[Bioconversion] Conserve -- Even the Air Force Wants to Cut Oil's Role

[David Neeley]

In my study thus far, I find the evidence of Man's contribution to
global warming far from a sure thing if we are to take the more
hysterical pronouncements as representing any sort of true scientific
consensus.

To me, a far more compelling case can be made regarding solar activity
as the primary driver in climate change, as the world continues to
warm up from the Little Ice Age--a warming which has been proceeding
for about three centuries now.

Personally, I am quite willing to accept that human activity may play
a part--but by no means a critical one in that process.

If we were to accept that we must take immediate corrective action, I
would suggest that carbon dioxide is by far not the most pressing
concern. By far the most prevalent "greenhouse gas" is water vapor,
and the impact of methane is on a volumetric basis far more serious
than that of CO2.

If, then, we were to seek to have the maximum impact upon the
greenhouse effect, it would make far more sense for humans to go vegan
and dispense with all those nasty methane-producing meat animals as
well as the 80% of grain production (consuming fossil fuels for
farming, processing and transport) which goes to feed those animals.

However, the greenhouse effect itself is somewhat suspect as usually
presented. If it were a major driver of climate change, for example,
we would expect temperatures in the troposphere to be far warmer than
they appear to be. This, in turn, would lessen the difference in
temperatures between the ground and the atmosphere, which would also
lessen the severity of hurricanes and typhoons...quite the opposite of
the doomsayers.

I am against squandering petroleum resources but not because of global
warming fear. I simply don't think that is the highest and best use of
it, and that increasingly costly supply will continue to be a problem
until it is exhausted. Burning petroleum simply seems the worst use of
a diminishing resource.

I am extremely interested in bioremediation in sewage treatment that
also will create biomass for generation of fuels. That seems to me to
be a far better approach than the mechanical one used in most places
today.

David

On 6/19/07, Philip Anderson <solarphil at comcast.net> wrote:
> In response to Geoff's discussion of the carbon cycle and renewable energy:
>
>
>
> Some factors I like to consider in the issues of the carbon cycle -both
> natural and human-induced- is time travel and overpopulation:
>
> >   It's the ancient carbon from fossil fuels -which has no natural place in
> today's world- which that is overwhelming the biosphere which is made to
> handle today's carbon.
>
> >   And overpopulation (in addition to our naive use of fossil fuels) is
> reducing the biosphere's machinery for handling both the ancient carbon and
> today's carbon, through our destruction of the green mantle, and further
> exacerbated by too many of us doing this.
>