A side effect of the "fun with numbers": we produce more GSG by breathing than by driving, yet human respiration is only the start: All animals and green plants too produce GSG. Now what?
How Granola May Be Our Salvation

INCOWVENIENT TRUTH

Green House Gases (GSG) Emissions

The end of the world is upon us, and yes, we are causing it.

Some More Inconvenient Facts

Policy makers are taking aim at the vehicles we drive and how much we drive them, because of the GSG spewed into the atmosphere by these iconic symbols of industrial society. According to the authoritative staff of the Washington Post, we must change the way we drive and live. Clearly motor vehicles must be a predominate source of GSG. So I did some arithmetic (details in the "Fun with Numbers" section), and discovered that they’re half right: life itself is the problem.

Using the EU, EPA and UK estimates for current GHG emissions from motor vehicles (before the 70% reduction we are being told is necessary to stop the end of the world), here’s an interesting (and inconvenient) fact: each vehicle puts out the equivalent GHG as 6 human beings breathing. There are, according to the U.N. about 300 million motor vehicles spewing forth this evil stuff right now, and 6.5 billion people on the planet currently breathing. The GWS experts tell us that the accumulation affect of GSG on global warming is exponential. Given these facts not in evidence, together with the figures above, a 70% reduction in vehicular GHG emissions is barely a drop in the GHG bucket unless it somehow causes the death of billions of people (death being the only way we know currently to prevent respiration in humans). If we really need to cut GSG output by 70% we need to get rid of about 4.5 billion people, which is really inconvenient.

But wait, there’s more...

Cows are the real problem

According to some leading scientists, as reported in the Christian Science Monitor, domesticated bovine produce many times more GSG emissions than humans (which we now know is more than motor vehicles). According to the authors, the only obvious solution is to stop eating meat and become vegetarians. Some medical research shows that pure vegetarian diets are not sufficient for most people, that there is more than protein we get from meat that the human body needs. No problem: this just helps solve the lesser problem of too many people breathing. It’s yet to be shown imperically, but it is only a matter of time before science can prove that vegetarians produce fewer GSG emissions than carnivores, so the dieing off of those bodies that need meat is natural selection. All makes sense...but wait, there is a problem.

Plants are the problem

According to another group of leading scientists, also reported on in the Christian Science Monitor, green plants produce vast amounts of GSG too. Hold it, most of us learned in 2nd grade that green plants consume CO2, doing something useful with the Carbon and emitting the waste product of O2 which us plant and meat eating animals need. So how can green plants contribute to GSG? Well there’s more to the story, or in this case more kinds of GSG than just CO2. Other gases, such as methane, are key GSG according to the GWS literature. And actual measurements taken by these leading scientists over and around dense forests, as well as in controlled laboratories, show significant (to them) production of other GSGs. So becoming vegetarians isn’t the solution after all. They didn’t say in the paper, and I’ve not gotten any response from the CSM or the authors, on how non-green plants such as grains compare as GSG producers. See, you knew the connection between environmental salvation and granola was inevitable. Since it can’t be disproved by the data, in the general spirit of the GWS methodology, we must assert that granola may be the answer after all.

It Really Is Worse Than We Thought

If you combine the results of the basic arithmetic with these two papers on bovine and green plant GSG production, you realize the situation is more dire than even Al Gore has predicted, and much harder to resolve. The evil motor vehicle isn’t even a measurable component of all this GSG production. So taking the easy steps of eliminating motor vehicles won’t even make a dent. It is all those living things that are destroying the planet. Life as we know it is going to put an end to life as we know it.

While there is some hope in the granola eating theory - which would allow us to eliminate domesticated animals, as well as many green plants - I’d be remiss not to point out that this theory is supported by no observable facts or sound logic, however convenient it may seem. Of course I’d be breaking with GWS theology if I let the absence of verifiable fact be allowed to affect the discussion, so we best leave the granola theory on the table. Better safe than sorry.

2/25/2007 BAR