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Heal the Harbor's Earth Day Message From: Heal the Harbor, Inc. at www.healtheharbor.org April 22, 2002
President George Walker Bush Dear President Bush: Congratulations on your winning the Presidency. Al Gore is gone from public office, but his legacy of the false fear of global warming apparently still lives on with the overwhelming majority of Americans, consequently this letter is about making the content of your "Earth Day 2001" speech rather than your planned speech to the Hurricane Conference in Washington (cancelled because of the China spy plane crisis) a chance to explain your policy on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and the Kyoto Treaty. Why not start out by agreeing that the global warming question is "serious" and that scientists arguing both sides of this issue have been barraging you with opposing data? Say something like, "Everybody talks about the weather, but they say nobody can do anything about it" is a statement that has been around for perhaps a million years, but actually has recently been proven untrue as the Earth's northern hemisphere by human action has increased in average temperature by 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 200 years or so, but other data say that the southern hemisphere's temperature has actually cooled a degree over the same time. Say other scientists tell me a 5 degree increase in climate temperature to temperatures like were present during the late Roman Empire would actually be optimum. Some scientists say present atmospheric concentrations of 0.035% CO2 in the atmosphere is too much, while other scientists say, why that's only 35 molecules of CO2 per 10,000 air molecules. These scientists say that CO2 itself is an endangered chemical species, recently brought back from near environmental extinction itself by nearly 3 billion years of constant depletion from the atmosphere by plant photosynthesis. The carbon in what is now oil, coal and natural gas (fossil fuels) CO2 emissions was once the carbon in the CO2 molecules in the ancient atmosphere. Go on to say atmospheric CO2 concentrations, I am told, were 400 times higher (14%) when the dinosaurs walked the Earth than now. Those were some Texas size animals and plants must have grown pretty fast back then to feed those herds. Carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H20) are the substrate or building block molecules for photosynthesis and CO2's increase in the atmosphere for the foreseeable future will be limited by its removal by photosynthesis to help crops, forests and sea plants grow faster without any need for genetic engineering. Say this administration, like each administration before it, will consider CO2 an atmospheric pollutant when its concentration in the air exceed OSHA environmental work safety standard limits (10%). We will not seek to lower these OSHA CO2 standard limits and you can count on this administration to enforce, not lessen these worker safety rules already in place. Some global warming, especially in winter is obviously good for most people, like in this harsh winter of 2000-2001 where U.S. heating oil prices have risen causing hardship on millions of Americans. Thousands of people and half their livestock have died from the cold in Mongolia and other frozen disaster zones in the world this past winter and perhaps thousands more would have died had not the northern hemisphere's temperature risen those two degrees. At one or another point this winter nearly 30 million people were in extreme discomfort and distress from cold. The small projected best estimates of global warming over the next 100 years, while maybe not the best news for glacier lovers, but for most Americans, and indeed, for most people in the world, some global warming with milder, shorter winters, longer growing seasons and faster rates of crop growth is good, not bad. Say while the main net effect of some global warming may be good, I am still concerned about possible stronger and more frequent hurricanes and tornado touch downs that even this small increase in climate temperature may bring, so I am going to propose that in addition to gathering and studying more data on global warming, this administration is going to take steps to mitigate the projected worst effects of global warming-storm fury or intensity. With our ever emerging technological capabilities and with our new weather and storm mechanism knowledge, we can meet this challenge of possible stronger hurricanes and more frequent tornado touch downs by bringing together scientists and engineers from industry, universities, NASA and NOAA, together with personnel from FEMA, Air National Guard units and the U.S. Navy for a new Project Stormfury (Stormfury II)to test several promising storm energy reduction plans. The previous NOAA Project Stormfury focused on cloud seeding to attempt to move the hurricane eye wall outward. Scientists concluded that this method was not working so the project was terminated. This new Project Stormfury II will focus on a fact that we know does make hurricanes lose their punch and that's when they travel over cooler surface water. We should use upwelling and pumping of cold water from below the thermocline up under Class II and above hurricanes headed for Hawaii and the U.S. mainland as our game plan. This upwelling of cold water from below the hurricane will hopefully not only help reduce the storm eye wall wind velocity a few miles per hour, but will also bring up nutrient rich waters to help the Pacific and Atlantic fisheries and, yes, this cold water will help offset some global warming. Say also that the big picture on the geologic time scale is that as our Sun converts its mass to energy to make light (E=MCxC) and this reduction in mass means less gravity over time, the Earth is projected to move father out in its orbit to where the Sun's rays are less concentrated. Mars, now cold and dead, is what the future of Earth's climate would have been like had not men evolved to discover how to drill for oil or dig for coal and use these fossil fuels. The CO2 from mankind's actions act to revitalize a CO2 depleted atmosphere. When Mar's geology is explored by NASA unmanned probes and if oil, coal and natural gas are discovered below the surface, then not only will it be proved that life once existed on Mars, but that this planet "died" because this fixed carbon in fossil fuel WAS NOT liberated back up into the Martian atmosphere by the action of intelligent life. This cooling or "planetary death", according to some scientists, may already have started. On the geologic time scale, the Earth has been getting colder. Twenty million years ago the vast Antarctic ice sheet formed and never melted again. The Arctic ocean finally froze over and never melted again eight million years ago and the vast ocean depths below the thermocline continue to become colder. In the last 2 million years of the nearly 5 billion years of Earth's history have great, mile thick ice sheets moved repeatedly four to seven times to cover Canada, Europe, Asia and what is now the United States. We know these glaciations as the Ice Ages and they have lasted for over 90% of the last 2 million years. Greenland is now still covered with a mile thick ice sheet left over from the last (Wisconsin) Ice Age and the Earth is now 10% covered by glacial ice. The trend over geologic time is an unrelenting march toward a frozen future were it not for man. Many scientists see this modern mild climate as only a brief intermission before the next glacial advance and that any global warming may help to put off or mitigate the next onset of Ice Age which many scientists also say may be overdue. Mr. President say the point is that CO2 emissions per se should not be looked at as pollution, but rather as atmospheric protection and buffering against the cold. More warmth means more water evaporation from the oceans and more rain for farmers, cities and more water for streams and hydroelectric production for energy hungry consumers. Please point out that we should not restrict CO2 emissions by law or treaty such as the Kyoto Protocol or limit our energy options to nuclear power with all of nuclear power's long term environmental problems (and as targets for terrorism) without clear and convincing scientific evidence that (1) significant global warming of more than 5 degrees is certain to occur and (2) that other beneficial mitigations such as upwelling of cold nutrient rich deep ocean water to reduce hurricane energy or fertilizing the great "ocean deserts" with iron* to increase to increase CO2 capture into ocean algae thus increasing the base of the food chain and increased fishery products are not enough. With best wishes, I remain Sincerely yours, Tim Beck, M.A. UCLA Biology * towable ferric sulfate diffuser devices are available from Heal the Harbor (John Martin Project) for U.S. Navy and other vessels whose courses will take then across ocean deserts. |