Convienent Lies?

I was wandering around on the site of a favorite author of mine, James P. Hogan, when I came upon a link to an article put out last year by Marlo Lewis, a Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in response to Al Gore’s “documentary, ” An Inconvenient Truth. You can find that article here: Inconvenient Truths for Al Gore.

In it, Marlo gives a point by point response to the assertions that the former Vice President makes in his film. Admittedly, I have not yet had a chance to read the entire document, but in reading the very first section, I was amazed by a fact that would point out the amount of misinformation coming out of the whacko liberal left.

Marlo states:

Comment: Water vapor, not carbon dioxide (CO2), is the most important greenhouse gas. Computing the exact contribution of each type of greenhouse gas to the overall greenhouse effect is complicated, because the gases “overlap” in some of the spectra in which they absorb infrared radiation. Taking the overlaps into account, RealClimate.Org concludes that “water vapor is the single most important absorber (between 36% and 66% of the greenhouse effect), and together with clouds makes up between 66% and 85%. CO2 alone makes up between 9 and 26%, while the O3 and the other minor GHG absorbers consist of up to 7 and 8% of the effect respectively.”

Gore editorializes when he says that we have “vastly” increased the amount of CO2. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is so small that CO2 is referred to as a “trace gas.” Over the past century and a half, atmosphere CO2 levels have risen from about 280 parts per million (ppm) to about 380 ppm – from roughly 3/100ths to roughly 4/100ths of one percent of the atmosphere.

So, in essence, Marlo is stating that CO2 has risen by the amount of 1/100th of one percent of the atmosphere in the last century.

Let’s put that in perspective.

Say the atmosphere is a giant vat filled with 10,000 marbles. In the last century, the amount of CO2 has risen from 3 marbles, to 4. A whopping grand total of a single marble.

Yet, when you hear the whacko left talk, they speak as if the air is saturated with CO2, and you NEVER hear any discussion on the effects of water vapor. The first I heard of it was reading the article that I’ve linked. Granted, I may not be the worlds most informed individual (the Beatles are still together, right?), but it seems to me that there should be some discussion on this. Of course, when people do bring up opposing arguments, they’re vilified and accused of manipulating the information.

The main problem as I see it is that there are too many political agendas and an utter resistance to consider the opposing view.

I guess they’re all afraid to lose their marbles.