"The world is grateful for the heroes of Robben Island, who remind us that no shackles or cells can match the strength of the human spirit." President Obama (comment in guest book of Robben Island, South Africa June 2013)
On his trip to Africa President Obama, took the time out to take his family to notorious Robben Island, the Guantanamo of South Africa. I wonder did the staggering irony of his presence there give him a start as he gazed out of the iron bars of the tiny cells in which Nelson Mandela and other so-called "terrorists" of the past spent decades of their lives under the heavy fist of the Apartheid rulers of that sorry nation. I wonder did he shudder as the realization dawned on him that like the Apartheid rulers of South Africa he was too the perpetrator and facilitator of similar inhumane treatment on another island---Guantanamo. Did his hands tremble as he grasped the worn iron bars when he realized he is responsible for keeping other men in other tiny prison cells half way around the world? Did he think of the suffering and deaths in that place he is personally responsible for? One can not but hope that his visit to Mandela's tiny cell, where that exceptional man, the world's embodiment of courage, silent inner strength and conviction, survived for two decades. Perhaps the powerful emotional vibrations of that cell might have some effect on our President. Perhaps the example of Mr.Mandela's courage and conviction might give our President a tiny bit of the inner strength he needs to actually do something to clean up the embarrassment of our own Robben Island in Cuba where inhumane treatment including shackles and cells are used to suppress human dignity and smother human spirit, which Obama claims to support.
Get the picture?
rjk
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Monday, June 17, 2013
OBAMA CHANNELS BUSH USES PHONY CHARGES TO ENTER SYRIAN CIVIL WAR
Majority Doesn't Trust Obama, Approval Rating Suffers Severe Drop As Obama Morphs Into A Clone Of George Bush.
The very first evidence of the recent morphological changes in our first Black President has been in his golf game. The President’s play has altered recently from phlegmatic to frenetic. His game has sped up dramatically. The Presidential “concertina” which normally built up behind Mr. Obama's golf party is gone. Some thought at first it was the “golfing tip” he got from Tiger. But the length of time he takes to complete his weekly 18 Hole “round” has dropped from a stately and “Tigerly” four-plus hours to a speedy Bush-family style two hours. But there are other signs. White House servants report that our man has taken to noisily clomping around in the West Wing wearing Tony Lama hand-tooled cowboy boots, jingling rowel spurs, and a big floppy Stetson. Furthermore, more ominously, one of the White House gardeners reported that the carefully tended grape vines in the First Lady’s grape arbor were mysteriously hacked down to the ground one night. The word is that the President has been secretly “cutting brush” on the White House property under the cover of darkness. The First Lady’s “prevent obesity” garden was apparently on the President's new “brush clearing schedule”. White House officials claim it helps to “relieve tension”. But others fear it is an infection, perhaps a slow-acting virus, left on the old, porous-leather seat, of the Oval Office Presidential chair by the previous occupant. A gene-altering virus may have infected the new guy by this route. No one knows for sure, disease transmission in such rarefied circles is little studied and understood.
But one thing is clear...the POTUS seems to be morphing into a Cleavon Little type character from Mel Brook’s “Blazing Saddles” right before our eyes. In these last few weeks, he has been “off his feed” and the result is that the administration seems blindsided and sidetracked by the several scandals which have hit the White House early in the second term. Obam’ instead of the “smartest guy in the room” is acting more like a dyslexic dunce. Instead of his usual professorial air he has been uncharacteristically silent, instead he has been observed taking a lot of whispered advice from his much more slow-witted VP, Joe Biden. The results are telling---the administration has wavered and wandered into dark political and policy corners. As a consequence the Nation has been uncertain, and tentative. The results are evident in public opinion. The President's approval rating has fallen dramatically.
According to a new CNN poll published by Newsmax Media (newsmax.com) June 17, 2013: “President Barack Obama’s approval rating dropped a shocking 8 percentage points over the last month -- one of sharpest, fastest plunges in his presidency,......" They add: “For the first time in Obama's time in office, more than half of the public doesn’t feel that the president is honest and trustworthy, the CNN/ORC International poll showed.”" See: Newsmax Media newsmax.com June 17, 2013?
But the latest “bushization” of the Obama White House has been his recent foreign policy pronouncements on Syria. He is (I can't believe it) actually replaying the old Bush “weapons of mass destruction” ploy. This time with Syria as the target. How stupid do they think we are? Well it IS TEN years ago that Bush, Cheney, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice cooked up the "weapons of mass destruction" story to divert and borrow tax dollars to prosecute a terrible war. I guess ten years is ancient history in this political era. So let me remind you. The charge that Saddam Hussein had “WMD" was the causus belli for our disastrous three-trillion-dollar foray into a bloody conflict of "nation deconstruction and building" in Iraq. That war, fought on borrowed funds, also contributed mightily to the Great Recession. Now our President is attempting to repeat a sordid part of our history with unproved claims of Syrian WMD. The so called "evidence", poo poohed by the Germans and Russians as "not substantive" consists of urine and blood samples collected by the CIA from two reputed Syrian fighters. These samples are the analogs of the phony Iraq "rocket tubes" of the Bush era. The physiological samples, of uncertain provenance, were tested in the US and (what else? ) they "proved" positive for sarin gas. But the question of who released the gas, what was the real identity and political association of the victims, and where exactly were the samples obtained--- is still an open question? Others claim the samples were rigged by the Syrian insurgents...a very likely possibility. As Americans paying with blood and money for such intervention should we not all have an opportunity to evaluate the evidence, particularly after the Iraq fiasco? And before Obama slides the nation onto a bloody slippery-slope leading into another war. But the Obama crowd has only offered their conclusions (conclusions rejected by Russia and Germany) with no intention of sharing any "hard evidence" cited.
I know our government thinks we Americans are real stupid, but we ain't that dumb! On this issue Mr Obama has turned the corner and is figuratively pumping the pedals of his mountain bike with his long legs as he heads into west Texas, his Stetson blown back off his head and a oil-painting kit under his arm. He is pouring the concrete which will become the footing for his permanent and official legacy: OBAMA: The Second George Bush".
Good bye Obama! You couldn't be yourself somehow. That Bush virus got you. Too bad. You had such potential. But at least you salvaged something for yourself. You will still make the history books as the first black President with an undeserved Nobel Peace prize! And will also generate records as the first president elected twice by a big majority only to morph (with no reason) into a predecessor from the opposing political party right before the eyes of the nation. Too bad we won't be able to say the Obama presidency and the efforts of all those who elected him put at least a tiny inflection in the erroneous course this nation had charted under the Bush leadership. Sad to say it appears Mr. Obama has turned out to be more of a deck hand than a ship captain. He has moved the deck chairs around a bit on the ship of state, but did not manage to wrest the great spoked steering wheel from the Bush faction. His actions in this Syrian affair prove it.
Get the picture?
rjk
The very first evidence of the recent morphological changes in our first Black President has been in his golf game. The President’s play has altered recently from phlegmatic to frenetic. His game has sped up dramatically. The Presidential “concertina” which normally built up behind Mr. Obama's golf party is gone. Some thought at first it was the “golfing tip” he got from Tiger. But the length of time he takes to complete his weekly 18 Hole “round” has dropped from a stately and “Tigerly” four-plus hours to a speedy Bush-family style two hours. But there are other signs. White House servants report that our man has taken to noisily clomping around in the West Wing wearing Tony Lama hand-tooled cowboy boots, jingling rowel spurs, and a big floppy Stetson. Furthermore, more ominously, one of the White House gardeners reported that the carefully tended grape vines in the First Lady’s grape arbor were mysteriously hacked down to the ground one night. The word is that the President has been secretly “cutting brush” on the White House property under the cover of darkness. The First Lady’s “prevent obesity” garden was apparently on the President's new “brush clearing schedule”. White House officials claim it helps to “relieve tension”. But others fear it is an infection, perhaps a slow-acting virus, left on the old, porous-leather seat, of the Oval Office Presidential chair by the previous occupant. A gene-altering virus may have infected the new guy by this route. No one knows for sure, disease transmission in such rarefied circles is little studied and understood.
But one thing is clear...the POTUS seems to be morphing into a Cleavon Little type character from Mel Brook’s “Blazing Saddles” right before our eyes. In these last few weeks, he has been “off his feed” and the result is that the administration seems blindsided and sidetracked by the several scandals which have hit the White House early in the second term. Obam’ instead of the “smartest guy in the room” is acting more like a dyslexic dunce. Instead of his usual professorial air he has been uncharacteristically silent, instead he has been observed taking a lot of whispered advice from his much more slow-witted VP, Joe Biden. The results are telling---the administration has wavered and wandered into dark political and policy corners. As a consequence the Nation has been uncertain, and tentative. The results are evident in public opinion. The President's approval rating has fallen dramatically.
According to a new CNN poll published by Newsmax Media (newsmax.com) June 17, 2013: “President Barack Obama’s approval rating dropped a shocking 8 percentage points over the last month -- one of sharpest, fastest plunges in his presidency,......" They add: “For the first time in Obama's time in office, more than half of the public doesn’t feel that the president is honest and trustworthy, the CNN/ORC International poll showed.”" See: Newsmax Media newsmax.com June 17, 2013?
But the latest “bushization” of the Obama White House has been his recent foreign policy pronouncements on Syria. He is (I can't believe it) actually replaying the old Bush “weapons of mass destruction” ploy. This time with Syria as the target. How stupid do they think we are? Well it IS TEN years ago that Bush, Cheney, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice cooked up the "weapons of mass destruction" story to divert and borrow tax dollars to prosecute a terrible war. I guess ten years is ancient history in this political era. So let me remind you. The charge that Saddam Hussein had “WMD" was the causus belli for our disastrous three-trillion-dollar foray into a bloody conflict of "nation deconstruction and building" in Iraq. That war, fought on borrowed funds, also contributed mightily to the Great Recession. Now our President is attempting to repeat a sordid part of our history with unproved claims of Syrian WMD. The so called "evidence", poo poohed by the Germans and Russians as "not substantive" consists of urine and blood samples collected by the CIA from two reputed Syrian fighters. These samples are the analogs of the phony Iraq "rocket tubes" of the Bush era. The physiological samples, of uncertain provenance, were tested in the US and (what else? ) they "proved" positive for sarin gas. But the question of who released the gas, what was the real identity and political association of the victims, and where exactly were the samples obtained--- is still an open question? Others claim the samples were rigged by the Syrian insurgents...a very likely possibility. As Americans paying with blood and money for such intervention should we not all have an opportunity to evaluate the evidence, particularly after the Iraq fiasco? And before Obama slides the nation onto a bloody slippery-slope leading into another war. But the Obama crowd has only offered their conclusions (conclusions rejected by Russia and Germany) with no intention of sharing any "hard evidence" cited.
I know our government thinks we Americans are real stupid, but we ain't that dumb! On this issue Mr Obama has turned the corner and is figuratively pumping the pedals of his mountain bike with his long legs as he heads into west Texas, his Stetson blown back off his head and a oil-painting kit under his arm. He is pouring the concrete which will become the footing for his permanent and official legacy: OBAMA: The Second George Bush".
Good bye Obama! You couldn't be yourself somehow. That Bush virus got you. Too bad. You had such potential. But at least you salvaged something for yourself. You will still make the history books as the first black President with an undeserved Nobel Peace prize! And will also generate records as the first president elected twice by a big majority only to morph (with no reason) into a predecessor from the opposing political party right before the eyes of the nation. Too bad we won't be able to say the Obama presidency and the efforts of all those who elected him put at least a tiny inflection in the erroneous course this nation had charted under the Bush leadership. Sad to say it appears Mr. Obama has turned out to be more of a deck hand than a ship captain. He has moved the deck chairs around a bit on the ship of state, but did not manage to wrest the great spoked steering wheel from the Bush faction. His actions in this Syrian affair prove it.
Get the picture?
rjk
Friday, June 7, 2013
JOHN DINGELL, TOO LONG IN CONGRESS
JOHN DINGELL A RAVENOUS BIRD OF PREY?
“Without (limits on terms) every man in power becomes a ravenous bird of prey.” John Adams.
In a laudatory piece on the “longevity” of our representatives in Congress, the NY Times (June 5, 2013) highlighted the career of Representative, John D. Dingell, of Michigan, who if he serves out his present term will become the longest serving member of Congress in history. Why the Times author seems to suggest that this is something our nation, the State of Michigan, and the 15th (12th) District voters should be proud of is what puzzles me. Dingell, is by all accounts a fine gentleman, patriot and a competent politician who served honorably in WWII, and has devoted his long life to Washington politics. But Dingle is also an example of one of the things wrong with politics in Washington. Representative Dingle, a Democrat born in Colorado Springs in 1926 is an octenagenarian who has served nearly sixty consecutive years representing the 15th (later 12) District in Michigan, a district formerly represented by his father, John Dingell Sr. The elder Dingell served twenty-two years as the representative of that district and upon his death in 1955 his seat was taken over by his son. A classic case of Washington nepotism which is so common now that no one seems to notice or comment. Thus, the people of the 15th (and its subsequent permutations by redistricting) have been represented by the same family of Dingells since 1933! For the last eighty years the 15th CD has has kept Mr. Dingell in his office at the Capitol. Like octenagenarian Mr. Dingell, now in his 87th year, the Congress is an old, creaky, hide-bound institution which can not get out of its own way to meet the needs of a vibrant 21st Century nation. Our present state of affairs in Washington where little of the people's business gets done, and where grandstanding,name calling, and politicking all underscore the charge that it is a vessel of old and rotted wood. Change and new ideas are desperately needed. But how can they ever arise if congressmen have a sinecure on their jobs, and we must wait until they die in office?
The Times seemingly without realizing it, published a story underlining the sad state of affairs in Congress which the Founders established to represent and further the will of the people. The Founders, who envisioned a Congress of "citizen legislators" not “career politicians” must be spinning in their respective graves, aghast at what successive generations have done with their finely tuned and carefully written plans for representative government. (James Madison in Federal Paper #39, stated that for best government office holders should “hold their offices... for a limited period”. While George Washington opined that: “The people must be ever vigilant against tyrants masquerading as public servants”. Thomas Jefferson stated that he favored “fixing (office holders) in a term of office, rather than for life” so that they must eventually return to the mass of the people to become part of the “governed instead of the governors”. John Adams’ opinion is found at the head of this essay.)
Mr. Dingell who the NY Times characterizes as a “Child of the House” was indeed a youngster of only six or seven years when his father was first elected to Congress and the family journeyed east to Washington in 1933. When the younger Dingell was sixteen in 1943 he first appeared on the floor of the House in Washington DC as a Page. In effect, he never left, except for those years he served in the US Army during WW II and attended college on the GI Bill earning a law degree. At the tender age of 29, upon the death of his father, Dingell won a special election for the 15th CD and has been there ever since. He is now an elderly man of 86 years.
Corruption in Congress is the result of entrenched interests. It is a truism that the longer a politician serves in Congress the more that person begins to serve their own interests rather than those of the nation and of the district they represent. Although this may not be applicable to Mr.Dingell, just his near sixty years in office and cozy relations with the industries in his district do make one suspect.
When a politician has a “safe seat” (and most of them do when 94% of all incumbents are reelected every cycle) he or she is more likely to have close financial and personal ties with big corporations, specials interests and other powerful and wealthy donors. In the case of Mr. Dingell, though I suggest no improprieties here, it is well known that he maintained a close relationship with and been an avid supporter of the motor industry in Detroit, and in turn they have provided strong financial support for all of his many reelection campaigns. Whether that relationship has been good over the long haul for the nation as a whole or for the motor industry itself, is a question frequently asked. Would Mr. Dingell’s tenacious opposition to CAFE standards (those federal rules that would control automobile gasoline consumption) and so hated by the car industry, would they have been good for that industry? Or would it have been better that the industry faced the facts early on and built cars which could better compete with more efficient imports? Perhaps had not Mr. Dingell been in office so long, and has such close relationships with this industry other voices and ideas would have been heard and we may have not had to pump the billions of Federal dollars into the faltering auto makers as we did to save that industry.
Because of name recognition and the advantage of money raised from cozy relations with special interests, incumbent members of congress find it easy to remain in office once elected, as noted above. In 1933 when the 15th CD was first created (as well as three others) and the when the senior Dingell was elected to the open 15th, that was a one-time event. That circumstance is unlikely to happen again. Today seats open when an incumbent dies. But without legitimate competition among office seekers, what incentive is there for the incumbent to serve the nation and the public, rather than his or her own interests? The answer is: there is little incentive. And the result is the nature of Congress we have now.
So perhaps if the Times had reminded us, of the commendable good attendance and longevity of Mr. Dingell, as well as the perceptive warnings of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and others that a man in power too long becomes a “ravenous bird of prey” we would have been better served by the great gray lady.
Caution---voters of the 15th! There is a grandson lurking out there in the hustings named Christopher Dingell. Please don't make a laughingstock of yourselves by permitting the 15th to become permanent property of the Dingell family by electing this kid next, and putting your district in the Guinness Book of World Records! Give someone else a chance as Adams, Jefferson and Madison would have wanted.
Get the picture?
rjk
Thursday, June 6, 2013
GLOBAL WARMING OR RETURNING TO THE AGE OF AMPHIBIANS
GLOBAL WARMING OR RETURNING TO THE AGE OF AMPHIBIANS
The geological perspective.
In a few words what is happening to the earth's atmosphere as a result of global warming is that we are facilitating the return to a more primitive state:the Age of Amphibians some 400 million years ago. The earth began its history with an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide...a result of “outgassing” a process in which volatiles formed by natural lithologic processes within the earth’s interior are naturally voided to the surface such as by volcanoes, fumaroles, and lava plain basalt flows. Over geologic time earthly and biological processes have altered the chemistry of the atmosphere and reduced the concentration of carbon dioxide gas, a heat absorbing gas, from the atmosphere by sequestering it underground in the form of coal, petroleum, natural gas and limestone. In the last few centuries man has reversed that process, by burning fossil fuels in the atmosphere and returning the formerly stored CO2 back to the atmosphere. To make matters worse, at the same time our industries and farmers are cutting down our forest and “ungreening” the planet at a rate of 16 million hectares each year (almost 40 million acres). It's that simple! The earth started out with an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide and a humid, warm climate in which giant amphibians thrived and now man is undoing eons of earthly evolutionary processes in a few hundred years...returning it to a more primitive state, to a condition in which amphibians like frogs, toads, salamanders would best survive.
Carbon dioxide gas has a unique property. Its absorbs long wave earth radiation or heat waves. Gas molecules exposed to such radiation, as that generated by the sun-warmed earth surface, causes the gas to heat up and to warm the atmosphere as a whole. The more of this gas in the atmosphere, the warmer the atmosphere gets. Venus, an earth-like planet close to us in space, has an atmosphere composed mostly of CO2 (97%) which causes a “run away” greenhouse gas problem which traps the suns heat and generates a surface temperature of over 800 degrees F (or @ 470 deg C) or hot enough top melt lead. In comparison, the earth has only a very small percentage of CO2 in its atmosphere (@3/100 of one percent by volume) and a temperature of 57 deg F or 14 degrees C.
The early Earth atmosphere was primarily composed of methane, CO2 and water vapor, probably mostly derived from the earth’s interior. As the planet cooled, the water vapor condensed into water to eventually form the world oceans, but the carbon dioxide simply continued to accumulate. For these reasons during its the early history, the earth’s atmosphere was much warmer than it is at present due to the larger percentages of heat absorbing (greenhouse) gases. Throughout the last half-a- billion years of earth history, the planet has experienced a generalized downward trend in both temperature and carbon dioxide levels. The decrease in CO2, not possible on other planets in our solar system, was the result of the evolution of living things on its surface.
The accumulation of CO2 continued and with it the continued warming of the atmosphere, until nearly 400 million years ago (mya). At that time green plants evolved and began to spread over the earth surface. These plants use carbon dioxide in the process of photosynthesis to form carbohydrates (sugars, starches, cellulose). That process absorbs CO2, converts it into mostly insoluble plant matter and produces O2 oxygen as a waste product. The process of removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the cooling of the atmosphere began with the evolution of green plants and especially with their expansion and flourishing on the formerly barren continents.
The initial “greening” of the continents occurred more than 400 million years ago in the Devonian Period (420-360 million years ago). Before that time, there few or no green land-plants to sequester carbon dioxide. The period is characterized by barren continents, while sea level was high, as were atmospheric temperatures. During the Devonian period the carbon dioxide level has been inferred to have been nearly six times what it is today, or about 2200 ppm (parts per million). At that time the earth’s average surface temperature was about 20 degrees Celsius or about six degrees higher than it is today. Sea level was nearly 180 meters above its present levels or almost 600 feet higher than it is today.
But by the end of the Devonian and beginning time of the subsequent Carboniferous Period (360 to 300 mya) the CO2 level had dropped by half, to three times (3x) the present level and the earth's average surface temperature fell to about 14 degrees C or about (57 F) what it is at present late in the Industrial Age. In the Carboniferous Period (named for the vast coal seams found in the rock record of that time) the climate was warm and humid with vast forests of lush vegetation. Sea level was well above the present level with most of the present East Coast and Gulf Coast under a shallow sea similar to that of today's Florida Bay and Bahama Banks, while the remaining eastern half of North America was mostly low land covered with extensive swamps and marshes. This was the Age of Amphibians, and dense vegetative growth of green plants such as ferns, scale trees, cycads, and giant club moss trees covered the continents. The great quantity of lush green plant growth absorbed vast quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for photosynthesis. In the process forming enormous quantities of insoluble plant matter as leaves, tree trunks, bark, seeds, etc. In the swampy terrane typical of the time, the forest detritus, dead trees, spent leaves and fallen trees (all composed of carbon taken from the air)settled into the shallow acidic swamp waters where they underwent partial decay. Much of the carbon in these plants was preserved ( some as magnificent fossils) and eventually were entombed forming thick coal seams (giving the period its name). The carbon stored as coal, bitumen and other deposits remained buried underground and sequestered from the atmosphere for four hundred million years. The earth cooled slowly with a few fluctuations, eventually to arrive at conditions which approximate the present.
This ancient carbon, formerly in the atmosphere, remained safely isolated underground until the industrial revolution in geologically recent times, when man began to exploit coal, and eventually other forms of sequestered carbon such as oil and gas, for fuel. Today, we extract huge amounts of formerly stored carbon from the earth’s interior, burn it with atmospheric oxygen and them dump the resulting CO2 back into the atmosphere from which it had been removed over periods of hundreds of millions of years. What we are accomplishing as a world society is in effect reverting the earth to a more primitive “carbonized” atmosphere. We are in effect returning the earth to a time when the great primitive amphibians of the past thrived. But the high earth temperatures, humidity, swampy terrane, and inundated shores of that period which would limit our living space would not be conducive to us as advanced primates, or to the plants we rely on for our agriculture and our sustenance, or to our modern way of life.
Get the picture?
rjk
The geological perspective.
In a few words what is happening to the earth's atmosphere as a result of global warming is that we are facilitating the return to a more primitive state:the Age of Amphibians some 400 million years ago. The earth began its history with an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide...a result of “outgassing” a process in which volatiles formed by natural lithologic processes within the earth’s interior are naturally voided to the surface such as by volcanoes, fumaroles, and lava plain basalt flows. Over geologic time earthly and biological processes have altered the chemistry of the atmosphere and reduced the concentration of carbon dioxide gas, a heat absorbing gas, from the atmosphere by sequestering it underground in the form of coal, petroleum, natural gas and limestone. In the last few centuries man has reversed that process, by burning fossil fuels in the atmosphere and returning the formerly stored CO2 back to the atmosphere. To make matters worse, at the same time our industries and farmers are cutting down our forest and “ungreening” the planet at a rate of 16 million hectares each year (almost 40 million acres). It's that simple! The earth started out with an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide and a humid, warm climate in which giant amphibians thrived and now man is undoing eons of earthly evolutionary processes in a few hundred years...returning it to a more primitive state, to a condition in which amphibians like frogs, toads, salamanders would best survive.
Carbon dioxide gas has a unique property. Its absorbs long wave earth radiation or heat waves. Gas molecules exposed to such radiation, as that generated by the sun-warmed earth surface, causes the gas to heat up and to warm the atmosphere as a whole. The more of this gas in the atmosphere, the warmer the atmosphere gets. Venus, an earth-like planet close to us in space, has an atmosphere composed mostly of CO2 (97%) which causes a “run away” greenhouse gas problem which traps the suns heat and generates a surface temperature of over 800 degrees F (or @ 470 deg C) or hot enough top melt lead. In comparison, the earth has only a very small percentage of CO2 in its atmosphere (@3/100 of one percent by volume) and a temperature of 57 deg F or 14 degrees C.
The early Earth atmosphere was primarily composed of methane, CO2 and water vapor, probably mostly derived from the earth’s interior. As the planet cooled, the water vapor condensed into water to eventually form the world oceans, but the carbon dioxide simply continued to accumulate. For these reasons during its the early history, the earth’s atmosphere was much warmer than it is at present due to the larger percentages of heat absorbing (greenhouse) gases. Throughout the last half-a- billion years of earth history, the planet has experienced a generalized downward trend in both temperature and carbon dioxide levels. The decrease in CO2, not possible on other planets in our solar system, was the result of the evolution of living things on its surface.
The accumulation of CO2 continued and with it the continued warming of the atmosphere, until nearly 400 million years ago (mya). At that time green plants evolved and began to spread over the earth surface. These plants use carbon dioxide in the process of photosynthesis to form carbohydrates (sugars, starches, cellulose). That process absorbs CO2, converts it into mostly insoluble plant matter and produces O2 oxygen as a waste product. The process of removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the cooling of the atmosphere began with the evolution of green plants and especially with their expansion and flourishing on the formerly barren continents.
The initial “greening” of the continents occurred more than 400 million years ago in the Devonian Period (420-360 million years ago). Before that time, there few or no green land-plants to sequester carbon dioxide. The period is characterized by barren continents, while sea level was high, as were atmospheric temperatures. During the Devonian period the carbon dioxide level has been inferred to have been nearly six times what it is today, or about 2200 ppm (parts per million). At that time the earth’s average surface temperature was about 20 degrees Celsius or about six degrees higher than it is today. Sea level was nearly 180 meters above its present levels or almost 600 feet higher than it is today.
But by the end of the Devonian and beginning time of the subsequent Carboniferous Period (360 to 300 mya) the CO2 level had dropped by half, to three times (3x) the present level and the earth's average surface temperature fell to about 14 degrees C or about (57 F) what it is at present late in the Industrial Age. In the Carboniferous Period (named for the vast coal seams found in the rock record of that time) the climate was warm and humid with vast forests of lush vegetation. Sea level was well above the present level with most of the present East Coast and Gulf Coast under a shallow sea similar to that of today's Florida Bay and Bahama Banks, while the remaining eastern half of North America was mostly low land covered with extensive swamps and marshes. This was the Age of Amphibians, and dense vegetative growth of green plants such as ferns, scale trees, cycads, and giant club moss trees covered the continents. The great quantity of lush green plant growth absorbed vast quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for photosynthesis. In the process forming enormous quantities of insoluble plant matter as leaves, tree trunks, bark, seeds, etc. In the swampy terrane typical of the time, the forest detritus, dead trees, spent leaves and fallen trees (all composed of carbon taken from the air)settled into the shallow acidic swamp waters where they underwent partial decay. Much of the carbon in these plants was preserved ( some as magnificent fossils) and eventually were entombed forming thick coal seams (giving the period its name). The carbon stored as coal, bitumen and other deposits remained buried underground and sequestered from the atmosphere for four hundred million years. The earth cooled slowly with a few fluctuations, eventually to arrive at conditions which approximate the present.
This ancient carbon, formerly in the atmosphere, remained safely isolated underground until the industrial revolution in geologically recent times, when man began to exploit coal, and eventually other forms of sequestered carbon such as oil and gas, for fuel. Today, we extract huge amounts of formerly stored carbon from the earth’s interior, burn it with atmospheric oxygen and them dump the resulting CO2 back into the atmosphere from which it had been removed over periods of hundreds of millions of years. What we are accomplishing as a world society is in effect reverting the earth to a more primitive “carbonized” atmosphere. We are in effect returning the earth to a time when the great primitive amphibians of the past thrived. But the high earth temperatures, humidity, swampy terrane, and inundated shores of that period which would limit our living space would not be conducive to us as advanced primates, or to the plants we rely on for our agriculture and our sustenance, or to our modern way of life.
Get the picture?
rjk
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