Global Warming For Dummies

Q: I might believe in Global Warming if it was not happening before there were cars. I do mean man made of course.

A: If we were burning plant based fuels, you would have a valid point. But by burning fossil fuels we are introducing carbon into the system that had been locked up since the Permian Extinction.

We are increasing the total amount of CO2 in the system by about 22 billion tons each year. That doesn't seem like much compared to the Earth's 5 million trillion kg atmosphere, but it doesn't take much CO2 to generate a greenhouse effect.

You might think that plants would absorb the excess, but meanwhile we've been deforesting the planet at an increasing rate as well.

So now we have about 30% more CO2 in the system than we did before the Industrial Revolution, and that's why we've seen a rapid increase in AVERAGE global temperature since that time.

Tanorexia

In case anyone is wondering where the term "Tanorexia" came from, I invented it about two years ago. Now it's all over the media. Cool!

Of course, it's an obvious pun, so I won't rule out convergent invention.

It's About The Habitat

In California, people are trying to save the habitat of the tiger salamander using the Endangered Species Act.

Usually in these cases the endangered species is an excuse to save an entire habitat. If the tiger salamander were not there, environmentalists would have little leverage. This is why the Endangered Species Act often seems ridiculous (to the ignorant) when applied.

The habitat of the tiger salamander includes untold numbers of animals and insects living in a wide variety of trees, grasses, and other places provided by the habitat.

A single tree provides an average of 1800 times the habitable surface area taken up by its crown. A large part of this area is inhabited by tiny creatures or plants, but each tree also provides quite a bit of nooks and crannies for larger animals. A grove of trees provides habitat for still larger animals, and also for a more diverse fauna and flora, as does a meadow surrounded by trees. Of course, a forest or a plain magnifies this effect further.

This is why all these areas are so important. The tiger salamander is just the tip of the iceberg. Replacing a grove of trees with a housing development reduces the habitable surface area to far less than a thousandth of what it was before. It leaves only room for animals like humans, rats, grackles, crickets and roaches.

This is part of why it's important to demand conservation, and it's why conservation is worth fighting for.

OVERPOPULATION

Why do people get so emotional about this word? I'm sure someone will tell me I should be the first to volunteer.

In fact, I've already done my part, I have only sired one child. In order to stop population growth, there needs to be an average of 2.1 children per woman. It's that easy! Some women won't have any children, some will have just one, so there's still plenty of room for some women to have 3 or 4 if they want.

This holds true even if you get the birth rate below 2.1, get it down to 1.8 or so, and the population will decline gradually to a more sustainable level.

Of course, the most reliable way to accomplish this is not through any means of control, but through the education of women. That's all, just make sure all the girls in the world get a good education, and the population of humans on the Earth will begin to decrease.

Can Humans Affect The Earth?

Can humans have an effect on something as large as the Earth?

Just doing some ballpark calculations, if each of 200,000,000 cars in the US uses 600 gallons per year, and all the carbon in that gasoline gets converted to CO2, then that will produce 4.8 trillion kg, or 4.8e12 kg of CO2.

The total mass of the atmosphere is 5.1e18 kg. So US gasoline consumption contributes about 1 part per million per year to the to CO2 content of the atmosphere.

Doesn't seem like much, but the current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is 365 ppm. Most of the excess CO2 has been added over the last 60 years, and ice core data indicates that we are now at 87 ppm over the pre-industrial average of 278 ppm of CO2.

So that's a pretty good check on my calculations. If we went steadily from 0 to 1 ppm in 60 years, we should have added 30 ppm during that time. If the US consumes a third of the world's gasoline, then we'd expect an extra 90 ppm of CO2.

So if in reality there is an extra 87 ppm, and ballpark figures predict an extra 90 ppm, and the baseline was 278 ppm, then we can be pretty sure that human activities have increased atmospheric CO2 by 31%.

So, yes, human activity can have a huge impact on the Earth, big as it is.

Return Of Telemarketing?

I just got a call on my cell phone at 09:15 CDT from a telemarketer. How could this happen? I thought cell numbers were off limits to that scum. So I got their number from caller id, 206-278-9128, and Seattle number. Called that but got a fast busy every time. Then I called the number they left 866-524-5449, and got some message from a company called RMT and a travel package or something. I looked up RMT on the web, and found that RMT Travel & Cruises were sued in 2004 by the Missouri attorney general for fraud.

The message said to leave my name and number for their Do Not Call Registry, but the voice mail box was full. On subsequent calls, the line was overloaded, so I imagine a lot of people were flooding the number trying to disrupt their service, and being successful at it.

Now you can call them too and do the same thing.

Intelligent Design Is Not Smart

No one expects that any of the chemical process which happen zillions of times a day requires the attention of an intelligent designer to make them happen in just the right way. Energy and the elements interact in a certain way, the cause and effect are well known and not unexpected. A snowflake forms without intervention from an unseen hand.

A really intelligent designer would have designed everything to work this way, even evolution. So there would be no way to tell the difference between design and chance, because the Universe would have been designed from the start to produce a certain effect.

Anything less than this is imperfection, and therefore not a product of any God claimed by existing religions. It might work with older, pagan religions. If you believe in Zeus or Wotan, maybe Intelligent Design will work for you. Otherwise, you're just blaspheming against your own God.