On the environmental front there's concern about global warming and high levels of carbon dioxide, and trees take in CO2 and store carbon.
Air is one we hold in common; it has a limited carrying capacity for pollutants and that's being used up by those who pollute the atmosphere. So we have to stop that externality. We would never allow a utility to put their coal slag in a dump truck and back it up to the city park and dump it in unlimited amounts for free. But that is exactly what we do with carbon dioxide and methane.
Carbon dioxide does not cause or contribute to smog, and the Kyoto treaty would do nothing to reduce or prevent smog.
Here's the problem - carbon dioxide doesn't contribute to smog and isn't a health threat. All of this is being done because some people believe carbon dioxide is causing global warming, and that preventing carbon dioxide from entering the air is the only answer. Never mind that there is still an ongoing scientific debate about global warming itself, and that some respected climate scientists believe that methane is a better target, California legislators have locked their sites on carbon dioxide.
I drove an electric car for seven years because of its advanced technology, not because I have any concerns about energy resources. I have none at all. And when environmentalists say that global warming is dangerous, unprecedented and that we'll have a tipping point for atmospheric carbon dioxide, it's just nonsense.
Carbon dioxide is natural. It is not harmful. It is part of Earth's life cycle.
My first inclination is to be a bit skeptical about the claims that human-produced carbon dioxide is the direct contributor to global warming.
Alone among businesses, the fossil-fuel industry is allowed to dump its main waste, carbon dioxide, for free
The burning of fossil fuels has altered the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere so rapidly and so abundantly that now, we are driving not just the warming trend, not just the sea level rise that is a consequence of the warming trend that is melting polar ice and alpine ice, but also [ocean acidification].
The general trend in the last 4,000 years is that carbon dioxide and temperature have been moving against each other.
Too many cars, too many factories, too much detergent, too much pesticides, multiplying contrails, inadequate sewage treatment plants, too little water, too much carbon dioxide - all can be traced easily to too many people.
. . . there is no substantive basis for predictions of sizeable global warming due to observed increases in minor greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and chlorofluorocarbons.
Climate is not responding to greenhouse gases in the way we thought it might. If increasing carbon dioxide is in fact increasing climate change, its impact is smaller than natural variation. People are being misled by people making money out of this.
. . . and his eyes were so green they could turn carbon dioxide into oxygen.
Ocean acidification - the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is turning the oceans increasingly acid - is a slow but accelerating impact with consequences that will greatly overshadow all the oil spills put together. The warming trend that is CO2-related will overshadow all the oil spills that have ever occurred put together.
It's not the case that carbon dioxide drives temperatures. When you leave Ice Ages, it's the other way around: The temperatures go up first, and then carbon dioxide levels go up.
Society's emissions of carbon dioxide may or may not turn out to have something significant to do with global warming-the jury is still out.
President Bush insisted today that he was not caving in to big money contributors, big-time lobbyists, and overall industry pressure when he broke a campaign promise to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. But the air was thick today with accusations from people who believe that's exactly what happened.
We have an atmosphere that is roughly 21% oxygen. The rest of it is largely nitrogen. There's just enough carbon dioxide (CO2) to drive photosynthesis. That has been, throughout the history of our species, pretty stable. Until recently.
So, if we decrease the use of carbon dioxide, are we not taking away plant food from the atmosphere?
