Diamond Pollution

Carbon in its purest form is known as diamond. President Obama says carbon is pollution. If that is so then diamonds must be pollution.

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Recent news says that President Barack Obama's top adviser on energy and climate change, Heather Zichal will step down in the next few weeks. Zichal “helped shape the administration's policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions blamed for contributing to global warming” (Reuters). Worse, Reuter reports, a replacement has not been named. What a pity. Who is going to point me in the right (diamond) direction now? Could it be that she found the diamond mother-lode and just wants to keep it to herself? Or is it that her advice was less based on scientific understanding and more on politics-driven wishful thinking?

The Facts

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The undeniable fact is that carbon and its compounds are the world’s largest and most widely used energy sources. The energy derived from burning coal, oil, gas, wood, peat and dung is due to their carbon materials being oxidised to carbon dioxide (CO2). Harnessing that carbon-based energy has led to the Industrial Revolution and to the untold conveniences enjoyed by modern societies around the world. Yet, some people want us to forget about carbon and convert back to our ancestral hunter/gatherer days, all in the name of saving nature from “carbon (dioxide) pollution.” The fact that most of them burn hundreds of gallons of fossil carbon resources to fly to conferences at exotic places does not appear to register as a contradiction in their mind. I am sure though that there is a good explanation for it, like do as I say, not as I do.

Climate and CO2

The recent “Summary for Policymakers” report released by the UN’s IPCC clearly shows:

1. A lack of global temperature warming for the last 17 years,
2. a lack of computer model’s ability to simulate global temperatures for even the last few hundred years,
3. that global temperatures are unrelated to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

Furthermore, what is never mentioned in any of the IPCC’s documents is another simple fact well known to professionals: Any of the earth’s (back)-radiation of infrared (IR) CO2-absorbable wavelengths is being absorbed by the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide present between the earth’s surface and a height of less than 200 yards. In practical terms that means that any increase (or decrease) of CO2 above that elevation could not possibly have any effect on the climate. Let’s hope the President’s new adviser on energy and climate has a clear understanding of the facts and, if you know, tell me where I can find the polluting diamonds.

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