CO2 Global Warming Argument in Perspective

The following monologue was emailed to me by a good friend from Australia, and was inspired by the debate about a new Carbon Tax that is to be levied on all Australian citizens (as I understand it), to help deal with the "problem" of man made CO2 in the atmosphere.

Certainly puts the situation into interesting perspective...

Imagine 1 kilometer of atmosphere, and we want to get rid of the carbon pollution in it created by human activity. Let's go for a walk along it.

The first 770 metres are Nitrogen. The next 210 meters are Oxygen. That's 980 metres of the 1 kilometer.

20 metres to go.

The next 10 metres are water vapour.

10 metres left.

9 meters are argon.

Just 1 more meter. A few gases make up the first bit of that last meter.

The last 38 centimeters of the kilometer - that's carbon dioxide...or a bit over a foot.

97% of that is produced by Mother Nature. It’s natural.

Out of our journey of one kilometre, there are just 12 millimeters left. Just over a centimeter - or about half an inch. That’s the amount of carbon dioxide that global human activity puts into the atmosphere.

And of those 12 millimetres Australia puts in 0.18 of a millimeter. Less than the thickness of a hair. Out of a kilometre!

As a hair is to a kilometre - so is Australia's contribution to what Julia Gillard calls Carbon Pollution.

Imagine Brisbane's new Gateway Bridge, ready to be opened by Julia Gillard. It's been polished, painted and scrubbed by an army of workers till its 1 kilometre length is surgically clean. Except that Julia Gillard says we have a huge problem, the bridge is polluted - there's a human hair on the roadway. We'd laugh ourselves silly.

There are plenty of real pollution problems to worry about. It's hard to imagine that Australia's contribution to carbon dioxide in the world's atmosphere is one of the more pressing ones. And I can't believe that a new tax on everything is the only way to blow that pesky hair away.

I have long held that Global Warming is indeed a reality - but that man has quite little to do with it.

This does not mean that we shouldn't do everything in our power to promote using clean energy sources, and to replace combustion-based technologies with ones that, say, convert photons into electrons to generate power for various purposes. But it seems that one of the byproducts of the "man-made Global Warming hysteria" is that it has given politicians another angle to come up with new taxes...

All people must be taxed to clean up a problem the relative size of a human hair! Elephant guns to kill flies...

S&F

Perspective is a beautiful thing.

Pity that the ALP don't spend half as much effort tackling real pollution problems instead of instigating their carbon tax.

Why would they bring in a new tax if it was blatantly obvious that it will do naught for the environment?

They are broke and need a new source of income.

Bring on an election.