Guest post by Steve Goreham, Climate Science Coalition of America
In an address to Green Mountain College on May 15, Carol Browner, Director of Energy and Climate Change Policy, stated “The sooner the U.S. puts a cap on our dangerous carbon pollution, the sooner we can create a new generation of clean energy jobs here in America…” In July, 2009, President Obama lauded the “Cash for Clunkers” program, stating that the initiative “gives consumers a break, reduces dangerous carbon pollution, and our dependence on foreign oil…”
Unfortunately, our President is misinformed about carbon pollution.
The phrase “dangerous carbon pollution” has become standard propaganda from environmental groups.
An example is a May, 2010 press release from the World Wildlife Fund that called for “a science-based limit on dangerous carbon pollution that will send a strong signal to the private sector.” Environmentalists have successfully painted a picture of black particle emissions into the atmosphere. This misconception is being used to drive efforts for Cap & Trade legislation, renewable energy, and every sort of restriction on our light bulbs, vehicles, and houses—all in the misguided attempt to stop climate change.
Carbon is integral to our skin, our muscles, our bones, and throughout the body of each person. Carbon forms more than 20% of the human body by weight. We are full of this “dangerous carbon pollution” by natural metabolic processes.
It’s true that incomplete combustion emits carbon particles that can cause smoke and smog. But this particulate carbon pollution is well controlled by the Clean Air Act of 1970 and many other federal and state statutes.
According to Environmental Protection Agency data, U.S. air quality today is significantly better than it was in 1980. Since 1980, airborne concentration of carbon monoxide is down 79%, lead is down 92%, nitrogen dioxide is down 46%, ozone is down 25%, and sulfur dioxide is down 71%. Carbon particulates have been tracked for fewer years, but PM10 particulates are down 31% since 1990 and PM2.5 particulates are down 19% since 2000. Over the same period, electricity consumption from coal-fired power plants rose 72% and vehicle miles driven are up 91%. We do not need Cap & Trade, Renewable Portfolio Standards, or the California Global Warming Solutions Act (AB32), to reduce carbon particulates.
Climatism! Science, Common Sense, and the 21st Century’s Hottest Topic, Figure 78, data from EPA, 2006
The target of “dirty carbon pollution” propaganda is carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is an invisible, odorless, harmless gas. It does not cause smog or smoke. Humans breathe out 100 times the CO2 we breathe in, created as our body uses sugars. But since it’s tough to call an invisible gas “dirty,” Climatists use “carbon” instead. It’s as wrong as calling water “hydrogen” or salt “chlorine.” Compounds have totally different properties than their composing elements.
Not only is carbon dioxide not a pollutant, it’s essential for life. As pointed out by geologist Leighton Steward, carbon dioxide is green! Carbon dioxide is plant food. Increased atmospheric CO2 causes plants and trees to grow faster and larger, increase their root systems, and improve their resistance to drought, as documented by hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers. Carbon dioxide is the best compound that mankind could put into the atmosphere to grow the biosphere.
This “carbon pollution” nonsense is driven by Climatism, the belief that man-made greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate. In a debate at the Global Warming Forum at Purdue University on September 27, Dr. Susan Avery, President of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, was asked “What is the strongest empirical evidence that global warming is caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions rather than natural causes?” Neither Dr. Avery nor Dr. Robert Socolow of Princeton, who also presented, could provide an answer, except the ambiguous “There is lots of evidence.” In fact, Climatism is based largely on computer model projections. There is no empirical evidence that man-made greenhouse gases are the primary cause of global warming. According to Dr. Frederick Seitz, past President of the National Academy of Sciences, “Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful.”
As Joanne Nova, Australian author, points out: “Everything on your dinner table—the meat, cheese, salad, bread, and soft drink—requires carbon dioxide to be there. For those of you who believe carbon dioxide is a pollutant, we have a special diet: water and salt.” So the next time you drink a beer or eat a meal, beware of that “dangerous carbon pollution.”
Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of Climatism! Science, Common Sense, and the 21st Century’s Hottest Topic.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Do warmists not realise that everytime they shower with a bar of soap and a sponge they are polluting themselves?
Zombie Drowned Polar Bear 10/9 9:32 PM
By your argument, oxygen would fall straight down. (It’s heavier than air.)
Balloons have nothing to do with the matter. The reason why a balloon filled with a light gas rises is that atmospheric pressure (exterior to the balloon) at the top of the balloon is less than atmospheric pressure at the bottom, so the motion of gas molecules inside the balloon exerts a net upward force. The reason why a balloon filled with a heavier-than-air gas won’t rise is that the pressure difference is not enough to overcome its weight.
That has nothing to do with what happens to gases outside a balloon. They rise because convection drives them upward. Some gases are so heavy that this doesn’t work very well, but CO2 is not one of them. The atmospheric concentration of CO2 is pretty constant up to some tens of kilometers, then it declines. Your argument is like saying that an updraft won’t lift anything heavier than air, except that you try to prove it by talking about the behavior of balloons, which is irrelevant.
Secondly, if CO2 concentrated at a low altitude, the greenhouse effect would be greater, not smaller.
Are not diamonds pure carbon?
“I’ll help you get rid of that dirty carbon on your ring.”
Zombie Drowned Polar Bear 10/9 9:32 PM
Let me add that if CO2 fell straight to the ground, the global warming alarmists could not possibly suppress this information. They don’t have magical powers. The error would be just too glaring. Hasn’t it occurred to you to see whether CO2 concentration has been measured at various altitudes? It has!
JPeden 10/9 11:03 PM
Climate Science is provenly not real science, …
That’s not true. For example, Prof. Lindzen (MIT) is a climate scientist of long standing, and he does not even accept the name “skeptic.” He calls himself a “denier” or a “realist.”
The name ‘greenhouse gas’ is incorrect, because greenhouses work by trapping warm air and not by trapping infra red radiation.
CO2 is the stuff of life. I can find no proof that CO2 is driving, or ever has driven, the global climate. Very likely the increase in atmospheric CO2 is one reason why global food production per head of population is now higher than at any time in history.
Therefore I think this statement is almost certainly true:
Carbon dioxide is not a greenhouse gas. It is a green gas.
Chris
CO2 + water + sunlight = life
The best counter sign that I can think of would be “PLANTS [large green heart symbol] Carbon Dioxide”
DirkH says:
October 9, 2010 at 11:39 am
I don’t hate science, really. I just hate that so many people use it in phrases like “I do science”, or “The science we are performing…”
That’s like a sociologist saying “I know how America thinks, because I’ve watched ‘Beavis and Butthead Do America.'”
Being bad at getting my point across, I know people doubted the accepted theories, and tried to prove them incorrect. Then they tried to supply an alternative theory. Then Occam got his razor involved. “The simplest explanation that fits the observations may be the correct one.”
Being bad at writing, I know this is fragmented. I am sorry about that.
Substitute “knowledge” for “science” and see if the sentence still makes makes sense.
Science is not a car or a bus. It is not something that you take.
Science, knowledge, is a destination, not an activity.
Knowledge, science, is to be questioned and doubted and proven to be unfalsifiable, by current methods.
It still must be questioned and doubted, though. That is what science means to me.
Even if it takes a lifetime.
“The sooner the U.S. puts a cap on our dangerous carbon pollution, the sooner we can create a new generation of clean energy jobs here in America…”
… and exactly how is the US going to manage to not repeat the “Spanish experience” with “green jobs” ? .. or make “green jobs” the new “Tammany Hall” ?
When my Senator was talking about carbon pollution I mailed him a Diet Coke.
Please go to co2u.info
Thank you
Bruce A. Kershaw
Flavio says:
October 9, 2010 at 10:16 am
“Just look at the carbon dioxide levels measured in Taylor Dome, Law Dome and Mauna Loa. This measured (not modeled) increase in CO2 is unprecedented.”
Here we go again …..(Sigh). This is where you guys always fall off your horse – drawing conclusions that end with terms like “unprecedented”, “incontrovertible” and so on that make you sound, well, “incompetent”.
Zombie Drowned Polar Bear says:
October 9, 2010 at 9:32 pm
No need to call yourself a shill. What you say is very interesting because it is based on genuine experimentation that can tell us something about how CO2 moves in the atmosphere. You will not find one climate scientist who is willing to discuss such matters. For them, the “science is settled” on the behavior of CO2 in the atmosphere; that is, they simply rely on their assumption that CO2 is randomly distributed throughout the atmosphere. Can you address my questions about how CO2 travels in the atmosphere? How does it get from Detroit, Shanghai, and Berlin to Mauna Loa? How much sense does it make to use Mauna Loa to measure CO2 concentration in the atmosphere? How much sense does it make to use a satellite or two? Where is the manmade CO2 in the atmosphere? Isn’t it mostly in the USA, Shanghai, and Berlin?
Bruce A. Kershaw says:
October 10, 2010 at 5:50 am
Please go to co2u.info
Thank you
Bruce A. Kershaw
This site has no information that cannot be deduced from the properties of the CO2 molecule and the assumption that CO2 is randomly distributed throughout the atmosphere. How about a site where folks have actually created a physical hypothesis about the behavior of CO2 in the atmosphere and done experiments to confirm it? Also, if you want to participate in the conversation, please explain these matters in your words.
Smoking Frog says:
October 10, 2010 at 3:17 am
Lindzen most emphatically denies that there is climate science beyond what has been deduced from the characteristics of the CO2 molecule, characteristics well known in 1860. He has written that a climate science based on tenths of a degree changes in temperature is nonsense.
I wish I would have been able to get to this one earlier, but here I go.
You are spot on with the analysis on pollution. There is vast confusion about the difference between pollution and CO2 emissions. I have an article how many of the “solutions” to reduce CO2 actually cause more real pollution. That is the wrong way to do.
Ethanol is the WORST possible solution. It increases ozone pollution and WASTES far more energy. Ethanol is…. sorry, proper language usage forbids what it is… I have an article on how bad it is for you gas tank and your pocket book.
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/2010/10/the-difference-between-pollution-and-co2-emissions/
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/2010/10/ethanol-i-like-it-in-my-glass/
John Kehr
The Inconvenient Skeptic
Smoking Frog writes:
“The atmospheric concentration of CO2 is pretty constant up to some tens of kilometers, then it declines.”
So, the CO2 from Detroit first goes up, through convection, and then some other convection takes it to Mauna Loa? So, because of seasonal change, there is a clear and detectable difference in flows, right? In summer, CO2 is blasting up from Detroit really fast and in winter it might not be moving upward at all, right? And I am sure that our excellent climate scientists have done the work to confirm their physical hypotheses which explain this behavior; using new physical hypotheses that are not merely deducible from the characteristics of the CO2 molecule.
Smoking Frog writes:
“Hasn’t it occurred to you to see whether CO2 concentration has been measured at various altitudes? It has!”
Measurement is not hypothesis. Measurement, if undertaken rigorously, can be used to confirm or disconfirm hypotheses. If you have measurements and no hypotheses, you have no science; that is, you are in the same boat as Mann, Jones, and friends.
These signs are used where there is a danger of suffocation from carbon dioxide, including, large tanks where beer has beenis brewed and places where there are tanks of CO2, for carbonated beverages and …..beer taps!
To borrow a joke from the first link
The thing about industrial accidents is that large numbers of people die from what appears to be innocuous stuff
REPLY: I don’t see the point of your comment, you act as if we are too stupid to know such things. But then again, being condescending is your style. Yes and they have signs for CO, NH3, High Voltage, Natural Gas (Methane CH4), H2S, and even Nitrogen N2. Anything in excess/high quantity can be dangerous, even rabbits. – Anthony
“Mike says:
October 9, 2010 at 12:55 pm
You’ve never heard that there can be too much of a good thing?
Water is good, but drowning is bad. 280 ppm CO2 is good, but 500 ppm is bad for planet.
And climate change is about more than temperature. Droughts have pushed down global plant growth despite CO2 being plant food. Turns out plants gota’ drink too!
http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/plant-growth-decline-drought-0459/
One dimensional thinking is always a bad for the planet.”
==========================================================
You OPINED that 500 ppm is bad for the … he he ….. planet.
LOLOLOLOLOL
Do you realize that for about 95% of the last 6 hundred million years,it was ABOVE the 500 ppmv level?
Here is a chart at my charts forum,that is based on “peer reviewed” science research:
http://globalwarmingskeptics.info/forums/thread-188-post-4671.html#pid4671
Maybe you should change 500 to 5000,as you might have left off a zero by mistake?
Theo Goodwin says:
October 10, 2010 at 7:19 am
Much work was done on tracking the patterns of dispersal of gases throughout the atmosphere by the US military and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the folks at Sandia in the 1950’s for several reasons: to track how lethal isotopes generated by nuke blasts migrate and also to prevent a recreation of the most successful air raid on North American industrial resources in history: the Japanese fire balloon campaign against Canada which prompted the Doolittle B-25 raids (the Japanese Army released thousands of balloons from a launch site in Japan loaded with thermite bombs which entered the jet stream and came down into Canada’s forests, starting over 600 major forest fires).
I would therefore start with the Sandia Labs website and also the US Army Military History Institute websites. All their work is based on empirical studies with large enough statistical population samplings to validate or disprove a hypothesis, which all the greentard models demonstrably lack to the extent they can define trending.
Whomever is in charge of doing air permit applications in engineering with your local electric utility can also provide you with truckloads of empirical studies, Schlieren imagery, and the like.
It’s goofy to think there is much gaseous migration over 4-5 miles up. Where and when you have to don a breathing apparatus when flying is at around 5 to 6 miles, folks, unless you fancy the idea of a stroke or other side effect of anoxia. Eight miles and you’re dead with your blood boiling and exploded eyeballs.
Theo, it’s very much worth our while to chase this down. I will ask my licenced engineer affiliates in the “criminal world-destroying” thermal power plant business, then come back here.
It’s odd not many practicing engineers from my industry check into these sites. I asked a registered PE why they aren’t blogging on this issue, and she laughed and said she had a life, and that all this idiocy would blow away of its own accord.
BTW, I hope I am not the only person who thinks it is a bit thick the country which ignited the largest forest fires in known history for the sake of global military conquest would be where the Kyoto Protocl originated. It’s like a drunk lecturing non-drinking people to give up drinking.
After reading these posts, I can only wonder if there once was living beings on the “greenhouse planet” Venus and if there was, could these folks be their direct descendents?