The do-nothing machine of carbon dioxide control

January 9, 5:22 PMAuto Review ExaminerJohn Matras

Previous Next

1 comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Auto Review Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Carbon dioxide will kill the earth, we’re told, causing what doesn’t dry up and blow away to submerge under a rising tide. Earthquakes and tsunamis, record high temperatures, record lows, deepest snows and California fires. It’s all climate change and it all comes down to carbon dioxide, the ultimate so-called greenhouse gas.

So the world has launched a crusade to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. It’s a campaign that would do Don Quixote proud, though the windmills would be on his side this time. And making him money, if he signs onto the current “cap and trade” mania and other, well, quixotic campaigns.

The problem is, as Harold Ambler details in “Mr. Gore: Apology Accepted,” published in The Huffington Post, is that carbon dioxide is a trace component of the atmosphere whose impact is grossly exaggerated:

"Meanwhile, the theory that carbon dioxide 'drives' climate in any meaningful way is simply wrong… Carbon dioxide cannot absorb an unlimited amount of infrared radiation. Why not? Because it only absorbs heat along limited bandwidths, and is already absorbing just about everything it can. That is why plotted on a graph, C02's ability to capture heat follows a logarithmic curve. We are already very near the maximum absorption level. Further, the IPCC Fourth Assessment, like all the ones before it, is based on computer models that presume a positive feedback of atmospheric warming via increased water vapor."

Mr. Ambler goes on to note that the CO2 theory is wholly supposition:

"This mechanism has never been shown to exist. [Emphasis in original] Indeed, increased temperature leads to increased evaporation of the oceans, which leads to increased cloud cover (one cooling effect) and increased precipitation (a bigger cooling effect). Within certain bounds, in other words, the ocean-atmosphere system has a very effective self-regulating tendency. By the way, water vapor is far more prevalent, and relevant, in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide -- a trace gas."

The prime mover of the earth’s atmospheric temperature, says Mr. Ambler, is the furnace of the solar system, the sun.

Climate changists, however, are wedded to CO2 and to a panicky belief that we must do something now or It Will Be Too Late. (See first paragraph). Putting aside that climate change is going to happen as it always has here on Planet Earth—whether we do anything or not—or that what we do may exacerbate as well as mitigate, it is undeniable that doing something/anything will have a cost.

That includes projects to reduce CO2 emissions. The claim that investing in green projects will produce “green jobs” is only true. But putting resources—money and labor—into one activity decreases the resources available for other activities. Economists call it an opportunity cost. By putting resources into activities that will accomplish nothing—such as reducing CO2 emissions, we’re wasting resources, resources that in fact could be used for other “green” projects, or even allowing taxpayers to keep and use at their own discretion.

Part of my inheritance is a hand-held block of wood with a double crank that makes little sliders move back and forth in grooves cut into the block. There’s no link to the “outside.” Any work put into the turning the crank, even the labor and materials used to create the device, are pointless. As a novelty it’s amusing but practically it’s a waste of time. Appropriately enough it’s called a do-nothing machine.

The European Union has established regulations that limit carbon dioxide emissions, and California new cars will begin having another window sticker, one that totals “greenhouse gas” emissions—primarily carbon dioxide—so drivers can make an “informed choice” about the car they buy. But these regulations, which have real and identifiable costs, will accomplish nothing. Carbon dioxide will not end life on Earth as we know it. It’s time to turn off the do-nothing machine.

Do-Nothing Machine from Nickerson Farms. Photos by John Matras.

For more on "global warming"  read Founder of the Weather Channel warns of dramatic turn toward a colder climate by Tony Hake, Examiner.com Denver Weather Examiner.