Global Cooling: An Inconvenient Fact

clipped from rfdamerica.com For the last decade or so, we’ve had to listen the the apocalyptic ravings of leftwing eco-nuts warning that the planet is growing warmer. They warn we are standing on the ledge of an abyss which would swallow the light of the world. The mainstream media has followed this irrational fear- mongering like a band of scared puppies. The Obama Administration is so sure that we are facing complete annihilation by our own hand, that they are moving a cap-and-trade policy through Congress at the speed of light. Global warming is an emergency; don’t you know? climate change is as natural as night and day Daniel Greenstein over at StormX, points to scientific evidence that the eruption of Mt. Redoubt in Alaska will result in a cooler than normal growing season for those of us in the Midwest The ash cloud, which is comprised of the same nasty chemicals as the smog in L.A. or Beijing, blocked the sunlight how are we to believe that smog over the world’s largest cities is somehow making the world warmer

Crisis. What Crisis?

The fact is, the planet is cooling.

Earth has gone through this cycle of cooling and warming many times, long before mankind ever showed up.

True we are adding to the problem but nature will make adjustments.

Global Warming Equals More Snow?

I need new clothes. But first I need to know, do I stock up on shorts, sandals and t-shirts? Or, sweaters, overcoats, mukluks and gloves?

Stories of record snow falls and melting ice-caps. Stories of record droughts. Damn it, I’m confused.

Snow in Las Vegas? Snow in Houston? Snow in New Orleans?

Just a few months ago we were all told that our coast lines will dramatically change due to rapidly melting ice caps. And we are adding more carbon to the atmosphere at a faster rate than ever before thus heating up our planet.

Now we find out Mars is experiencing global warming as well. Has our behavior gotten so bad and far-reaching that we have affected a planets weather patterns over 55 million km away?

Here’s how some scientist try to cover the scientific community’s collective butts, the surprise with which we have greeted the extreme conditions only reinforces how our climate has changed over the years. Huh? They are telling us that such extreme weather as record snowfall in places that always gets snow and snowfall in places that usually never gets snow now only occurs every 20 years. When these occurrences used to occur every 5 years or so.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not buying it. I used to put more faith in science that I have of late. But putting too much stock in that old expression 'too cold to snow' may show a crack in their logic.

In the meantime, while scientist try to figure out what our future is going to look like, my garden is showing new life a full month ahead of schedule. Apparently, I am not the only one confused.

If this Global Warming trend keeps up, we are all going to freeze to death.

Excuse me, I need to shovel some Global Warming snow from my driveway. I wonder if there will be a market for fur-lined t-shirts.



Humor: Snow – Global Warming Alert!
Global Snow Job: Global Warming Plot to Take Over the World?
Global Warming Caused by Shoveling

Global Warming – Idling Cars Add to Air Pollution

Millions of people do it everyday. Sitting at a traffic light. Warming up in the drive way. Waiting for your order at a fast food restaurant. Idling cars add tons of pollution to the air we breathe.

About 30 states and dozens of municipalities have measures in place to limit the amount a vehicle can be left idling, typically around three to five minutes.

New York City has had a three-minute law in place citywide since 1971, but advocates say it is rarely enforced or advertised.

A new measure signed into law this month cuts the allowed idling time from three minutes to one minute around schools, and gives more city agencies the power to issue violations. It also requires an annual violations report so officials can track enforcement.

A new report by the Environmental Defense Fund estimates that idling cars and trucks produce 130,000 tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide each year in New York City, contributing to global warming. The group believes the one-minute idling limit next to schools is the toughest such law in the United States.

This is one of many ‘little’ thoughtless action’s we do everyday that if halted could prevent tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides from entering the atmosphere, not to mention the millions of gallons of gasoline we could collectively save.

Progress Toward Addressing Climate Change Fails Again

Are we really committed to combating climate change? We talk a great game. We seem to recognize that something must be done. But when it comes right down to it, there is very little action.

Industrialized and developing countries get together periodically to discuss the problem and toss around ideas on how to deal with it, but in the end any solution is so watered down that it becomes ineffective.

Money is made available for developing countries, through a 2% levy on carbon trading under the UN Clean Development Mechanism, but everyone agrees that the amount raised ($80 million) is far below what is needed to build the necessary flood defenses, to develop much needed drought-resistant crops, and to produce storm warnings. This fund represents the human side of climate change, something that tends to be lost when discussing how much pollution should be cut back by industrialized nations.

The biggest polluters are of course industrialized nations, such as China, India, America, and Japan, who raise the loudest objections to pay more into the fund and consistently fail to reach agreements to make deeper emissions cuts. Understandably, developing nations are disappointed at their position and stubbornness. Everyone is paving a road of good intentions, but good intentions never get anything done.

U.N. projections are that poor nations will need tens of billions of dollars a year by 2030 to cope with climate change. Poland spent 24 million euros ($31.84 million) just to host the Dec. 1-12 conference and the only concrete result was to streamline access by developing nations to the fund while rich nations secured controls to ensure cash was properly spent.

This summit represented the halfway point between Bali in 2007 and Copenhagen in 2009. It was scheduled to reach an agreement to expand the Kyoto Protocol committing industrialized countries to make deeper emission cuts in the short-term and to produce a longer-term agreement encompassing all countries. No discernable progress was made.

EU leaders in Brussels agreed a pact on Friday to cut greenhouse gases by 20% below 1990 levels by 2020 -- after making costly concessions to east European countries. Is this going to be another disappointment of more talk and less action?

Cutting greenhouse gas emissions was never expected to be cheap or easy. It requires drastic changes in lifestyles for all of us, rich and poor alike. Everyone knew this before agreeing to get together to create an action plan to overcome our past mistakes. Time passes, pollution levels remain unaltered. The time has come to actually commit to a plan. Industrialized nations, being the biggest polluters should bear the largest financial burden to ease the rest of world of their disproportionate suffering.

This could be our last best chance to make a difference. Let’s make it effective.

EPA Should be Overhauled

The subject of coal was brought up during the recent presidential campaign cycle and President-elect Obama as well as Senator John McCain made some allusions to keeping this 19th century fossil fuel industry alive. Truth of the matter is we continue to need the energy this sooty polluting energy source provides. However, it is not the only option and the EPA is doing nothing to force this industry into cleaning up its act.

Dozens of new coal plants across the country have been put on hold in response to EPA allowing coal-burning power plants to build without addressing global warming. The coal industry’s response is to counter-sue in an attempt to prevent states from acting to fight global warming. This is just incredulous.

During the presidential campaign, the coal industry launched a $35 million ad campaign to rally public support for coal-fired electricity and to fuel opposition to legislation that Congress is crafting to slow climate change. The Australian Coal Industry spent millions to launch an offense to persuade the public that it is not a climate change villain. These advertising campaigns, quite simply, mask the harmful and polluting nature of coal-fired power plants. The public knows these advertising claims are lies. And yet they continue to try to greenwash the truth hoping the public will buy into their self-delusional pipedream.

The money spent on these greenwashing campaigns would be better spent in developing renewable energy sources. If the coal and oil industries would redirect their efforts and invest their very sizable fortunes into developing alternative energy the entire planet could get there sooner and everyone would be healthier for it. Money spent on new coal plants could also help develop wind and/or solar farms, geothermal plants or biomass development. Why fight the inevitable?

It disturbs and saddens me greatly that the EPA could issue such permits to an industry that has historically been the single most visible polluter of our environment without requiring controls on carbon dioxide. As far as I am concerned it is an indictment against the EPA. For what are they good for if they are not going to take appropriate measures to protect our environment and our health? Their action is the converse to their very name.

I can understand why the coal industry wants to do what it can to maintain its ‘business as usual’. It is the very mindset of human behavior to continue on the course that it knows best. But when that course is proving to be harmful to the health of the general population, not to mention the very environment in which we all live, then that course needs to be altered.

We as a nation have understood for decades that polluting our water, air and land cannot be tolerated. The federal government created an entire agency to protect the environment because we all know that in our endeavors to become a powerful nation we were fouling our own nests. The EPA has been given tools to combat polluters, the Clean Air Act being most notable, but continue down a path that all but proves they are in bed with these very polluters.

Other recent decisions have indicated that EPA Director Brown is, at best, sympathetic to industry polluters, and, at worst, being bought off by them. The EPA has obviously lost its mandate to protect us and therefore should be overhauled.

Finally, we will have a president that will actually listen to scientists and view them as something more than just court-jesters. The EPA better sit up and take notice.

I know the coal industry and all its related support groups employ a lot of people, but coal truly is not the answer. It has polluted our world for far too long. Alternative methods need to be employed, sooner rather than later. Monetary factors cannot dictate our future health. The only parties arguing the permits should be upheld are those who have a financial interest in having these coal-power plants be built (American Institute, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Chemistry Council and the National Association of Manufacturers). This sends a very loud message that they value profit over our health.

The Supreme Court will go no further than to tell the EPA that they must decide whether carbon dioxide endangers public health and welfare. But we already have tons of proof concerning the negative effects of excess carbon dioxide and where it comes from. Let us stop wasting money on more studies. Let us stop spinning our wheels trying to side-step the obvious, albeit expensive, solution. Let us develop renewable energy sources and get these industries up and running now.

Further reading:
CoalisnottheAnswer.org
American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity Greenwashing Dirty Coal
EPA Decision on Standards for Greenhouse Gases Draw Criticism
Is Bush interfering with EPA decision?
EPA Car Emissions Ruling Contested on Hill

More Doom and Gloom from Global Warming Scientists

We have all become too familiar with the incessant prophecies of how our planet is going to heat up to the point that global geography is going to change. The debate is about what is causing it and when will it happen.

Now scientists have come up with yet another prediction: the earth’s oceans will rise 1-2 feet over the next century instead of the previously predicted 1-4”.

The bottom line is we just don’t know the extent to which melting ice sheets are going to change the face of the earth.

Modern scientists have developed computer models to predict all sorts of outcomes but there still remain too many factors in order to reach a clear conclusion. And this isn’t taking in account a host of unknown factors.

Should we change our lifestyles based on unknowns? Historically, no one but the truly freaked-out alarmists ever has. This situation is becoming too reminiscent of the “chicken little” syndrome which will quite possibly lead many people to ignore these predictions altogether.

I say we rid ourselves of fossil fuel dependency because it is good for the environment and our health.

Global warming has been shown to be a part of the natural cycle throughout planet Earth’s existence. We are either going to experience it within the next 100 years or 1,000 years, but it will happen.

In the meantime, while the finger pointing continues and while scientists gather and calculate new findings, let us all individually concentrate on not contaminating our water, air and land and develop habits to the keep the Earth clean and humming along for the benefit of us and the planet.

Source: Physorg.com

The Everglades Could Soon be Whole Again

Florida Governor Charlie Crist is expected to announce a $1.75 billion deal to essentially buy the U.S. Sugar Corporation, including 187,000 acres of farmland that once sat in the northern Everglades. The purchase, reported by Time magazine’s Michael Grunwald, would resurrect the almost decade-old restoration project to rebuild the Everglades.

It is hoped that the project will re-establish storage reservoirs, treatment marshes and a flowway that will reconnect Lake Okeechobee to the Glades. This could help recreate the original north-to-south movement of the "River of Grass", and eliminate damaging pulses of excess water into coastal estuaries. That would be good news for panthers and gators, dolphins and herons, ghost orchids and royal palms.

The Florida Everglades was once a vibrant, free-flowing river of grass that provided clean water from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay. Today, this extraordinary ecosystem is dying due in part to U.S. Sugar Corporation who has been responsible for years of sucking water out of the glades and pumping polluted runoff into the lake. Now that ex-governor Jeb Bush’s industry-friendly aides, who pumped up U.S. Sugar with obscene amounts of subsidies and have fought hard to eliminate funding for the restoration project, have been replaced with more eco-aware legislators, the project to restore and preserve this American treasure could now be back on track.

The plan was approved in the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 2000 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in partnership with the South Florida Water Management District and numerous other federal, state, local and tribal partners, to enhance water supplies and maintain flood protection. It includes more than 60 elements, will take more than 30 years to construct and will cost an estimated $7.8 billion.

Once again, global warming is cited as a an important reason for why this project needs to be undertaken. According to a University of Miami expert in coastal marine environments, Dr. Harold Wanless, speaking at the Everglades Coalition’s annual conference in January 2008, recreating enough of the natural flow of water to the 2.4 million-acre marsh to rebuild its eroded peatlands could hold back salt water intrusion from rising sea levels and protect South Florida's drinking water supply. He pointed to conservative estimates that predict a two foot increase in sea levels by 2100, but cited other studies that indicate the rise could amount to 20 feet by 2200, which would submerge all of South Florida.

On a personal note, I visited the Everglades during summer vacations in the early 1960’s and again in 2005. The Everglades is not nearly as vibrant and teaming with life that I remember in earlier times. It feels good to finally report some good news for the planet.

Sources:

The end of U.S. Sugar

Journey to restore America’s Everglades

Everglades reading list

Everglades Restoration Gains Urgency as Climate Warms

Is Global Warming A Real Problem or Not?

One group of well-educated and well-intentioned scientists warn that the world’s population needs to act immediately to stave off the possible devastating effects of a warmer planet. And they have a lot of photographs and scientific documentation to back them up.

Another group of equally well-educated and well-meaning scientist warn that taking up arms against global warming is not only a waste of resources but could do more harm than good.

Who do we believe?

Arthur B. Robinson, who led a team of scientists at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine in researching the hypothesis of the Kyoto Protocol, claims his research shows that greenhouse gas has a very negligible effect on global warming. He even goes so far as to say that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide have been beneficial to the environment. Robinson’s report outlines sharp increases in growth of forests in the United States and the Amazonian rain forests, arguably due to the increase in carbon dioxide emissions; trees respond well to carbon dioxide fertilization.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of the world's leading climate researchers, sees a greater than 90% likelihood that most warming over the last 50 years has occurred because of human-caused emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

At the core of the argument is not if the planet is warming but what is causing the higher temperatures. Throughout millennia the earth’s climate has gone through temperature changes. Warming and cooling is a natural cycle of any living thing. Your own body goes through this cycle. Earth’s oceans go through this cycle. Why are we raising such a overblown fuss with this particular natural phenomena?

Is it just human nature that when the number of participants gets larger the less likely the chances of agreement on any topic? Is this what we are seeing?

If there is proof that humans are not causing global warming and there is proof that that humans are causing global warming, where do we go from here?

There are some conspiracy theorists that claim that Chicken Little scientists created the scare in order to get more people involved in caring for the environment. Sounds a bit implausible but not entirely impossible.

While these two camps duke it out in the scientific arena, and the remainder of the world population that cares to chooses sides, the rest of us will go about living our daily lives enjoying the Summer sun, admiring Autumn’s changing colors, lamenting Winter’s freezing temperatures, and welcoming Springs promise of new life.

China’s whitewashed green initiative

China plans on shutting down many Beijing-area factories and cement plants for two months beginning in late July as a key part of the effort to clean the city's famously polluted air for the Olympic Games. Sorry China, temporary closures, while all eyes are on you during the Olympics does not count as cleaning up the environment.

Oh but they are planning on banning the use of half the city's 3.5 million vehicles, disallowing spray paint and other harsh chemicals to be used outdoors, closing about one-tenth of the city's gas stations, and halting construction in the Beijing area, which now has about 40 square miles of construction sites. This is only a temporary measure. They are basically going to put the city on hold during the Olympic games.

Their idea of staging “green games” does not involve anything more than to temporarily mothball 19 heavily polluting enterprises, including steel mills, coke plants and refineries. Coal-burning power plants, in China, account for a marked increase in soot, toxic chemicals and other climate-changing gases emitted into the atmosphere last year. In early April, a dense cloud of pollutants over Northern China sailed to nearby Seoul, sweeping along dust and desert sand before wafting across the Pacific. An American satellite spotted the cloud as it crossed the American West Coast.

The increase in global-warming gases from China's coal use will probably exceed that for all industrialized countries combined over the next 25 years, surpassing by five times the reduction in such emissions that the Kyoto Protocol seeks.

Sulfur dioxide production threatens the health of China’s citizens, contributing to about 400,000 premature deaths a year. It also causes acid rain that poisons lakes, rivers, forests and crops. Photo courtesy of Chang W. Lee, New York Times.

China uses more coal than the United States, the European Union and Japan combined. Every week to 10 days, another coal-fired power plant opens somewhere in China that is big enough to serve all the households in Dallas or San Diego.

China has a history of buying cheap and often antiquated equipment from well connected domestic suppliers rather than importing costlier more fuel efficient modern equipment from other industrialized nations that would better serve to help clean up the gases and other pollutants emitted from their coal burning plants.

China is beginning to enjoy the increased access to electricity that until only recently was available for a few hours in the evening for many rural families. Bringing electrical power to hundreds of millions of people will take some time and the quickest and cheapest way to do this is through burning through their abundant supply of coal. Unfortunately, the rest of the world is suffering from the resultant pollution.

Filters near Lake Tahoe in the mountains of eastern California "are the darkest that we've seen" outside smoggy urban areas, said Steven S. Cliff, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California at Davis.

Shutting down a few factories and banning cars from Beijing’s roads may help visitors breathe a little easier during the Olympics but China has a long way to go clean up the air we will all breathe after the Olympics are over.

Is global warming a conspiracy

There’s an undertow to global warming today concerning scientists who don’t believe global warming is as big of a threat to humanity as is the general consensus.

In the vast global warming arena, hurricane building is one method scientists use to debate global warming’s impact.

William Gray, the well-known Colorado State University hurricane forecaster, routinely uses the annual National Hurricane Conference as a platform to bash global warming. Gray argues that the scientific consensus on global warming is bogus — and "a mild form of McCarthyism has developed toward those scientists who do not agree" that mankind is in danger.

He basically derides anyone who portrays global warming as a doomsday scenario to be alarmists and charlatans out to brainwash our children.

In the pre-Inconvenient Truth days global warming was a topic discussed mainly among environmental hobbyists and a few scientists. Since then it has become the number one threat to all mankind.

Is global warming the harbinger of Earth’s final days? And does mankind have anything to do with hastening its arrival?

Al Gore is not a scientist, he does however possess the ability to marry climate change science with fears of climate change to produce a very effective piece of documentary film work that has garnered a huge following.

Casting Al Gore as the unchallenged guru of climate change is dangerous and disingenuous to true scientific discipline. It represents the lazy mans way of scientific study.

In this day of quick and easy access to an overwhelming amount of data on any subject, we tend to search for and more readily accept easily digestible packets that best match our view of the world. Access to widespread distribution allows for quicker dissemination of popular ideas which are then, too often, taken for fact. When you invest your belief system in what later turns out to be erroneous facts you begin to question your ability to determine what is real or fiction.

At the risk of being labeled a climate change contrarian, I will state that environmentalist want to believe that mankind is the evil doer in the climate change scenario. Climate change has been taking place since the earth was created. I will not dismiss human-kinds effect on climate change, I just want to go on record that the human connection to climate change has not yet been definitively defined. I am certain there are other mitigating factors of which I am sure humans have some link to but we are not alone in bringing about global warming. Nor do I believe we will come to an end as a result of it.

We need more proof before buying into what amounts to be a conspiracy theory of which every human has unwittingly taken part.

Science has been stumbling through theories about the climate since a Swedish scientist published, in 1896, the new idea that as humanity burned fossil fuels such as coal, which added carbon dioxide gas to the Earth's atmosphere, we would raise the planet's average temperature. This process was dubbed "greenhouse effect" and was only one of many speculations about climate, and not the most plausible.

In the early 1970s, the rise of environmentalism raised public awareness of the effects of human activity on the planet. Curiosity soon turned into anxious concern. Alongside the greenhouse effect, some scientists pointed out that human activity was putting dust and smog particles into the atmosphere, where they could block sunlight and cool the world. Analysis of Northern Hemisphere weather statistics showed that a cooling trend had begun in the 1940s. This contradiction in scientific findings led to a division in public opinion, those who believed we were headed toward major flooding of coastal area as the ice caps melted versus the school of thought that the Earth was about to enter a catastrophic new ice age.

Climate is a vastly intricate system that responds to many influences, such as variations in the heat of the sun, volcanoes erupting clouds of smoke, subtle changes in Earth’s orbit, and even the raising and lowering of mountain ranges which divert wind patterns and ocean currents. These changes are subtle and beyond man’s control, but they do have an influence on the climate. To say that mankind’s influence on the climate overshadows any of these naturally occurring phenomena is simply placing too great an importance on mankind’s ability.

We can of course minimize our own influence but that would require a Herculean effort to get everyone to act as one and truly, when has that ever happened? Not a very likely scenario is it? Scientists cannot even get organized enough to give us a single answer to the cause of global warming because there are simply too many influences. How could we possibly come up with a solution to reverse the global warming trend?

So, why do we put so much faith in one man who is not even a scientist or an expert in the field of climatology?

Perhaps if scientists could all pool their money and create a flashy documentary film that would show climate change to be a good thing and tirelessly push it on the talk circuit the rest of us would relax enough to live our lives and not worry so much about that which we truly have so little control over.

Kansas strikes down another pollution producer

Is this state legislature for real? With all the proof of global warming landing like a brick wall squarely on their heads, the Kansas legislature has the temerity to introduce a bill that would not only allow the spewing of 11 million more tons of greenhouse gas into our atmosphere, they also had written in the bill excusing energy producers from adhering to the state’s stricter-than-the-EPA-standards of pollution.

Sunflower Electric power Corp tried twice in the last year to obtain approval to add two 700 –megawatt units at a facility in western Kansas. I can’t believe anyone is still pursuing this outdated filthy form of power generation. It is morally irresponsible to actually want to add pollution to our atmosphere. Sunflower president Earl Watkins had the nerve to threaten Kansas families with higher electric rates saying that if the bill did not pass it would “punish our Kansas workers and industries”.

Just who does this guy think he is fooling? Pollution to our bodies and our planet is a far greater threat than the increase in home and business utility rates that we have come to expect almost annually anyway.

"Of all the duties and responsibilities entrusted to me as governor, none is greater than my obligation to protect the health and well-being of the people of Kansas," Governor Sebelius said in her veto message.

Thank-you governor for showing some common sense against outdated dirty energy producing power plants and legislators who cannot see past the dollar signs being waved in front of them.

Sources: Kansas City Star, Reuters, Associated Press

Forests are becoming a memory

In the U.S., many people value our National Parks system for the relaxation and the chance to commune with nature that these great, legally protected, expanses provide. It’s the solitude that make these destinations so desirable. The ability to escape the concrete and asphalt creep that claims so much of our natural surroundings, more and more every year, is priceless.

Trees, with their almost magical ability to immediately sooth the wary soul with their presence and grandeur, is what most people mention as their reason for traveling to our national parks.

The world’s rainforests, and the life-sustaining qualities they impart onto the world as the single most important buffer between clean air (providing 20% of our oxygen) and the destruction of our atmosphere, are disappearing at alarming rates. Not from what nature itself has wrought against them, but from mankind’s quest for survival.

Deforestation, by ranchers, farmers and timbermen, is occurring at the rate of 60 acres per minute! Take a moment to let that figure sink in. Every second, one acre of this world’s tropical forest is destroyed. For perspective, this amounts to an area the size of Mississippi being cleared every year!

Twenty years ago, tropical forests were cut down at the rate of 50 acres per minute, now it’s 60 acres per minute.

Warnings go unheeded
Warnings from scientists, conservation groups, religious leaders and others were repeated at December's climate conference in Bali, Indonesia and remain unheeded while the world’s consumers continue to support the very reason that these forests are being cut down.

It may surprise you to learn, it certainly surprised me, that Africa is now the leader in deforestation. Almost 1 percent (10 million acres) of the forests of Sudan, Zambia and Tanzania are lost every year to small-scale farming.

South American forests are replaced for cattle ranching and growing soybeans.

Southeast Asians cut down or burn forests for giant plantations of palm trees for the palm oil they produce. This palm oil is used in food processing, cosmetics and other products.

Clearing these forests for profit has led to the extinction of animal and plant life, soil erosion, changes in weather patterns, loss of forest peoples’ livelihoods, and the increasing threat of climate change. None of these considerations have any effect to motivate those responsible for deforestation.


Deforestation creates pollution
Not all trees that are cut down make it to the lumber industry, some are not suitable, some are in areas that make it unprofitable to haul them out, so they are burned where they fall, or they are left to rot. The pollution from burning these trees accounts for 20 percent of manmade emissions. This number blows me away. Only the burning of fossil fuels creates more pollution than the burning of these trees.

To exacerbate the problem of pollution, hauling ‘profitable’ trees away by truck, cutting trees down with chainsaws (much larger ones than you see at your neighborhood home improvement store) and tearing trees down with tractors, all add to the fossil fuels pollution numbers.


What is the alternative?
The more trees we lose to individual profiteers the fewer there are to absorb the global warming carbon that is emitted by cutting them down. The effect of pollution increases with every tree that is removed. Growing new trees is not the answer, they grow too slowly and they are not planted where they are needed most. You simply cannot replace tropical rain forests by planting trees elsewhere. Rain forests have grown where they have because that is the best environment for them.

If we are going to allow the continued destruction of earth’s ability to absorb our pollution then we need to find a replacement for these trees. We must have ways to absorb the huge amounts of carbon we create or we are going to destroy ourselves either from the increasing temperature of the earth or by suffocating ourselves due to lack of usable oxygen.

In light of this, is deforestation necessary to continue to feed the world’s ever increasing demand for beef, biofuels and other products? Is deforestation necessary to provide livelihoods for the farmers and ranchers to support their families, their communities and the rest of the world?

If moving industries to third world countries in order to give those populations jobs so they stop replacing our forests with farms, then that is what we need to do.

Food supplies are decreasing due to global warming and a shift to farming for biofuel and cattle feed. Deforestation is the cause of the former and the result of the latter.

The world has large-scale farming operations and industrial concerns that grow food crops to help feed the world’s human population. A larger percentage of this production is being redirected towards feeding beef and for biofuel, both of which add to deforestation.

If improving the production of these farms, through bio-engineering or whatever other means, will stop deforestation, then this is what we need to do.

Meat producers spends millions in advertising trying to sell us on the health benefits of eating more meat. The resulting debate between the pro and con issues of eating more or eating less meat will go on forever. The bottom line is that it is a personal choice. But, here is another issue that needs to be considered, the drive to produce more beef is destroying our forests. And this falls heavily on the side against eating more beef. We are destroying ourselves by trying to ‘eat healthier’, if you buy into what the meat producers are saying.

Do we really need more cattle for beef? Do we really need the extra farm land for biofuels? The argument for diverting our trend from a meat-based diet and towards a grain-based diet has never been as keenly felt as it is right now.

If we have to become vegetarians in order to save ourselves, then that is what we need to do.

If we have to turn these rainforests into living museums and promote ecotourism to protect them, then this is what we need to do.

If we have to declare rainforests as medical research labs in order to protect them, then we need to do it.

Why should so few, take away so much, for so little, that which means so much to the world’s future?

Mankind has gotten very proficient at destruction. It seems we dedicate more time, energy and money at improving ways of destruction than what we spend on anything else. Many people have tried to change this course to one of preservation but not enough is being done. The importance of maintaining these forests for what they represent as well as how they actually serve us is not being taken seriously enough.

In the opening to this post I mentioned that our national parks are legally protected. But, how long will it be before the profit mongers are able to convince a financially strapped administration to allow them access to our forests and begin the destruction of that which the rest of us prize most?

Do you think the law will protect our national parks? The U.S. Forest Service, one of those financially strapped administrations, granted a foreign mining company the rights to drill for uranium just miles from a popular lookout point in Grand Canyon National Park!

Will survival of the whole outweigh the profits to the few? Has it ever happened in the past?


For more research on rainforests:
Rainforest facts


Research shows dollars and sense in protecting rainforests

Rainforest Alliance

Rainforest Foundation

Rainforests books for children

Turning CO2 into Baking Soda.

A company called Skyonic, based in Austin, Texas, recently announced it has been testing a system (called Skymine) to collect carbon dioxide created by factory processes to make food-grade baking soda. Using exhaust heat, generated from factories processing, to power the system makes it an economically viable system that can be custom built to any smokestack. The resulting baking soda can then be marketed for home or industrial use. Or it can be buried harmlessly in landfills or abandoned mines.

The process of filtering out carbon dioxide is called carbon sequestration and uses algae to collect the carbon dioxide. It is a very simple and ingenious system using items found anywhere in the world.

The inventor of Skymine, Joe Jones, has been working on the idea in his garage and was able to patent it in 2005. Since then he has field tested the system at a coal-burning power plant in Texas. Skyonic is currently performing pilot-scale demonstration plant work at Luminant’s Big Brown Steam Electric Station in Fairfield, Texas, under real-world conditions.

Testing the system will work out any bugs in order to make it viable for large scale use, but the process is very promising as an alternative to other carbon sequestration methods.

It’s not that we need baking soda, but we don’t need carbon dioxide. This system has the potential to go world-wide.

Kudos to Joe Jones in helping find a workable solution to the global warming threat.