Steam Center Blog

Oil on canvas by Ashok It seems that the burning of fossil fuels that produce carbon dioxide may be incorrectly blamed in the media and by many others for global warming. Carbon dioxide accounts for just 0.038% of the atmosphere. The amount is too minuscule to have any significant effect on global warming. In fact water vapor is a stronger greenhouse component of the atmosphere. In fact the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has fallen to suffocatingly dangerous levels for plants. They need it for photosynthesis and are a source of food for animals and humans. Greenhouse owners who raise carbon dioxide content about three times find that plants grow fifty percent faster. (Update April 7, 2014) A lay person assumes that because carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas  its increase must lead to increased heat absorption in the atmosphere and therefore increased temperatures but the more relevant question to explore is how much increase. Admittedly the full calculation

The rapid depletion of fossil fuel if not the addition of global warming gasses in the atmosphere is sufficient to indicate that current lifestyles of modern humans are not sustainable. A sustainable lifestyle would probably involve the following changes: A return to small towns rather than living in large cities with public transportation fueled by bio-fuels and electricity. The use of wood energy from sustainable forest plantations combined with the use of wind energy for meeting the electricity needs of the town. When wood is burnt from forests that are periodically replenished for more wood the net carbon addition to the atmosphere is zero. New trees absorb the carbon dioxide produced by the power plant. To minimize this wood burning a substantial amount of electricity would have to be produced from wind turbines with the wood burning stepping in to fill the lull in the breeze. With a disappearance of fossil fuels in future, the use of bio-fuels would become necessary to supplemen