Climate Change

Open email to Sen. Cruz (TX):

Dear Sen. Cruz,
    Thank you for your form letter on climate change.
    You said that many proposed legislative and regulatory remedies for climate change are draconian and would undermine job creation, raise electric rates and gasoline prices, and make American manufacturing less competitive.  Ironically, they do little to reduce global production of greenhouse gases.   I am committed to responsible environmental stewardship, but I cannot support measures that undermine our individual and economic freedoms by placing more control of our economy in the hands of unelected bureaucrats.
    I respectfully suggest that you are on the right track but are using some incorrect facts.

    First, greenhouse gases are not necessarily destructive. In fact, we owe most of our favorable world climatic conditions to the presence of greenhouse gases. Without them, life would be unsustainable on earth.
    All of the individual gases in the atmosphere show a greenhouse effect. None of them is more or less efficient than another as a heat reflector. Therefore, the concentration of any specific gas in the total atmosphere is the determining factor for its actual greenhouse effect. The job is being done by a combination of nitrogen and oxygen, which constitute most of the atmospheric gases. Carbon dioxide's contribution is negligible, because of its low concentration (presence) at 0.04%.

Interior Dept. Employees Must Support Administration Global Warming Theory

Open email to Chairman Lamar Smith (TX)  Science, Space, and Technology Committee

Dear Rep. Smith,
    Pres. Obama has a stated policy to reduce the use of carbon containing fuels to foster development of wind and solar energy sources. Part of his program is to claim that carbon dioxide, which is emitted in burning carbon containing fuels, leads to global warming. There is no more scientific proof of the relationship between carbon dioxide and global warming than there is to baseball scores controlling the rising of the moon.
    The following is a quotation from the Washington Examiner:
    "Buried in a lengthy Washington Post article about President Obama’s environmental policy is an illuminating anecdote about just how debatable the administration views climate change — namely, not at all:
    In an agency-wide address to employees Aug. 1, (Interior Secretary Sally) Jewell took the unusual step of suggesting that no one working for her should challenge the idea that human activity is driving recent warming. “I hope there are no climate-change deniers in the Department of Interior,” she said.
    The address does not appear to be posted on the department’s website, so the Washington Examiner can only go by the Post’s presumably third-hand version. Still, it raises some interesting questions: What would happen to somebody at the department who raised some skepticism regarding Jewell’s take on climate change? Would they be in danger of losing their job?
    For example, what if that person posted a news article pointing out that the global temperatures have been flat for the last two decades?
    Presumably somebody at the Interior Department knows the answers to these questions. Whether they’re willing to talk openly about them is another question."

Refrigerants in the Atmosphere

Open Email to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy:

Dear Administrator McCarthy,
    In the June 17 issue of C&E News, Cheryl Hogue reports that Pres. Barack Obama and Chinese Pres. Xi Jinping have agreed to cooperatively phase down production and use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFC's). HFC's are used as refrigerants in air conditioning equipment. There is no indication of what would be used as a replacement, if HFC's were eliminated.

    It is also reported that HFC's have been adjudged to do no harm to stratospheric ozone. Ozone is said to be needed in the upper atmosphere in order to protect citizens from overexposure to ultraviolet at the surface. I will tentatively accept that conclusion.

    However, the main reason for the presidential agreement seems to be a matter of climate change. It is said that HFCs have a global warming potential 1300 times greater than that of CO2. I find that a very questionable assertion, since absorption of such heat by any molecule would be enough to break the bonds of atomic attraction. However, even if we take that at face value, we have to consider the extremely low concentration of such material in the atmosphere. Climate will be controlled by the majority of gases in the atmosphere, which includes nitrogen and oxygen. HFC's will have no significant effect on climate, because of their extremely low concentration.