My take on global warming...I mean climate change.

First of all, I believe in climate change. In fact, I believe it changes all the time. From season to season (best I can tell Winter has always been colder than Summer) so we get at least 3-4 major shifts in climate every year. I have even started noticing climate change in the morning and afternoon. Surprisingly, it seems to me to be much cooler in the morning (now that we are into the Summer months) than in the afternoon.

All kidding aside, there has always been climate change. Remember a few years ago when the crisis was the hole in the ozone layer? This was going to cause us all to be burned because the UV light would be too intense for humans to handle. Where did that scare go? This frenzy cost American dearly as we gave up CFCs for ozone-friendly coolants. This meant new AC units for everyone (huge cost), pump sprays instead of aerosols (carpel tunnel syndrome), and the smuggling of CFC coolants from Mexico. Surprisingly, the rest of the world did not adopt the same policies as we did in the US?

The thing about green house gases is that CO2 is not the only one. Methane, from the natural decay of living organisms, is a huge contributor to the green house effect. So is water vapor. Thankfully no one is proposing we limit water vapor emissions. After all, this actually sustains life. Wait, so does CO2. Plants need it for their survival.

So where did all this carbon come from in the first place? Well it came from the CO2 that was originally in the environment millions of years ago when volcanoes we producing livable land and salts that would make sea water. Plants absorbed (or maybe it is adsorbed) this CO2 and made energy through photosynthesis. The residual carbon was then deposited in soil when plants died. Through years of pressure and transformation, it bonded with hydrogen to form hydrocarbons (aka crude oil). During this time, the earth cooled off because there was less C02 in the atmosphere. So much cooling took place that the earth experience an ice age (actually several). So man is really just putting a little of this material back into the atmosphere so future generations can have a little crude oil of their own.

Just fly over the country at 40,000 feet and you realize quickly how small man really is. To think that man can actually influence climate is an incredibly arrogant assumption. There are just too many variables including solar, lunar, and other celestial effects that far outweigh anything man can muster that might effect climate.

So why do I choose to reduce my carbon footprint? For one reason, I hate waste. We live on a planet with scarce resources and I would like future generations to enjoy a high standard of living and it will take resources to do that. Conserving for the future is really what the environmental argument should be about today. Lowering every one's standard of living and pushing us back to the middle ages in terms of living conditions is not an alternative that I am interested in pursuing. However, that is exactly what will happen if we allow environmentalists to hijack public policy and government.