Global Warming

Reprinted with permission from As I See It, which is available free by writing to the editor at dkutilek@juno.com. Read the series so far.

One of the favorite tactics of environmental extremists and their invariably uninformed “celebrity” spokespersons is to claim with panicked voice that we are on the brink, the very precipice of irremediable environmental and ecological disaster, and that mankind’s very existence and continuation as a species, along with life itself on earth hangs in utterly precarious balance, frighteningly close to the tipping point of no return. And, as a consequence, immediate and sweeping government-mandated and rigidly enforced changes in everything from toilet tank water capacity to grossly cost-ineffective and unworkable “alternate energy” sources to automobile mileage standards to the closing of coal and nuclear power plants are proposed and imposed on the populace, “for their own good,” regardless of how disruptive, expensive, inconvenient, even dangerous and unnecessary the forced changes may be—and inevitably are. “Never waste a crisis”—even if it is a manufactured, fictitious crisis—is the watchword of those who wish to seize power and dominate and domineer their perceived “inferiors” in the populace.

Among the most absurd of the draconian measures proposed, and not far from being imposed, is a so-called “carbon tax” to restrict, even punish those who add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere through the combustion—burning—of such non-renewable fuels as coal, oil and natural gas. That carbon dioxide—a minuscule .03% of the atmosphere—is a “greenhouse gas” is true; that that is a bad thing, is false. Without carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, along with the other, much more influential greenhouse gases (water vapor by far number one among them), the earth would trap less heat during the day and lose much more during the night. These gases which trap solar heat moderate the daily temperature swings on planet earth and make life possible. Without them, day time highs would regularly and substantially exceed 100 F. and at night the temperature would plunge below freezing, making agriculture—and human existence—impossible.