: the attractive, pathetic, at first sight noble idea that transcends the individual in the name of the common good, and the enormous self-confidence on the side of its proponents about their right to sacrifice the man and his freedom in order to make this idea reality. What I had in mind was, of course, environmentalism and its present strongest version, climate alarmism.
As an economist, I have to start by stressing the obvious. Carbon dioxide emissions do not fall from heaven. Their volume (ECO2) is a function of gross domestic product per capita (which means of the size of economic activity, SEA), of the number of people (POP) and of the emissions intensity (EI), which is the amount of CO2 emissions per dollar of GDP. This is usually expressed in a simple relationship: ECO2 = EI x SEA x POP. What this relationship tells is simple: If we really want to decrease ECO2 we have to either stop the economic growth and thus block further rise in the standard of living, stop the population growth, or make miracles with the emissions intensity.
I am afraid there are people who want to stop the economic growth, the rise in the standard of living (though not their own) and the ability of man to use the expanding wealth, science and technology for solving the actual pressing problems of mankind, especially of the developing countries. This ambition goes very much against past human experience which has always been connected with a strong motivation to better human conditions. There is no reason to make the change just now, especially with arguments based on such incomplete and faulty science. Human wants are unlimited and should stay so. Asceticism is a respectable individual attitude but should not be forcefully imposed upon the rest of us.
I am also afraid that the same people, imprisoned in the Malthusian tenets and in their own megalomaniacal ambitions, want to regulate and constrain demographic development, which is something only the totalitarian regimes have until now dared to experiment with. Without resisting it we would find ourselves on the slippery road to serfdom. The freedom to have children without regulation and control is one of the undisputable human rights.
There are people among the global-warming alarmists who would protest against being included in any of these categories, but who do call for a radical decrease in carbon dioxide emissions. It can be achieved only by means of a radical decline in the emissions intensity.
Did you exhale while reading that? Then you contributed to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. I recommend reading the whole article - it hits at the crux of the problem with global warming alarmism: the threat to liberty posed by those who say that the crisis in gigantic and they are the people who know how to fix it.
There seems to be latent within humanity a desire to control things - a desire, that is, to set everything to right and by a web of rules to make everything fair and square. Such plans are always doomed to failure because of human nature - we are a fallen people, and thus there is in us a desire to deliberately choose the wrong thing even though we know full well that it is wrong, and that we’d be better off chosing the right thing. As long as human beings are human beings, there will be nothing but approximations of equity and justice in human affairs. Enter the utopian idealist (100 years ago, a socialist; today, an environmentalist) who ignores all of human history, asserts that our problems are the results of the rules we use and if we could just alter the rules, everything will come together just fine. Of course, to obtain the control necessary to change the rules, the utopian idealist will puff up the problem to gigantic proportions (100 years ago, the horrors of the robber barons; today, the claim that the very earth will be wrecked), and will insist upon a totalitarian system under the utopians’ exclusive control.
Even the most benign of the global warming zealots contains within himself the seed of what I call “junior-league Leninism”; “junior league” because these people don’t contemplate murdering millions of people, as Lenin did from an early age; but “Leninist”, none the less, because like Lenin they aspire to a baby-out-with-the-bathwater overturning of society in the name of alleged human progress. The plain fact of the matter is that even if the global warming zealots are correct that the world is rapidly warming due to anthropogenic CO2 emissions there is no way short of the most radical, totalitarian program to reduce CO2 emissions to a point where global warming ceases and then starts to reverse itself. And I’m doubtful that even totalitarian efforts would do the trick - I think that as long as there are to be 9 to 12 billion of us a century or so hence, there is simply no way to reduce CO2 emissions to a point where more CO2 comes out of the atmosphere than goes in.
And so, only a collapse of the global economy resulting in a massive die-off of humanity will do the trick…and mark my words, good people, as the global warming zealts gain power and come to realise just what it would take to reverse what they view as the central problem of our times, there will be more and more of them willing to go that route. In my view, we should make efforts to pollute less and clean up our messes from the good stewardship mindset - and we should leave off any alarmism, just as we leave off any program to create heaven on earth.
Entry Filed under: Economy, Environment
35 Comments
1. Rana Quijotesca | March 13th, 2008 at 12:49 am
I am afraid that Mr. Klaus is assuming that in order to improve standards of living and foster economic development, one has burn more fossil fuels… This isn’t the case. In fact, switching to cleaner energy sources will, in the long run, take up fewer resources and thus increase the amount of resources available for more purposes, increasing the standard of living and developing economies.
2. Mark Noonan | March 13th, 2008 at 12:59 am
Rana,
But poorer economies won’t be able to afford the cleaner technology…and as the world population goes up, even cleaner technology won’t actually reduce CO2 emissions to the point where more CO2 comes out than goes in…the global warming zealots are asking the impossible…certainly the impossible in a free society of 9 to 12 billion people (the projected population by 2150).
Each human being produces about 1 kilogram of CO2 each day…now, some like to say that we’re part of a “closed system” - meaning we’re only exhaling the CO2 we drew from plants which, in turn, pulled it out of the atmosphere…but that presumes that a plant can absord 1kg of CO2 as fast as a human can make it…and that the plant doesn’t absorb CO2 from, say, a volcano and thus doesn’t have the ability to remove that bit from Joe Human today.
We can’t do what the zealots want, Rana - not and remain free.
3. Freedom1 | March 13th, 2008 at 1:15 am
Yes. Freedom suplanted by totalitarism in the name of the false science of manmade “global warming” oops, “global climate change”. Frightening.
4. Freedom1 | March 13th, 2008 at 1:58 am
Canadian Winter Set To Break All-Time Records For Snow (and the Canadians are getting violent)
“Guns and fists as ’snow rage’ erupts” - Reuters
5. Dennis | March 13th, 2008 at 2:13 am
“…just as we leave off any program to create heaven on earth.”
Oh, but isn’t that what the Bush admin was trying to do in Iraq - at least before the reality set in?
I’m speaking figuratively, of course - just as Mark was in his reference to efforts to curtail CO2 emissions. Except I believe the latter goal more realistic than the former.
6. Dennis | March 13th, 2008 at 2:40 am
“only a collapse of the global economy resulting in a massive die-off of humanity will do the trick…and mark my words, good people, as the global warming zealts gain power and come to realise just what it would take to reverse what they view as the central problem of our times, there will be more and more of them willing to go that route.”
Mark worries about utopian idealists who ignore history, and totalitarian approaches to accomplish emissions reductions resulting in mass killing.
Ha! heck, WAR is the most efficient means of mass killing known to man, and if the Iraq war wasn’t a utopian scheme that ignored history then there isn’t any such thing.
Just imagine if our govt was pouring $12 billion a month into alternative energy research instead of waging a ruinous war that didn’t need to happen.
But oh, once we secured heaven on earth in Iraq we were supposed to gain another 10 years of cheap oil and maximum CO2 emissions again, before reality smacked us in the face.
Do you really think before you make these crazy posts, Mark?
7. Freedom1 | March 13th, 2008 at 3:01 am
“But oh, once we secured heaven on earth in Iraq we were supposed to gain another 10 years of cheap oil…” - Dennis
Ok, Dennis, I’ll bite. If the US went to war in Iraq for cheap oil, then why are gas prices so high in America?
8. winnowhead | March 13th, 2008 at 3:25 am
Wow, this guy Vaclav Klaus is a rabid lunatic. And Mark, you’re proving a point I made on a recent highly informative global warming post of yours - you latch on to anything that discredits global warming or those looking to soften the effects, intellectual consistency be damned.
You claim to understand the science and call it out as phony on every attempt you get; claim that there’s a conspiracy among scientists to enacts some kind of new world socialist order when you read about it somewhere; state that “even if” its happening “we can’t do anything about it”, or worse, “we can, but it’s too hard” and in a great case of concern trolling, today claim that it’s developing countries that can’t go green. (WTF, dude! Developing countries are the ones who will carry the brunt of the economic and human costs of warming, and they are responsible for close to nil of the C02 emissions.)
You have so many disparate, often contradictory, attacks on climate science that it’s abundantly clear that you simply attack any problem whose solution contradicts your political orthodoxy.
Oh, my.
Mark, humans don’t “make” CO2. We consume carbon and oxygen, and then release it. What we breath out has nothing to do with global warming, period. How the food we eat is produced certainly does, but breathing is irrelevant.
The reason more “carbon comes out than goes in” is because we’re transferring it from fossil fuels stored under the earth’s crust into the atmosphere. Hardly a contentious statement. I’m sure you know this, so I don’t mean to be a smart ass, I don’t get why you think it’s noteworthy to point out that we breath out C02.
Fossil fuels are not the only energy source that exists; it just happens to have been cheap for a couple centuries. Now it’s time to be more intelligent.
9. Dennis | March 13th, 2008 at 4:45 am
Freedom1: “Ok, Dennis, I’ll bite. If the US went to war in Iraq for cheap oil, then why are gas prices so high in America?”
Duh…let me think real hard…maybe because the geniuses in the Bush admin didn’t realize how destabilizing their war would be? Never took history into consideration? Only thought about all the flowers and sweets that would be tossed to the victorious “liberators”? Didn’t have a clue what they were doing?
Take your pick - the list could go on forever.
10. TiredofLibBullSh** | March 13th, 2008 at 5:38 am
minihead….
Humans don’t make CO2?
Okkkkaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy………….
How’s that home correspondence GED course coming?
Not too good, still stuck on high school chemistry and biology I see, as evidenced in your ignorant post.
You obviously do not know that CO2 production in animals, humans and other hydrocarbon emissions via decaying plant matter are NATURAL. IF the world completely stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow there would still be CO2 and other “greeen house” gases production through other natural means.
This climate change scam is nothing more than an attack on capitalism and wealth redistribution on a global scale. The “solutions” that are proposed are richer countries forced to give poorer countries funds to “limit” CO2 emissions, in the name of saving the world. And, just like money for AIDS, the massive majority of those funds will find their way into that country’s leaders’ pockets.
Freedom1, the libs will never admit that they are the cause of high oil and gasoline prices. They have consistently denied access to this country’s oil and denied new refinery construction. Both of which will not increase capacity or supply with ever increasing demand. We could have a $1 per barrel oil waiting to be refined and the refineries will still only be able to produce so much gasoline and the price will still be fairly high because of the high demand and limited supply. And they do all of this for their special interest groups. Just like they deny the energy alternatives that their special interests are against.
It’s pathetic really and they manage to fool their minions day in and day out as evidenced by the USEFUL IDIOTS who post(ed) here.
11. Ricorun | March 13th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Mr. Klaus’s equation would be more correct if he replaced the EI term, emissions intensity, which he defines as the amount of CO2 emissions per dollar of GDP, with another EI term: energy intensity, the amount of energy consumed per dollar GDP. After all, it is the energy we desire. The emissions aren’t useful. They are only an unfortunate by-product. Klaus seems to think that energy intensity and emissions intensity are inextricably bound. I beg to differ. That is only the case if all energy is derived from carbon-emitting fuels, and if all such fuels were equal in emissions. Up to the present that has largely been the case. But it doesn’t have to be. Useful energy can be produced without emissions from solar, wind, waves, geothermal, hydroelectric, even nuclear. Does that make the energy so derived less useful? Of course not.
Some “clean” (low or zero GHG emitting) technologies are not suitable in some places, or at some times. But that’s not the real issue. The real issue is cost. And Klaus seems to think that clean energy sources necessarily have to cost more than fossil fuel sources. And again, up to the present, that has been the case. And of course it would be so if the only technology relied on is carbon capture and sequestration to remove emissions from fossil fuel plants. In that case yes, clean energy will always be more expensive than dirty energy. But again it doesn’t have to be. Many clean technologies are getting quite competitive with even the cheapest fossil fuels. And they will become more so over time, as both their cost of production comes down and the cost of fossil fuels go up. I’d say the likelihood of both those things happening is pretty high.
In addition, there is another way to reduce emissions intensity that has nothing to do with whether you reduce the emissions intensity of the energy source or not. That is to improve energy productivity — i.e., the level of output achieved from the energy consumed. At least implicitly, Klaus makes the assumption that energy productivity cannot be improved. I think it’s pretty obvious that’s not true. On a previous thread I mentioned the results of an economy-wide analysis of energy productivity. What they found was that it could be improved to the point were it could provide an average internal rate of return of 17 percent, which represents a total savings of $900 billion per year over current rates of consumption. Moreover, that savings would also deliver up to half of the abatement of global GHG required to cap the long-term concentration of GHG in the atmosphere to 450-550 parts per million. And that assumes we do nothing whatsoever to reduce the emissions intensity of the energy consumed. Of course, if we do, so much the better. And imagine how far we could get if we invested that $900 billion/yr into clean energy.
I don’t know if it makes me a USEFUL IDIOT or not, but the reasons described above I’m not buying the baloney that dramatically cutting GHG emissions has to hurt the economy. In fact, there’s every indication it would help.
12. SteaM | March 13th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Mark,
Humans have evolved and survived for a long time. Some science has suggested that the earliest known human fossils are from seven million years ago.
We have been around a long time and survived a lot.
To suggest that, as a solution, climate change alarmists are asking for people to simply die off in mass numbers or destroy country’s economies is interesting. I’m not buying it.
Because if we do nothing we will die off in massive numbers anyways. Poorer economies? How about rivers and lakes drying up? These are sources of water for millions of people in our country alone. And communities like in Africa that rely on their fishing industry are in trouble as well as climate change threatens the fish population.
13. Sunny | March 13th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Ok, Dennis, I?ll bite. If the US went to war in Iraq for cheap oil, then why are gas prices so high in America? Freedom1
For severl reason freedom. First, very poor planning on the part of the Bush administration. They thought they would go in and set up shop in Iraq and run the middle east from all of the military bases and that enormous embassy. However, there was more resistance than expected and the country eventually erupted into civil war. So, here we are, stuck in Iraq pouring 12 billion dollars a month into trying to fix our mess, and in the mean time OPEC is telling us to go screw ourselves. Great plan, huh? How much was oil before we invaded Iraq? Please answer that question. Your response was idiotic.
14. winnowhead | March 13th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
TiredofLibBullSh**, get your self righteous head out of your (expletive deleted). Of course C02 is “natural”, and of course humans breath it out. Of course it will still exist if we stop burning fossil fuels. And you think this is profound, how exactly?
15. Pansy | March 13th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
“In my view, we should make efforts to pollute less and clean up our messes from the good stewardship mindset.”
This sort of mewling, limp-wristed, pinko tree-hugging has now infected the conservative blogosphere. Run for the hills, people.
16. TiredofLibBullSh** | March 13th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
minihead…..
YOU STATE - “humans don’t “make” CO2″, “What we breath out has nothing to do with global warming, period.” AND “I don’t get why you think it’s noteworthy to point out that we breath out C02.”
You present that the only source of CO2 that “damages” the planet is that of burning fossil fuels and CO2 from other sources is of no concern. If not, then you need to learn to write.
Being, “self righteous” as you say has nothing to do with being informed, while individuals such as yourself have no clue what is going on and what is worse - you can vote!
17. winnowhead | March 13th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
(Expletive Deleted),
Breathing out C02 has no effect on global warming, period. You’re frankly a fool if you think it’s significant; all that carbon came from the atmosphere in the first place.
You’re just giving us more reasons you call you a fool when you say garbage like that.
18. JS | March 13th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
17. winnowhead
“Breathing out C02 has no effect on global warming, period”
What are you, some kind of NASA scientist? Prove it. Where is the study that proves that claim? or are you barking out of the wrong end?
Cmon, lets see it.
19. Freedom1 | March 13th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
The “answers” to my question -
“Ok, Dennis, I?ll bite. If the US went to war in Iraq for cheap oil, then why are gas prices so high in America?”
- are moronic. The anti-war morons said we went into Iraq for Iraq’s oil. Well, now the US military controls most of Iraq and the US military controls the Iraqi oil fields. If we went into Iraq for cheap oil, then what’s stopping America from just taking Iraq’s oil?!? OPEC? OPEC and what army?! The American military is right there and is in control of Iraq’s oil fields. The other members of OPEC couldn’t do a damn thing if we wanted to take Iraq’s oil for ourselves.
Iraq is floating on a sea of oil. If we really waged war in Iraq for oil, then we would have a vast and endless source of cheap oil that would send prices of gasoline in America plummeting.
The anti-war claims that we waged war in Iraq for cheap oil are totally bogus and everyone can see how bogus they are every time people fill up at the gas station.
20. winnowhead | March 13th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
You’ve got to be kidding. Use your common sense. The carbon in the C02 we breath out comes from the food we eat. The food we eat ultimately gets its carbon from the atmosphere.
It’s called elementary school.
Please provide you’re learned contrary evidence or shut up.
21. Retired Spook | March 13th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Breathing out C02 has no effect on global warming, period. You’re frankly a fool if you think it’s significant; all that carbon came from the atmosphere in the first place.
The carbon in the C02 we breath out comes from the food we eat. The food we eat ultimately gets its carbon from the atmosphere.
Winnow, I understand the process of respiration, whereby CO2 sequestered at some point in plants that we eat or in plants that animals eat which are then subsequently eaten by us. What I’ve never quite understood is where the CO2 that is released when fossil fuels are burned came from originally. Since you seem to be the resident expert on sources of CO2, perhaps you could explain it in terms that the rest of us could understand. Clearly there seems to be a difference between the CO2 emitted when a mammal eats, say a potato and the CO2 that is emitted when a potato is left in the oven too long and burned into a little pile of ash. Can you explain the difference?
22. SteaM | March 13th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Sure the food we eat should come from energy that came from the sun.
However, if we eat meat that was produced in a corporate farm using coal and oil for fuel then we are actually geting energy from carbon that used to be safely stored underground. There it was unable to go into the atmosphere. It was meant to stay there.
If we eat fast food, or restaurant food, or food from the grocery store that was produced in a way that it was derived mostly from energy that came from those fossil fuels that had previously been stored underground then we are moving that carbon from the ground and placing it into the atmosphere.
In other words, we used to have a balance whereas the sun provided energy and animals ate the plants, aniumals ate the other animals, and the trees and oceans absorbed the excess carbon. A perfect balance.
NOW, we have carbon that we are taking from beneath the earth’s surface from many millions of years ago, and putting it into the atmosphere. We are not living a sustainable life.
Read my lips. What we are doing tips the balance of what we have known for millions of years. We are now moving carbon that was safely stored in the ground… into the atmosphere and throwing off the balance.
23. Mark Noonan | March 13th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
Winnow,
Where do you think all the carbon in the atmosphere comes from? You think its from Haliburton factory creating matter ex nihilo?
24. winnowhead | March 14th, 2008 at 1:07 am
Mark,
You say, “Where do you think all the carbon in the atmosphere comes from? You think its from Haliburton factory creating matter ex nihilo?” No, matter doesn’t come from nowhere. Again I ask, what’s your point? I should be asking you the question of “where” the C02 is coming from. Carbon, and the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, is naturally occurring. No one questions that. The issue is: what is the effect of rapidly transferring trillions of tons of carbon from inside the earth into the atmosphere in the blink of a geological eye? What does that do to the earth’s complex atmospheric system? Again, it seems obvious you don’t care about the question or the answer: you’re blindly tied to the idea that government regulations of industry and human activity in general is somehow an evil, so you simply reject any problem that might require us, as humans, to coordinate our activities a bit.
The horror! A mandated 10% auto fuel efficiency gain is so horrible to contemplate I must disregard all common sense and reason to avoid it! Solar energy subsidies: the horror! Burning fossil fuels is my religion: don’t tread on me!
Retired Spook,
I’m not sure what you’re getting at, but the carbon from fossil fuels are from long dead organic matter that has been been deposited in the earth.
SteaM,
The way we produce our food is eminently important - ie, how energy intensive the production process is, and how much energy is consumed shipping that food to our tables. But the carbon in the food we eat is ultimately coming from the atmosphere. That’s what I’m addressing - the lame attempt on the part of global warming apologists to say “humans breath out C02! what’s next, are the environmentalists going to ban exhaling!?” It’s a stupid exercise in nonsense.
25. Almiranta | March 14th, 2008 at 1:37 am
“There seems to be latent within humanity a desire to control things..”
I suggest that this would be more accurate if it read: “There seems to be latent within SOME GROUPS OF humanity a desire to control things..”
Because this is the most basic difference between the Left and the Right, liberals and conservatives. The former believes that there is an inherent right for some to control others, while the latter disagrees and believes that individuals should be free to control their own destinies.
At the heart of every “liberal” plan or dream is an elite core which decides what is good for the whole, what can and cannot be done, what is and what is not permissable, what any individual does or does not “deserve”, what anyone can keep or how it should be distributed to others…..
In the case of the climate hysterics, the underlying theme is how to change people, how to dictate to them how they will or can live, and this is based on the determination of the self-appointed elites.
26. TiredofLibBullSh** | March 14th, 2008 at 5:36 am
MY GOD, you people are dense!!!!
CO2 that we exhale comes from the food we eat and how it was produced.. So if we stop consuming food, then the amount of CO2 we exhale decreases??? That is what you fools are saying.
Are you serious?
So food grown naturally in the sun and hand picked contains less carbon than those that were grown on a “corporate farm”????
Where did you get your facts from Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance?
Wow, talk about government school and environmentalist indoctrination.
CO2 is 1 carbon atom bonded with 2 oxygen atoms - basic chemistry. CO2 from burning fossil fuels has the same chemical structore. CO2 is CO2 whether it is a result of burning fossil fuels, ethanol, methanol, alcohol, wood, paper, dried leaves etc. etc. etc.
The CO2 we exhale has the same properties/consequences (if any) as the CO2 resulting from combustion of any organic substance on the environment.
So, what you are saying is if a person exhales 1 kg of CO2 and 1 kg of CO2 is produced from the combustion of fossil fuels - the only CO2 that has an adverse effect on the environment is the 1 kg of CO2 from the combustion of fossil fuels????
I would like to see the logic and the “science” behind that.
And to think, these people who believe this garbage CAN VOTE!!!!
Pathetic and scary at the same time.
27. winnowhead | March 14th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
BullShit,
You are a freaking idiot. No one said there is a chemical difference between the C02 we breath out and the C02 from burning fossil fuels.
Are you serious? In the sense that if we stop eating food, WE DIE, then yes, we breath out less C02. But it’s irrelevant because our breathing out of C02 IS NOT SIGNIFICANT BECAUSE IT CAME FROM THE ATMOSPHERE IN THE FIRST PLACE. What part of that don’t you understand?
If I take a gallon of water from the bath tub and then pour it back in, I’m not increasing the amount of H20 in the bath tub. That’s what breathing is like.
If I take a gallon or water out of my toilet and pour it in the bath tub, I’ve got an extra gallon in the tub, and eventually, if I keep doing it, my bath tub will overflow. That’s what moving carbon from the earth into the atmosphere is like.
Do you need pretty pictures, too?
28. SteaM | March 14th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
The perfectly healthy salad with disease fighting, cancer fighting, and immune system boosting qualities can be made from food I can produce in my own yard. Free of chemicals if that is how I choose to grow it.
If I buy it at a fast food place where the food was produced on corporate farms, shipped to processing plants, processed, then packaged (using oil-based packaging), then shipped to the stores to be put together in a nice oil-based plastic container which I then pick up in the drive thru with my car (which runs on oil), and take it home and eat it with plastic utensils (also made from oil)…………
sheesh… do you see what I mean? Growing your own food is sustainable but that doesn’t mean you have to grow it all. It can be grown locally to at least save the fossil fuels that are needed for shipping across the country or even from overseas.
Sustainability. This is the key word here. The way we as humans live right now is unsustainable. Therefore, if we do not change. We will probably go extinct or our numbers will be greatly reduced. Many species (as many as 75% by 2050) will just become extinct.
Happen to notice the story today about banning salmon fishing in parts of the west coast because the fish numbers are dangerously low? It’s because their habitat has changed…
29. TiredofLibBullSh** | March 14th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Minihead… you are hopeless. Your idea that we do not produce CO2 is a joke and completely stupid.
“If I take a gallon of water from the bath tub and then pour it back in, I’m not increasing the amount of H20 in the bath tub. That’s what breathing is like.”
Using your stupid logic, if I seal you in a room that is air tight. You will not suffocate because, according to you with your stupid bathtub analogy, the level of CO2 will not change because the CO2 you will expel comes from what is already in the atmosphere and not yourself. Okay, try it! Perform an experiment for science. Seal yourself in a room and see if you do not pass out because of increased CO2 in the room. Hint: get a friend (if you have any) to stand by to save your sorry butt before you suffocate.
I did not say stop eating food altogether. Just that if we stop eating food for a period of time before our next meal the amount of CO2 we expel, according to you, will be less. Because the CO2 we expel comes from the food we eat or the atmosphere (whichever your changing argument is now) and not us.
My second grade child has a better understanding of the breathing process than you do.
Definitely the one who needs the pretty pictures is your ignorant self. I can see how the myths of global warming and the disasterous effects of climate change that are just around the corner are so readily acceptable by you. Your understanding of basic biology, chemistry and science is severely lacking.
So, if we have increased population, we need increased food supplies. More food plants need more CO2. So again if using your stupid arguments that CO2 is a zero sum balance, where will we get the additional CO2 for the additional plants to consume? If we do pull additional carbon out of the ground, how will the additional food plants get the necessary additional CO2 that will be needed? - don’t bother answering you will just humiliate yourself further.
Here’s another hint - do not audition for “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader” it will be an embarrassing experience - stick to Jerry Springer.
30. TiredofLibBullSh** | March 14th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
SteaM, if you are talking of the “carbon footprint” for producing food then simply say so. Don’t make it sound like food grown a certain way changes the carbon content of the food itself.
The salmon you are talking about are salmon in ONE SPECIFIC RIVER - the Klamath River. Ban fishing on 700 miles of coastline to save salmon in ONE RIVER - typical liberal over-reaction. Poor water management is the so-called culprit and not global warming or climate change.
31. winnowhead | March 14th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
BullShit,
I’m not going to bother arguing with you anymore. Educate yourself if you you can muster the energy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle
32. TiredofLibBullSh** | March 14th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
minihead, let me remind you of you original quote:
“What we breath out has nothing to do with global warming, period.” AND “I don’t get why you think it’s noteworthy to point out that we breath out C02.”
You stated that the CO2 we expel has nothing to do with global warming but the CO2 produced from fossil fuels do.
You said it!!! So who’s the idiot! If that is not “what you meant” then repeat basic writing along with basic science, biology and chemistry.
33. TiredofLibBullSh** | March 14th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Wow, minihead…..
“I?m not going to bother arguing with you anymore.”
Seems you need to stop arguing with yourself, because you lost it.
You need to learn to read….
C6H12O6 + 6O2 ? 6CO2 + 6H2O.
The organic compounds absorbed from food in our bodies (C6H12O6) react with oxygen (6O2) and PRODUCES CO2 (6CO2) and water (6H2O), which we expel through respiration. We produce CO2 - Basic biology.
The process is reversed in plants and other processes.
Thanks for proving my and Mark’s point.
34. winnowhead | March 14th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
And I’ll repeat it. Our breathing out of C02 does not contribute to global warming, but the burning of fossil fuels does.
Again, the carbon we breath out was originally absorbed by plants via photosynthesis out of the atmosphere. When we “breath it back out,” we’re simply putting it back where it was earlier in the carbon cycle. When you quote the chemisty, you’re not saying anything I haven’t already. You’re apparently missing the point altogether.
But now I’m really done repeating myself. You’re free to get the last word in, as you clearly relish it.
35. TiredofLibBullSh** | March 15th, 2008 at 8:08 am
So, minihead…..
“Our breathing out of C02 does not contribute to global warming, but the burning of fossil fuels does.”
The atmosphere and plants can discriminate between CO2 from humans and CO2 from combustion of fossil fuels.
OK….what about the CO2 space between your ears?