Monday, April 09, 2007

Another Supreme Court Ruling

The US Supreme Court is at it again. The men in black robes rules that the EPA can now regulate greenhouse gases specifically CO2 gases. You know that gas we and other animals exhale out every time we breathe and that the green plants consume. The Supreme Court considers it a pollutant. I am really getting tired of the Supreme Court stepping outside its role as judges. This would be like umpires during a baseball game changing the rules whenever they want to. So, what is the EPA going to do? Tax people for breathing? How are they going to regulate greenhouse gas production?

According to Wikipedia, these are the main factors of the greenhouse effect:

  • water vapor (excluding clouds) 36-70%
  • water vapor (including clouds) 66-85%
  • CO2 9-26%
  • methane 4-9%
  • ozone 3-7%
Note the top greenhouse factor: Water vapor. Which of course is not a pollutant. This is a main factor because of oceans and seas I am guessing. CO2 is number two. Methane is from natural gas, cattle belching, and produced by those pesky ravenous termites. I thought flatuence contain methane, but this is a common myth. Flatulence actually has more nitrogen (not a greenhouse gas) than methane. Which is probably a good thing because methane is a lot more flammable than nitrogen. If you look at the percentages you will notice they are given in ranges not single values. This is because according to Wikipedia: "because the influences of the various gases are not additive. (The higher ends of the ranges quoted are for the gas alone; the lower ends, for the gas counting overlaps.)" Something to ponder when reading or hearing about global warming.

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