Robert Dunlop's Space

I think now would be a good time to let one of our founding fathers weigh in on the healthcare debate:

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
Thomas Jefferson

Global warming alarmists would have us believe that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide from current levels around 350 PPM (parts per million) would be the end of life of life on Earth as we know it.  I'd like to take a look at this claim in the light of what one could call "planetary common sense".

Our atmosphere is roughly 79% nitrogen and 21% oxygen, plus trace gasses.  If an alien race were to look at this composition, it would be apparent that life exists, because that much free oxygen could not exist in the atmosphere unless some process outside of the normal entropic chemical reactions were occurring.  There are just too many things that like to bind with oxygen, and without life the presence of free oxygen in the atmosphere would be minimal.

Science tells us that the road to life on earth as we know it started with the evolution of photosynthesis in primitive blue-green algae, which ultimately transformed our atmosphere by converting carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight into simple sugars and oxygen.  The algae got the chemical energy and building materials it needed, and our atmosphere got oxygenated.

Now here's the rub - to generate the current levels of oxygen, there must have been at least 21% carbon dioxide in our atmosphere prior to the evolution of photosynthesis.  It was likely much higher, when one considers that much of the carbon in the incredible biomass of our planet came from the sequestration of carbon from our atmosphere.

To put this in terms of the roughly 350 PPM of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere today, at one time there was at least 210,000 PPM of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere!

How could life have ever have come to be if this planet was such a greenhouse?

As a scuba instructor, it never fails to amaze me that there is hardly a day of diving that does not hold something new - some new creature, new behavior, or just seeing something in a new way.  Then there are days that just seem full of discoveries, as this last Sunday at Ana Capa Island.  We did three dives off of the Raptor, out of Ventura Harbor, the last dive at Ana Capa's East End, a dive site that is closed to divers most of the year due to the currents that flow around the point.

Normally I make note of items that made a dive special in my dive log, but this time around there simply was not enough room.  Oh for want of a camera on this journey!  For lack of room in my log, I figured would immortalize this dive here.  Some of the things I encountered:

• Lots of seals at all three dive sites, and both seals and sea lions frolicking at the East End.  Usually I see one or the other, as they are territorial, but here they seemed to be okay with each other.
• Talk about freindly seals - on the second and third dives I had seals come right up against me and look in my eyes from inches away.  They didn't seem to want me to leave, either... as I tried to depart the East End and swim back to the boat, three times I found my progress impeeded by a seal attached to one of my fins!
• At the first dive site, The Caverns, there must have been hundreds of halibut fry.  They are always a cool surprise, they blend in perfectly with the sand untill they move, by oscilating their body, which is basically one giant fin.  Rarely do you see more than one at a time, though... seeing a half dozen or more at a time taking off was something to see.
• At Caverns there were hundreds of molts laying in the sand from some sort of crab I have never seen before.  It had an elongated body like a mole crab (also known as the sand crab, found at beaches everywhere), but was around 3 inches long and an inch wide, and had at least one claw, which the mole crab lacks.  I didn't see any live specimens, I'll have to keep an eye out for this critter in the future.
  
• Lots of invertabrate life at East End:
  • Many large colorful anemone, including a variety I had previously not seen, with multiple shades of purple crowned with tips of crimson.
  • A white sea cucumber with orange bristles, which I have seen on previous occassions, but had never seen feeding.  Beautiful plumage!
  • A couple of the largest hermit crabs I've seen, wearing large turret shells.  This is the first I've seen hermit crabs at Ana Capa, the only ones I've seen in the Channel Islands were at Santa Cruz, and always at night.
  • I've seen sea hares (picture a bulbous slug with big floppy rabbit-ear-like appendages) in different colors - black, green, brown - but never one in a deep crimson red before.  I was so entranced I laid in the sand in front of it for several minutes, until it started to crawl onto my mask!  I kept wondering if another diver might mistake me for unconscious and try to rescue me

Ah, another great day in the chilly Pacific!

I couldn't spell it out better than this guy has here:

"BBC SHUNNED ME FOR DENYING CLIMATE CHANGE"

In a speech on Sunday, Joe Biden told supporters to expect a major international crisis within the first six months of Obama's administration, and tells them to expect that unpopular decisions will have to be made that will be right in the long run.  He said he can "give at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate", and talked about the Middle East, Russia, and a Pakistan "bristling with nuclear weapons".  This when his running mate has several times talked about taking military action against Pakistan.

The same day, Colin Powell announces his endorsement of Obama.  Powell, who was so instrumental in selling an unpopular war against Iraq... any bets on whether he might become Obama's Secretary of State, to help sell whatever new agenda is in the pipeline?

Here's a neat bit of "logic" from Biden's speech:


Hmmm, so popular decisions are not sound, and sound decisions aren't popular... sounds like "we know what's good for you, get ready to take your medicine".  He also talks about how decisions will be made that are sure to cause low ratings in the polls a year from now.  This sounds to me like they've already got things planned out, and they know they won't have the support of "we the people", while making the assumption that the populace would not support the decisions they feel are "sound" and necessary.  Does this sound like democratic representation to you?  Just what are they planning this time around??