Eco-Crisis, comme ci, comme ca

Contrary to appearances this treatise is not a political polemic.  Rather, it is a skeptical analysis of “dogma” currently being bandied about in contextual proximity to the recently concluded 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference.  I will not argue data as that exercise becomes a tedious tit-for-tat exchange not dissimilar to the juvenile ritual of sticking ones tongue out at another.  While generally emotionally satisfying, it very rarely results in a reconsideration of tightly held dogmatic position.  In plain English (or as close as I can allow myself to come to that vulgar level of communication), you cannot argue with a brick.

So instead, I will employ the Socratic method of asking questions in hopes that the answers you, the reader,  provide will illuminate new and alternative paths of understanding.

Question number one:  If ninety-nine percent of all species that have inhabited the Earth are now extinct, how can we be so egotistic as to believe that human activity alone will be responsible for the next mass extinction?

Question number two:  If the sun is the source of heat energy that drives our climate (just stand in a non-shaded spot for a while, even on a cool day), and the sun’s energy output has been increasing steadily since the day of ignition (about four and one-half billion years ago), how can we assign blame to human activity for the gradual increase in ocean temperatures on our planet (well, it’s not really our planet so much as we are its inhabitants… new tenants will gladly take ownership in the event of our departure, see question number one)?

Questions number three and four:  How can we use Venus’ atmosphere (the planet, not the Roman goddess) for making predictions about green house gasses on Earth when the chemical composition (CO₂ on Venus is 96.5% of the atmosphere, on Earth it is 0.04%) of their respective atmospheres is so different?  And how can one cite the temperatures on Venus as a future model for Earth when Venus is (average) 67 million miles from the sun compared to the 93 million miles for Earth?

Question number five:  When charging animal husbandry since the nineteenth century with adding untold amounts of methane (CO₂’s delinquent younger sibling in the green house gas hierarchy) to our atmosphere, how does one account for the tens of millions of American Bison (buffalo) that roamed the plains for eons prior to European settlement and westward expansion?  Don’t buffalo fart?

I believe I have given you enough to think about for this week.  And please, don’t exhale so much.