Let's all take a breath...

...and a rational look at Energy, Oxygen and CO2 says Michael R. Fox in today's Hawaii Reporter.

First consider the global prevalence of CO2 and its significance. CO2 is essential for all plant life on the planet, including the entire agricultural industry. It is not a pollutant, regardless of the recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the well-known process of photosynthesis performed by most plants, CO2 is combined with water to produce oxygen and cellulose. The process is actually much more complicated but certainly CO2 is an essential ingredient for this life giving process. That the process globally also generates billions of tons of oxygen (O2) for the atmosphere, and for us to breathe, the importance of photosynthesis to life on earth and the requisite CO2 cannot be overstated.

The media have convinced many that CO2 is a pollutant, which it is not. Their line of reasoning is that man-made CO2 is causing global warming. This effect is relatively small and is based upon questionable CO2 measurements from ancient ice cores. There are a number of other natural climate forcing functions, such as the sun, clouds, and aerosols, all of which have unknown and unquantified potentials for warming.

Then there are several key gases which combine to be called greenhouse gases (GHG). About 97% of the greenhouse gas inventory is water vapor. Given that 70% of the Earth’s surface is water, we shouldn’t be surprised. The next most prevalent GHG is CO2 which is about 1.9% of the total. There are lesser amounts of methane, and others making up the rest. The CO2 fraction is only 1.9% of the total. However, the man-made fraction of the total CO2 is even smaller, less than 3% of that 1.9%, or 0.06%.

Thus, another problem arises for the “global warmers”. They are left to explain why the tiny manmade fraction of CO2 is a warming problem but the much larger fraction of CO2 from natural sources is not, since the CO2 from both natural and manmade sources are chemically identical.

The above is just a bit of a fairly lengthy article. The author Michael R. Fox, Ph.D. is a science and energy reporter for Hawaii Reporter and a analysist for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. Now retired, he has nearly 40 years experience in the energy field and has taught chemistry and energy at the University level.

Read his whole article, Energy, Oxygen and CO2.