Politics over Compassion
The current level of carbon dioxide is 428 parts per million (PPM) or .0428% of the total atmosphere. All human activities, including burning fossil fuels, represent 5% of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, or at most, 21 total parts per million. These values spread uniformly around the globe from ground level upward, is what is claimed as the causation of global warming and all the rampant climate alarm being spread by the political progressives, activist scientists, and their unlearned followers.
As I wrote last July, Real Clear Science magazine has an interesting analogy when the CO2 level stood at 400 PPM, “Take 100 liters (26.42 US Gallons) of water in a nice large container – this is the total atmosphere. Pour out 99% of it and you are left with one liter. Then, pour out 99.6% of that single liter. What is left is 4 milliliters (less than a teaspoon full), now that is equivalent to the TOTAL amount of CO2 in the atmosphere - compared to the original 100 liters. Now from that 4 milliliters, pour out another 94.6% more. What is left is 0.2 milliliters, about the same as a single teardrop compared to that original 100 liters - and that is our human contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere!”
Rarely, anywhere does the climate change community show this value, instead you’ll see a hefty value of annual human emissions in the 10’s of gigatonnes projected on an annual basis. Advocate climate change science and its conformist, consensus-driven, well-funded scientists, say that human-produced CO2 emissions have created an imbalance in the natural carbon dioxide cycle. Essentially translated, they are saying that the atmosphere is animate, and can differentiate between the sources of carbon dioxide flowing into the atmosphere, and thus, as a result create warming of the entire earth. Carbon dioxide levels have been substantially higher in the past.
Some rational, level-headed scientists, while generally opposed to any climate change chaos, find the science of global warming reliable to a degree, but certainly nowhere near the crisis maintained by advocate scientists - those generally employed by progressive governments or elevated academia. Most sensible scientists also accept human adaptation and the ability to reconcile to any, and every, environmental condition.
A significant portion of the United States and Canada has had a very warm July. While the local weather person on the combined FOX - ABC television channel has said we can expect summer temperatures in excess of 100°F in our area, they have yet to materialize. The evening news did, however, broadcast a segment and I paraphrase, “Human-Caused Climate Change – How to Cope with it”.
It seemed most people being interviewed for the segment had various forms of climate anxiety and self-diagnosed levels of it. It further appeared, that the interviews were all conducted in cities, where Urban Heat Islands (UHI) are prominent heat accelerators.
Urban Heat Islands Include:
Paved roads, parking lots and sidewalks
Buildings especially with heat-absorbing materials
Limited vegetation and greenery
Domestic and industrial heat emissions
Traffic and airports
A representation of UHI is shown below:
Real Clear Science writes a factual and provocative article on the human-induced escalation of climate disorders called, “A Generation Lost to Climate Anxiety”. Here are some selected citations from that story:
This reckless alarmism, saturated across the mainstream media and endlessly amplified by it, has had profound societal consequences. It has both distorted public understanding of the massive benefits the carbon economy makes possible and grossly exaggerated the risks of extreme events it allegedly makes more likely.
Perhaps most perniciously, as Nordhaus details, the doomsday prophesying of climate extremists has created hardened skeptics on one side who are increasingly suspicious of all public “expertise”, while at the same time infecting true believers on the other side with a crippling, pathological fatalism that has come to be referred to as “climate anxiety.”
Yes, there’s the obvious cases of obnoxious and lawbreaking behavior, from climate iconoclasts defacing priceless works of art, to interrupting Broadway shows and sporting events, to gluing themselves to buses and holding up traffic on major thoroughfares.
Influencers like Greta Thunberg are motivating the young to pursue careers in political activism instead of research and innovation. It is easier to make the world angry through protest than to make it better by finding solutions.
And the kicker “Left-wing political leaders have been using the specter of a “climate emergency” to justify the expansion of their powers for years—limiting consumer choice with product bans, picking winners and losers with boondoggle subsidies, and using lawfare to try and put energy companies out of business by abusing “public nuisance” laws, just to name a few”.
This is all politics over heart - votes over verity - ideology over compassion - governing over humanitarianism.