US Oil Reserves, Global Warming and Carbon Dioxide

Late last week Hot Air published an article entitled "CBS Report Shows Much Higher US Oil, Gas Reserve Levels Than Previously Thought." In the article, about which I have already written, it is discussed the US has not "2%" of the world's oil reserves as Obama continues to offer, but instead we have up to "17% of the world's oil reserves" based on both new discoveries and more sophisticated methods of cost effective extraction.

As well CBS wrote an article specifically stating "New Drilling Method Opens Vast Oil Fields In US." Never one to let a chance to grab the glory slip by him, Obama even touted how we "increased domestic oil production" (paraphrased) under his watch. The truth is these developments were in the works long before anyone except Michelle had ever heard of something called "Barack."

Now the dilemma is getting our own domestic greenies to let us drill our own damned oil and gas as well as shutting them up about us using our coal, which we have more of than Saudi Arabia has oil. Once again, the world operates on oil, like it or not. Facts like this are often inconvenient to the left and the radical greenies, but facts they are indeed. I wanted to use this situation to highlight yet another of the sophistries of the green movement...global warming and carbon dioxide. Do folks understand in even any basic way, the carbon cycle? Allow me to explain in laymen terms, totally lacking all the chemical formulations, what the carbon cycle is and how it works.

First, we and every living thing on Earth is what is known as a "carbon based life form." No carbon, no life. One of the successful things about the carbon cycle is how green plants eat it and defecate oxygen, and we eat oxygen and defecate carbon dioxide, to turn a phrase. Nice, huh? The carbon cycle is the entire cycle of life on Earth. Do folks ever wonder what happens to carbon dioxide after trees ingest it? They store it until they die and then they slowly release it back into the atmosphere as they decay. Every part of a tree decaying in a silent wood is all about that formerly living tree returning carbon dioxide back from whence it came...the atmosphere. Every living thing returns all its stored carbon as it decays. The dead bodies of man and animals return the stored carbon dioxide to the atmosphere as we employ "ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

Oil is carbon in liquid form. Coal is carbon in solid form. Flora and fauna are carbon in living form. Get it? Every molecule of carbon stored in an animal, a plant, the soil or in the oceans will eventually be returned to the atmosphere, so basically we are arguing about the time schedule of the return. I am not making small potatoes of that fact...the timing issue, but merely specifying that is the sum total of the issue. Does burning wood for heat return more carbon to the atmosphere than does the naturally decaying tree as it lays in the woods? No, it merely accelerates the time schedule of the return. I am not enough of a scientist to fairly address any dangers - real or imagined - of accelerating said schedule of carbon return.

I do not argue we should burn every forest to release carbon dioxide and see what happens. I know such events would cause "nuclear winter" type scenarios akin to the post apocalyptic end of the dinosaur era. But still, how much carbon is too much, too fast? I don't know; you don't know and science doesn't know either. The last time it happened no one was around to see it, catalog and report on it.

Just know that the Earth is a dynamic - that means LIVING - entity. The planet does things to its inhabitants just as the inhabitants do things to it. We respond to the Earth's machinations and Earth to ours. The Earth quakes and we respond; we sometimes accelerate carbon release and the Earth responds. Who is to say either is not as it should be?

Recall Saddam lighting the Kuwaiti oil fields on fire. It was supposed to be a pollution heretofore unseen, yet the Earth cleansed itself rather quickly...much, much more quickly than the environmental alarmists assured us. Same with the oil spill in the Gulf last Spring. At every turn the Earth seems to shrug off human action and once again shows us we are but guests on her surface. Again, I am not making light of environmental disaster, merely correcting the factual record when compared to the wishful agenda of the radical environmentalist and their willing accomplices, as Lenin called them, the "useful idiot[s]."

No one should assume I argue that because oil is natural it's safe for humans to consume or that it's a good idea to let it flow freely over the Earth's surface either. Hemlock is natural but it'll "naturally" kill ya dead if ya ingest it, so Socrates proved. Uranium is natural but I don't think one should walk around with a chunk of it in their pants pocket. The oceans water are natural but they'll kill ya to breathe unless you're Kevin Costner in "Waterworld" too, so just because of something's natural state does not impart carte blanche to consume it or otherwise employ it in a way that harms plants, animals or the Earth.

Science has been overtaken by agenda. How, one may ask? Simple...government and big business. As government funds much of scientific research, it behooves science to arrive at conclusions that nicely dovetail government's intentions or desires. Same with business. Oil companies love research that shows good stuff for them and anti-oil types think it's good when science backs their play. Isn't this totally and glaringly obvious to all but the most obtuse? As humans are flawed and naturally self-interested, thus not above inflating their own points to gain favor, power, money and all the rest, isn't it more than likely the truth lies somewhere between the environmental nutballs claims' and those of the pro-oil groups?

Lastly, let's go to my favorite source of common sense...Ronald Reagan. As he said "Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources." Gee! Common sense? What to make of that?

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust." Amazing that such an ancient concept as birth, death and the life cycle were so clear to the unsophisticated human being, yet today we are deep in argument about this very issue. We all started out as molecules that combined to create new forms of life, yet even so, we all die and return to our source. Once again, history is our guide.