When you have limited resources to accomplish change, use them wisely.
I consider myself an environmentalist but lately “environmentalists” have been pissing me off. Why do we always focus on the wrong things? Everyone is so concerned about carbon emissions that they don’t even look at the other problems that are killing us right now. I think we need to be more concerned with the toxic substances we are throwing out. Climate change is not unusual but we make it out to be new and human made. Granted, we are so close to being able to control it now. However, I would much rather focus on the immediate problems that are killing our kids right now. We are staring down the road at bridges lifetimes in our future while we stumble over rocks at our feet.
Burning coal releases CO2 (greenhouse gas) but it also releases Mercury (poison), NO2 and SO2(acid rain, lung problems). We are so fixated on carbon emissions and carbon credits that we fail to see the church burning around us as we pay our indulgences. We can’t even drink water anymore! The biggest reason not to fish is that most of the time you can’t even eat them because they are so filled with mercury and lead! I’m tired of hearing about CO2 footprints. Start looking at why I have to buy the most common substance on the surface of the Earth for $8 per gallon? Gasoline isn’t expensive, water is.
When Al Gore showed his graph comparing CO2 with temperature levels and said, “It’s complicated”, what he was really saying was it’s actually backwards. The temperature goes up and THEN a couple of hundred years LATER, the CO2 level goes up! How can CO2 cause the raise in temp it if come after the temp change? The answer is the CO2 level raises when the ocean temp increases enough to release some of its trapped CO2. The ocean is a great CO2 sink but a bit limited when looked at on a global scale. Trees aren’t the answer either. Trees suck up CO2 for the first 50ish years of their life. Most of it in their first 30 years. After that, they are CO2 neutral until they die. Then they rot and release it all back! Canada and Brazil thought they would use their forests to offset their emissions under Kyoto with carbon credits based off trees. They measured the levels and found the trees were CO2 neutral though.
Yes, I’m short sited in that I’m not concerned about 100-500 years from now when the average temperature is 3 degrees warmer and people will have at least 50 years notice to move from their Florida beach property to an area not covered by raising sea levels. Two thousand years ago, Egypt was the breadbasket for the Roman Empire. It failed because the climate changed.
Solar activity is more likely the primary cause of climate change. Google “mini ice age” and see what you get. http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/little_ice_age.html is a good article. High sunspots and the temperature goes up. Low sunspots and the temperature goes down. It’s a cause and effect situation; the basis of something I like to call “science”.
