Global warming: The numbers

I’m feeling snarky today because I’m sick of hearing know-it-alls in the media talking about human-caused global warming without lifting a finger to investigate the claims they’ve been spoonfed by the eco-lobby.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most-cited culprit in our anticipated date with doom, its levels supposedly soaring because of human activity.

The mantra is oft-repeated, but less known are the real numbers:

• No. 1 greenhouse gas: water vapor.
• Portion of the atmosphere that is carbon dioxide: 0.03 percent (3/10,000ths).
• Portion of CO2 caused by human activity: 3.207 percent (or 0.0009621 percent of the total atmosphere, or less than 1/100,000th).
• Accounting for the relative effect of water vapor (a gas over which we have no control) and the relative effect of carbon dioxide, portion of total greenhouse effect attributable to CO2: 3.618 percent.
• Figuring effect of carbon dioxide multiplied by man’s contribution to CO2, the portion of the overall greenhouse effect attributable to human sources: 0.116 percent.
• Most-cited actual temperature increase over past 100 years: 0.6 degrees Celsius or about 1 degree Fahrenheit.
• Calculating for human contribution to global warming, the actual temperature increase possibly caused by humans over 100 years: 0.000696 degrees Celsius or 0.00116 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Predicted warming over next 100 years: up to 2 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Extrapolated possible human contribution to global warming over next 100 years: up to 0.0023 degrees Fahrenheit.

Summation: For the crime of contributing 0.00116 degrees to the average global temperature over the past century and possibly contributing 0.0023 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century, Al Gore and the Greens (aka Reds) would sentence us to a world in which the following (and more) are true:

• Gasoline is exorbitantly priced, if it is available at all.
• Declining private transportation, increasing regulation of travel.
• Unreliable energy sources, including regular blackouts.
• Remote control of your household utilities, including banning of fireplaces.
• Heavy taxation, possibly nationalization, of industries that don’t match the designated “carbon footprint.”
• Widespread long-term unemployment due to government meddling in economy and fleeing of industry to foreign, non-Kyoto countries. (See Europe’s current actual experience.)
• Banning or restrictions of hundreds of “greenhouse intensive” products we rely upon, including paper, all plastics, meat, certain plants, building materials, clothing materials, etc.
• Widespread hunger, possible government-enforced famines to reduce carbon footprint of farming and ranching.
• Rising taxation to “provide relief” to impoverished masses created by government policies and to create “busy work,” a la the Great Depression.
• Restriction of medical technologies considered energy intensive, such as MRIs, manufacture of certain drugs, life support for patients in vegetative states, etc.
• Possible large-scale disease outbreaks as public health system breaks down under weight of the poor.
• Further collapse of real estate and banking system as out-of-work families are foreclosed upon.
• Taxation, regulation and possible banning of children. (Yes, it’s already been proposed in Australia. Enforced abortions and sterilization, anyone?)
• Euthanization becomes standard treatment for all potentially terminal illnesses. (See the Netherlands.)
• All the above policies won’t make a dent in global warming.

Try balancing that equation.