Carbon Life Forms

“CO2 is our friend.” — John B.

- Life on earth is carbon-based. This means that all life is comprised of vital molecules that rely on carbon atoms.

- Despite always being a very tiny portion of our Earth’s atmosphere (currently 0.04%), carbon dioxide has been the ONLY source of all this carbon in living things ... for hundreds of million years.

- The way that living things capture carbon dioxide is through plant photosynthesis ... which, on the side, produces oxygen ... which then animals use ... and they (we) also consume the plants (and each other). Animals then, through respiration, put CO2 back into the air to feed the plants. This is called a symbiotic relationship.

- However, over the eons, plants were voracious ... thought to have reduced CO2 levels ten-fold to levels close to where they are today. It was only when man invented fire and burned wood that plants didn’t starve to death. More lately, internal combustion engines and central heating helped feed plants even more carbon oxide.

- Most carbon-based deposits — oil, natural gas, coal, etc. — derive from the demise of previous carbon-containing living things (mostly plants).

- Carbon dioxide is a “greenhouse gas” and does, among other variables, contribute to the warming of our planet. As plants drove down CO2 levels to near zero, they could have contributed to our periodic ice ages ... the more dangerous temperature extreme ... as plants and animals have survived much, much higher CO2 levels during the Earth’s Carbonaceous Period.

- When one sees smoke coming out of chimneys and industrial smokestacks, it is NOT carbon dioxide (which is invisible.) It is, in fact, water vapor and soot (tiny carbon particles.)  Don’t confuse them. Getting rid of the soot is OK.

- During the Obama administration, our EPA designated carbon dioxide as an air pollutant. And the current environmental activists have declared a war on “carbon” (suggesting soot to most, but implying carbon dioxide to the woke.)  These are both clear indications of a virulent and suicidal mass hysteria.

As a Horse

Our president is as healthy as a horse. For almost an hour yesterday his examining doctor took questions from the MSM about Trump's latest exam. His conclusions: Trump has slightly elevated cholesterol, he should lose 10 to 15 pounds, scored 30 out of 30 on his cognitive tests and has great genes ... see: Vox Story. If you want to see the whole press conference go to Google and watch the U.S. "free" press embarrass themselves.

Trump doesn't smoke, drink or do drugs ... never has. On the other hand, Obama has done all three but the MSM could have cared less about B.O.'s health or mental acuity. Why the difference?

Semantics

There has been a subtle shift in the semantics being used by Obummer and John Kerry when crowing about the squishy results of the Paris Climate Accord. Instead of talking about reductions of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, they are now taking about targeted reductions in "carbon." Now this seems like a trivial difference but it truly isn't. Smoke is comprised mainly of unoxidized carbon and its reduction is a good thing ... with which most civilized people can agree. Whereas CO2 is the source of all life on Earth ... and its reduction is not necessarily a good thing. During the Carboniferous Period (360-300 million years ago) CO2 was 10 times higher than it is today, yet the Earth survived well ... thank you very much.

In fact this 60 million year period in our planet's formation is when most of the oil, coal and natural gas was laid down underground. Ponder on this for a moment. All the lush vegetation that was growing in this CO2-rich environment is the source of most all of the fossil fuels that we use today. 60 million years is 20 times longer than when the earliest man appeared on Earth and 30,000 times longer than the period of time since the birth of Christ. That's a good long time with a whole lot of vegetative growth ... and thus a whole lot of fossil fuels ... much more than I suspect we currently estimate. Yes, some day we will run out... but this is many lifetimes away ... and I believe that our sources of energy then will not be wind ... maybe sunshine ... but more likely safe fission and fusion.

So our administration's purposeful obfuscation of the term "carbon" to imply both smoke and CO2 is disingenuous and purposefully confusing. ... an attempt to lead the uninformed to its way of thinking. How very semantically Orwellian!

See also: Power Line Blog.

Smoke

Why has China not smacked down North Korea's half-pint despot, Kim Jong-un, for his dangerous game of nuclear brinkmanship? Clearly China has much to lose from this saber-rattling in that both South Korea and Japan might now be tempted to develop nuclear capabilities of their own. And it is still possible that an actual nuclear Holocaust might be triggered.

Is it that China is allowing this insanity to happen in order to smoke-out the United State's defense capabilities vis-a-vis such a nuclear threat?  Might China want such knowledge so that they could develop counter-counter measures for the time when it might be China that was posing an equivalent threat?  Clearly the United States has taken preventative measures such as deploying sea-platformed radars (see: CNN Story) and anti-ballistic capabilities (see: The Aviationist Story) to the region. This is providing valuable information to China about the speed and extent of our deterrents.  Might China also be testing our neophyte Secretaries of State and Defense to see how effectively they respond to such a crisis (see: AP Story)?

To China, all this smoked-out intelligence might more than offset the downside risks mentioned in the first paragraph above.