Environmentalism
by Dr. Wasley Krogdahl (Kentucky)
Global Warming
A clean natural environment is something everyone is for. Therefore it
follows that everyone is against global warming and an ozone hole. Some
environmentalists claim that the consequences of global warming would be dire:
melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps, causing rising ocean levels
with attendant flooding of coastal cities, as well as other unwanted results.
To forestall these and other catastrophes, environmentalists say, it will be
necessary for mankind (especially the portion of mankind living in the United
States) to curtail drastically those activities which contribute to the
production of "greenhouse gases", which are blamed for global warming.
These gases allow sunlight to penetrate to the earth’s surface, where they are
absorbed and warm the earth, but impede or delay the radiation of the
accumulated heat back into space, thereby raising the temperature of the
earth’s surface.
A dangerous increase in the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (the bubbles in
your soft drink), environmentalists say, is produced by burning fossil fuels
such as coal, oil and natural gas. To counter this danger, we must cut back
severely on the consumption of fossil fuels in homes, power plants, cars and
trucks. Al Gore, for example, says that the automobile "is posing a mortal
threat to the security of every nation that is more deadly than any military
enemy we are ever likely again to confront". Instead, walk, ride bicycles
and retire at sunset.
In fact, 98 percent of the greenhouse effect -- which is a real effect -- is
due to water vapor, only 2 per cent to everything else. Though the small
abundance of carbon dioxide has increased measurably in the latter half of the
twentieth century, nearly all of the very small increase in the earth’s
average temperature occurred prior to the increase of carbon dioxide.
Atmospheric scientists are overwhelmingly of the opinion that no global warming
can be attributed to the burning of fossil fuels by industrialized nations such
as the United States.
The Ozone Hole
When raw sunlight encounters the uppermost layers of the earth’s
atmosphere, its ultraviolet portion (nearly all at invisible short wavelengths)
splits some of the oxygen molecules (O2) into two oxygen atoms. These atoms are
then free to unite with any of the remaining oxygen molecules to form ozone
(O3). The harmful ultraviolet sunlight is then absorbed and moderated by the
presence of ozone; without it, ultraviolet sunlight would reach the earth’s
surface at full strength, lethal to some lower forms of life and injurious to
human eyes and skin. Any real decrease in ozone in the upper atmosphere would be
a truly serious matter.
Environmental extremists see a threat to the ozone layer in freon, the gas
which serves as the working fluid of refrigerators and air-conditioning systems.
They say that leaks of freon from cooling systems put freon into the atmosphere,
where it rises to the ozone layer, reacts chemically to destroy the ozone, and
thereby represents a lethal threat to all terrestrial life, including mankind.
Unfortunately for this argument, freon will not rise in the atmosphere,
because it is many times heavier than air. Instead, it will hover near the
ground, where it is absorbed and transformed by soil bacteria into entirely
harmless biomass within one or two weeks.
The Dangers of Demagoguery
Unfortunately for Americans, irresponsible environmentalists have prevailed
upon both Presidents Bush and Clinton to issue Executive Orders to make the
manufacture and sale of freon illegal. Available substitutes are expensive,
corrosive, dangerous to handle, less efficient and require completely new
cooling systems for homes, businesses and industry. A changeover will be both
extremely expensive in dollars and lives and would be totally unnecessary.
President Clinton is attempting by Executive Order to implement the
unratified edicts of the harmful United Nations Rio de Janeiro Treaty and Kyoto
Protocol which call for drastic reductions in the United States’ consumption
of fossil fuels. This would needlessly reduce Americans’ standard of living
and cost hundreds of thousands of jobs.
The global warming and ozone depletion alarms are the current schemes being
promoted by the same hustlers who gave us the phony acid rain, Alar, PCB, DDT
and nuclear winter scares. All were fraudulent; all invoked pseudoscience; all
have since been discredited. They are being foisted on a gullible world whose
citizens are being told blatant falsehoods. The truths are:
Our forests are not being destroyed by acid rain; Alar-treated apples are
perfectly safe; atomic bomb tests are not precipitating a new ice age;
accumulating carbon dioxide is not responsible for minute fluctuations in the
earth’s average temperature; freon is not wiping out the protective ozone
layer in the upper atmosphere; DDT does not threaten the extinction of entire
species of birds and animals, but its ban has caused the deaths of millions of
people from malaria in the tropics.
Those who promote such scares are seeking to panic the people of the world
into accepting an all-powerful government and a socialized economy, of which
they expect to be the masters. It is time to discipline the false leaders who
would fasten crack-pot policies that will reduce our freedoms and our standards
of living.
Experts’ Opinions
"Forty-six prominent scientists and intellectuals in the United States,
including 27 Nobel Prize winners, joined 218 scientists in other countries and
presented what is called the Heidelberg Appeal to the Heads of State attending
the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. This appeal states that the global warming
theory, ozone depletion theory, and other ‘catastrophes’; paraded before the
world are based on ‘pseudoscience, irrational preconceptions, and non-relevant
data’." -- Ecologist Dr. Michael Coffman, in "Saviors of the
Earth"
"First, we must recognize that the environmental movement is not about
facts or logic. It is about how people feel. Second, we have to understand that
no amount of scientific "proof", however decisive it may seem to a
scientist, will influence or change the minds of those who hold deeply felt
beliefs." -- Dr. Dixie Lee Ray, former Governor of the State of Washington,
former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission
In view of the fact that warming predictions are dubious, that warming may
result in overall benefits rather than damages, and that the goal of the Climate
Treaty cannot as yet be scientifically defined, it seems foolhardy to embark on
crash policies that spell economic disaster. -- Dr. S. Fred Signer, Prof.
Emeritus of Environmental Science, University of Virginia, Distinguished
Research Fellow at the Institute of Space Science and Technology.
Dr. Wasley Krogdahl is the Professor Emeritus of Astronomy
and Astrophysics at the University of Kentucky.
