Letter: Biomass fuel switch questioned

• Published: Oct 8, 2009 - Page: 8B

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NRG Energy cannot be blamed for making the business decision of including biomass in its burns in anticipation of costly Environmental Protection Agency permits (“Big Cajun to use switchgrass as fuel,” Sept. 30). Nevertheless, there should be concern as food acreage gets switched to biomass on the huge scale needed for power generation.

Using Big Cajun II as the basis and current switchgrass yield, up to 25 million acres nationwide would be used for biomass production in order to meet the 2020 goal of 20 percent reduction in emissions.

In the final analysis, the question still remains, “Why?”

Mr. Scott Baker makes good arguments (“Urge senators to support energy bill,” Sept. 30), such as cleaner operation and a Louisiana biomass business, but makes the common mistake of assuming that warming and its consequences automatically implicate an effect of man-made carbon dioxide. They do not.

The experiment that conclusively shows that atmospheric CO2 caused 20th-century warming has not been done. Furthermore, if there were even one example in climate history where CO2 had indisputably caused a large temperature increase, it would be exhibit No. 1 in the argument that man-made CO2 causes global warming. Significantly, you will not find one credible scientist discussing that example, for the simple reason that it doesn’t exist.

Ice core samples from which temperature and atmospheric CO2 have been determined for the past 450,000 years refute CO2 causation of increased temperature in two ways.

There have been five major warming cycles in that period, of which our own Holocene Era is the latest.

First, analysis shows that temperature increase PRECEDED CO2 increase by an average of 800 years. Warming of the world’s oceans led to the slow release of some of the huge amount of dissolved CO2, which is less soluble in warmer seawater.

Second, the eventual decrease in temperature also occurred first, i.e., cooling started while CO2 was still high!

And by the way, our current global temperatures are exceeded by all four of the previous warming cycles, and even exceeded by earlier periods in the Holocene Era.

There is no example in ice cores where a 280 parts per million increase in CO2, such as would occur from doubling of CO2, caused an 8 degree Fahrenheit temperature increase over already naturally warm temperatures, such as advocated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

To see how poorly IPCC predictions of temperature are doing as compared to the global cooling that has occurred since 1998, go to http://icecap.us /images/uploads/SPPI8Year.JPG.

Climate legislation before the Senate is unnecessary, and destructive. It will increase the cost of energy, result in job losses, depress American business and make overseas locations more attractive.