WARNING: The following is forbidden knowledge for committed climate activists.  If you are one, please click the “X” in the upper right corner of your screen and then send a check to Al Gore to help keep him off the street.

Lucky for us, the Earth is massive enough to hold on to a tenuous atmosphere.  In this gaseous soup are elements and a few compounds.  Nitrogen is the most plentiful element, followed by oxygen and then the inert gas argon...the slightly heavier cousin to neon, the illuminator of electric signs, and helium, the inflator of party balloons.  Carbon dioxide is just a bit down the list and comprises only a hair over 0.04% of the entire atmosphere — or, out of every ten thousand molecules of air, only four are carbon dioxide.

For earthly animal life, the most important function of the atmosphere is to provide oxygen.  It wasn’t always this way.  The primordial atmosphere was largely devoid of oxygen, which had already been mostly consumed when it combined with hydrogen to create water.  Then came photosynthesizing plants.  They employ a biochemically complex process which allows plants to combine carbon dioxide with water (the remaining source of hydrogen) to produce various forms of carbohydrates (sugars and fibrous tissues), releasing oxygen as a waste product.

The much-derided process of atmospheric heat trapping is actually a benefit for all life forms.  Without the comforting blanket of air and clouds, the surface of the Earth would freeze solid every night — just as it does on the airless moon.

Over time, the accumulated vegetable biomass decomposes and releases methane gas (CH4), which is highly flammable.  When burned (oxidized), methane produces water and carbon dioxide among other trace compounds such as carbon mon-oxide.  Other ultimate products of plant decomposition are coal and petroleum.  Peat bogs are mostly found in the northern hemisphere and can be used directly as fuel.  Many ancient peat bogs became buried beneath sediment, where they morphed into coal deposits — archetypical of the term “fossil” fuel.  In rare cases, pure crystals of carbon have formed in these deposits.  We call them diamonds.

When a hydrocarbon is oxidized, water is always part of the exhaust — hence the condensation trails produced by jet aircraft.  Carbon dioxide is, of course, also produced.  What is not mentioned often enough — because it is the most forbidden of all knowledge — is that all of the carbon in fossil fuels got there due to the extraction of atmospheric carbon dioxide by photosynthesis.  It just keeps cycling around and around.

When sugary water (such as fruit juice or diluted barley malt extract) is digested by yeast, both alcohol (ethanol) and carbon dioxide are produced.  The primary source of commercial carbon dioxide is the beer-brewing industry.  During the recent supply chain crunch, there was a shortage of soda pop because less beer was being brewed and thus less carbon dioxide was available to inject the necessary fizz into these products.  Carbon dioxide is also fairly inert, so it’s safe for us to swallow and also use in fire extinguishers.  And because it is so inert, it takes such a complex biochemical process as photosynthesis to separate it into carbon and oxygen.

Climate change, however, is a given.  Were climate not to change, there would never have been ice ages and their interstitial warm periods — causes of which are still not fully understood.

This is our planet.  We have no other place to call home.  Spurious hoaxes intended to make our lives more miserable — so political demagogues can have the leverage necessary to control us — don’t quite ring the bell of credibility.

The ”Climatistas” just recently got an unwelcome reality check.  Wink, wink.  So where is this debate going from here?  Perhaps the realities of climatology will finally become more a part of common knowledge.

Image: Marco Verch Professional Photographer and Speaker via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.