ASTRONOMY -- Voyages of Discovery -- Fall 2008

Essay on Global Warming -- for CreRet class 17Nov2008

* Asian Brown Cloud -- extends from Saudi Arabia across middle east through China from burning dung, trees, and coal.
* Desertification in Africa -- has expanded by watering animals from well intended western built wells.
* Deforestation in S. America -- to provide cropland, including sugar and corn for ethanol fuel.
* Acid Rain in Europe -- from burning sulfur-rich coals including from the American Midwest.

	Have you ever flown over the vast stretches of pristine America cropland, prairies and mountains?  
Have you ever flown over the smoke belched skies of Gary Indiana?  Does, or will, industrial society trump nature?

	All are attributable to over-population.  But are we to really ban native populations from burning dung?  
To the people involved, it is as significant as the SUV is to us.  And that gets into the economics of populations

	I am opposed to the premise that it is lifestyle that is causing global warming.
There are multiple weather cycles upon the planet earth since it started to coalesce into matter from the 
big bang and has to do with energy movements from within the solar system (Sun) and the earth's core
(rotating molten iron) and between heat sinks on the surface (oceans) and subsurface (volcanoes) of the earth's crust.
	Man's contribution to pollution is population, excess numbers of individual humans that, like all other 
lifeforms when given the chance, will swarm -- from bacteria, to grasshoppers, to deer that
consume everything they might possibly need and leave behind waste -- until they reach a point in which 
they overcrowd and destroy themselves.

	Regardless of the cause, or more properly the magnitude of the various causes, over
time and place, the only legitimate discussion is how to prepare -- either mitigate or correct
the situation.
	First some precautions:
		Governments screw up everything they touch.
		Self-interest affects every decision made by man.  (and women)
			(even altruism is to make the giver feel good)
		Do we know the course of future earth?  April 28, 1974, Newsweek spoke of
			global cooling and listed ways to warm the earth.
	Population Control.  War and pestilence are the old standards ; these are not
		hampered by demands by religions to increase the numbers in their sect.
		Elimination of religion is on the list of alternatives, but would that increase happiness
		of mankind? Some people find comfort in ringing bells in Tibet or saying rosary in
		 Italy, or sweating in an Indian medicine lodge. Attempts have been made that resulted in an
		increase of nationalism -- Mussolini and Hitler each wanted more children to grow soldiers. 
		Mao and Chou each reduced population to build national wealth to be able to impose their policies.
		I find government and religion as unsuitable for any constructive policy.
		Look at AIDS, did it discourage sex and population growth?  
		How effective was the Shaker practice of abstinence?
	Non-Polluting Sources of Energy.  I personally favor eliminating this from two  ideals --
	 	as a Boy Scout consersvtionalist and as an Efficiency Expert as it concerns wastefulness.
	     Solar Electric Power causes few harms -- offer a prize for the most efficient means of
			creating and of storing power.  How big a prize?  How much is it worth?  The
			answer is a big number.  We are offering $100 million for Bin Laden, a fraction
			of a day of warfare.  Maybe economic solar will come about in our lifetime, or
 			maybe it won't, but my bets are on some twelve-year old boy alive today.
	     Wind Power is being pushed by TBoonePickens to replace natural gas used for making 
			electricity, thereby freeing natural gas for transportation; cleaner than oil, and domestic.  
			Not bad, just don't spoil the Kennedy view of Cape Cod Bay.  
			In Holland, the canal pumps are powered by wind so that a power failure or storm clouds 
			will not flood the country.  Smart application.  
			My problems with the Picken Plan : what assures that wind farms will result in natural gas 
			powered cars? 
			This plan is only an interim measure until solar is available, about which he is silent.  
		(I bought ENER stock this week and last.  Fools are selling solar power companies because of 
		 the current economic downturn.  You can't trust Wall Street, either.)
	
	I love the cartoon with a car full of hippies out of gas who think that conserving will get them to 
their destination.  So much for the Green movement -- economics will win, 
but bless their cause to make earth livable. 
 
	So, what if the power of the sun and earth overwhelm the puny and wasteful political measures to 
prevent global warming, if, in fact, that does comes about?  My wife says that any unsolvable 
situation is an engineering problem.  This engineer says 
	move all the people living in flooded coastal Bangladesh to re-newly greened Greenland ; 
		although the mountainous regions of Asia are closer.  They just walk uphill.  Dah!  
	Issue visas so Hollanders can move to Pella, Iowa.  
	And, let the idiots who build in New Orleans and on Florida beaches -- -- drown if they don't move.  

	What are other effects of Global Warming besides coastal flooding?
		Wider selection for growing plants in Iowa. 
		Higher crop yields -- in much of the world.  
 		More comfortable winters in Iowa.
		What else?  (pause 5 seconds)

	Don't get me started on Kyoto Treaty and selling of Carbon Credits.  Then again, please do,
I am loaded for bear on those issues.  
	The effect of one is to weaken the economies of industrialized nations 
	(to satisfy foolish pronouncements by Al Gore and Prince Charles)
 in which some of the largest polluters are exempt by diplomacy.  
	And the other is a transfer of wealth from rich industrial nations to poor jungle nations. 
Excuse me, they are now called rain forests to be politically correct. 
	This whole issue is about being politically correct -- Phony.

	The people wanting to spread soot on the Antarctic ice caps in 1975 (at the very end of a brief cooling period) 
will seem as foolish as those who want to outlaw burning dung thirty years later.

	Encourage conservation.  Encourage green living.  Let science try to predict, but not expect to control, 
whatever happens in the future.  And then, mankind, and its excess populations, can adapt.

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Another "Discussion on Global Warming".
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