Hand-to-Hand Combat and Global Warming

E-Mail to Congress:
Randy,
I recently sent the following message to Rep. Giffords, D of Arizona:

Dear Ms. Giffords,
I have seen considerable criticism of your question to Gen. Patreus concerning what he is doing to control carbon dioxide emissions on the battlefield.

Having some experience in war and considerable experience as a scientist, I thought I might try to explain a few technicalities, which might modify your opinion on war and global warming.

You suggested use f more hand-to-hand combat involving knives and bayonets, rather than bullets and bombs, in an effort to suppress emission of carbon dioxide. The realization of war is to kill the enemy without being killed yourself.

Hand-to-hand combat is a one on one encounter with about a 50% chance that you yourself will be killed. It is much more practical for the individual and the war in general if the odds of survival can be increased, which they can be through use of bombs and bullets. This is generally true for industrialized nations, such as the United States, which has technically superior weapons.

However, it is granted that in the use of bullets and bombs, there is a release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Some back-of-the-envelope calculations, which might take a half hour, will also show that the amount of such carbon dioxide emissions are insignificant as related to the present concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the amounts produced daily merely by the breathing of human beings.

I believe that when you brought up the subject to Gen. Petraus, you were thinking of global warming and the myth that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere significantly affects such global warming.

We do have global warming, but the carbon dioxide affect is not significant. Earth is protected by an atmosphere composed mostly of nitrogen and oxygen. These gases form a greenhouse effect to retain heat at the surface. Without it, we would all freeze to death. Therefore, to say that carbon dioxide is a significant greenhouse gas is a gross exaggeration, especially when its heat transmission is not significantly different from other gases and its concentration in the atmosphere is only about 0.04%.

Some data may show that the Earth is warmer now than it might have been 1 or 100 years ago, but there's also significant data to show that the Earth has been warmer during other time periods. These differences are caused by variations in solar radiation output and not by any actions on the part of mankind.

I hope this gets battlefield and global warming understanding in perspective for you.