LiveWire

(A Post by Maynard)

Al Gore has been back in the news lately with his Inconvenient Truth movie. It’s worth taking a moment to review the facts and fantasies of the global warming scare.

The basic fact is that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been growing since the onset of the industrial revolution, when we started to burn stuff. The current figure is 380 ppm (“parts per million”) and rising, which is about a 40% increase over the pre-industry base. This is actually a very small percentage of the atmosphere (380 ppm is .038%), meaning that 99.962% of the atmosphere is other stuff, like oxygen (21%) and nitrogen (78%)). But the carbon dioxide tends to absorb the sun’s energy, just like the glass on a greenhouse holds in the heat from the sun. Hence the term, “greenhouse gas”.

The recent increase in carbon dioxide is clearly the result of burning fuel. There are also natural sources of carbon dioxide, of course, such as volcanoes and natural fires, not to mention the air you exhale. Atmospheric carbon dioxide has varied over the eons, running high (maybe 300 ppm) during warm periods and low (maybe 180 ppm) during ice ages. So on the face of it, the concern about increasing carbon dioxide concentration appears legitimate. It’s fair to assume that if we tamper with a fundamental ecological parameter like this, we risk serious consequences.

But what consequences? In spite of the dire warnings, nobody really knows. Keep in mind that the problem of global warming isn’t that the temperature may rise by a degree or two; the problem is that the weather patterns could change drastically. For example, the existing ocean current pushes warm water from the tropics towards the North Atlantic, keeping Europe warmer than it would otherwise be. If those currents slow down, as they show some signs of doing, then Europe could freeze. The weather systems are much too complicated to be completely understood. Computer models are getting better as computers get more powerful, but the mystery remains. Will our climate prove resilient and dynamically self-correcting, or will it spin into wild extremes? All we can do is make our best educated guesses. By the time we know for sure, it will be too late.

So the claims of the doomsayers cannot be lightly dismissed, and caution is in order. It seems to me that, even setting aside the potential global interest in burning less stuff, we’ve got a national interest at stake as well. The more oil we burn, the more we become dependent upon the Middle East, which is, like it or not, the world’s gas tank. The oil reserves of the world are not in friendly or stable hands.

Even so, we have good reason to recoil at Al Gore’s warning. Leftists are naturally inclined to curtail our economic freedoms, and so the global warming scare dovetails nicely with the Leftist agenda. The governments of the world are being given an excuse to exert frightening new controls over every one of us. This threat should disturb freedom-loving people.

So feel free to reject the solutions of the Leftists of the world who are ready to enslave us in pursuit of their notion of salvation. But the problem may be real, and we may have to deal with it, one way or another.

Update: Today Bill Clinton, speaking in Florida, linked the uptick in Caribbean hurricanes to Republican policies. This is nonsense. Hurricane activity has historically cycled up and down, and Clinton’s allegations of a clear linkage between CO2 and the storm season is pure political opportunism. Again, the rapid increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is a fact, as is its man-made cause. The exact consequences are uncertain, although it’s a reasonable possibility that they will not be entirely benign. Unfortunately, the Democrats often seek to scare us into submission, while Republicans may thoughtlessly dismiss the possible consequences. Being smart Tammy fans, let’s try to acknowledge the facts without losing our heads.

UPDATE from Tammy 6/14:

Scientists respond to Gore’s warnings of climate catastrophe