Response To A Comment by WaterNotOil

I received the following comment on my "Honda Commercial" blog post rant.

WaterNotOil said:
Are you trying to spread disinformation?? Water vapor harmful? Do you have ties to the oil industry? Even if we entertained for a second that water vapor from a car was bad, (forgetting about that lake or ocean or puddle outside that is producing water vapor through evaporation) If you run the exhaust across a cooling plate it turns directly into water. What kind of propaganda are you trying to spread, by encouraging people to think water vapor is bad?

Dear Water Not Oil, thanks for taking the time to comment. I really mean that.

I wasn’t trying to spread disinformation.

I was, in my own pathetic way, trying to ask something very similar to what you asked me in your comment when you said...Water vapor harmful?

My whole blog post entitled Honda Commercial could be summed up similarly by changing one word:

"Carbon harmful?"

Carbon is every bit as natural as water vapor. Why is the production of carbon in machinery considered bad and/or evil, while production of water vapor by machinery considered good and/or harmless?

Stop and think about that for a minute.

In my pissed-off-ed-ness, and sarcasm, I was trying to point out a simple downfall of the whole global warming scare as put forth by so-called specialists like Al Gore and James Hansen. They make the claim the carbon is bad, although any person who actually looks at the charts in An Inconvenient Truth for themselves will find that increases in carbon in the atmosphere FOLLOWS the rise in temperature, NOT precedes it as Al Gore tries to imply.

Carbon is what all life on earth is based on, and is every bit as natural as water, and water vapor.

So all the focus is being put on carbon by the global warming alarmists and it is a tiny, tiny, tiny portion of our atmosphere. By comparison, water vapor is THE most abundant “greenhouse gas” that is in the earth’s atmosphere, and that creating a whole range of machinery that emits water vapor instead of carbon will have much more of the effect that Gore/Hansen claim for carbon in our atmosphere, yet water vapor is considered OK and harmless.

I’m just using the logic of Gore/Hansen here, and showing the folly and silliness we can so easily get caught up in.

If you feel I was feeding disinformation, you are free to feel that way, but I stand by my logic, even if I was heavy handed in explaining it. If carbon is bad and more carbon is worse, then water vapor a nightmare too and will lead to more drastic greenhouse effects. That is, IF, IF, IF, what the Gore/Hansens of the world are accurate in their scary predictions of what will happen if carbon is increased. Simply switching from production of one greenhouse gas to another, each naturally occurring, is not buying us ANYTHING.

Make no assumption that I hate the earth and see no benefit in conservation, I believe we truly are stewards of all that we touch, and believe that recycling and other measures are just plain good sense, but the things that the Gore/Hansens of the world suggest we do will absolutely cripple our economy with their onerous taxes and yet global warming is nowhere near being the “consensus” that Vice President Gore claims. The IPCC warning on global warming used the input of 2500 scientists, a small but significant fraction of whom have taken action to have their names removed from the report because the report was actually written before the data were assembled and gone through, and that the dissenter's data was, in their view, misused for political purposes. In other words, the non-scientists of the IPCC created the final report before the data were in and collated. They had decided what they wanted to write BEFORE the data was assembled!

A little over one month ago (May, 2008), a paper refuting the claims of global warming was signed by 31, 000 scientists, 9,000 of whom are Phds. The IPCC paper by the United Nations pales in comparison.

Al Gore’s “consensus,” if it exists, is actually in the direction of refuting global warming, not supporting its claims.

In the end, in my blog post, I was just trying to point out how silly we’ve gotten by falling for the claims that carbon is bad while water vapor is considered good. If there is any truth at all to the global warming scare, it follows that emitting more water vapor instead of carbon will intensify the effects of global warming quite possibly more rapidly than increasing carbon output.

And the bottom line for me, is that folks like Al Gore live their lives making GIGANTIC carbon “footprints.” If they believed even ten percent of what they claim to be true about global warming, they’d conserve in their own lives. But they don’t. They are bigger hypocrites than any politician or tv evangelist you could possibly name. If they truly believed what they say, they’d live like it; their hypocritical lifestyles speak louder than their false claims from their speeches given all over the world (after being flown there on carbon-spewing private jets).

I’m just sorry that millions of Americans have fallen for Al Gore’s and James Hansen’s lies and are willing to cripple America’s economy with onerous “carbon taxes” while China and India bring on-line an average of 2 coal-fired power plants per week, FOR THE NEXT 20 YEARS; way out stripping any efforts we could possibly do to lower carbon emissions.

I believe that both carbon AND water vapor are natural, and neither is to be feared.

As to my ties to the oil industry, both my father and my maternal grandfather made their livings as men who worked on oil drilling and oil production rigs in Louisiana and offshore from Louisiana and Texas. Both men, sadly, are dead, but were hard working and honorable men.

Other than their livelihoods which put food on our tables for me to eat while growing up, I have no ties to the oil industry, unless of course, my 401K invests in oil companies, but I'm not sure about that. So at best, it's a small "maybe."

But as to my opinion of oil companies, I believe they are not evil. I do not hate oil companies or the oil they get from the ground, and I do not hate products made from oil.

Sadly, there is no other form of energy available today that matches oil and nuclear power, pound for pound. Our entire world economy requires the energy that, at least for today, only oil can supply.

We have enough oil in the earth for many generations to come, and I truly believe that at some point, better energy alternatives will be found, but until then we need to drill for and get the oil to use.

Solar energy, battery technology, and wind and hydroelectric power are nowhere near enough to supply, dollar for dollar, the energy output of oil and nuclear power plants.

Simply put, I believe we should drill for our own oil for energy and for the security of America, and also build nuclear power plants. It's either that or coal. Take your pick.

And then one day, maybe when I'm an old man, or when my grandkids are old, some other, cleaner forms of energy will take over. I welcome that day with open arms.

Until then, I welcome oil and nuclear power with open arms.

But that's just me. If you disagree, then I guess we'll have to be satisfied that our votes in national elections cancel one another out.

Oh, and if the water vapor from lakes and the ocean make water vapor OK, then all the carbon that each and every living mammal on the planet exhales with each breath makes carbon alright to produce. Again, both are natural, and neither is evil.

Also remember that too high a concentration of oxygen is poisonous for us to breathe, just as is too high a concentration of carbon.

Killing our economy to lower carbon emissions is, to me, silly. Carbon is no more "wrong" than many other naturally occurring things around us.