I have a friend, call him Rick, who runs an ice skating arena that has an outsize parking lot. The lot is rarely used to its full capacity, even when business is popping.
The arena is across the street from a big grocery store. A few weeks ago, the big grocery store hired a paving contractor to resurface the store’s parking lot.
The pavers needed a staging area for their trucks and paving supplies. It wouldn’t do to use the store’s parking lot, since that would squeeze out paying customers.
The contractor’s crew chief spotted the ice arena’s big parking lot across the street. Light bulb flashed overhead. “Why look”, he told his crew. “That empty lot would be perfect. Park the trucks and pile our stuff over there.”
So they did. And Rick was not happy about it, or about the mess he had to sweep up afterward.
Rick told me the story at a chamber of commerce picnic. “Did you send a bill?”, I asked. “Sure did”, Rick said, “for $1,500.”
He was within his rights to ask for the money. It doesn’t matter that the arena’s parking lot is mostly empty most of the time. It doesn’t matter that the pavers didn’t have a practical alternative. And it doesn’t matter that they meant no harm.
When a business uses someone else’s property for its own purposes, it ought to pay the owner. Especially when permission was not secured ahead of time.
Which is why industries ought to pay for disposing of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and why the revenues ought to come back to you and me.
The sky is mine. And it’s yours too. Those who use the sky to dispose of their refuse ought to pay for the privilege. It doesn’t matter whether the payments come from auctioning emissions allowances or levying a carbon tax. Either way, it’s a user fee.
As Ronald Reagan said in 1988, “Many laws protecting environmental quality have promoted liberty by securing property against the destructive trespass of pollution.”
Back to the ice arena. The $1,500 bill that Rick sent was reasonable. Had he sent them a bill for $15,000, that would have been unreasonable. Rick wasn’t interested in gouging the paving company, only in receiving fair compensation for use of his property, the resulting wear and tear, and his time sweeping up after them.
Fairness is why carbon disposal fees ought to bear a reasonable relationship to the risks of loading our atmosphere with gases that could harmfully perturb the global climate and with the costs of mitigating the problem. Charge nothing more and nothing less.
One more trip back to the ice arena. The following didn’t happen, but suppose it did. The paving contractor sends Rick a check for $1,500, and the city demands most of the payout. We have better uses for this money than the ice arena does, the city fathers say. The budget’s tight, folks like our programs, and we sure don’t want to have to lay off cops, do we?
As the Beatles song “Tax Man” goes, “Be thankful I don’t take it all.”
Whether the city has better uses for the money than Rick does is irrelevant. The payment is for use of his property, not to fill another tanker car on the government gravy train.
That’s why carbon disposal fees ought to go back to the people who own the sky. You and me. Not the tax man.
25 responses so far
1 lasulasu // Aug 18, 2009 at 11:33 am
By your analogy, since the atmosphere belongs to the planet, and air pollution is not contained by national borders, the logical and ethical recipients of a carbon tax would have to be the planets population. We would pay the rest of the world for our pollution. Good luck with getting that idea passed. Just tax the fuel that causes the pollution, and offset payroll and income taxes with the energy tax income.
2 sinz54 // Aug 18, 2009 at 11:33 am
There is a sovereignty issue though: A nation which is a heavy greenhouse gas polluter (like the U.S. and China) will end up paying more than a nation which is not.
The pure free-market view of the world ignores this. To them, a polluting factory anywhere in the world needs to compensate the rest of the world for polluting their atmosphere with greenhouse gases. In a pure global free market, there are no national boundaries, frankly.
Conservatives are not Randian Objectivists or libertarians. They tend to be nationalists, and don’t like it when their country is made to pay more than other countries for something like greenhouse gases. There’s no question that America will pay a heavy price for its coal factories, SUVs, and Interstate highways that cause transportation to be 70% of America’s total energy needs. So in a sense, America will have to pay a price for its lifestyle.
I have always supported a carbon tax. But the international and sovereignty issues are delicate, and I haven’t thought them through entirely yet.
3 barker13 // Aug 18, 2009 at 11:44 am
“…industries ought to pay for disposing of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and why the revenues ought to come back to you and me.”
What absolute crap.
Government should regulate pollution (which carbon dioxide isn’t btw) via traditional means, namely, by decreeing that “this or that” creates too much pollution and so you can’t do it.
Say a certain model car or truck is “too polluting.” OK. Then we don’t allow these certain cars or trucks on the road. Say a certain factory process is deemed “too polluting.” OK. Then we don’t allow that process to take place.
(*SHRUG*) Simple! Simple and transparent. Best of all, if the government “decree” backfires… we know who to blame and throw out of office – then we allow the NEW government officials to recalibrate what government allows and doesn’t allow.
Listen, folks… Jim here is a pro tax guy. He’s a pro big government guy. He’s a pro nanny state guy. I’m not.
Over on another thread Midcon shocked the hell out of me by favoring a carbon tax. Well I’ll tell you… I don’t care if it’s Mid, Frum, or Dipeso here wanting to increase my taxes… I’m saying no. I’m saying cut government spending. But then again… I’m a conservative. (*SHRUG*) My position makes sense coming from me.
What Dipeso wants is for government to become a “partner” in the pollution business just as government is a “partner” with big tobacco. (*SHRUG*) The cigarette manufacturers make money… government makes money.
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There is no such thing as “taxing business.” Not in the sense of Dipeso’s “the revenues ought to come back to you and me.” Business passes along taxes as they do all their expenses. We pay. All of us.
Jesus Christ… I think some of you folks saw the Lorax too many times when you were kids.
BILL
4 balconesfault // Aug 18, 2009 at 11:57 am
What Dipeso wants is for government to become a “partner” in the pollution business just as government is a “partner” with big tobacco.
Government is already a partner. It issues permits that allow industries to pollute.
Each time you eat certain kinds of fish, you’re ingesting toxic mercury that will accumulate over time in your body. The government has partnered with industry in allowing the emissions of mercury that fell into the water that held the fish you ate.
In certain airsheds in the country – say Houston, or LA, under certain climate conditions the air becomes dangerous for many people to breathe. By permitting certain emission levels of volatile organics and NOx, government is partnered with industry in polluting your lungs.
There are stretches of water, and even bays, that become highly contaminated under certain low flow conditions, making them unfit for swimming or fishing. By permitting discharges into the river and bays, government is partnered with industry in eliminating people’s ability to enjoy using those public waters.
The partnership already exists.
5 sinz54 // Aug 18, 2009 at 12:15 pm
barker13: You actually PREFER Government regulations that tell each car manufacturer what types of cars and drive trains they can produce, tells businessmen what types of factories they can build???
Energy conservation by oppressive, micro-managing regulations is one of the things that doomed the Carter Administration.
A carbon tax is a clean, single law, that then lets the market pricing mechanism dictate allocation of resources.
6 sinz54 // Aug 18, 2009 at 12:17 pm
barker13: You really think that any Administration in Washington DC is ever going to tell the Midwest states to shut down their coal power plants?
7 sumcommoncents // Aug 18, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Any step taken towards cutting emissions is a step in the right direction. However with the effects of global warming already showing up, and even the conservative predictions of whats to come looking grim at best, the planet will cure itself long before humans can. Its hard to burn fuels under water, and a starving population isnt worried so much about carbon taxes.
8 barker13 // Aug 18, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Re: Balconesfault // Aug 18, 2009 at 11:57 am (#4) –
“Government is already a partner. It issues permits that allow industries to pollute.”
Sorry, Balc, but words have meaning. Government is acting as a “partner” when they regulate. Governments regulate – regulation is one of the functions of government.
No. What we’re talking about is – to keep your same wording of “allow industries to pollute” – is the next step… government PROFITING by private sector pollution. Now THAT’S a partnership – just as the previous analogy of the Big Tobacco governmental partnership is… er… a partnership.
“Each time you eat certain kinds of fish, you’re ingesting toxic mercury that will accumulate over time in your body. The government has partnered with industry in allowing the emissions of mercury that fell into the water that held the fish you ate.”
So following your logic then I suppose in addition to a carbon tax you’d like to add additional “mercury taxes” while allowing the same mercury pollution to take place. (*SMIRK*)
OK. One more time. I’m against Cap & Trade. I’m against a carbon tax. I’m against a mercury tax too. (*WINK*)
“In certain airsheds in the country – say Houston, or LA, under certain climate conditions the air becomes dangerous for many people to breathe. By permitting certain emission levels of volatile organics and NOx, government is partnered with industry in polluting your lungs.”
Then restrict emissions by restricting emissions. Simple. (Why must I keep repeating myself…???)
“There are stretches of water, and even bays, that become highly contaminated under certain low flow conditions, making them unfit for swimming or fishing. By permitting discharges into the river and bays, government is partnered with industry in eliminating people’s ability to enjoy using those public waters.”
No. Once again you’re deliberately distorting plain English language meaning. In this example – as with your initial example – government is regulating. Now apparently you don’t feel they’re regulating tightly enough. That’s fine and dandy. You’ve every right to that view and heck… I might agree with you from one case to another. (*SHRUG*) Balc. None of us is “pro-pollution.” It’s where we draw the line that the discussion revolves around.
Re: Sinz54 // Aug 18, 2009 at 12:15 pm (#5) –
“A carbon tax is a clean, single law, that then lets the market pricing mechanism dictate allocation of resources.”
Or… as I would put it… A CARBON TAX IS AN ADDITIONAL TAX.
(*SHRUG*)
I’m still voting “nay,” Sinz.
Re: Sinz54 // Aug 18, 2009 at 12:17 pm (#6) –
“You really think that any Administration in Washington DC is ever going to tell the Midwest states to shut down their coal power plants?”
I certainly hope not! Again, Sinz… I’m kinda fond of my car and my home heating and cooling systems and all of my labor saving devices which run on… er… energy.
(*CHUCKLE*)
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We’re stuck with fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. Oil. Coal. I’m all in favor of ANY and ALL new or existing power sources and of making their use as environmentally friendly as possible. That said, I’m pretty happy with the environment the way it is and while there’s always room for improvement my goal would be a cleaner environment AND producing MORE energy at CHEAPER prices.
(Hey… never said the goal was easy… just saying that’s the goal.)
Re: Sumcommoncents // Aug 18, 2009 at 3:24 pm (#7) –
“…predictions of what’s to come looking grim at best….Its hard to burn fuels under water, and a starving population isn’t worried so much about carbon taxes.”
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
Yeah. Sure. The apocalypse is just around the corner.
PARTY ON, GARTH…!!!
(*SNORT*) (*CHUCKLE*)
BILL
9 SFTor1 // Aug 18, 2009 at 9:49 pm
With all due respect to my liberal fellow travelers on this forum, I regret to inform that I do not believe that our release of carbon dioxide is a serious threat to the biosphere. It is not pollution. It is unlikely, not to mention scientifically unresolved, for it to be increasing temperatures much. Present carbon dioxide levels are quite low, and the baseline of 280 PPM at the beginning of the Industrial Age is actually arrived at through cherry-picking data. A real averaged data set shows that it was actually higher in the not so distant past.
Frankly I think that many of the climate activists are behaving like a bunch of Aztecs in a solar eclipse. The sum total of environmental impacts so far seems to be an increase in the NPP (net primary productivity), in other words an increase in the production of plants on the planet’s surface—hardly a bad thing. Climate repercussions are otherwise invariably framed in a conditional—birds COULD die, polar bears COULD go extinct, etc. (Polar bear populations have quintupled since the early seventies, by the way. They are doing great.) We are coming out of a fairly cold period, and should welcome a moderate warming. It is going to get colder soon enough—that you can count on. Let me mention that after much clean-up Atlantic salmon has returned to the Seine, which indicates that this very temperature-sensitive fish seems to think that things are just fine there, which is towards the southerly border of its range.
Don’t get me wrong, We need sustainable energy and energy independence. We need sustainable energy to bring positive change for people in general and to reduce real pollution (soot, sulphur, and much other nastiness), and we need energy independence to change the geopolitical and economic game.
There is an issue that needs urgent attention, and that is our husbandry of the oceans and their fisheries. There is real trouble ahead if we neglect this. Large parts of the world’s population depends on seafood as their main protein source.
There is yet another problem with the AGW alarmism we see today: it has the potential to weaken the authority of science, as there is little chance of the many dire predictions to see reality. As this forum seems blessedly free of flat-Earthers, young-Earthers etc., I believe we can agree that we can ill afford to have the voice and authority of science weakened going forward.
Carbon-tax? Don’t know. Cap-and-trade? Does Al Gore really need to get any fatter? He has a vested interest you know.
10 Stewardship // Aug 18, 2009 at 9:52 pm
*Snort*
Barker needs to look up the definition of conservative.
*Chuckle*
No clue.
*Sad*
He has to use the big guy’s name in vain.
Folks, I hope we can all agree that global warming is happening, and that canaries-in-the-coal mine are dropping around the globe. We can disagree on cause, solutions, end game. But the record must be set straight that Republicans have set the standard in putting future generations’ interests ahead of their own (Reagan’s treaty to ban CFC’s, his administration’s first proposal of cap-and-trade to deal with climate change; GHW Bush’s use of cap-and-trade to combat acid rain.)
Barker is putting his own interest and that of his bank account ahead of future generations. That is decidely not conservative. Here are just a sampling of words from the men who’ve defined conservatism (that is, until Rush Limbaugh twisted the definition to fit his liberal appetites.)
Edmund Burke: “One of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealth and its laws are consecrated, is lest the temporary possessors and life renters in it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity, should act as if they were the entire masters; that they should not think it among their rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance, by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their society; hazarding to those who come after them a ruin instead of a habitation…No one generation could link with another. Men would become little better than flies of a summer.”
Russell Kirk: “…only the unscrupulous or shortsighted can defend pollution and degradation of the countryside.”
Richard Nixon: “We still think of air as free. But clean air is not free, and neither is clean water. The price tag on pollution control is high. Through our years of past carelessness we incurred a debt to nature, and now that debt is being called.”
Ronald Reagan: “What is a conservative after all but one who conserves, one who is committed to protecting and holding close the things by which we live…And we want to protect and conserve the land on which we live — our countryside, our rivers and mountains, our plains and meadows and forests. This is our patrimony. This is what we leave to our children. And our great moral responsibility is to leave it to them either as we found it or better than we found it.”
11 SFTor1 // Aug 18, 2009 at 10:02 pm
Regarding carbon dioxide as a potentially pollutant toxic:
Carbon dioxide levels of 1,500 to 2,000 PPM are artificially maintained in greenhouses, as it makes plants grow much faster. This is because the plants we have today were used to higher CO2 levels in the past.
Plants begin to die at 200 PPM, the level we had during the last Ice Age.
Submarines will regularly run atmospheric CO2 levels around 5,000 PPM, with no ill effects to the crew.
CO2 becomes toxic to humans at around 80,000 PPM.
To reiterate, we are today at 385 PPM.
12 SFTor1 // Aug 18, 2009 at 10:05 pm
errata:
as a potential pollutant:
not
potentially pollutant toxic:
13 SFTor1 // Aug 18, 2009 at 10:07 pm
Stewardship:
sorry to do this to you, but could you please enumerate some of those “canaries” that are dropping?
Is it the 22,000 polar bears? the 3 million seals? What?
14 SFTor1 // Aug 18, 2009 at 10:39 pm
Stewardship:
As far as “global warming is happening”: yes it is. We are today somewhere between 0 °C and 0.4 °C warmer than the baseline period. This well within historical temperature variations, but the trend has been higher, although very slightly.
15 barker13 // Aug 19, 2009 at 8:19 am
Re: Stewardship // Aug 18, 2009 at 9:52 pm (#10) –
Stewie – pay attention to Stfor1.
(*SHRUG*)
Stewie – go through the archives. Stfor1 isn’t the first to bring up these… er… inconvenient facts. (*WINK*)
* Sftor1 – GREAT FRIGG’N JOB!
I mean, seriously… I’m impressed. (*NOD*)
** Back to Stewie – Stewie… *SAD* would not fit into the Bill Lexicon. It’s an emotion, not an action. Pay attention. Keep up! (*CHUCKLE*)
Oh… and btw, just as a little history/political science lesson… Nixon was not a conservative in the modern economic sense of the word. Remember wage and price controls? Remember “supercabinets?”
Anyway… (*SHRUG*)
BILL
16 sinz54 // Aug 19, 2009 at 10:17 am
sftor1: “There is an issue that needs urgent attention, and that is our husbandry of the oceans and their fisheries.”
Interesting. A liberal who gives global warming lower priority, and a conservative (yours truly) who gives it high priority. But the oceans aren’t a separate issue, sorry.
One of the biggest carbon sinks is the world’s oceans. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can dissolve into the ocean water. (Water has the capability to dissolve CO2, that’s how we make seltzer.)
Up till now, certain ocean algae, such as coccolithophores, have taken up this carbon to build their shells. When they die, they sink to the bottom of the sea, taking their calcified shells with them.
But it’s unknown whether these carbon sinks can handle all the new CO2 in the atmosphere, some of which will dissolve into the oceans. I doubt that the world’s fish and shellfish are going to enjoy living in acidic seltzer. Fish populations will almost certainly be adversely affected by excess CO2 dissolving in the oceans.
So you can’t separate oceans from atmosphere. A major change in one will change the other.
17 SFTor1 // Aug 19, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Sinz, we the oceans are now slightly less alkaline as they presumably were in 1900. We’re talking on the scale of .1 or .2 PH—perhaps, from, again perhaps, 8.7 PH to 8.5, on average. The PH value of oceans vary geographically and even with the time of day. To assume that algae cannot handle the slight change—if there is a change—is conjecture, as they already handle significant swings in alkalinity. The oceans are still about as alkaline as they ever were, and this is not projected to change much with current projected CO2 releases. To talk about “acidification” is therefore an overstatement, as there is no danger that the oceans will become acidic in any foreseeable future.
On the other hand there is a limited amount of fish in the ocean. We have hard data—again, hard data—that this resource is dramatically over-exploited. Many key fisheries are below 20% of their original biomass. We see that management practices such as stricter quotas and the establishment of marine sanctuaries dramatically improve the situation. The science is not hard, to find the political will is.
CO2 is a question mark at best, the fisheries situation is becoming an emergency. The Grand Bank/George Bank cod fishery is an example of what happens with a population crash. It becomes very hard to do something about it once the damage is done.
Barker, if I am going to post I owe people and myself my best intellectual honesty. That’s all it is.
18 JohnMcC // Aug 19, 2009 at 5:56 pm
As remarked, interesting that there are no deniers using all caps and demonstrating their ignorance. Yeay us!!! But anyway:
data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
Regarding the role of carbon dioxide:
earthguide.uscd.edu/globalchange/global_warming/03.html
So go argue with the earth-science faculty of every significant university about CO2, ok?
And the point of the debate is not whether the earth has ever been warmer or CO2 higher. The point is the pace of change; evolution adjusts adequately to many changes given time. By pouring the carbon byproduct of oxidation of plant cellulose that accumulated over millions of years all in a century or two we have exceeded the capacity of the natural processes. If the American southwest becomes a permanent drought zone over 10000 years that is a very different business that the same thing happening over 100 years.
19 barker13 // Aug 19, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Re: Sftor1 // Aug 19, 2009 at 5:25 pm (#17) –
Another OUTSTANDING post, Sftor1 – informative as well as logical and well written.
(BTW, I couldn’t agree more with you on the fisheries issue.) (*NOD*)
Re: Johnmcc // Aug 19, 2009 at 5:56 pm (#18) –
So… (*SCRATCHING MY HEAD*)… you’re saying the American southwest is guaranteed to become a permanent drought zone over the next hundred years…???
Please clarify.
BILL
20 SFTor1 // Aug 19, 2009 at 11:26 pm
johnmcc:
Please refrain from using the term “denier.” It harkens to the term “Holocaust denier,” and is nothing but a slur. The term “skeptic” covers it just fine.
I will also point out that your argument from authority is a logical fallacy. I am making my position known here, in this forum, after continuous deliberation and study. It is possible that many Earth Science faculties disagree with my position, but to suggest that I am a solitary voice flailing against a bulwark of accepted facts is nothing but a misrepresentation. You know and I know that there are many respected scientists who disagree with the IPCC reports. As a matter of fact many IPCC scientists disagree with the summary conclusions of the IPCC. The sooner you stop hiding behind authority the sooner you can assume the benefits of finding out for yourself.
The pace of change we are seeing is not particularly quick. Temperature, sea levels, and atmospheric CO2 content has changed at a greater pace in the past over several periods. It is also interesting to note that Swedish oceanographer Nils Axel Morner, who bothered to check sea level histories in the Maldives (the ocean level canary in the coal mine) found that the sea level around the Maldives has actually dropped by about 12 inches since 1970. Erosion, however, is giving the Maldivians (?) recurring problems. That, however, is not the same as sea level rise. I am not saying this is the case worldwide, where we have had very small rise. Sea level rise varies, and the IPCC estimates a rise of abut 8 inches on the outside, provided that the climate models are reliable (more about that in a moment.)
We know that CO2 releases lag temperatures by about 800–1,000 years, which means that our current anthropogenic releases are mixed in with the increased releases from the Medieval Warm Period. Please also note that the CO2 increase is too linear to fit with anthropogenic releases. There is more going on than meets the eye.
As for temperature changes they are nothing special whatsoever. The transition between the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age was more rapid and of greater magnitude, so also changes related to the Minoan and Roman Warm Periods. I know, the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age don’t really exist, except that they did for the more than 6,000 Vikings who were driven out of their Greenland settlements due to a worsening climate, and the general contraction of agricultural outputs across Europe during the Little Ice Age. It is there for all to see, and cannot be hidden by revisionist climate history.
When we look at current weather statistics (rainfall, droughts, hurricanes, etc.) we see no pattern, and certainly no increase in catastrophic events. Currently total energy in warm weather systems is somewhere between down and fair to middling.
What are we left with on the global warming side? An increase of temperatures over the last century of about 0.5 °C. According to the ice core research done in Greenland with GISP II, 1871 was the coldest year there since the last Ice Age. This again is a local measurement, but demonstrates that we are measuring temperatures starting with a very cold period. As for a correlation between CO2 releases and temperature: it does not fit. This does not mean there is no causation, simply that it cannot be inferred directly from recent measurements of temperature and CO2 releases.
How about climate models? Recent evaluations have given them predictive power out to a two-week horizon. Once you are past that the chaotic nature of the climate system takes over and renders them unreliable. To trust them for predictions over decades is simply unscientific.
Should we continue the research and learn how to evaluate AGW? Yes. Do we have any idea what is really going on with the planet’s climate today? Not really. Not in any meaningful sense.
Every observation points to that the climate we live in today is reasonably inhabitable, but that it can get better with a little more warming. Predictions of droughts and other adverse developments are pure conjecture. Predictions of catastrophy caused by AGW is pure conjecture. Predictions of a colder future climate on the other hand, are almost guaranteed to be accurate.
We live on one of the climactic peaks of recent Earth history, a time that is fairly benign to the human race, separated from one another by lengthy swaths of frigid conditions.
Let’s enjoy, shall we?
21 SFTor1 // Aug 19, 2009 at 11:40 pm
errata:
the IPCC estimates a rise of abut 8 inches on the outside, provided that the climate models are reliable (more about that in a moment.)
should be
the IPCC estimates a rise of abut 8 inches by 2100 on the outside, provided that the climate models are reliable (more about that in a moment.)
22 SFTor1 // Aug 19, 2009 at 11:48 pm
One more thing:
you will note that historians use climate to explain historic events such as the Eurasian Migration Period, the first migration across the Bering Land Bridge, the Viking territorial expansion, Medieval cathedrals, wars, famines, average European body heights through history, the Black Death, and so on.
Climate change advocates now try to erase these climatic swings.
23 barker13 // Aug 20, 2009 at 11:54 am
Re: Sftor1 // Aug 19, 2009 at 11:26 pm (#20) –
“As for temperature changes they are nothing special whatsoever. The transition between the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age was more rapid and of greater magnitude, so also changes related to the Minoan and Roman Warm Periods. I know, the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age don’t really exist, except that they did for the more than 6,000 Vikings who were driven out of their Greenland settlements due to a worsening climate, and the general contraction of agricultural outputs across Europe during the Little Ice Age. It is there for all to see, and cannot be hidden by revisionist climate history.”
(*LAUGHING MY ASS OFF*) (*HUGE FRIGG’N GRIN WITH TWO THUMBS UP*)
Sftor1… whether you appreciate the compliment or not, I’m just blown away by the QUALITY of your posts on this particular thread/subject.
To to give you a bit of blog history – perhaps before you discovered NM – whenever one of us brings up the historical record… it’s usually met with silence.
Usually at this point we can expect to hear no more from Sinz on the subject – at least here on this thread.
(Of course… my writing that might just hook Sinz back it; you just never know!) (*GRIN*)
BILL
24 SFTor1 // Aug 20, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Thanks for the compliment Barker, I do appreciate it.
I know my position on this causes some discombobulation in the local political blogscape (both here and on HuffPo, but the sum total of what I know leads me away from Al Gore’s cushy bosom.
It is interesting to note that HuffPo now rarely blogs about climate change.
25 lasulasu // Aug 21, 2009 at 9:41 pm
sftor1 // Aug 18, 2009 at 10:02 pm
“Carbon dioxide levels of 1,500 to 2,000 PPM are artificially maintained in greenhouses, as it makes plants grow much faster. This is because the plants we have today were used to higher CO2 levels in the past.
Plants begin to die at 200 PPM, the level we had during the last Ice Age.”
Please post supporting links (primarily for “This is because the plants we have today were used to higher CO2 levels in the past” statement).
Thank you
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