In terms of money, economists measure the health or activity of an economy using “velocity” of money in an economy. There are a thousand measuring tools measuring the same parameter, whether it’s investment dollars generating new production or a change in policy like a tax cut or increase that either releases money to or sucks money from, an economy. Supply-chain snags can certainly reduce the velocity of money; building road, rail or air infrastructure can speed it up. If you’re seeking real understanding of this kind of velocity you’ll have to ask someone else: I know only how rapidly $20 bills move out of my pocket these days, converting themselves to a few coins in a blink of an eye.
Let’s talk about the climate… a place where velocity is never discussed as a “good.” It’s always “bad,” and it’s everybody’s fault, which means “climate change” by today’s – or this morning’s – definition, is going to increase a lot of financial velocities while slowing or stopping others. These effects will affect everybody and his or her $20’s like we’ve never seen. In any case, the velocity of “change” in the Earth’s climate seems to always be too fast, potentially the end of humanity, often in a very small numbers of years, and the result of conservative politics. That is, unless the “conservative” in question is neither European nor English-speaking. The Earth knows.
Very quickly, climate change discussion centers on carbon: carbon dioxide, carbon-based fuels, “carbon-neutrality” by 2030, 2050 or next week. Anyway, the other day, at a point when no other useful actions were possible, Prudence led to an interesting question about climate that we’ve never heard asked: “What is the velocity of carbon in the Earth’s climate-economy?” And this will be followed in most people’s minds with, “What the Hell is wrong with this person? There’s no such thing as carbon velocity.” Ahhh, but there is, my friend… there is.
The Earth has about as much carbon on it as it has ever had. A lot of it is buried deep underground, but a lot more is in the biosphere between, say, 20 feet below ground and, maybe, 200 feet above ground, although with 1,000-foot high rise buildings we’re certainly stretching those limits. Then, there’s the ocean – definitely part of the biosphere, so… cripes! We live in a gigantic biosphere! And, it’s carbon-based, which is to say that molecules with carbon in them are the fundamental building-blocks of life, including seaweed and us.
Now, the CLIMATE we all live in has been “changing” for billions of years, which is a very good thing. The simplest example of a climate-change “good” is the endings of ice-ages, of which there have been several. Humans were impacted by only the last couple of them: they’re not very frequent, thank goodness, and the impacts of the last one are still with us, even being enjoyed by us, like the Great Lakes, Cape Cod and so forth.
For the average ersatz vaccine-loving supplicant to climate-change fears, the movement of carbon from safety underground to horrific, polluting, crime above ground is a cumulative, onrushing white-man-caused threat to life. Why, the USGS (U. S. Geologic Survey) tells us that upwards of 36.5 TRILLION TONS of carbon spewed (probably, “spewed”) into the atmosphere worldwide in 2019! That is a hu-u-u-u-ge number, but there are lots of huge numbers involved when measuring worldwide things. A small amount was in the form of methane, other ethanes, ordinary “anes” and the majority of it from CO2 which is a lot heavier than average, breathable air. Fortunately for all concerned, plants “breathe” CO2 in and oxygen, O2 out.
“Oh, my Gawd! Everybody stop breathing!” Also, stop mowing your lawn, heating your homes, cooking, refrigerating, making plastics, driving cars and trucks and, for God’s sake, stop flying back and forth around the world on those terrible jet planes… just stay home.
Quite a bit of CO2 derives from cute little woodland creatures that, since Walt Disney gave them names, we must love and protect, along with every other sort of elk, antelope, bison, bear, reindeer, POLAR bears, for heaven’s sake, whales, dolphins, dogs, cats, protected tigers, elephants and, of course those evil cattle who do little but eat and fart, don’t you know?
Still more comes from rotting vegetation in the normal cycle of plant life and the bacteria and bugs, termites and ants that live off of the trillions of tons of IT. Government types, those who really like to apply rules for living to most everyone else – rules derived from superior intellects like theirs – hold, without fail, concepts of perfection for humanity and how humanity should live, among which are rules against eating animals that Disney may have named or which provide substantial amounts of nutrition for sub-perfect humans, nutrition those same humans may be “taught” to live better without.
Just the same, carbon in various chemical combinations moves into and out of the atmosphere at rates that could be measured, extrapolated, closely estimated, and measured again for more or less controllable impacts humans might want to have. Except no one asks the velocity question. There are no grant millions for calculating how fast carbon churns in what kinds of weather, over what kinds of land or waters. Or, in what levels of the atmosphere. Grants are plentiful if researchers – or advocates – can add to climate panic; only a level of panic enables political control, after all, which is a large part of making grant monies available: find out something that makes specific political or taxation controls possible. If you find out something else, give it a good leaving-alone.
No matter how carbon moves around, whether from volcanoes seen and unseen, or burning forests to yield cropland, or propelling planes at 35,000 feet, or burning trash at ground level, moving trucks and things, or, pushing ships with both vital and frivolous container loads, joy-riding passengers or militaries setting off to war, not all climatological consequences are of the same value. Some are just plain pollution, spreading dirt where we live in ways that we could control if the value were better understood. Others are “necessary evils,” tolerated, temporarily, for lack of cleaner alternatives. Over the past 130 years, say, humans have quite consistently moved away from “dirty” ways to improve life and living standards, towards much cleaner ones. Only a relative handful of people on Earth burn cattle dung to keep warm – too many, and a very controllable problem – but a handful.
Cars and trucks get phenomenally better mileage compared to 40 or 50 years ago, as do even those jet planes at 35,000 feet. More and more electricity is generated without coal, and “scrubbers” can mitigate particulates and sulphur compounds, which are actually bad to have in the air, along with some CO2, making even coal much cleaner. New buildings are built to be far more thermally efficient. New lighting and electronics are far more efficient, too. Watch for the impact of solid-state batteries in making almost everything electrical more efficient, including cars and trucks.
The point is, CO2 in the air is not, per se, a bad thing, but if you ask the average, fearful, climate-change crybaby what he or she is afraid of and the answer will be that we have to stop spewing CO2 or else the world is going to end… possibly even before illegal aliens and polar bears get the vote!
In a sense, we are constantly reminded that the CO2 from last year, and the year before that, and before that, and ever since the first automobile burned gasoline, is hanging over our heads ready to destroy the PLANET, including my daughter’s recycling science project! All it will take to tip the balance is for a few more Trump voters to drive through drive-up windows for a cheeseburger and some Freedom Fries, when they could have had a hand-picked kale salad. The time to act is now, now, now!
But it isn’t, is it? The CO2 building up in the atmosphere, I mean. It churns around, dissolving into bodies of water, like oceans, of which there are a lot, and if not dissolved right away, generally CO2 sinks down to near ground level because it’s quite a bit heavier than air. This, alone, is a good thing, because that’s where most plants that we can eat, grow. Whoever thought of this system was a very smart Dude.
Mankind, however, is both brilliant and ignorant, wise and foolish, scientific and superstitious, and clean and dirty. We used to think that God had provided convenient sewers in the form of rivers, but we have become smarter about that foolishness – we could be and will be much smarter about that. We used to think the atmosphere was a big river to dump effluents into, too, but we’re coming around quickly on that foolishness. Politically, however, we are being propelled to ever greater foolishness over CO2, not because we can “save the planet” and keep ocean levels and weather right where WE want them by limiting it, but so that we can, politically, control how people live, prodding them ever closer to the perfection models government-types have clung-to since Miss Hannigan’s 4th grade terrarium with the turtle in it.
Just like fraudulent COVID-19 statistics, if the government and compliant media focus on single numbers, a lot of fear can be ginned up, quickly modifying sovereign individuals’ actions, beliefs and willing abandonment of freedoms… like the number of COVID “cases,” as they “spike” from time to time. Most are simple positive results from testing, and what they have detected are remnants of spike proteins, mostly not actual infections. If you run enough cycles of PCR tests you can detect a lot of “cases.” Everyone can be made to change his life through the police-power of the state or municipality because of largely meaningless numbers like these. Fixating on how much CO2 goes into the atmosphere is much the same. That we should be happy it’s there, for the most part, is never part of the news. Do you have any concept of where we’d be without global warming?
Respecting our home planet by not dirtying its air and water is a noble thing to do – not from baseless fears but from purpose.
There are satellites watching the whole earth, now, measuring CO2 for places where it comes from and goes to at different times of year. These are fine data to have and will, little by little, improve recommendations for spewing less CO2 . Which we probably should… spew less, that is. But we never will, or never will fast enough, if we don’t adopt a worldwide perspective on being clean or dirty in how we live, prosper and move ourselves and things about, starting with how cleanly we can generate electricity. This will have to include nuclear power at its best, for urban areas, and solar collection and energy storage at its best in rural areas. Cleaning up the planet need not, and should not require forcing people into cities, for example, or forcing ever tighter regulation on freedom (quite the opposite) or directing whole economies from a dictatorial, tight-control top.
It does involve honest education and a recognition that fouling where we live is anathema to both God and to humanity. Economic mobility is prime in terms of balancing needs and wants and increasing qualities of life. That comes from freedom. Any “plan” for defeating – pick any – COVID, inflation, climate change, crime, ignorance, poverty in every other country in the world, that also includes restricting personal freedom or sovereignty, is the absolutely wrong move to accept. A political party that identifies with restricting freedom and which villainizes those who don’t, does not deserve any American’s vote.