April 30, 2003
My point? As a good old-fashioned "bleeding heart" liberal, you might think I would be a bit of an eco-freak and thus opposed to global warming. Well, I am. But not because I believe that science has proven that we are in danger of melting the polar ice caps. In fact, I think the science is not very certain at all on that issue: the problem is that the earth has a history of various climate changes over periods of thousands of years. It is possible that we were headed for an ice age bit now we're not.
But the science is clear on one thing: we are definitely increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at a significant rate.
I am opposed to global warming because we don't fully understand what the results will be, and some of it's major effects may well be irreversible. In other words, I'm simply in favor of prudence, especially when the arguments against Kyoto are largely related to sustaining our voracious appetite for conspicuous consumption anyway.
Coincidentally, the same actions we need to take to address global warming also reduce pollution. So why not? It just seems prudent.
There isn't very much carbon dioxide in the air, relatively speaking. As much as we spew it forth, from SUV's and power plants, it only makes up a tiny fraction of the atmosphere. Plants need it to survive, and they convert it into oxygen, which we do need.
A field of corn ripening in the sun consumes all of the carbon dioxide within a meter or so of it's stalks in five minutes. If there was no wind to bring more carbon dioxide, the corn would not grow. I didn't know that. I thought it only needed sun and water and nutrients from the soil.
When a plant gets "too much" carbon dioxide from the air, it increases the number of roots that it grows, in order to balance it's intake of carbon dioxide and minerals. These roots eventually die, of course, every fall. They then decay. Parts of them become topsoil, and parts become carbon dioxide and return to the air.
Did you know that "global warming" will take place mostly in the colder extremes of the earth, where the air is dry. That is because the increase of carbon dioxide doesn't affect moist air as much as it does dry air (which is usually cold). But that doesn't mean that North America will necessarily get warmer. If global warming increases rainfall in the West Antarctic, it will decrease the salinity of the water, which could cause it not to sink under the denser warmer currents in the middle of the ocean, which could affect the Gulf Stream which apparently brings moderate temperatures to Northern Europe.
For the last million years or so, the earth has been subjected to periods of extreme cold lasting for about 90,000 years, interrupted by brief periods of relative warmth lasting 10,000 to 12,000. We are at the end of one of those periods rights now. In fact, the next ice age could arrive at any moment. All of Northern Europe and Canada could be covered by ice sheets in a few thousand years. Unless,