Reason # 97: Global Warming

Reason # 97: Global Warming

Why do we need to defeat Donald Trump and ensure that a Democrat occupies the White House?

Republicans persist in denying that mankind, specifically industrial activity is causing rapidly increasing global warming that threatens our future. There is no excuse for this willful ignorance. The concepts are not terribly complicated. Let me try to explain how the carbon atom works.

Human life is impossible without carbohydrates. We are totally incapable of producing them and are dependent on plants. What is special about plants? Their leaves capture solar energy (what a clever idea) and use the energy to drive chemical reactions that combine CO2, O2 and H2O into carbohydrates. Because the carbon atom can bond with as many as four other atoms, it can form short chains like sugars and long chains to form complex molecules like cellulose to construct trees.

Oxygen is a product of these reactions, that sustains our vital atmosphere.

Animals do the reverse. They cannot use solar energy; instead, they eat leaves and break down sugars into CO2 and water. Man not only eats the sugars in greens, but also the fats and proteins in animals. We breathe in and consume oxygen in the process and exhale CO2 into the environment. Luckily, the two balance out and O2 and CO2 levels in the air stay about the same. This is pure science; no sane person disagrees.

But man needs warmth to stay alive and so he must have fire. Fire is essentially the same chemical reaction as the metabolism of carbohydrates, except that it requires energy input and produces the energy in a much more vigorous manner. In the end O2 is consumed, carbohydrates are broken down and CO2 is released, but at much higher levels and more rapidly. Fortunately, trees regrow, in the process removing CO2 produced by man burning other trees.

Over time, more trees are cut down than grown (deforestation) and environmental CO2 starts to rise. Man is changing the atmosphere, but not by much. As man’s population and energy needs grow, wood no longer suffices. Where else to seek warmth. It turns out to be from trees again. When ancient trees and other plants died, they were buried and compressed over millennia, converted into coal and petroleum products. The following three brief videos can serve as a tutorial.

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=where+does+coal+come+from+%3f&mid=72421A91617FD5DB15D672421A91617FD5DB15D6&FORM=VIRE

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=where%20does%20coal%20come%20from%20?&mid=ACCE5B59045771C116D9ACCE5B59045771C116D9&ajaxhist=0

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=where+does+coal+come+from+%3f&mid=60FC88E2D83B9AE2B29D60FC88E2D83B9AE2B29D&FORM=VIRE

As the population grew and wood could no longer suffice, man began to learn how to extract and refine these non-renewable forms of energy and use them not only for heat, light and cooking, but also to drive trains and ships, industrialize manufacturing processes and make deep mining feasible. Burning coal and petroleum products (hydrocarbons) releases enormous amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Wood and coal produce approximately equal amounts of CO2 per unit energy. CO2 emissions are calculated as pounds of CO2 per 1,000,000 BTU of energy produced. I emphasize the word “pounds”. This ranges from over 200 pounds for coal, to almost 160 pounds for gasoline and 120 pounds for natural gas.

OK, then how many million BTUs to heat a house? Estimated to be 36 million/year

Driving a typical car? 4.6 million tons of CO2/year.

In total, the U.S. churns out about one hundred quadrillion BTUs (quads) each year, more than 80% from fossil fuels!

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/

More than a third goes to generation of electricity; less than a third for transportation; industry gobbles up a quarter, the remainer to domestic and commercial use. Only about a twentieth goes for the original purpose of heating homes.

What do “four quads” of BTU energy mean in terms of CO2. I mean, CO2 is so tiny we can’t even see it with a microscope, it is so light that it literally floats in air. But boy does it add up. It is estimated that after subtracting uptake of CO2 by plants etc. we send up 5,489 million metric tons of CO2 up into the atmosphere annually.

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-sinks

MIT explains we emit more than billion tons of CO2 each year, about as much as the rest of the world combined. Each ton equals a cube of CO2 27x27x27 feet cubed, to earth’s atmosphere each year?

https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-ton-carbon-dioxide

So what, if almost two trillion pounds of CO2 is added the the atmosphere that sustains our lives? Why should we care?

It’s called the “greenhouse effect. CO2 in the atmosphere causes the atmosphere to retain heat from sunlight and the effect is cumulative; the more CO2, the more heat retention. This video from the Environmental Protection Agency explains in greater detail.

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=what+is+the+greenhouse+effect&mid=310AA58C979D85A44D27310AA58C979D85A44D27&FORM=VIRE

How do we know? Couldn’t be simpler, we just track atmospheric CO2 and average ocean temperature over long periods of time. We can go back in time by measuring CO2 in ancient ice layers in the Arctic.

What does the data show? Is CO2 increasing in the atmosphere? Yes. Are oceanic temperatures rising? Yes.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that atmospheric CO2 is now 420 parts per million (ppm), up from 320 ppm in 1960 and 280 ppm in 1750, i.e. the rate of increase is accelerating.

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide#:~:text=Atmospheric%20carbon%20dioxide%20is%20now%2050%20percent%20higher,of%20the%20last%20ice%20age%2011%2C000-17%2C000%20years%20ago.

Dissolved CO2 is also slowly acidifying ocean water.

Disclosure: My daughter is a NOAA senior advisor.

Oceanic temperatures have reached historic highs, near an average of 21 degrees Celsius. Local water temperatures are also higher, e.g. in the Caribbean, where all of these hurricanes are born.

https://www.seatemperature.org/

90% of the Greenhouse effect is on ocean heat content, which has also risen steadily and is accelerating since 1960.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_temperature

OK, so what if CO2 and ocean temperatures are rising? First, ice is melting. I have personally seen where glaciers have disappeared in Glacier National Park and in parts of Alaska. Greenland is melting. Sea levels will inevitably rise and are already inundating low islands and seacoasts.

Ever looked at a hurricane and wondered where the power to form a giant cyclone with winds blowing at 150 miles per hour comes from? The answer is from the heat stored in the ocean. The end result of rising temperatures is glaringly obvious to the naked eye. I sat in a restaurant in Australia and watched seven separate forest fires across the horizon. I can jump in my car now and visit enormous swathes of California forest that are now charred ash. Major droughts torment and threaten populations. Just in the past month two major hurricanes savaged Florida.

Is there any disagreement among reputable scientists that this is happening? No. The world agreed on the science and what must be done to save the earth from inevitable harm in the Kyoto accords in 1997, updated in the Paris accords in 2015.

https://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol

That brings us back to the frightening subject of a possible second Donald Trump presidency. What did Trump do during his first term?

He very early threatened to renege on our agreement.

https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/articles/president-trump-announces-u-s-withdrawal-paris-climate-accord/

He was not bluffing. In 2020, he pulled the U.S. out of the Paris accord!

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54797743

But that was just a part of the harm he caused. He also removed a hundred regulations designed to protect our local environments.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16072024/trump-environmental-impact/

Joseph Biden reinstated our Paris agreement national promises in 2021.

What will Trump do if reelected? He has said that he will do the same destructive things all over again. This is one promise you can rely on.

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/power-switch/2024/03/12/how-trump-could-exit-paris-and-make-it-stick-00146504

Why? He says it is to save the jobs of American workers. This is pure fabrication. It is because the Republican party is sustained by callous and greedy millionaires and billionaires who care more about the ever-increasing profitability of their investments in the coal and petroleum industries, than about our home on mother earth. It’s not that they don’t understand the science. They do. These hypocrites just don’t care about the planet or about you and your family.

At the same time they deny climate science, they are carpeting red states with profitable wind and solar farms. (I just drove across northern Texas and saw them.) Trump’s biggest donor is making billions on electric cars and trucks.

Do you really want to threaten the future of your children and grandchildren by voting for Donald Trump and the Republican toadies who support him?

Please share this message with your friends and please, add your thoughts, to expand upon what are only brief sketches here.

To date, I have written 97 Reasons NOT to vote for Donald Trump. They are archived at my Facebook page

“100 Reasons NOT to vote for Donald Trump”.

Please visit the page and share the URL with your friends and colleagues.

Please click on the URL link below.

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61565843924438

You will be prompted in an on-screen box to “See More on Facebook”.

You can view the page even If you are not a registered Facebook user. Simply click on the X in the upper right corner of the pop up box and you will be able to view the site and all of its contents.

Because some have problems with Facebook, I have also opened a web page at

https://www.TRUMP100TIMESNO.COM

And started to add the 100 reasons there. It is a work in progress.

Why have I committed to posting 100 Reasons NOT to vote for Donald Trump? Because I do not have time to post 10,000.

Fred Grannis

October 20, 2024


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