Soon after taking office, President Obama, through his executive authority and the EPA (Environment Protection Agency), began implementing an agenda dear to all Environmentalists and liberals, the "greening" of America (a "feel good" slogan, but un-analyzed as to reasonableness, practicality or cost).
On December 7, 2009, the EPA announced that "carbon dioxide", would be considered a "dirty" pollutant; there would therefore be limitations upon how much could be spewed into the atmosphere from (even average size) buildings and factories, with costly (job-killing) financial penalties.
A companion bill (Cap and Trade) was quickly passed by the overwhelming plurality of Democrats in the House of Congress - stalled by the Senate (as media outlets such as Fox News, et al, began calling attention to what was going on).
Carbon Dioxide? America, in grammar schools, was taught that life on Earth could not exist without oxygen and carbon dioxide - that CO2 was what humans and mammals exhale as they inhale "air" (essential constituent being oxygen); plant life exchanging the carbon dioxide into oxygen - a "symbiotic" process: plant and animal life flourishing through their mutual inter-dependence.
CO2 a pollutant - banned and penalized by government - how can this be? On December 7, 2009, the EPA posted an announcement that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases were threats to public health and the environment, imposing restrictions and penalties on emissions.
As 85 percent of the U.
S.
economy runs on fossil fuels (which emit carbon dioxide), this imposes a national tax on energy use, costs that businesses will inevitably pass on throughout America.
Carbon dioxide is an inorganic compound (chemical formula, CO2), about 1.
5 times as heavy as air.
a colorless gas with a faint, sharp odor and a sour taste when dissolved in water.
It is produced when carbon-containing-materials burn; it is also produced by fermentation or decay of all organic materials; and it is exhaled in the respiration of all animals, including humans.
Plants use CO2 in photosynthesis to make carbohydrates.
CO2 in Earth's atmosphere keeps some of the Sun's energy from radiating back into space.
In water, CO2 forms a solution of a weak acid, carbonic acid.
Carbon dioxide is widely used in advanced societies: as a refrigerant; in fire extinguishers; in foam rubber and plastics; as a pressurizing agent to produce carbonated beverages; in aerosol sprays; in water treatment; welding; and in cloud-seeding to induce rain.
The natural application of CO2, of course, is to promote plant growth in commercial greenhouses.
Under external pressure it becomes a liquid, the form most often used in industry.
Carbon dioxide may be liquefied or solidified, its solid form being known as dry ice.
In its various foams and many uses, carbon dioxide has become a widespread boon to advanced life-styles and industry.
Carbon dioxide is obtained commercially from four sources: a by-product of chemical processing, deep gas wells, fermentation and the combustion of carbonaceous fuels.
Most CO2 is obtained from steam-hydrocarbon reformers used in the production of ammonia, gasoline, and other chemicals.
Carbon dioxide is distributed in three ways; in high-pressure non-insulated steel cylinders; as a low-pressure liquid in insulated truck trailers or rail tank cars; and as dry ice in insulated boxes, trucks, or boxcars.
Early discovery of carbon dioxide was about 1600, by van Helmont, who identified it as a gas produced by combustion, showing that it would not support life.
Later Joseph Black, Professor of Medicine in Glasgow in the 1760s showed that it was produced by respiration, however, it was Lavoisier in the 1790s who definitely established the excretion of carbon dioxide after its formation in metabolism.
While generally demonized as a man-made pollutant - caused primarily by 1st world addiction to fossil-fuel usage - carbon dioxide occurs in nature in both a free state and in combination, as carbonates.
It is part of the atmosphere, composing about 1% of dry air by volume.
Since it is a product of combustion of carbonaceous fuels (e.
g.
, coal, coke, fuel oil, gasoline, and cooking gas), there is usually more of CO2 in city air than in country air.
In various parts of the world, notably Italy, Java, and Yellowstone National Park in the United States, carbon dioxide is formed underground and issues from fissures in the earth.
Natural mineral waters such as Vichy water, effervesce because of the excess carbon dioxide that dissolves under pressure, collects in bubbles and then escapes when the pressure release.
The "choke-damp" of mines, pits, and old, unused wells, is largely carbon dioxide.
Critical reaction to the Obama administration's defining of CO2 as a "pollutant", with the EPA's severe restrictions and financial penalties, have been with warnings of dire financial consequences.
The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis produced a study of the economic effects of the EPA's carbon dioxide regulations, warning of losses in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) exceeding $600 Billion in some years, due to energy cost increases of 30 percent or more, with annual job losses exceeding 800,000.
Hit particularly hard would be manufacturing, with attendant losses of jobs in some industries to 50 percent.
Commentators, such as George Will, predict that any emission-reduction targets, whether coming from the EPA, the Cap and Trade bill, or the international Copenhagen treaty, are simply unattainable.
He states, "Barack Obama, understanding the histrionics required in climate-change debates, promises that U.
S.
emissions in 2050 will be 83 percent below 2005 levels.
If so, 2050 emissions will equal those in 1910, when there were [only] 92 million Americans.
But there will be 420 million Americans in 2050, so Obama's promise means that per capita emissions then will be about what they were in 1875.
That - will - not - happen.
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