Texas Sen. Cornyn on Greenhouse Gasses

Dear Sen. Cornyn.

Thank you for your greenhouse gas form letter.

You are against controlling carbon dioxide emissions by fossil fuel burning as proposed by the EPA, because you see the great cost and damage to our economy in doing so. This is a very pragmatic and attractive approach, but it still leaves you wide open to continued EPA pressure.

The EPA starts with the assumption that greenhouse gases are bad and if you follow that assumption, you are liable for easy manipulation by the EPA.

The fact is that greenhouse gases are not in general destructive to our environment. Earth's atmospheric gases are absolutely essential for maintaining life on earth. Without greenhouse gases, the differences between nighttime and daytime temperatures would be so great as to obviate Earth's ability to maintain organic life.

We are this favorable presence of greenhouse effect primarily because of two major gases in the atmosphere; nitrogen and oxygen. Other natural gases, such as argon at 1% and carbon dioxide at less than 0.05% have only minor effects on the greenhouse ability of the system. There is nothing special about carbon dioxide. It is neither poisonous nor especially heat reflective in its greenhouse ability. Because of its low concentration, it can be considered an almost insignificant part of the greenhouse gas complex. However, it does have another special property. Even at low atmospheric concentration, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is necessary for the continued growth and health of plant life, on which we depend as food. That is, even slight increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide contribute are to higher crop yields and general forestry.

Once again, contrary to the position of the EPA, carbon dioxide is not a dangerous greenhouse gas. It is a greenhouse gas, but there's nothing dangerous about it. It is part of the greenhouse gas system as originally required for the production and continuance of life on this planet.

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From: Senator Cornyn [mailto:SenateWebmail@cornyn.senate.gov]
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2015 9:23 AM
To: asucsy@suddenlink.net
Subject: Thank You For Contacting My Office

Dear Dr. Sucsy: Thank you for your recent letter regarding global climate change and greenhouse gases. I appreciate having the benefit of your comments on this matter. I welcome an open debate on how to be a good steward of our environment; however, I cannot support regulatory actions that create a massive new government bureaucracy, raise energy prices, increase taxes, and send American jobs overseas. I oppose actions by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to treat greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, as pollutants under the Clean Air Act (CAA). This misrepresents the legislative intent of the CAA in favor of expanding the EPA's regulatory authority. Recently, the EPA has sought to restrict carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants. Furthermore, the EPA seeks to limit new plants by imposing new standards that are not commercially demonstrated today. As a result, a considerable amount of electricity generation is at risk and could be taken offline, increasing electricity prices and harming grid reliability. When regulatory agencies discount real-world data or fail to follow due process, they needlessly destroy jobs and threaten whole industries, increasing economic uncertainty and hampering job creation. I strongly believe that innovation and technological advances in traditional and alternative sources of energy will address our nation's environmental challenges more effectively than more government regulation. Furthermore, I believe that any effort to control greenhouse gas emissions should not place the United States at a global economic disadvantage or penalize American families and workers. Given the scope and magnitude of the EPA’s regulations and their impact on the economy, it is essential that the regulatory process remain transparent and accountable to all Americans, not solely in the hands of unelected bureaucrats. In an effort to restore transparency and accountability to the federal regulatory process, I cosponsored the Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny Act (REINS Act; S. 226). This legislation would require major agency actions—defined as those having an economic impact of $100 million or more—to obtain prior congressional approval. S. 226 was referred to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs for further consideration, and it is my hope that this important legislation will be brought to the Senate floor for debate during the 114th Congress. I appreciate having the opportunity to represent Texas in the United States Senate, and I will continue to support policies that ensure economic viability while protecting public health. Thank you for taking the time to contact me. Sincerely, JOHN CORNYN United States Senator 517 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510 Tel: (202) 224-2934 Fax: (202) 228-2856 http://www.cornyn.senate.gov Please sign up for my monthly newsletter at http://www.cornyn.senate.gov/newsletter. PLEASE NOTE: Due to the nature of electronic communication, if you did not receive this e-mail directly from my office, I cannot guarantee that the text has not been altered. If you have questions about the validity of this message, or would like to respond to this message, please use the web form available at my website, http://www.cornyn.senate.gov/contact.

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Basis of CO2 Emissions and Climate Change

According to the Washington Times, Pres. Obama has proposed to the United Nations that he will cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 26% over 10 years. By the term "greenhouse gases", Obama means carbon dioxide, which is a gaseous emission from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, natural gas, etc.. He is basing this on the long-term opinion held by his administration and propagandized as the anticipated cause for climate change, with associated disasters, including flooding of coastal cities.
There is no true scientific basis for making any claim that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels has any significant effect on climate change. It is purely an imaginary connection engendered to develop fear as a motivation to use the hypothetical connection for other reasons.
The question is how does the Obama administration come up with such a nonscientific based position. The quick answer is because they want it to be so, not because it is. The alternate question then is how can relatively intelligent people come up with a belief and program, which has no basis of scientific fact. To answer this, I thought we might take a look at the background of education for Brian Deese, who is a senior advisor to Pres. Obama.
Brian has a Bachelors Degree in Political Science from Middlebury College. For his degree, he had to take 10 courses in Political Science, and at least one course in eight other fields, one of which is Science. We do not know whether he had chosen Science, but suspect that he did not. If he had, the Science Department describes its courses as, "A study of inductive and deductive processes of science. Emphasis is on the methods used to gather, interpret, and evaluate data critically, and the placement of this information into a larger context. Fundamental principles of each discipline are discussed in a manner that illustrates the evolving relationship of science, technology, and society." Notice that there seems to be no teaching of scientific fact.
Brian followed this with a law degree from Yale University and then one might say did some super graduate work as an employee of the Center for Global Development, a think tank whose stated mission is "to reduce global poverty and inequality by encouraging policy change in the United States and other rich countries through rigorous research and active engagement with the policy community. In short, there is no indication that Brian Deese has ever studied gases, including CO2 and properties related to it, such as specific heat. His concentration has been to redistribute global wealth, consistent with that of Obama, and a distorted version of CO2 emissions and associated climate change is only a means to that end.

Converse Opinions on Carbon Dioxide/Climate Change

In celebrating the International Day of Happiness, the United Nations sponsored an event with hip hop singer and producer Pharrell Williams to talk about climate change. During the event, Pharrell said, "Protecting our planet is fundamental to the pursuit of human happiness," Pharrell said, telling the enthusiastic crowd, "We only have one home and there's climate change... If you don't (take) care of your home, you don't have a life, and we have to transition from climate change to climate action."
Conversely, Patrick Moore, cofounder of Greenpeace and presently co-founder, chair, and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies, said among other things, "By its constitution, the IPCC has a hopeless conflict of interest. Its mandate is to consider only the human causes of global warming, not the many natural causes changing the climate for billions of years. We don’t understand the natural causes of climate change any more than we know if humans are part of the cause at present. If the IPCC did not find humans were the cause of warming, or if it found warming would be more positive than negative, there would be no need for the IPCC under its present mandate. To survive, it must find on the side of the apocalypse."
He also said, "I am skeptical humans are the main cause of climate change and that it will be catastrophic in the near future. There is no scientific proof of this hypothesis, yet we are told “the debate is over” and “the science is settled.”
And, "There is a powerful convergence of interests among key elites that support the climate “narrative". Environmentalists spread fear and raise donations; politicians appear to be saving the Earth from doom; the media has a field day with sensation and conflict; science institutions raise billions in grants, create whole new departments, and stoke a feeding frenzy of scary scenarios; business wants to look green, and get huge public subsidies for projects that would otherwise be economic losers, such as wind farms and solar arrays, and the Left sees climate change as a perfect means to redistribute wealth from industrial countries to the developing world and the UN bureaucracy."
Finally, "At [the present] 400 parts per million [carbon dioxide], all our food crops, forests, and natural ecosystems are still on a starvation diet for carbon dioxide. The optimum level of carbon dioxide for plant growth, given enough water and nutrients, is about 1,500 parts per million, nearly four times higher than today. Greenhouse growers inject carbon-dioxide to increase yields. Farms and forests will produce more if carbon-dioxide keeps rising." "The IPCC’s followers have given us a vision of a world dying because of carbon-dioxide emissions. I say the Earth would be a lot deader with no carbon dioxide, and more of it will be a very positive factor in feeding the world. Let’s celebrate carbon dioxide."

Columnist Walter Williams on Global Warming

Thirty-Five years ago the United Nations brought to the public attention the idea that man's burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, fuel oil, and gasoline increased atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, which results in global warming, with disastrous consequences of glacier melt, sealevel rise, and flooding of coastal cities, among other things.
The President George W Bush Administration was in office at the time and tended to ignore the disaster claims. In fact, it was said that the his Administration attempted to suppress the disaster claims of global warming.
When Pres. Obama took office, his Administration latched onto the global warming theory with fervor, having spent to date many billions of dollars on regulations suppressing carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere and promoting alternative sources of energy.
In spite of the Obama Administration's policy and support of a multitude of pseudo-scientists indirectly on government payrolls, there is strong skepticism in the land about the existence of global warming/climate change, as related to man's activity.
Walter Williams is a well-respected national columnist. Yesterday, he issued a paper claiming that the United Nations/Obama Administration/pseudoscientists position on global warming is a hoax intended to support a redistribution of wealth on a global basis. Here's what he had to say:

"“But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact,” said President Barack Obama in his 2014 State of the Union address. Saying the debate is settled is nonsense, but the president is right about climate change.

GlobalChange.gov gives the definition of climate change: “Changes in average weather conditions that persist over multiple decades or longer. Climate change encompasses both increases and decreases in temperature, as well as shifts in precipitation, changing risk of certain types of severe weather events, and changes to other features of the climate system.” That definition covers all weather phenomena throughout all 4.54 billion years of Earth’s existence.

You say, “Williams, that’s not what the warmers are talking about. It’s the high CO2 levels caused by mankind’s industrial activities that are causing the climate change!” There’s a problem with that reasoning. Today CO2 concentrations worldwide average about 380 parts per million. This level of CO2 concentration is trivial compared with the concentrations during earlier geologic periods. For example, 460 million years ago, during the Ordovician Period, CO2 concentrations were 4,400 ppm, and temperatures then were about the same as they are today. With such high levels of CO2, at least according to the warmers, the Earth should have been boiling.

Then there are warmer predictions. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, warmers, such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, made all manner of doomsday predictions about global warming and the increased frequency of hurricanes. According to the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, “no Category 3-5 hurricane has struck the United States for a record nine years, and Earth’s temperature has not budged for 18 years.”

Climate change predictions have been wrong for decades. Let’s look at some. At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, “The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind.” C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, “The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed.” In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and “in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people (would) starve to death.”

Ehrlich forecasted 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989 and by 1999, the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich’s predictions about England were gloomier. He said, “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”

In 1970, Harvard University biologist George Wald predicted, “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

Sen. Gaylord Nelson, in Look magazine in April 1970, said by 1995, “somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals (would) be extinct.”

Climate change propaganda is simply a ruse for a socialist agenda. Consider the statements of some environmentalist leaders. Christiana Figueres, the U.N.’s chief climate change official, said her unelected bureaucrats are undertaking “probably the most difficult task” they have ever given themselves, “which is to intentionally transform the (global) economic development model.”

In 2010, German economist and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change official Ottmar Edenhofer said, “One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.” The article in which that interview appeared summarized Edenhofer’s views this way: “Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection. ... The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.”

The most disgusting aspect of the climate change debate is the statements by many that it’s settled science. There is nothing more anti-scientific than the idea that any science is settled. Very often we find the half-life of many scientific ideas is about 50 years. For academics to not criticize their colleagues and politicians for suggesting scientific ideas are not subject to challenge is the height of academic dishonesty."

WALTER E. WILLIAMS is a professor of economics at George Mason University. His column is distributed by Creators Syndicate, 5777 W. Century Blvd., Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045.

Radiative Forcing

On Page 28 of the March 2, 2015 issue of Chemical Engineering News, SR has a Concentrate entitled "CO2'S Climatic Impact Measured". SR says "Spectroscopic measurements of Earth's atmosphere have provided the first directly observed evidence that rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are altering Earth's surface energy balance, a parameter known as radiative forcing." It is also said that Earth's total radiative forcing in the atmosphere is currently about 2.3 W per square meter of which CO2's contribution stands at about 1.8 W per square meter.
I thought we might take a closer look at what SR and his references mean and how they come to their conclusion.
Since the writing includes terms with which we may not be familiar, let's take a look at a few of these. Most of us know what "CO2" and "climate" are, so let us start with "spectroscopic measurements ".
Spectroscopy is a study of the light emitted by an object. That light could be generated internally, as for example from a lightbulb or flashlight. It could also be light that is reflected from an outside source, as for example, we can see a person in daylight, because he is lighted up by sunlight. In both cases, what we see is kind of an average of many components of light. There are also some components of flight that we can't see, such as ultraviolet.
However, there is a device which contains a glass prism, such as old Isaac Newton used in his studies of light. It separates the components of light into different bands some of which we can see. It is called a spectroscope. For example, if we have a flame and put some table salt in the flame, we can see through the spectroscope various bands which are characteristic of sodium.
With the spectroscope, we can look at the sun or the stars, and from the presence of the bands we see in the spectroscope and known characteristic bands of various elements, we can determine what the sun and stars are made of. In addition, depending upon the intensity of the bands, we can get some good idea about the concentration of each of those elements.
Just for completeness, we can also shine a light on various samples of matter and look at the reflected light through the spectroscope to see the various bands characteristic of that particular material. As added versatility, the light.
we shine on the sample can be a wavelength of visible light, such as yellow, or invisible ultraviolet light, infrared, or x-rays. In each case, we get back a different picture from the sample. From those pictures, we can usually identify various component parts of the sample and concentrations thereof. For example a sample of stainless steel will show we have iron, chromium, molybdenum, vanadium, etc., with an indication of just how much of each component is there.
The bottom line is that spectroscopy will tell us a lot about composition of matter, with respect to what the components are and the concentrations of each. If we use it on the Earth's atmosphere, we can determine the carbon dioxide is present and it's concentration in the atmosphere. I don't see how it could tell us how "rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are altering Earth's surface energy balance", but perhaps I'm missing something. If I am not, many people are taking a long stretch.
Let's go on to "radiative forcing".
Massachusetts Institute of Technology publishes a newsletter. In 2010, David Chandler said, "The concept of radiative forcing is fairly straightforward. Energy is constantly flowing into the atmosphere in the form of sunlight that always shines on half of the Earth’s surface. Some of this sunlight (about 30 percent) is reflected back to space and the rest is absorbed by the planet. And like any warm object sitting in cold surroundings — and space is a very cold place — some energy is always radiating back out into space as invisible infrared light. Subtract the energy flowing out from the energy flowing in, and if the number is anything other than zero, there has to be some warming or cooling going on."
He also gives the following example: "It’s as if you have a kettle full of water, which is at room temperature. That means everything is at equilibrium, and nothing will change except as small random variations. But light a fire under that kettle, and suddenly there will be more energy flowing into that water than radiating out, and the water is going to start getting hotter. In short, radiative forcing is a direct measure of the amount that the Earth’s energy budget is out of balance."
Notice that Chandler in his example of the kettle did not use the obvious second part, which was when you take the heat source away, the water in the kettle cools. That would've been consistent with his first statement which was that radiative forcing is the difference between energy going in and energy going out.
Notice also that he had nothing to say about why some substances, such as carbon dioxide are claimed to have strong radiative forcing characteristics even at low concentration as compared to many other gasses, such as nitrogen and oxygen.
But going back to the C and E News article, it is all of a sudden claiming that the Earth's total atmospheric radiative forcing is 2.3 W per square meter with CO2 accounting for about 1.8 W per square meter of the total.
That seems to me to be an awful big leap of faith, when in the first place I can't put any energy terms on the reported spectroscopic measurement, nor can I see how carbon dioxide is suddenly a strong radiative forcing component of the atmosphere, whereas other atmospheric major gases are not.

Climate Change Research Funding

What's the latest flap on climate change? The Washington Times says, "Democrats [are] on [a] ‘witch hunt’ for doomsday-denying climate scientists". 
Explanation: Seven professors from various universities have challenged the theory that climate change is driving extreme weather events such as hurricanes and blizzards. Democrat Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona is attempting to castigate them and their position, because at least some of them may have accepted research funding from private fossil fuel industries.
So what? The whole group of global warming/climate change advocates have been accepting research funding from various federal agency sources for many years. It seems that Rep. Grijalva wants to allow funding for researchers only who are favorable to global warming/climate change theory and deny funding to dissenters.
While this is an interesting sideshow, it really has little bearing on science. The whole basis of global warming/climate change theory is the concept of "radiative forcing". This concept was presented in the original papers of the United Nations. The most interesting aspect of the radiative forcing concept is that there is no explanation of what radiative forcing is. Scientists advocating action on global warming/climate change have been accepting government grants for years, but I have been unable to find anywhere an explanation or justification for the concept of radiative forcing. The best I can find is that carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide are said to be agents of radiative forcing.
There has been big money spent by the government in so-called university research on global warming/climate change, and now another seven university professors are presumably obtaining funding from the private fossil fuel industry. While this should have been done some time ago, we need to research the fundamental science involved in global warming/climate change. Associated radiative forcing should be investigated and explained in terms available to an average intelligent person. This is not unreasonable. For example, our patent system is based on the fact that a reasonably intelligent person should be able to duplicate an invention previously issued as a new composition of matter or process patent by the US patent office.
In simpler terms, I would like somebody to tell me what radiative forcing is, with respect to what the atoms and molecules are doing and why there are differences among these atoms and molecules. Without that basic information, which would make sense to me, I can't get excited about any supposed disastrous effects from global warming/climate change as said to be caused by man.

Carbonated Beverages and Atmospheric CO2

    One of my previous essays discussed the National Research Council's (NRC) position on global warming or climate change. The NRC wants to fix something that's not broken. There Is no established relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and climate change.
    An ancillary essay dressed the question of whether carbonated beverages make a significant contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. While we are previously decided that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is unrelated to global warming or climate change, I addressed the question as though a relationship existed the answer was that even over 10 years, the release of carbon dioxide from carbonated beverages had no significant contribution to the total concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
    We now have a third opinion from one of our political associates. I will make no comment and only repeat what he he has had to say as follows:
   

   "Since plants process CO2 as their primary metabolic gas, much as animal kingdom beings process O2, we will see a significant change in plant growth if CO2 levels truly do increase.  This has been demonstrated time and again in basic botanical experiments where a plant is grown in a high CO2 environment.  The plants 'sequester' the Carbon and release O2 as a byproduct.   This is a basic demonstrable scientific fact. " 

      "Where the rub comes is that the robber barons want to tax everyone for this natural process.  They argue that they are going to plant the plants that will sequester all this extra carbon gas.  This is just a ploy to redistribute wealth.  The claim is to 2nd and mostly 3rd world economies.  The reality is that the people at the top will skim, and then the despots of the UN will skim and then the dictates of the 3rd world will sop up what gravy trickles to them and very very few 'plantings' will be accomplished."  

     "However the CO2 rate of increase will have been "stabilized". Their claim will be due to the glorious actions of these skim balls, the truth will be due to the naturally occurring processes already in play in our environment." 

     "Our dear leaders are claiming that the risk to the planet is greater than the risk of any war.  Famine and floods will happen, which they always have, and there will be much suffering, which there has always been, because of yours and my use of atmosphere.  We are getting played like fools on this, and if successful the carbon tax will change lifestyles on the earth forever.  Suffering will increase, progress will decrease, what a bunch of fools we are if we let this come to pass."