Global warming, a word.

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One of the things Carl Sagan taught me was that some of the earlier astronauts, gazing upon the earth from their capsules, were amazed by how thin the atmosphere looked. Until I really thought about it, I always thought of it as some vast, tall layer of air that extends for miles and miles and miles above you before finally petering away, not, as what one of those astronauts described it, as an onion peel.

In reality, the troposphere--air--, ends at about 7 miles. The air is thin enough at 2 miles that you start to get a little loopy from the lack of oxygen, and the air pressure at 3 miles is only one tenth what it is at sea level. Nevertheless, 75% of Earth's atmospheric gases are found within this 7 mile boundary, with the remaining 25% between 7 miles and 75 miles above sea level.

Seven miles:


Or, a little lower than the cruising altitude of a trans-pacific airliner.

Every climatologist has his or her own pet theory for what climate change will mean for us as a species, with varying degrees of wars and famines and blights. But very few cannot agree with the data; that the amount of atmospheric carbon has risen 35% since the industrial revolution, and demand for energy is increasing. And nobody really knows what this will mean for the climate now, let alone after 20 more years of throwing the stuff in ever increasing amounts into the atmosphere.

We've only been at this pollution business in earnest for about 150 years. In that time the human population has grown from about 1 billion to over 6, and in the same amount of time we've gone from producing under 200 megatons of carbon from fossil fuels per year to over 6500.

And nobody knows what the consequences of this are.

My position, my entire position, in regards to climate change, to wit:

Atmospheric carbon dioxide retains heat.

Very minute temperature changes affect ecosystems in unpredictable ways to varying degrees.


There exists a positive correlation between global temperatures and carbon emissions.

Demand is increasing for fossil fuels.


Nobody knows what global climate change will mean. Probably pretty bad until a new equilibrium develops. Worst case: I am killed in a resource war. Second worst case: I die of starvation. Third worst case: I die of dehydration. Best case: I am sitting on beachfront property and its the Central and South Americans, the Europeans, the Kansans, the Asians and the Africans dying in the wars and famines and droughts.


People figured this stuff out in the 70s, but elected Reagan and Bush in the 1980s, and Bush again in the double-aughts, to prove something about the Vietnam war.


Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda again, Afghanistan, al-Qaeda again, al-Qaeda yet again, then Iraq again, with more al-Qaeda to follow.


How about we get some wind turbines?