In a recent post about Rick Perry, I pointed out that in something like 250 years we’ve released much of the carbon into the atmosphere that it took nature millions of years to compress and store beneath the earth’s surface. This simple fact supports the logical argument that human activity is responsible for global warming in the current era. While climate-change deniers sometimes admit that the earth is warming (there’s too much evidence to say otherwise), they insist that it’s part of a natural cycle, that human activity has nothing to do with it. This, of course, is industry speaking. People like Rick Perry don’t have the brains to manufacture such a lie.
The science isn’t difficult to comprehend. There was a time in the earth’s early history when it was much warmer than it is now, and that period coincided with higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas. Much of that carbon became oil and coal over many millions of years as life forms died and were covered over before they could decompose and re-release that carbon into the atmosphere. This is why oil, gas, and coal are called “fossil fuels” — they’re the fossilized remains of carbon-based life forms. They’re referred to as “non-renewable” because they take so long to form. They would still all be in the ground if it wasn’t for us.
So here it is in a nutshell: releasing millions of years’ worth of stored carbon back into the atmosphere by burning it isn’t part of the natural cycle — it’s human intervention in a natural cycle. It’s an unnatural event that’s been going on since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. It’s as Pogo said — “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
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