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June 30, 2006 Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," is pretty scary about alleged American effects on global warming. He says we should curtail our burning of carbon compounds, to slow the process. That would certainly decrease our standard of living and our military strength. But would it have any noticeable effect on global warming? In spite of all the scientific studies, we shouldn't ignore the fact that, 65 million years ago, the earth's atmospheric carbon dioxide was five times as high as it is now. (For example, in your local public library, see Science News, Nov. 1, 2003, page 286.) And of course that was not caused by America's excessively high standard of living. And it finally did go back down, all by itslelf. There's still a lot of important stuff here that we don't understand. Well, I agree that we ought to do whatever is practical to alleviate the problem, if it would really help. In my own case, I am providing free consulting to a big Korean company that is working on cheap, very efficient solar cells that could be spread out in "sun farms," similar to the huge one that General Electric is building in Portugal, but a lot cheaper. Very nice-sounding effort --- but will it succeed? If so, when? And what effect would it all have, anyhow? Let's suppose that we all switch to hybrid automobiles, insulate our houses, use big solar cells, and all that. China has four times our population, and India three times ours. If you go away from their coastal cities, most Chinese and Indians are still extremely poor, compared to us. The only way they can possibly raise their standards of living is by burning more coal and oil, by a huge margin (and I do mean huge). Then suppose they get as many cars as we have, even efficient ones. But on the other hand, should Al Gore condemn China and India to eternal poverty? How about Nigeria, with 130 million people? Eternal poverty? How about Brazil and Argentina, etc., etc.? In fact, even if we all stopped increasing our carbonaceous fuel combustion, the uncontrolled fires in China's abandoned coal mines release as much carbon dioxide as the entire country of Japan does from useful fuel consumption. (See page C-1 of the June 23, 2006 New York Times.) We have some of that in the U.S. and Canada also, but even worse are the continuous forest and tundra fires in Siberia and northern Canadia, started by lightning. Is Al Gore suggesting that we try and extinguish them? I wish I had some good suggestions, but outside of cheap solar cells, I don't. It's just that I'm tired of being told it's the fault of sinful old America, and if we make a vow of poverty, it will cure the problem. ------------ About the author: Dan Shanefield is a retired engineering prof, who worked at Bell Labs and then at Rutgers University. He wrote the book "Industrial Electronics for Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians". Visit his website or email: shanefield@ieee.org Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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