Are We Having Global Warming?
A couple of problems that they don't tell you about

Let's look at what's going on with the environment.  First of all our population has now exceeded six billion.  People are striving to have every convenience possible.  A car, a heated home, electricity,  air-conditioning and so forth.  We all want a good life, and all of these conveniences use energy.   Unfortunately, most of these energy sources produce green house gases.   Even though greenhouse gases are composed of many different gasses we are mostly talking about CO₂.   I know that you have heard this before, but, we are going to look at this from a totally different standpoint.  I remember reading a "Scientific American Magazine" article about the carbonate silicate cycle.  It talked about the terrestrial CO₂ storage mechanisms which absorb most of the Earth's CO₂ and put it into long term storage.  This system prevents most of the CO₂ from remaining in our atmosphere like it does on the planet Venus where the surface temperatures exceed 800^o F. 
 

 By the way, trees take the Carbon out of the CO₂ in our atmosphere and use it for the bulk of their mass, which is a shorter term storage mechanism than the shellfish and coral.   The pollutants that we produce are killing the shellfish and are destroying a very large and crucial storage system for this carbon-dioxide gas.   As global temperatures raise, the water temperatures also raise, creating a process called coral bleaching.    When the water is too warm, the coral polyps retract into their stony shell and stay there until the water temperature drops to a point where the coral polyps are again comfortable and come back out.  In this process of the polyps retracting, the coral  becomes white and loses its beautiful color thus the word bleaching has been used.   The problem is, because of our greenhouse gas emissions causing an off balance of the terrestrial temperature regulation system, the water temperatures aren't allowed to drop enough for the polyps to come back out of their shells.  When the polyps stay in the shells too long, the coral dies. 

This starts the beginning of a thermal runaway cycle, something that I learned about while studying electronics.   Electronic systems can maintain a slowly increasing temperature, then suddenly they cannot hold it back any longer and a thermal runaway cycle moves into a thermal avalanche zone which cannot be stopped and the electronic device is quickly destroyed.  This is the same sort of thing that is happening here with our planet.  One of the problems that oceanographers have discovered is that large portions of the coral reefs around the tropical regions have been experiencing this bleaching effect and once the coral dies, it no longer collects and stores the carbon-dioxide.
 

Are we heading for an avalanche now?  You can bet your life on it and in the near future your life will be affected by it.  I like listening to the Art Bell show on late night AM radio.  He and one of his colleagues have written a book called, "The coming Global Super Storm."  In this book he talks about the tremendous increase in severity of upcoming storms with extreme winds into the level six region and beyond.  Last night, 12-13-1999, there was a reported storm in Australia with winds that reached 185 miles per hour.  This is unheard of on planet Earth.  Another indicator of increased storm activity is the Shuman Resonance (I sure hope I spelled that right).  The Shuman Resonance is the phenomenon that is used in the storm detection systems in today's aircraft called a storm scope.  This aircraft system detects an effect caused by lightning and paints a spot on a radar like scope for every bolt of lightning that happens.   With this system, the weather agencies can get the exact count and position of lightning strikes globally.  It has been found that for every one quarter of degree of temperature increase there is a doubling of lightning strikes and researchers have been able to see a large increase in the number of strikes every year for the past several years.  An upcoming global super storm is on its way.
 

Another area of concern and indication is as the temperature increases the number of insects also increase.  For the last several years we have been having increasingly mild winters.  I have noticed that the woods behind our farm has been tremendously infested with insects, mostly mosquitoes.  Large areas of Canada have been plagued with dying trees, not from acid rain as originally thought, but from the fact that the warm winters have not been not been cool enough to kill the insect larva causing an increase in the insect population.   The insects are killing the trees.  Remember, trees take in CO₂ and give off Oxygen the carbon is retained in the tree as most of the bulk of the tree.  The largest mass of the tree comes from the carbon in the air and not from the minerals in the ground as most of us think.  This is a carbon storage system and we are killing increasing numbers trees to make houses and to use as firewood and so on.  When we burn the trees the CO₂ from their mass is returned to the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas.  When we cut the trees we also destroy our planets carbon storage mechanism.   With the combination of emitting more greenhouse gasses and destruction of more of our carbon storage mechanisms, we are increasing the temperature of the earth and the  the number of insects.  As we just learned,  the increased number of insects increases the destruction of the trees.  This is another runaway system that we must be concerned about.
 

This article can go on and on to the size of a huge book.  If you want to read a book, read the Art Bell book, "The Coming Global Super storm. "  If you want to help solve the problem here are a few suggestions for yourself and a couple of solutions for your community.
 

I'm going to mention the community list first. 
 

What about our forgotten forest?  Here in the Midwest there used to be large forest, now the country side consist of large open farmlands.  My Idea is to plant trees along the sides of the roads on the opposite side of the telephone poles.  On the south and west sides plant deciduous trees so they will shade the roads in the summer and heat the roads in the winter.  On the north and east sides plant non-deciduous trees to block the wind in both the summer and winter.   This will greatly increase the number of trees in each county which will increase the carbon storage system as well as reduce erosion and solve another problem which is eating up our Midwest farms. 
 

Another problem is insect reduction.  Putting more chemicals on the farms is causing all kinds of problems locally and down river as well and is not the answer.   When I look at the countryside at night I see a big problem solver that we need to take advantage of.   For miles and miles, the farm houses are lit up with a yard light supplied by the local electric companies.   I do a lot of flying and you can really see these lights from up in the air.  When you look closely at these lights there are millions of mosquitoes and other bugs flying around them.   The solution is to put a bug zapper around every light.  It doesn't need to be one of those black light versions,  just a high voltage screen around every light would make a very big dent in the areas insect population.   There is another fact about insects, they not only kill trees, they transmit disease, but that is another story.
 

How can you reduce energy consumption in your own home?
We all need to keep these ideas in mind and practice them.  Insulate your house.  Insulate your water heater.  Drive your car less.  Go on a diet, yes, a diet uses less energy .  You consume less, you use less energy to heat your food and you will feel better and probably spend more time working in the yard and less time watching the energy sucking TV.
 

There is a lot more happening than we covered in this article.  If you want to know more buy some books and listen to the Art Bell Show on late night AM Radio

C. Jeff Dyrek, webmaster.

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