False warming alarms sentence us to life without industry

By DON SNYDER

Global warming alarmists far and near are concentrating on carbon dioxide as an undesirable component from an undesirable American industry.

Kelly Decker, an ecosystem scientist at CSU, suggested in a Feb. 22 “Your Turn” (“Changing our ways before warming tipping point”) that the sky is falling. So let’s take a closer look at this carbon dioxide scam.

The carbon dioxide (CO2) content in fresh air varies and is between 0.03 percent (300 PPM) to 0.06 percent (600 PPM) around the globe. The U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health limits brief exposures to 3 percent and considers concentrations exceeding 4 percent as “immediately dangerous to life and health.” Please do your math: 3 percent = 100 times 0.03 percent. In her article, Kelly Decker said that 0.0375 percent (375 PPM) is a great threat.

Smaller areas of the world have a CO2 content of higher than 3 percent (30,000 PPM). The concentration of CO2 in soil gas at Mammoth Mountain is currently being monitored on a continuous, year-round basis because of dangerous amounts settling in lower regions. Death Valley got its name because wildlife was not able to survive in some areas there. Years later, high levels of CO2 were found to be the cause.

It’s interesting that Decker and other alarmists use ice core samples as proof of rising CO2 levels. Having taken chemistry, she should know that CO2 is very soluble in both solids and liquids and over time tends to absorb. She should be familiar with an indirect approach based on fossil plants since plants are classed by how they use carbon dioxide. With the emergence of C4 type of plants, which thrive on low CO2 concentrations, previous levels had to be much higher. Cretaceous atmospheric CO2 is estimated to have been 1,120 to 1,680 PPM. This means the earth has the ability to reduce CO2 levels by 400 percent without the help of British tycoon Sir Richard Branson.

What happens if we double the amount of carbon dioxide in air? A great number of experiments have already been done. Morgan et al. (2001) reported that twice-ambient levels of atmospheric CO2 increased above ground biomass by an average of 38 percent. Biomass productivity is one of the most important ecosystem functions that Decker should be familiar with. She also knows that with high levels of oxygen, a process of photorespiration occurs, which uses energy but does not make sugar, and so the balance of nature continues.

Kelly Decker’s essay avoids the phrase “global warming” and instead concentrates on the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement she supports. So let’s look behind the curtain and see who’s pulling the strings.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors passed the Mayors Climate Protection Agreement in June 2005. It says that “climate disruption is a reality and that human activities are largely responsible for increasing concentrations of global warming pollution.” It also says the U.S. is responsible for producing 25 percent of the world’s global warming pollutants and state and local governments should adopt emission reduction targets. This means that the global warming freaks want to make it so hard on the remaining industry that they will be forced to leave the U.S. Most of the U.S. industry has already been forced out.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors is in partnership with the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives. The ICLEI was established in 1990 when the World Congress of Local Governments for a Sustainable Future convened at the United Nations in New York. ICLEI is a U.N. group that was instrumental in the development of Agenda 21, which failed to pass in Congress. It then proceeded to go around Congress directly to mayors pushing their global policies. So who’s pulling the strings? The U.N. and their Kyoto Protocol, which wants to enforce a carbon tax.

The purpose of all this madness is to convince America it is a perpetrator of a crime never committed and sentenced to life without industry. After we have purged the U.S. of industry and become a dependent nation to the Communist world, we will find that our independent Republic is replaced with a North American Union having no borders, no rights and a two-class system. I think you folks should start reading the fine print before it is really too late.

(Snyder lives in Napa.)

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