THE FACTS ABOUT CARBON DIOXIDE

Today we often hear mealy-mouthed politicians (mostly on the political right) trying to weasel out of taking a stand on climate change. Members of the GOP can not abide the fact that CO2 levels are rising, that they are caused by human actions and that such changes will have serious perhaps calamitous climatic, economic and social effects. But the scientific facts are so overpowering they hit you in face like a stretched circle of uncooked pizza dough.

Carbon dioxide is the gas which makes soda pop fizzy and forms the bubbles and the “head” on beer. It is also the gas that makes that pizza dough light and bubbly. It occurs naturally in the earth’s interior as a result of igneous rock differentiation processes. During volcanic eruptions it is vented into the atmosphere from the earth’s interior, along with water vapor and other gases. In our modern atmosphere CO2 gas amounts to only a tiny fraction of the air we breathe(less than 0.04% by volume of dry air), but that small amount is exceptionally important. Beside arising from the earth’s interior, carbon dioxide is also formed on the earth’s surface as a waste product of oxidation and animal metabolism. Carbon dioxide is an essential element to the process of photosynthesis, by which carbohydrates are produced by combing CO2 and H2O in the presence of chlorophyll. Photosynthesis releases the oxygen necessary for life, as a gaseous waste. Carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere also functions to soak up heat in the lower levels of the atmosphere, absorbing earth long-wave radiation and holding that heat like a gaseous blanket which helps to warm the lower atmosphere. For that reason, it is classed as one of the “greenhouse” gases, keeping the earth warmer than it would normally be based on how much solar radiation it receives.

Over most of the last nearly one-million years the concentration of CO2 has remained remarkably steady in the atmosphere and up until recent times so has the earth’s temperature. This “steady state” of CO2 is the result of the cycling of carbon from the atmosphere into the biosphere (plants) and back again into the atmosphere in about equal amounts. In the “carbon cycle” photosynthetic (mostly green) plants remove CO2 from the atmosphere and fix it as a simple carbohydrate, from which plants generate sugars, starches and insoluble cellulose, and in the end release oxygen as a waste. Plants also consume the oxygen they produce for their own metabolism. While animals (which use the oxygen for their metabolism) complete the cycle by consuming the plant-formed carbohydrates, combining them with oxygen and releasing CO2 as a waste of metabolism back into the air. Thus when Mother Nature held unrestricted sway over the earth, the tiny percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere remained stable and minuscule at about 4/100s of one percent and the earth’s mean surface temperature kept steady too at about 13 degrees C or about 55 deg F.

But enter the human species. According to Ancient Greek myth, it was Prometheus who created man out of clay and then tricked the Gods out of the meat from sacrificial offerings (the Gods got only the long bones and some fat or skin). Zeus, displeased with this effrontery, hid fire from the earthlings, but Prometheus stole a burning brand from heaven to comfort his human creation. However man acquired fire, once they learned to make fire and use it, they developed a penchant for burning things up. Wood was the main fuel of early man. By using wood as a fuel, man simply converted the cellulose and lignin created from atmospheric carbon and water, back into those same substances. As a result, no additional carbon was added to the earth’s atmosphere. But man is very curious and inventive, something Prometheus may not have planned on or foresaw. Upon the discovery that other substances, other than wood (which is difficult to cut, dry and haul) would burn and produce heat, man quickly began to exploit these substances. coal was the first and easiest to exploit.

Very early in human history man learned that some “rocks” would actually burn even hotter than wood. They quickly began to exploit the outcrops of coal or seams at the surface, even dig down into the earth to extract this, light-weight, black material. As far back as 1000BC the Chinese used coal, the “rocks that burn", extracting the light weight rocks from the Fushun Mine in northeastern China to smelt copper. As a result of, the Venetian, Marco Polo’s travels in late 13th century AD in China, (@1271-1291) Polo was able to report in his travelogue the remarkable observation that the Chinese used “black stones” which “burned like logs” to heat water for their baths. He added the astounding fact (for cold, unwashed, Medieval Europeans) that the “stones” were so plentiful and widely used that the common people could take “three hot baths a week!”.

The Romans also exploited coal for smelting and to heat water in the hypocausts under their communal baths. Soon after the Roman invasion and colonization of Britain, initiated under Emperor Claudius in 43AD and lasting to about 409AD, the Romans mined coal to smelt British tin and copper, to burn limestone to make quicklime for concrete, and as a source of fuel to heat water in public baths.

From those early beginnings the use of coal and other fossil fuels, such as oil and gas, expanded exponentially to eventually provide the major sources of energy for the Industrial Revolution. In 2011,according to “coal statistics", world coal production reached 8 billion tons annually and its use was still growing by about 7% each year. Coal is approximately 70% carbon, so when it is burned its carbon is converted into CO2 and that waste gas is simply voided into the world atmosphere to add to the total burden of that gas in the atmosphere. In 2010, the world economy consumed nearly 32 billion barrels of crude oil, while in 2010 natural gas consumption reached 113 trillion cubic feet or 3 trillion cubic meters (doubling in use since 1980). These fossil fuel resources are burned when they are used and the carbon dioxide waste is dumped into the atmosphere. Some have estimated that human activity adds about 29 gigatons or 29 billion tons (tonnes?) of carbon to the atmosphere annually. But this (0.04 %) amount is small compared to the approximately 750 gigatons cycling in the earth oceans and atmosphere at any one time. However, it is "new" carbon and it is added to the already existing carbon, over the over two hundred years of industrial activity that amount has accumulated. It can not be absorbed without consequence into the earth or atmosphere and slowly builds up to alter the climate.

The vast majority of fossil fuels were formed from plants and other organic materials hundreds of millions of years ago. The deep burial of these concentrations of carbon in sedimentary structures sequestered the carbon from the atmosphere and removed them from the carbon cycle. During the industrial revolution beginning @ 1750 these fossil carbon sources were mined, and consumed (i.e. burned, or combined with atmospheric oxygen), which resulted in the release of the ancient carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. It is this “ancient” carbon which is spewed out from every internal combustion engine,every home heating plant that burns fossil fuel, every coal and oil fired electric generation plant, every car, every truck, every motorcycle and lawn mower which dumps newly formed carbon dioxide back into the air and adds to the formerly stable carbon burden of the atmosphere.

Today (as of October 2012) the concentration of carbon dioxide or CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere is 391 ppm (parts per million) That is significantly higher than the value of 280 ppm calculated for the pre-industrial era. Thus the present high level is about 1.4 times greater than the pre industrial period in human history. That is an uncontested actual fact. Annual measurements of CO2, (which are generally made in the well-mixed, far from industrial contamination, pristine air on the slopes of Mona Loa on the Island of Hawaii) indicate that the value has been increasing steadily since the first measurements in the last century and between 2000 and 2009 in this century at the rate of about 2 ppm/year. That is also a simple scientific fact. No, there is no opportunity to formulate your own opinion on this.

Though the overall graph-trend of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is still rising, the recent economic downturn or Great Recession of 2007-08 is reflected in a corresponding slight decreases in that rate. It is noteworthy that the CO2 curve closely follows a graph of the world economy. In an expanding economy, when we all use more fossil fuels, the CO2 levels rise too, and when we use less energy they fall. Thus the correlation between human economic behavior and the CO2 concentration is very close. This fact alone strongly supports the general scientific opinion that the fluctuations are anthropogenic. If we accept the fact that our industries and behavior can control carbon levels then perhaps we can do something (or stop doing some things) to modulate the increasing concentration and the even now observable climatic consequences.

Get the picture?

rjk

AMERICA TAKES UP ROMAN PROSCRIPTION ---BY DRONES

Of all the revelations that are the most hurtful and embarrassing to an American who loves his country and wishes it well is that of the government’s policy of targeted killings of individuals abroad under the claim that they are enemies of the state. In recent times, even American citizens have been killed, and some were as young as sixteen years of age. They were only ACCUSED of crimes. They were not tried in a court of law, or in absentia, or even had a malleable judge cast an eye over their case. They had no opportunity to face their accusers, or even minimal opportunity to defend themselves. The President writes a list of people he wants killed and he or his advisors act as prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner. This is definitely not the “American Way" I learned of as a student. I was taught that Americans are exceptional and here to lead the world to a better more humane place, not draw it down into repetition of ancient barbarity. The policy of former President Bush and now of President Obama is indeed barbarity, reminiscent not of an American Republic, but more akin to the worst depravity of the latter Roman Republic of two thousand years ago.

 In those archaic days they did not refer to “extra juridical executions” but called it simply “proscription”. The Roman word derives from “proscribe” to put outside the law, outlaw, or condemn something which is dangerous or harmful. Who would have imagined as a student reading Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Republic” and shuddering at the thought of how the Roman leaders used the infamous “proscriptio” which acted to speed its descent into chaos, violence, corruption and death. Who would have imagined that our own nation would ever countenance such horror? And then by bald faced lies attempt to justify it. Yet we have.

 Proscription is the policy of public identification and official condemnation of enemies of the state first used in the Roman world of the first century BC. Proscription as employed by the Romans was the violent elimination (murder) of political opponents, rivals or even personal enemies, which occurred during violent revolutions. Proscription is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as a "decree of condemnation to death or banishment". The word is heavily charged in a political sense since it in fact simply refers to illegal state-approved murder or persecution. It was not confined to the First Century BC but has reared its ugly head in more recent politically chaotic times as well,in times and places that we as Americans would probably not like to be associated with...yet we are. Proscription occurred during the ugly “reign of terror” of the French Revolution, and during the political violence that ensued in Argentina after the fall of the Peron government. These were times and characters that we as a nation would not like to be associated with...but Bush and Obama have in fact involved this nation in “state approved murder”. We must fully appreciate that fact and understand it in its historical context.

The earliest incident of proscription I know of occurred in 82BC in Rome, when Lucius Cornelius Sulla, after defeating the forces aligned against him was appointed dictator by a weakened and frightened Senate to make changes to the constitution and repair the Republic. Sulla who was described by a contemporary as having the “cunning of a fox and the courage of a lion” proceeded to direct the Senate to draw up a kill list of those he considered enemies of the state and have the list published in the Roman Forum. Does this seem familiar? Perhaps the only difference from modern times was that Sulla had no technical means (no drones and cruise missiles) to secretly assassinate his enemies, so he published his list and let it be known that each person on the “proscriptio” list was stripped of his citizenship and excluded from all protection under law. Thus anyone could kill and were encouraged to kill the listees with impunity. To encourage them, Sulla provided reward money to be given to anyone who provided information leading to the death of a proscribed man. The weaknesses of the system were obvious. It permitted accusers with ulterior motives to fall prey to corruption and greed. The President’s kill lists are similarly filled and established by CIA paid informers. In Sulla’s day any person who killed a proscribed man was entitled to keep part of his estate (the remainder went to the Roman treasury). We haven’t fallen to that level yet.

The victims of Roman proscription were decapitated and their heads were displayed on spears in the Forum. Bush and Obama have had no similar option in our own times, since their victims are generally completely obliterated by high powered munitions delivered from armed drones or cruise missiles. The blast not only vaporizes the intended target but is so overwhleming that it too often kills many other bystanders and innocents. (Though the present government counts all those killed near-by as "terrorists", an so never kills any innocents.). The Romans by contrast were very specific in their viciousness only the man on the list was killed, his family, wife and children were spared.

Sulla used proscription to help restore the depleted Roman treasury which had been drained by costly civil and foreign wars in the preceding decade, and to eliminate enemies (both real and potential) of his reformed state and constitution. Bush and Obama used their form of proscription to pad their domestic political fortunes, to insure reelection, to lower the costs of war in difficult terrain, and terrorize the purported enemy, their families and supporters, as well as insulating the President from the Republican charge of military “wimpishness”.

Sulla's proscription was bureaucratically overseen, as are the modern USA practitioners of this form of murder, and during Sulla’s time the names of informers and those who profited from killing proscribed men were entered into the public record. In later years and under succeeding Roman consuls these informers and profiteers could and were prosecuted under Roman law as criminals. There the Romans were well ahead of those in the USA who use state-sanctioned assassinations today, for our present government has kept “secret” those who are supporters and practitioners of these immoral, illegal and unconstitutional acts. We only know that both Bush and Obama, like Sulla...were initiators of the policy and signed off on each instance of killing. We as American citizens, apparently have no hope that in the future the guilty will be prosecuted for these barbaric acts. Unless we act to stop it, we are guilty too.

Got the picture?

rjk