Don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to fight science. I’m not going to say man has no impact, but my contention is that we must always balance regulation with freedom. It can be done. And where man might have an impact on the atmosphere, he is not the only element causing climate change. One big question is how much and what can be done or make real sense and embrace the human spirit.
So once more, where’s the balance and freedom? And what about population growth? We breathe out carbon dioxide. The more folks, the more cars, the more electricity, the more plastic products, equals more carbon dioxide. Quick, control everything…
Over its 4.5 billion-year history, our own planet has gone through continuous upheavals and change. The primitive Earth had no oxygen in its atmosphere. Due to its molten interior, our planet was much hotter than it is now, and volcanoes spewed forth in large numbers. Driven by heat flow from the core of the Earth, the terrestrial crust shifted and moved. Huge landmasses splintered and glided about on deep tectonic plates. Then plants and photosynthesis leaked oxygen into the atmosphere. At certain periods, the changing gases in the air caused the planet to cool, ice covered the Earth, entire oceans may have frozen.
Today, the earth continues to change. Something like ten billions tons of carbon are cycled through plants and the atmosphere every few years—first absorbed by plants from the air in the form of carbon dioxide, then converted into sugars by photosynthesis, then released again into soil or air when the plant dies or is eaten. Wait about a hundred million years or so, and carbon atoms are recycled through rocks, soil, and oceans as well as plants.—from The Accidental Universe, by Alan Lightman
According to Michael Crichton: We are in the midst of a natural warming trend that began about 1850, as we emerged from a four-hundred-year cold spell known as the “Little Ice Age.” Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be a natural phenomenon. Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be man-made.
Maybe man was to blame for the cold spell, because he didn’t know how to use coal or fossil fuels and didn’t invent concrete yet.
“Science will find the truth,” said Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, “It may get it wrong the first time and maybe the second time, but ultimately it will find the truth.” That provisional quality of science is another thing a lot of people have trouble with. To some climate change skeptics, for example, the fact that a few scientists in the 1970s were worried (quite reasonably, it seemed at the time) about the possibility of a coming ice age is enough to discredit the concern about global warming now.—National Geographic, March 2015
The current near-hysterical preoccupation with safety is at best a waste of resources and a crimp on the human spirit, and at worst an invitation to totalitarianism. Public education is desperately needed.—Michael Crichton
As bikers we know about these efforts at totalitarianism.
And more recently is was revealed in The Week Magazine another reason to constantly question the government:
Here’s another example of the regulatory dilemma from The Week Magazine, March 27, 2015: The future of energy production in the U.S. is shifting toward natural gas, with wind and solar playing smaller but growing roles. But coal remains very much alive in the developing world. India, where 240 million people have no access to electricity, has proposed building 455 coal-fired plants to meet this demand. In China, where coal provides a whopping 70 percent of the country’s electricity, another 363 coal-fired plants are planned, though public concern over pollution may reduce that number. But it’s highly unlikely that 82 percent of the current global coal reserves will be left in the ground, says earth systems scientist Steven Davis. “There is a global effort to reduce carbon dioxide,” Davis said, “but it’s actually increasing at a shocking rate.”
And about government reliability and its warnings, hang on for this from the Week Magazine, March 20, 2015: For decades, health officials have warned Americans about the dangers of eating foods high in cholesterol, like eggs, shrimp, and lobster. But in a stunning reversal, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee recently recommended no longer listing cholesterol as a “nutrient of concern.” That turnaround is in keeping with mounting evidence that for most healthy adults, eating foods high in cholesterol does not significantly contribute to the amount of cholesterol found in the blood—most of which is produced naturally by the body.
