Burning Carbon Raises a Stink: Life's Carbon Footprint

I was going to title this entry: "Burning Carbon and Burning Chrome Raise a Stink", mainly fo rthe alliteration, but I decided against it. The reference is too exoteric, and the connection not obvious. "Burning Chrome" is a reference to the modern "school" of science fiction represented by authors like William Bibason and Burce Sterling--somewhat like Michael Crichton's "Next". That kind of science fiction tends to deal more with computer/virtual reality than with spaceships and ray guns. I still have a little bit of a hankering for the spaceships and ray guns. No wonder I don't have a cell phone, or text message. The wilder speculations of the "burning chrome" writers about the impact of computer "reality" have not really come to pass, despite the explosion of the internet, as computers seem to have become a massive aid to instant, impersonal communication, rather than creating a new world of "virtual reality." I digress (sort of).

"Burning Carbon" refers to the process by which essentially all life on Earth is based. See the previous entry, to which this is a follow up. All life on Earth is carbon based. Without carbon, life on Earth could not exist--at least in its current form. Further, CO2 (the main "greenhouse gas" condemned by Obama and the radical environmentalists), is an essential part of the life cycle of life on Earth. Unlike carbon monoxide, CO2 is a harmless (leaving aside "global warming") natural component of our atmosphere. It is exhaled by the breathing of every "higher" animal on this planet. That is because the energy that fuels are body is produced by the "burning" of carbon (just like burning coal produces energy). Not the least of the "crimes" of "global warming" advocates is their demonization of CO2.

From elementary school science, we learn that the energy producing reaction in animals produces CO2 as a "waster" product. However, CO2 is a plant food. Since plants take energy directly from the sun (making plants superior to anmals, I guess, in the Obama universe), plants produce energy by a different reaction. This reaction produces oxygen as a "waste" product. In other words, plants exhale oxygen. You can see how this cycle fits neatly together (you can see evidence of God in this sort of thing, if you try hard enough--not enough evidence to make me other than an aganostic, but evidence nonetheless). Note that the process is largely self-correcting. That is, more CO2 helps produce more plant life, which metabolizes the CO2--a natural "scrubber". See my nightmare in the previous entry of endless CO2 "scrubbers" across our l landscape. We already have them. They are called "trees".

Note further that all life requires energy. That is because "life" represents a localized reversal of "entropy"--of chaos. Organization against chaos requires energy. All energy production produces heat (disorganized energy--chaos) as a byproduct. In other words, not only are our exhalations putting a "greenhouse gas" into the atmosphere, but our very bodies are heating up the Earth as they produce the energy we require to live--to stand up against the destructive forces of chaos. That is true of every living thing on this planet--especially of every animal.

Not to worry. The total amount of energy/heat produced by man (whether by activities or as part of our very existence) is minuscule. How can I say "miniuscule". Easy. Because it is--in comparison with the sun. So when we heat our houses, or cool our houses, we are warming the Earth. But it is such a small thing, in comparison with the fusion/thermonuclear reactions occurring in the sun and radiating to us, that even radical environmentalists, who dare almost any distortion, have not dared to suggest that our mere production of energy heats up the Earth. Yep. You can take it to the bank. "Alternative" energy of any kind--even solar, because of the electricity it produces--heats up the Earth. The effect is just so minuscule that it does not matter.

But why should we assume that relatively small (in comparison with the entire atmosphere) amounts of additional CO2 (greenhouse gas or not--and it is one) will have more of an effect on changing the "temperature" of the Earth than our puny energy output? The sun is still there. Why is it not enormously more of a factor than the activities of man--including greenhouse gases? Well, it is. And that is why the "theory" of "global warming" is so suspect. It is speculation driven by political agenda, rather than science. The theory takes one fact--the existence of the greenhouse effect on a small scale--and then takes advantage of our ignorance of the physics of both the atmosphere and the temperature of the Earth, to build a mammoth house of cards based on computer "models" ("models" which pretty much ignore other factors that go into temprature, such as changes in the sun, ocean currents, precipitation, etc.).

You thought I would never get to "burning chrome", didn't you? Yes, we have reached the use of computer models to give a spurious "certainty" to a vague "theory" that has successfully predicted nothing. Computers--despite Gibson, et. al. and artificial intelligence people--do not do the tinking here. They just take the human assumptions, driven by political agenda, and crunch the numbers.

That is why "burning chrome" has not been predictive, in the main. Does "virtual reality" produce infrastructure? Nope. It does not build bridges. Sure, it can speed up design, if you know what you are doing. Virtual reality does not produce electricity. It does not produce a correct model of the temperature of the Earth, unless the factors going into that temperature are accurate. How can they be accurate, when we cannot even predict hurricanes from year to year, or temperature from year to year? It is all a hoax (the "certainty", or even likelihood, of it). Note CO2 is not otherwise a "pollutant"--being plant food and a naturally occurring part of our atmosphere. Therefore, it is ridiculous to say that we "should" reduce CO2 anyway, and thus there is no "harm" in fighting against "global warming".

No harm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (lol). Read the previous entry carefully again. The harm is that we are on the way to destroying ourselves and our standard of living--on our way to crucifying ourselves on a cross of "global warming". "Cap and trade", especially of an aggressive type promised by Obama, will destroy whatever industrial base we have left. It will dramatically increase the cost of energy. It will drastically decrease jobs and our standard of living.

What about the jobs that will be "created". Ah-hah. I knew you had not been paying attention to this blog. That is merely a "central planning" attempt to force "global warmng" down our throat. It is guaranteed to produce incredible amounts of fraud and waste, as people like good old T. Boone (Pickens) line up to feed off of the government teat. T. Boone, of course, is touting a carbon burning fuel (in addition to wind and solar). People are going to come out of the woodwork to get government (your, if you are among the half that pay significant taxes) money. Projects will flower that have no other reality (talk about "virtual reality") other than the flow of government subsidies. Then people will wonder why our economy is ruined, as everything becomes more expensive (a hidden tax, in addition to the actual tax on industrial civilization represented by "cap and trade"). I am not exaggerating when I say that "global warming" (really always an excuse for the socialism Wall Street has now signed up for) hold enormous potential for producing the downfall of Western Civilization.

The Hell of it is: The Earth is no longer warming. Yes, for the last 10 years or so the Earth has not warmed (from any cause, much less the activities of man). We our ruining ourselves over a problem that is vague, unclear, and proving itself false.

Did not the Earth "warm" for decades. Yes, but from 1940 to 1970 it had cooled for decades. As this blog has often said, once dinosaurs roamed the Earth. It was very hot. Then woolly mammoths roamed the Earth. I was very cold. Luckily, we had global warming, which made civilization possible (all without man influencing the process, despite excerpts in this blog rom time to time, from the "Ice Age Times", about the attempt by Al Gorice, in the last Ice Age, to prevent the destruction of the Ice Age way of life by limiting fire).

Will our country survive either Obama or McCain? I have my doubts (although, as stated in the previous entry, the risk with Obama is probably extreme, especially in combination with Pelosi and Reid).