Climate change confusion

Even with an engineering background, I have a hard time understanding
all the "data" being put out on this subject.

First off - all the "highest" temperatures quoted by the weather
people on TV are the "highest since" sometime many decades ago. What
was going on then that made the temeratures so high?

Secondly, as I understand combustion theory, when you burn a fuel to
produce power, the carbon dioxide and monoxide produced are directly
proportional to the power and are a very minor function of the type of
fuel being burned. Bio-fuels may help get us unhooked from Arab oil
and the massive foreign exchange inequalities, but will do almost
nothing to change the amount of carbon produced.

Thirdly, we are all being bullied into using more efficient electrical
equipment (high efficiency appliances, compact fluorescent light
bulbs, etc. In my part of the world, about 75 percent of our power
comes from falling or flowing water. Maybe I missed something in
engineering college, but I can't remember any chemical formulae
showing that flowing water decomposes into CO2.

Yes, in other parts of the world, a lot of fossil fuels are burned to
generate electricity, but the crusaders don't seem to differentiate
between areas that do and areas that use renewable resources.
Unfortunately there also seems to be a lobby that considers salmon and
scenery to be more important than renewable, non-polluting methods of
generating electricity, as we're seeing plans to demolish several
hydro systems in the Northwest to restore wild salmon runs and return
rivers to the "wild and scenic" state.

You gotta wonder who's driving what.


Frank Damp
Anacortes, WA

I think we're being sold a bill of goods.

.

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