What exactly is carbon dioxide, and why is it such a problem?

October 1, 2024

First it was “global warming,” and now it is “climate change.” It is caused, we are told, by too much carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. CO2 is one-part carbon and two-parts oxygen. It is the carbon that is the problem.

“Carbon is a planetary paradox,” according to Arizona State University’s ASU News. “As the foundation for DNA, carbon is essential for all life on Earth. Yet, as part of the compound carbon dioxide, too much of it has built up in our air, threatening life on Earth as well.

“Today, carbon-based fuels power our very way of life. They support the global economy, transport networks and energy infrastructures. Addressing our carbon problem is, in a word, complex.

“Fortunately, it’s also a problem we can solve together.

“At Arizona State University, researchers explore many ways to reduce atmospheric carbon. And by working alongside industry, government, nonprofits and communities, they’re seeking solutions that are good not just for the planet but also human well-being.

“Experts from fields across ASU share how we can start to bring these systems into harmony and build a healthier world for ourselves and our children.

Why is carbon dioxide a problem?

“Our planet has an elegant system to recycle carbon. After making its way through plants, animals, soil, rock and ocean, it goes into the atmosphere — mainly as carbon dioxide — where it begins its journey again. But if Earth is so great at recycling carbon, how did we end up with too much in the atmosphere?

“Around 200 years ago, a key disturbance unbalanced this cycle. People found they could extract oil and coal — two forms of carbon called fossil fuels — and burn them for energy.

“In short time, our way of life came to depend on carbon-based fuel. Many of today’s amenities, like long-distance travel, buying food grown far away and lighting our homes, rely on this fuel.

“But these innovations have a hidden cost. As we burn fossil fuels, we release carbon back into the air, bypassing a natural process that would have taken thousands of years.

“From pre-industrial times to 2021, humans have added an extra 1.69 trillion metric tons to the atmosphere, and scientists estimate we added around 37 billion metric tons in 2022 alone.

“CO2 naturally traps heat, so all that extra CO2 increases Earth’s average temperature. This has noticeably affected our climate and weather patterns. These changes increase flood and fire risk, threaten crops and food security, endanger vulnerable species, expose us to new diseases, and force people to leave their homelands.”

So, that amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is a problem. What besides CO2 is Earth’s atmosphere made of? While the list of components has 16 gases, it primarily consists of four gases: nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and carbon dioxide.

The function provided by each of these is described thusly by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): “Nitrogen dilutes oxygen and prevents rapid burning at the Earth's surface. Living things need it to make proteins. Oxygen is used by all living things and is essential for respiration. It is also necessary for combustion (burning). 

“Argon is used in light bulbs, in double-pane windows, and to preserve museum objects such as the original Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Plants use carbon dioxide to make oxygen. Carbon dioxide also acts as a blanket that prevents the escape of heat into outer space.”

Because CO2 absorbs heat, it is blamed for contributing to the “greenhouse effect,” “global warming,” or “climate change.”

However, the NOAA website from July 2024 tells us that the proportion of these four gases is approximately as follows: nitrogen = 78 percent; oxygen = 20.9 percent; argon = 0.9 percent; carbon dioxide = 0.04 percent.

So, with all that extra CO2 from fossil fuel use, only 4 in 10,000 atmospheric particles are CO2.

As the NOAA said, “Plants use carbon dioxide to make oxygen.” So, plants “eat” CO2 and emit oxygen. That’s a good thing, right?

In Australia, China and nations in Africa, drylands are turning greener. Why? Because of the increased amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

“The primary reason, most recent studies conclude, is the 50-percent rise in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere since preindustrial times,” according to Yale Environment 360, published by the Yale University School of the Environment.

David McGee, an associate professor in the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, is quoted on MIT’s Climate Portal saying that today’s CO2 levels are actually “nothing special.” “In the past, carbon dioxide levels have been much higher than they are today and much lower than they are today.”

And Earth’s temperatures have been both much higher and much lower than they are today.

Conceivably, the comparatively minor temperature and CO2 increases that have been witnessed recently are not so important in the context of those changes over many decades and centuries.

Perhaps these increases are not really the serious problem the climate crisis faction wants us to believe they are. And maybe if we make changes to how we do things, those changes should be less radical than those proposed.

Harris is the absolute worst choice to lead this country

September 24, 2024

As the 2024 presidential election draws nearer, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrat nominee, continues to avoid nearly every opportunity to tell voters about the specifics of her plan for what she will do, and how.

She has gained a reputation for some rather radical positions, including: wanting to abolish ICE, open the southern border, defund the police, release violent offenders, eliminate middle-class tax cuts, ban fracking and end fossil fuel use, confiscate guns from lawful owners, take away private health care plans, and provide taxpayer funded transgender surgeries for illegal aliens.

During a recent campaign stop in Moon Township, Pennsylvania, a reporter asked her: “And can you give us a sense of what other policies you want to unveil moving forward?"

In answering that question, she said, "Sure, well, I mean, you just look at it in terms of what we are talking about, for example, around children and the child tax credit and extending the EITC [Earned Income Tax Credit]." She did not answer the question. She then babbled on about the EITC, and in the process made false statements about it.

Late last month Harris told CNN's Dana Bash in her first sit-down interview since becoming the Democrat’s candidate through a non-democratic process that the Biden-Harris administration has done "good work" on the economy, but "there's more to do." She completely ignored the high level of inflation that developed during her tenure as VP.

Asked about her changing position on important issues, she said, "I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed." Again, she avoided answering the question and failed to explain why she changed positions after becoming a candidate.

On immigration, Harris noted her prosecutorial record as attorney general of California saying she has long cared about border security, even though under her watch as “border czar,” the border has effectively become wide open, allowing in roughly 10 million illegal aliens.

Her priority on day one if elected will be to "strengthen and support the middle class," she said. Again, she did not take the opportunity to explain exactly how she plans to do that.

Harris seems to be following the lead of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, who famously said about a piece of legislation, “We have to pass it to find out what is in it.” Harris’ message: “Elect me to find out what I plan to do.”

Harris claims to be a Second Amendment advocate. She says she wants some “common sense” measures to keep everyone safe.

“I’m a gun owner,” she said in a friendly interview with Oprah Winfrey. “If someone breaks in my house, they’re getting shot.” Ooops! “Sorry. I probably should not have said that. [Cackling] My staff will deal with that later. [Cackling]” 

However, as a prosecutor in California in 2007, Harris outlined her view of why she could violate the Fourth Amendment. She said she would search the homes of gun owners. “Just because you legally possess a gun in the sanctity of your locked home doesn’t mean that we’re not going to walk into that home to check and see if you are being responsible and safe,” she said. 

And Harris said back in 2020: “These stand-your-ground laws … have often, often and frequently, been used as an excuse, if not a cover, for people motivated by race and racial profiling.” Seriously?

And even this year, while she claims she’s “not taking anybody’s guns away,” Harris still supports a mandatory buyback plan for so-called “assault rifles.” That is a disguise for what it really is: gun confiscation. “We need an assault weapons ban,” she said. 

While claiming that Bidenomics and other policies have been wonderfully successful these nearly four years, she says she will fix everything on day one. What needs to be fixed in this wonderfully successful administration? How will she fix it?

She cites words Trump used that are the same words Hitler used. So, Trump is like Hitler because they have sometimes used some of the same terms. But Harris isn’t like Hitler because some of her preferences are similar to Hitler’s?

So many of her supporters say they will vote for her because they “like her.” She refuses to give details on her plans if elected, but they will vote for her, anyway.

And let’s look at a broader picture: which side is more radical, the left or the right? Well, how many attempts to assassinate Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have we seen?

If you like the high prices on most everything; the millions of illegal aliens, gotaways and terror watch-list persons running free and committing crimes; our once-great energy status that existed before Biden-Harris; the coming higher taxes and increased regulations; our constitutional republic being torn apart, then vote on November 5 for the woman who spurns interviews and tough questions, refuses to publish her positions and policies, and promises to fix all the things her present administration brought on the American people over the last four years.

She does not understand or care about America, and will take us down the road to socialism. 

Renewable energy to replace fossil fuels? Will that be much better?

We have been told for years about the damage to the environment of burning fossil fuels, and the marvelous benefits of renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Steps have been taken and more are being put forth to reduce the amount of CO2 we produce, on concerns of “climate change.” America, incidentally, has led most, if not all, of the world in reducing CO2 in recent years.

And, regardless of whether humankind is really harming the environment to a serious level, we can agree that wind and solar energy are far less polluting when they are in use than machines that burn oil, gasoline, diesel fuel and natural gas.

But when you look at what happens in the process of turning these sources into useful products, and what happens to them after their useful life is over, a very different story emerges.

The details of these processes and products were explained in a Prager University video featuring Mark Mills, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, who discussed the environmental costs of using these energy sources.

First, windmills and solar panels, and the batteries to store the electricity they produce, are made from non-recyclable materials, Mills said. And after some 20 years since the wind and solar energy technologies were born, and after billions of dollars of subsidies, those two sources provide less than three percent of the nation’s power. 

Mills explained that the maximum rate that wind can be turned into electrons is about 60 percent, and the maximum for sunlight is about 33 percent. As of now, we can convert 45 percent of blowing wind and 26 percent of shining sun. Technology is now able to get a little more than half the possible electrons from the wind and the sun. That will likely increase as technology advances.

Since the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine all the time, excess electricity must be stored in batteries. Mills put that into perspective: The world’s largest battery plant, created by Tesla in Nevada for its electric vehicles, would need 500 years to make enough of the batteries it makes today to store enough electricity for just one day of current U.S. demand.

Of course, more battery plants will gradually be built, and perhaps the capacity and efficiency of batteries will also increase. But this presents a tremendous challenge if the U.S. is to end using fossil fuels, as we are told we must, in favor of renewables.

The processes to enable wind and solar energy to produce electricity, he said, are quite expensive, in environmental terms.

One electric car battery weighs half a ton. But to acquire the materials to produce it, 250 tons of earth from somewhere must be mined and processed.

One 75 mega-watt wind farm powers 75,000 homes, and requires 30,000 tons of iron ore, 50,000 tons of concrete, and 900 tons of non-recyclable plastic. And a 75 mega-watt solar farm requires 150 percent more materials — concrete, steel and glass — than a wind farm.

The rare earth and other metals needed — lithium, cobalt, copper, iridium and dysprosium — will require a massive increase in mining activity: from 200 to 2,000 percent of the mining now occurring.  Rare earth materials are mostly not available in the U.S., but must be acquired from other countries Some of them, like China, are hostile to us. In 2019, China was responsible for 80 percent of rare-earth materials.

And, the equipment and processes used in acquiring and refining the materials, and constructing and installing the windmills, solar panels and batteries are powered by fossil fuels.

After about 20 years of production, these windmills and solar panels will have exhausted themselves, leaving millions of tons of non-recyclable waste behind that must be put somewhere.

Mills also said that the plastic waste from these sources will total more than twice the amount of all existing plastic waste.

Using the sun and the wind to our benefit makes perfect sense. The more seasoned readers may remember fondly your grandmother or mother hanging freshly washed clothes on the line in the back yard to dry in the sun and breeze. And then electric dryers came along.

The idea that transitioning from burning fossil fuels to wind and solar energy to produce electricity will be cleaner is false. We will trade polluting the air for producing tons of solid waste.

Too much of anything can be harmful: too much vitamin C, too much water, too much sun, too much oxygen, and too much CO2. But the environmental cost to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar power might be as expensive, or more expensive, than the cost of burning fossil fuels, in terms of the waste that is produced.

Geologist and earth scientist Professor Ian Plimer, who is called a “climate change denier” by some, said our “climate is cyclical,” and that Earth is heading to an ice age.

“We are getting towards the end of the warm period, the peak of the warmth was about 5,000 years ago and we are heading for the next inevitable ice age,” he told Sky News.

If so, someday we may want and need more CO2, not less.

Democrats want to turn the United States upside-down

CNN’s marathon townhall last Wednesday may have set some records. The broadcast lasted a full seven hours. It featured 10 of the numerous candidates for the Democrat nomination to run for president in 2020. They were, alphabetically: Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Julián Castro, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang, and Elizabeth Warren.

The event did not set a record for the number of viewers it attracted. During the 5:00 p.m.-12:00 a.m. broadcast, CNN pulled only 1.1 million viewers, compared to MSNBC’s 1.7 million, and Fox News’ more-than-double 2.5 million during that time period.

The focus of the event was climate change. “So, based off [a BBC] study, CNN will produce 57.4 tons of carbon dioxide emissions while warning about increasing carbon dioxide emissions,” wrote Timothy Meads on Townhall.com prior to the event.

The candidates expressed their ideas about what they say is an existential threat to life on Earth. These ideas include doing away with fossil fuels and nuclear energy, red meat, plastic straws, incandescent light bulbs, carbon, fracking, combustion engine vehicles, and babies.

Abortion was high on the list for some. “Human population growth has more than doubled in the past 50 years. The planet cannot sustain this growth,” an audience member said to Bernie Sanders. He agreed, and promised to back more U.S. funding for abortions in the developing world.

Environmental groups like the Sierra Club have warned that Africa and Asia are producing way too many babies, and this will threaten the future of the Earth. Former Vice President Al Gore once said the we “have to have ubiquitous availability of fertility management” in the developing world to fight climate change. 

And Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg offered an opinion some time ago. “[A]t the time Roe (v. Wade) was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” Was that a racist comment?

If over-population truly is a problem, Gore’s fertility management solution, if that means pregnancy prevention, would be far preferable to killing developing humans in the womb.

"We are fighting for the survival of the planet Earth, our only planet. How is this not a major priority?" Sanders asked.  He boasted that his was the most serious approach of any presidential candidate in history. It will only cost us $16 trillion. That is roughly equal to all federal spending for four years.

Cory Booker has changed his super-identity from “Spartacus” to “Star Trekian.” This transformation may have come after his discovery that non-white and low-income people are disproportionately affected by climate change, though he did not explain how this occurs. Economic and environmental justice therefore demand that we transition to a carbon-neutral economy as soon as we possibly can, he said, in order to restore the balance of the effects of climate related issues.

Getting millions of vehicles off the road was posited by Joe Biden, the most moderate candidate, who vowed to lead the whole world in this effort if elected president, not just the U.S.

Asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper if the Green New Deal’s plan to ban all fossil fuels, 99 percent of cars and planes, and meat within the next decade was “unrealistic” or “promising too much?” Biden answered, “No, no it’s not.”

Pledging to do away with carbon energy, but also to do away with nuclear energy by 2035, Elizabeth Warren urged Democrats not to get distracted by sideline issues like the environmental consequences of plastic straws, cheeseburgers and light bulbs. "This is exactly what the fossil fuel industry hopes we're all talking about," she said.

Taking a different tack on the issue, admitted cheeseburger lover Kamala Harris wants to eliminate barriers to forcing her radical views on we the people by ending the Senate filibuster. Currently, ending debate on legislation requires 60 votes. Harris supports a simple majority vote to speed along her efforts at control.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., commented on that idea. "The legislative filibuster is directly downstream from our founding tradition. If that tradition frustrates the whims of those on the far left, it is their half-baked proposals and not the centuries-old wisdom that need retooling," he wrote in an op-ed in The New York Times.

Harris also said she would use executive power to order the Justice Department to go after oil and gas firms. Is that an American ideal? Or does Harris believe that when you can’t win through better ideas and honesty, you must change the rules, or play dirty?

The list of past environmental catastrophe predictions that didn’t come to be is long: in 1975 a coming ice age; the acid rain threat; over-population producing mass starvation; global temperatures melting ice floes and flooding coastal cities. And now, only 10 or 12 years left to save the world. Again.

The alarmists point to a “scientific consensus” that millions cling to. There were scientists selling the past failed predictions, too. Even if these predictions of doom are true, the only way to stop the threat, apparently, is to spend trillions and turn the United States upside-down, and impose government control.

More information essential to evaluate the renewable energy idea

What we hear about almost ceaselessly is the impending environmental catastrophe facing the world. Despite the tremendous progress the U.S. has made in reducing its carbon emissions, which we are told is what is causing, or hastening, the crisis, more must be done.

We must spend trillions of dollars and turn our lifestyles upside down to make a very fast transition from traditional fossil fuel production of energy through coal, oil and natural gas to so-called “green” renewable energy sources.

We hear repeatedly how bad fossil fuels are as primary energy sources, and how wind and solar power are our salvation. However, much needed detail about this transition is left out.

So much of what those on the left offer regarding climate change, and their proposed solutions to the problem, is what economist and columnist Thomas Sowell calls “Stage One Thinking.” This involves identifying a problem and proposing a solution that sounds effective and satisfying, but doing so without thoughtfully looking at what happens after that initial action – Stage One – is taken.

Mark P. Mills, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, has gone beyond Stage One to look into what is involved in replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources in his column “If You Want ‘Renewable Energy,’ Get Ready to Dig.”

“’Renewable energy’ is a misnomer,” he wrote. “Wind and solar machines and batteries are built from nonrenewable materials. And they wear out. Old equipment must be decommissioned, generating millions of tons of waste. The International Renewable Energy Agency calculates that solar goals for 2050 consistent with the Paris Accords will result in old-panel disposal constituting more than double the tonnage of all today’s global plastic waste.”

Mills’ excellent article appeared in The Wall Street Journalin July. He helps us understand the enormous amount of raw materials needed for electric vehicles, and where we will get them. For example, “A single electric-car battery weighs about 1,000 pounds. Fabricating one requires digging up, moving and processing more than 500,000 pounds of raw materials somewhere on the planet,” he explained. “The alternative? Use gasoline and extract one-tenth as much total tonnage to deliver the same number of vehicle-miles over the battery’s seven-year life.”

Wind and solar power involve similar problems: “Building one wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of nonrecyclable plastic. Solar power requires even more cement, steel and glass—not to mention other metals. Global silver and indium mining will jump 250 percent and 1,200 percent respectively over the next couple of decades to provide the materials necessary to build the number of solar panels the International Energy Agency forecasts. World demand for rare-earth elements—which aren’t rare but are rarely mined in America—will rise 300 percent to 1,000 percent by 2050 to meet the Paris green goals. If electric vehicles replace conventional cars, demand for cobalt and lithium, will rise more than 20-fold. That doesn’t count batteries to back up wind and solar grids.”

And, what the greenies do not want you to know is that so much of the production of renewable energy devices requires the burning of fossil fuels. “What’s more, mining and fabrication require the consumption of hydrocarbons,” Mills explains. “Building enough wind turbines to supply half the world’s electricity would require nearly two billion tons of coal to produce the concrete and steel, along with two billion barrels of oil to make the composite blades. More than 90 percent of the world’s solar panels are built in Asia on coal-heavy electric grids.”

Mills referenced a Dutch government-sponsored study that concluded “that the Netherlands’ green ambitions alone would consume a major share of global minerals. ‘Exponential growth in [global] renewable energy production capacity is not possible with present-day technologies and annual metal production,’ it concluded.”

He adds that Europe and the U.S. will not be able to produce the minerals needed for this gargantuan undertaking. “Instead, much of the mining will take place in nations with oppressive labor practices. The Democratic Republic of the Congo produces 70 percent of the world’s raw cobalt, and China controls 90 percent of cobalt refining. The Sydney-based Institute for a Sustainable Future cautions that a global ‘gold’ rush for minerals could take miners into ‘some remote wilderness areas [that] have maintained high biodiversity because they haven’t yet been disturbed.’”

And his coup de gras: “Engineers joke about discovering ‘unobtanium,’ a magical energy-producing element that appears out of nowhere, requires no land, weighs nothing, and emits nothing. Absent the realization of that impossible dream, hydrocarbons remain a far better alternative than today’s green dreams.”

So much of what the increasingly socialist left proposes sounds good, but fails the pragmatism test. Its ideas: are ridiculously expensive; increase government control; impinge on constitutionally guaranteed freedoms; or all of the above.

These solutions are sold to the people through fear of impending catastrophe, such as that climate change is caused by or made worse by human activities. Scientists who produce contrary scientific evidence, and those who believe them, are “science deniers,” which is somewhat the same as being a “deplorable.”

Resistance to this dogma is essential if America is to survive intact.