Some typical Greenie ignorance -- with a reply

First below the Greenie effusion then below that a comment on it:

Hydrogen: Nature's way

Not only is the burning of hydrocarbons forming carbon dioxide, which is contributing to global warming, but it is also contributing to a loss of free oxygen in the atmosphere. What is the significance?

There were only a set number of atoms created. The planet Earth was allotted a share of atoms that over the eons of time would neither increase or decrease. What does happen is chemicals can combine. Millions of examples could be sited for materials being oxidized, but overall the number of atoms assigned to the planet Earth does not change.

However the planet Earth evolved, a miraculous evolution took place in which life forms created a sustainable process. Two systems were devised, vegetation and animal. The animal form created used oxygen as the power chemical which energized living cells to acquire chemicals - food - needed to maintain their "life." This life form used the oxygen to combine with carbon and form carbon dioxide. Here nature stepped in to create vegetation - a non-mobile form of life - that had the capability of using the carbon dioxide and within a complex process associated with sunlight disassociated the oxygen from the carbon, releasing the oxygen back into the atmosphere for use by the animal life and burying the carbon in the earth. The animal life contributed to the overall cycle by dying, rotting and providing "fertilizer" for the plant life. Nature created an almost perfect system!

Now the human form of life has invaded a well organized growth process. Finally, man began to imagine machinery, an achievement that had varying results. Fire for heat, boiling water and cooking goes back many thousands of years. The discovery that hydrocarbons burned and gave off large amounts of heat was for a time very useful, but then man became blind to the future.

Animal life, human life, burning of small amounts of hydrocarbons all creating carbon dioxide, could be tolerated. Vegetation would break down the carbon dioxide and restore the oxygen to the atmosphere, but then man with little foresight launched into mass consumption of hydrocarbon fluids/solids. As we know now the resulting "greenhouse gas" is slowly, but surely, changing the balance of nature. Carbon dioxide gas resulting from this folly is already causing climatic weather changes in the form of heat, which is now being recognized and proven with science, but this usage is also robbing the atmosphere of oxygen.

Is there a solution? Certainly. Use hydrogen. Are there drawbacks? Yes, but only for a moment in time. This gas can be extracted from several almost inexhaustible sources - water and vegetation. The simplest solution for obtaining hydrogen is the process of electrolysis of water. Other processes can extract hydrogen from vegetation - economically.

The use of hydrogen would be ideal from nature's point of view since burning hydrogen creates water, replacing the water that was electrolyzed. If done properly, the electrolysis would be done by sun power, therefore the only energy involved would be heat from the sun which would otherwise be dispersed into space. Nature's plan for recycling would be maintained.

Harold Thompson, Pasadena

Reply:

It disturbs me that the Star-News would publish the wad of misinformation parading as some kind of lecture by letter writer Harold Thompson (Oct. 6, "Your view"). Virtually everything he wrote is either completely wrong or so incomplete as to be meaningless.

For example, Thompson's notion that the number of atoms in the universe is fixed along with the Earth's portion thereof, is hilariously wrong. The nuclear reactions that power the universe consume, destroy and create uncountable numbers of atoms every second. On Earth, radioactivity, cosmic ray collisions with matter, nuclear reactors, fusion and fission nuclear weapons all consume or create atoms by altering the atomic nucleus. Sunlight comes from such reactions - this is taught in elementary school!

After an error of that magnitude, why would anyone assign any credibility at all to what Thompson wrote? His errors on global warming and hydrogen fuels are particularly bad, as they advance popular misconceptions that can result in poor public policy like the emissions bill just signed by Gov. Schwarzenegger.

Contrary to Thompson, it is not known whether increased atmospheric carbon dioxide can cause global warming. It is rather amusing that he seems unaware of acknowledging this himself when he says "science is proving" it - agreement that it is currently unproven.

The 0.5 degree Celsius increase in atmospheric temperature in the past century is not at all unusual by geologic standards that considerably predate fossil fuel consumption. The statement (as fact) of weather disruption from global warming is completely foundationless, although currently a popular notion.

The assertion that the atmosphere is being "robbed" of oxygen sounds dramatic but is just more twaddle. If this is speculation about oxygen migrating through combustion to carbon dioxide, consider that oxygen makes up 21 percent of the atmosphere; carbon dioxide makes up far less at 0.04 percent. The last few decades' increase in carbon dioxide is approximately .01 percent by the same measure.

Even if all the extra carbon dioxide came from atmospheric oxygen (it doesn't), it would "deplete" 0.05 percent of the oxygen. This, with a substantial overestimate, qualifies as "robbing" the atmosphere? The natural variability of oxygen dwarfs this tiny effect.

The National Academy of Sciences this summer renounced support for the conclusions of the much ballyhooed original report by Michael Mann on global warming. Specifically, the reconstruction of historical temperatures (pre-1600s) was found to be too inaccurate to allow the report's conclusions. There were other serious flaws, almost all of which, for some reason, erred in a way that would increase the predicted temperatures.

Hydrogen fuel, per Thompson, is just the item to put nature back in balance. The fuel cycle of hydrogen is from water, dissociation into oxygen and hydrogen, then combustion back to water. Even a perfect process for this cycle - banned by the second law of thermodynamics - requires as much energy as it consumes for a net of zero. A real process must consume energy - so there is a net loss. If the free hydrogen is removed to be used as fuel, the entire energy yield of the fuel must also be supplied from some other source.

Further, hydrogen has to be highly compressed to be comparable to gasoline, which means large, heavy tanks (gas cylinders), estimated to triple the total weight of a passenger car. Storage is difficult and very dangerous. The fact that it generates little or no pollution would appear to be of secondary importance given that it can't be used.

Andrew K. Gabriel, South Pasadena

The reply above is probably a bit too negative about the future feasibility of hydrogen technology for cars but otherwise seems sound




Free enterprise protects the environment

It is good news that many world travelers have learned the truth about market capitalism. Contrary to the slogans of demonstrators throughout the world, the nations that have the best track records on environmental protection and improvement are those with the highest amount of free-market capitalism. Make no mistake, the anti-capitalism demonstrators often add environmentalism to their claimed objectives solely because it attracts many gullible young persons and appears to legitimize their activities, which often have little or nothing to do with the environment.

Nations with the freest economic systems are the ones whose citizens can afford the luxury of protecting their environments. Conversely, persons living in command-and-control economies barely surviving on life's necessities of food, clothing, and shelter use their natural resources to the absolute limit. They have no other choice in providing for themselves and their families. As family incomes rise, the improving quality of life allows people to devote more resources to solving environmental problems. Thus, with expanding societal wealth under free-market economies, environmental degradation is first arrested and then reversed. Society goes through a form of "environmental transition." After the transition, greater wealth and technology improve environmental quality instead of worsening it.

Because the goals of the environmental movement are positive and constructive and already have strong support, the movement has earned its right to lead--as long as it relies on scientific accuracy, fairness and balance, and persuading the public through sound information. Unfortunately, the environmental movement of late has displaced a great deal of expected scientific accuracy with an increasing use of junk science, which we will define as "the art of utilizing selective rather than comprehensive data to prove a theory or hypothesis, in order to obtain either an economic or political advantage."

Beware the individual, group, or organization that relentlessly attacks the free enterprise system, bashes big business, and bashes corporations. Too often their real agenda is power--power to remake the economic and social systems to suit their own command-and-control goals, not to serve the public good as they so loudly proclaim. Free enterprise capitalism provides the economic lifeblood for many of the world's poor. The late senator Paul Tsongas said in his speech at the 1992 Democratic Convention, "You cannot redistribute wealth you never created. You can't be pro-jobs and anti-business at the same time. You cannot love employment and hate employers."

The extremes of big government socialism and communism have been tried and found wanting in many nations, but their principles still dominate the thinking in world environmental conferences and are widely taught in many major U.S. universities. For three-quarters of a century the Soviet Union was touted as the model of what a planned economy could do for its people. To the embarrassment of many economics professors, it imploded. It could never afford environmental protection or improvement.

Environmentalists who sincerely desire to advance their cause must disassociate themselves from anti-capitalists and destroyers of the social orders of communities, nations, and the world. Nothing highlights this problem more than the Heidelberg Statement, which was signed in the spring of 1993 by 250 prominent scientists, including 27 Nobel Prize winners. It noted, "We are worried at the emergence of an irrational ideology which is opposed to scientific and industrial progress and impedes economic and social development. The greatest evils which stalk our Earth are ignorance and oppression, not science, technology, and industry. We do forewarn the authorities in charge of our planet's destiny against decisions which are supported by pseudo-scientific arguments or false and non-relevant data."

Many sincere environmentalists are unaware that the real goals of the World Summits (Rio de Janeiro, Montreal, Kyoto, etc.) are not mainly related to the environment but rather are intended to manufacture global crises in order to promote plans for a New World Order. The essence of this would be a major loss of national sovereignty to some form of world government--a loss of national sovereignty to planning groups that would control practically all aspects of energy use, technology development, resource management, and the mandatory redistribution of wealth from the have nations to the have-not ones. For all practical purposes, free enterprise and capitalism would disappear.

Source




A world without people

There are an increasing number of commentators who believe that the planet would be better off without the presence of human beings on it. The current issue of New Scientist goes one step further to speculate what it might look like.

The premise of the article is that human beings disappear overnight. `The sad truth is, once the humans get out of the picture, the outlook starts to get a lot better,' says a conservation biologist from California. Nature would be able to reclaim the fields and pastures, and make new habitats in deserted buildings. `Light pollution' would disappear from the skies. Forests would return to their natural state. Nuclear reactors might catch fire or explode, but even there ecosystems would thrive. Strangely, it's not all good news for nature. Some ecosystems have thrived in the presence of human activity and might fail if we were to disappear.

In terms of leaving a legacy, however, the mark of mankind will be pretty shortlived in the great scheme of things. As the article concludes: `The humbling - and perversely comforting - reality is that the Earth will forget us remarkably quickly.' What would be more accurate is that without the presence of an intelligent lifeform, the Earth would be a pointless rock flying through space.

What is remarkable is that the producers of Britain's most widely read science magazine, who should be celebrating the increasing capacity of human beings to understand and shape the world, have so little regard for humanity's interests. Instead, they seem to dismiss the great progress we have made in conquering the problems that nature confronts us with, prefering to fantasise about our demise. While environmentalists speculate about humanity destroying itself through `ecocide', it is the increasingly fashionable desire to dismiss our existence as pointless which is more likely to herald disaster.

Source





JAPAN'S KYOTO GAP WIDENS AS EMISSION RISE AND RISE

Japan's greenhouse gas emissions rose 0.6 percent in the fiscal year to March as oil consumption for heating climbed, taking it further from its Kyoto Protocol target to cut pollution, the government said on Tuesday. Japan's Environment Ministry said preliminary data showed emission of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (CO2), were 1.364 billion tonnes in the fiscal year, reversing a slight decline in 2004-2005 and 14.1 percent above its Kyoto target.

The increase may be a further blow to the global pact to cut emissions of greenhouse gases that are blamed for global warming, as most European countries are lagging Kyoto targets, and may be an embarrassment to Japan, where the pact was signed. "To achieve its Kyoto target Japan needs a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme -- I think Japan can't succeed in its Kyoto target," said Kuniyuki Nishimura, director of the global warming research division of Mitsubishi Research Institute. "The biggest factor for the rise was winter heating at homes and offices," a ministry official told Reuters, pointing to a winter that was the coldest in two decades.

The emission volumes were up 8.1 percent from the benchmark year of 1990 for Kyoto, under which Japan has to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 6 percent from 1990 levels by the 2008-2012 period. Analysts say it will struggle without placing mandatory caps on industrial emissions, like in Europe.

It may also need to dramatically increase investment in CO2-credit projects in developing nations, which it can use to offset higher pollution levels at home.

Source

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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