The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 4 of 9)

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Eric Peters has picked up on something so obvious that I have yet to see it stated until now -- those "evil" automotive engineers around the world have improved internal combustion engines (and catalytic converters) to the point where almost nothing but carbon dioxide and water come out the tailpipe. Thirty-five years ago, when as a child I remember the odor of organic fumes thick and heavy wherever there was substantial traffic, this achievement would have been considered a godsend. But not today! Environmental intellectuals, panicked at the thought that the evil automotive and oil industries were no longer poisoning our children, suddenly declared carbon dioxide (the same gas that even the high-minded environmentalists exhale -- perhaps even more so than others) as a serious pollutant. So the incredible achievement is combustion technology, and the impact it has had on breathing in the larger cities goes unheralded.

p>The idea that carbon dioxide and oxygen levels in the earth's atmosphere have been properly balanced and controlled for hundreds of millions of years by the very animal and plant life that depend upon both to survive seems to have eluded the environmental "scientists." In fact, I remember a Science journal article from 1992 in which carbon dioxide levels were measured and dated in entrapped air bubbles in amber. It concluded that the carbon dioxide levels in the past have ranged from half of today's levels to over twenty times today's current concentrations. And yet somehow, life not only survived, but flourished. Any engineer worth is salt can understand the equilibrium process that takes place -- as carbon dioxide levels go up, world-wide plant growth increases (and it has), which consumes the excess carbon dioxide levels until they level off and drop again. There are others factors at work in this great control scheme, but without a robust control system, life as we know it would have extinguished long ago. This control scheme will continue to support life on this great planet long past the last carbon dioxide-laden breaths of today's Chicken Littles, and as an SUV-sized hearse takes them to their final resting place, my they finally rest in peace. br> -- Mike Spencer br> Midland, Michigan /p> p> ROBERTS RULES br> Re: Paul M. Weyrich's Persistence Pays Off :

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