2007-03-10

Mar’s polar ice caps are melting. I was having this conversation last night with a friend of mine, as we love to debate topics. I’m smart, he’s Mensa Smart, but I hold my own but I do listen to his points and ponder them.
We have been debating global warming for a while, as in essence while the Al Gore’s can make a movie with the worst song to win an Oscar, this flag waving and alarmist work is just another way for Hollywood to ride the “We Care But What Color Ribbon Should We Wear?” platform.

To really understand the issue, it is not about whether you believe it’s happening, but knowing how greenhouse gases affect the world.

The greenhouse effect defined is this: The process in which the emission of infrared radiation by an atmosphere warms a planet’s surface. Earth, Venus and Mars all have the greenhouse effect.

If we didn’t have this effect the surface of the earth would be 30 degrees Celsius cooler, or for those of you who need the translation 86 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than it is. Now the argument is with human consumption of fossil fuels we have raised the temperature of the planet and if we continue on the course we are the planet will be x amount of degrees hotter in 2089. Nothing for nothing and as my friend likes to point out, we can’t predict weather correctly eight days out, much less the temperature of earth in 80 years.

The government however urges us to cut down on our use of fossil fuels, recycle, and I don’t know what we are going to do about the flatulence problem with our cattle. Lord knows the methane produced is making that hole in the ozone exponentially bigger as the 1.2 billion cows have increased atmospheric methane emissions (but truly only as belches, not moon burps) at the rate of one percent a year. Horrors! Someone call India and have them revisit that Sacred Cow issue.

The real problem with so called Global Warming, is what we are going to do about it on an individual level. The president argued that the mandatory limits under the international accord would have resulted in billions of dollars in industry losses and the elimination of nearly 5 million U.S. jobs. While acknowledging the serious threat of global warming, he insisted that the government could do more by spending billions more on research, new technology and tax incentives to promote voluntary reductions than to attempt to impose mandatory targets.
“As president of the United States, charged with safeguarding the welfare of the American people and American workers, I will not commit our nation to an unsound international treaty that will throw millions of our citizens out of work,” Bush declared in a speech delivered at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in suburban Washington in 2002.

The president’s plan in effect would preserve the status quo, allowing the United States to continue emitting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases at roughly the rate it has done for the past decade. But with the promise of $4.6 billion of incentives and tax credits over the next five years for research and to encourage voluntary reductions by utilities and manufacturers.

In 2007 the EU has announced that 27 countries vowed to reduce emissions to 1990 levels using renewable energy such as solar, wind, and water, but won’t recognize nuclear energy. Personally, nuclear energy is the way to go and there will be a day when smaller nuclear generators will be the main source of household power. Other EU countries not as wealthy argue they can’t go to those sources and have to stick with fossil fuels such as coal and oil, which are higher pollutants. They suggested a burden-sharing system whereby nations with more advanced alternative energy programs would go beyond the 20 percent threshold, while others were given more time to hit the target.
In June another meeting will be held for the top eight industrialized nations to agree to deep emission cuts. They are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, the United States and Russia.

How are these cuts going to be monitored without involving federal regulations, which leads to more government spending? Who ends up paying for it in the end? The taxpayers. It has already been stated as part of the plan for businesses to cut emissions they will be given tax credits. Once again, the businesses get the cut, the consumers pay out the ass to pay for it. Look at how many of your bills you are paying right now include a “fuel surcharge.” You get a double whammy as the cost of the goods have increased from the manufacturer, then to get the product to your store or door fuel surcharges are being imposed. Now if regulations go into effect, they have to be monitored and reported.

Take for example recycling. As a business we are required by the township where our office building resides to have a separate recycling container for cardboard, office paper etc. We even have the separate blue waste containers under our desks. The first year it was mandated we complied and at the end of the year, I receive a letter from the township asking how much paper we placed in the bin in gross tonnage. My thought would be the trash hauler should know that info, as it was never stated we would have to account for what we threw out. So I called the hauler, to get a number that I should place on this report. What it boiled down to in the end, is the townships get funding from the government for complying. Is that funding divided back to the individuals who complied? Do you get a letter at the end of the year at your house, requesting the gross tonnage of recycling you performed so you get a tax cut on your 1040? Of course not. Well maybe in eighty years your descendents will get thirty dollars on their refund for a three year look back period, just like our little friend the telephone excise tax refund this year.

So back to Mars and the polar ice caps melting. If you follow the argument, that burning of fossil fuels contributes to this, who is burning fossil fuels on Mars creating global warming? Do you think the little probe zipping around up there, taking pictures, is emitting enough toxins to bring around the demise of Mar’s polar caps? Or as we now are learning to read Mar’s climate over the last 3 billion years, it is a wet planet that goes through cyclical changes, just like planet earth.

Maybe it’s just my perception, but my guess is that back in the beginning of time and primordial soup, this was one hot planet. Life forms began as scientists are now discovering far below earths surface are bacteria and such from whence all life flows. We already know there have been four major periods of glaciations in the Earth’s past, and we are still in one. An “ice age” is a period of long-term reduction in the temperature of Earth’s climate, resulting in an expansion of the continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets, and mountain glaciers (“glaciation”).

There are multiple factors that contribute to the climate of this planet that are far beyond our control. Position of the continents, variations in earths orbit, variations in the sun’s output, vulcanism and Earths albedo, which is the ratio of the electromagnetic radiation, which either absorbs or reflects the suns energy.

I’m not saying we aren’t contributing to an increase in greenhouse gases, but it isn’t the only cause of our planets ever changing environment. What I am saying is trying to impose federal mandates to control it is just another ruse to increase government spending and taxation. Cut the emissions for health reasons, and place the onus on businesses to comply without any tax breaks. But let’s stop labeling it Global Warming.
THE KYOTO PROTOCOL AS OF 2006- PACT ENDS 2012