Quote:
Originally Posted by DJRoss
So if the atmosphere currently contains approx .038% co2, how much becomes too much?
I honestly believe that the earth is resilient enough to handle the fossil fuel issue, but that is not a reason to ignore the opportunities to truly develop alternatives. I am afraid however that in spite of the mantra out there and even the so called push by the seven sisters (big oil) to invest in alternative research that the huge reserves in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado will be too enticing to for oil companies to ignore. What really surprises me is why no noise on the clean burn front regarding maintaining the status quo of using fossil fuels, but research technology to clean the burn so to speak. I could get excited about new techniques in distilling or in processing or new motor technology that can convert the burn off into water vapor instead of carbon monoxide.
I don't deny the world is getting warmer, I am not sure how much an impact industry really has on creating this situation. I mean if you give everyone on earth a square yard to stand in, the entire earths population could fit in the state of Delaware. I mean if co2 levels get over .04% of the entire atmosphere will that be disastrous? I mean the alarmist mantra really scares people. My friends daughter came home crying because her teacher told her that we are killing the earth and that if we don't act now global warming would destroy the planet. I mean come on, that is just crazy talk.
I really like this article in the Boston Globe written by Bjørn Lomborg a Danish scientist who is part of the committee that share the peace prize with Gore. He is a professor adjunct at the Copenhagen School of Business:
An Inconvenient Peace Prize |
I may have been too loose in my assessment of co2 levels. They are growing at a rapid pace, and are beginning to make changes to our environment. However, these changes are unlikely to be catastrophic, and would not rival the sweeping changes that have occurred in our environment over the last 1-2 million years.
The main reason I don't care as much as I probably should about global warming is the fact that almost all of the species that have ever lived on the planet have gone extinct (somewhere between 98 and 99.9 percent. I lean toward the latter figure from what I've seen) and the earth will continue to be inhabited for another 5 billion years or so. Small groups of humans have gone extinct because of their destruction of their environment (chopping down all the trees on their island, for instance) and if we end up destroying our environment, then we'll go extinct too. In the grand scheme of things, no big deal.
Still, I don't see that happening, as even Al Gore's version of events has a few large cities being destroyed as the worst that will happen, which would be a very minor inconvenience, again in the grand scheme.
Edit: That article that DJ posted is great, and closely mirrors my thoughts.