From: stevef@bug.UUCP (Steven R Fordyce)
Newsgroups: alt.activism,talk.environment,alt.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Why we shouldn't worry about man's production of CO2
Summary: Man' production of CO2 dwarfed by nature's
Keywords: carbon dioxide
Date: 4 Oct 92 05:07:59 GMT
Reply-To: stevef@bug.UUCP (Steven R Fordyce)
Followup-To: alt.activism.d,talk.environment,alt.rush-limbaugh
Organization: Handmade Designs, Salem, OR.

Some environmental groups, Senator Albert Gore, and others tell us that we
must reduce our use fossil fuels so that we put less carbon dioxide into
the atmosphere so that we don't suffer global warming.  There is a good
letter on this subject in the October 5, 1992 issue of "National Review"
that deserves careful consideration:

Dear Mr. Buckley:

  Regarding the environmentalists' concern over CO2, here are some facts
nobody argues with:

  1. Atmospheric pressure is about  15 psi (pounds/in./in. ). [sic, should
be pounds per square inch, and I'm sure it was in the professor's letter,
but error was added in bringing it to print.]

  2. Earth's radius is about 4,000 mi.

  3. CO2 constituted about 0.04 per cent of the atmosphere in 1950.

  Here is another fact that I have seen. It is politically correct and
therefore no one questions it; it's probably scientifically correct as
well:

  4. CO2 now constitutes more like 0.06 per cent of the atmosphere.

From #2 we calculate that Earth's surface area is 0.8 billion billion sq.
in. And from #1 that the atmosphere weighs 11.9 billion billion lbs. This
is 6 million billion tons. Now take fact #3; 0.04 per cent is 2,400 billion
tons of CO2.  Half (the change since 1950) is 1,200 billion tons. Let's
call this fact #5:

  5. There were 2;400 billion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere in 1950; 3,600
billion tons now, give or take a sigh or two.

  Here are two more facts. I haven't seen them challenged anywhere. They're
a little looser, but probably in the ballpark, considering the respectable
places where I read them.*

  6. Human activity currently releases 6 billion tons of CO2 year.

  7.  Non-human activity (oceans, trees, Pinatubo, Mauna Loa, etc.)
releases 200 billion tons of CO2 per year.

  If #6 and/or #7 is seriously wrong, then please accept my apology for the
nonsense that follows. But if they are anywhere near right, then please
read on.

  Now compare fact #5 with fact #6. Simple division tells you that if every
molecule of human-released CO2 at the current rate of production stayed in
the atmosphere, it would take another 200 years for the post-1950 change to
be matched. Or looking backward, since minus 200 years takes us back to
before the Industrial Revolution, it means that if every CO2 molecule from
every factory, car, steam engine, barbecue, campfire, and weenie roast that
ever was since the first liberal climbed down out of a tree right up until
today was still in the atmosphere, it still wouldn't account for the change
in CO2 since 1950.

  Fact #7 has been going on for a long time, a lot longer than any piddling
200 years. Comparing #5 and #7 means it takes about 12 years for the
average COz molecule to be recycled back out of the atmosphere.

  Given the above, here are some conclusions that nobody can argue with and
still claim to be a reasoning creature:

  8. Human activity, carried out at the present rate indefinitely (more
than 12 years) cannot possibly account for more than 6 per cent of the
observed change in CO2 levels.

  9. Entirely shutting off civilization or even killing everybody could
only have a tiny effect on global warming, if there is any such thing.

  Dan Rather may find the above argument very abstruse.  To anyone trained
in science, however, it is so absolutely trivial, so mind-bogglingly
simple, that you may be 100 per cent certain that every last person
calling himself an "atmospheric scientist" or suchlike not only would
understand it immediately but has actually carried it out for himself
already.  Thus the final fact:

  10. Every geoscientist knows and believes #9.

  The strangest part of all is that the very people who should be yelling:
"Oompah!  Oompah!"** are among the ones perpetrating the scam and beating
up on George Bush for not going along with it.

  That leaves two questions that neither one of us knows how to answer:

  Q1. Why do all these supposedly educated, supposedly sane people want to
end civilization?

  Q2. Since humanity can't possibly be causing the CO2 level to go up,
isn't it time to start wondering about what is?

  Thank you for your attention.

                                    L. L. Van Zandt
                               Professor of Physics
                                  Purdue University
                               West Lafayette, Ind.


Dear Mr. Van Zandt: That is truly beautiful, your demonstration. Thank you
for sending it along.

Cordially,
WFB

* S. H. Schneider, Scientific American Z61 #3, Sept. 1989, p. 73.

** From an old joke.  The punch line is: "Careful!  Don't step in the
oompah."

[For those of you in Rio Linda, try thinking of something, found in
quantity in many barnyards, that you would generally like very much not to
step in.]
-- 
orstcs!opac!bug!stevef          I am the NRA              Steven R. Fordyce
uunet!sequent!ether!stevef         . . .  	        Deer are for Dinner
Newsgroups: alt.activism,alt.desert-storm,alt.politics.clinton