Governor Romney as US President?

With tremendous national debt, the housing market in shambles, and terrible unemployment, the Republicans are knocking themselves out to find a potential candidate who can defeat Pres. Obama in the 2012 elections.

According to polls, Mitt Romney, present governor of Massachusetts is a leading candidate. Two days ago I saw an interview with him on TV.

Gov. Romney is very presidential looking and speaks well. However, his brain is either full of mush or he is an opportunist willing to sell his soul for power. I look at Gov. Romney from a prejudicial viewpoint. He believed in mandated government healthcare, which he instituted in Massachusetts. I consider mandated government healthcare to be an infraction of my personal liberty. It is now hanging fire at the federal level, with the likelihood that since the bill was passed, most of its provisions will be enacted. Unless Gov. Romney changes his mind, he will promote the complete establishment of mandated healthcare at the federal level.

Without the healthcare background, I was especially interested in his response to the interview ion a question concerning global warming. The Governor pussyfooted around the subject a bit but ultimately said that he believed carbon dioxide to be an agent of global climate disruption and its concentration in the atmosphere must be controlled by government.

The general concept of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leading to global warming and its negative consequences has been dying over the past year. However, there are continued attempts at its revival and a large number of people still believe in the concept. I do not, and continue to apply efforts to convince believers in the theory and fear monger promoters that this is a destructive attitude for the economy of the United States and the world at large.

Without getting too scientific, we need to talk about heat insulation and concentration. These are really simple terms which everyone faces in their daily life. We insulate the walls and ceiling of our houses with fiberglass bats in order to reduce loss of heat from the inside in the winter and reduce gain of heat to the inside during summer. The fiberglass is a heat insulator. We also use insulated containers to hold our cold beer and soft drinks on picnics. The second simple concept is concentration. If we put 2 teaspoons of sugar in a cup of coffee, it will taste sweeter than if we put in only one spoonful.

Gov. Romney and the various theorists who have preceded him say that carbon dioxide gas is a wonderful insulator. They say that it is such a good insulator its presence in the atmosphere will strongly limit the passage of heat to pass from the earth to the stratosphere. Since the heat can't escape from Earth, the temperature builds up, and we have global warming.

If carbon dioxide is a perfect insulator, think of the technical possibilities for its use outside of considerations of global warming. Manufacturers could put carbon dioxide between the two panes of glass in double paned windows. We could use plastic confinement containing carbon dioxide for use in the walls and ceilings of our houses and commercial and manufacturing buildings. We could have carbon dioxide in a separately confined layer of our tents for camping. We could put carbon dioxide in the space between the roofs and ceilings of our automotive vehicles. The opportunities are boundless! Why is this not being done? The answer is that carbon dioxide is not that good a heat insulator, in spite of talk to the contrary. Manufacturers of double pane windows use argon in the space between the panes, and building supply manufacturers still produce large quantities of fiberglass for insulation. I know of no cases where carbon dioxide is being used as a local heat insulator. If it is not good is a local heat insulator, why would anyone think it would be good as a global heat insulator?

Let's talk a little about concentration. The atmosphere is composed of about 21% oxygen and 79% nitrogen. Those gases are reasonably good heat insulators in their own right. If this were not true, we would all freeze to death at night. However, both nitrogen and oxygen are not quite as good heat insulators as carbon dioxide in the pure form. Notice that I have said "pure form", which means 100%. But, like the sugar in the coffee, concentration makes a huge difference. One grain of sugar in a cup of coffee goes unnoticed. Similarly, a very low concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will have little or no effect on global warming. In fact, the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is only about 200 ppm, which is 0.02% of the atmosphere. That's about the same concentration as one grain of sugar in a cup of coffee.

If you like a man who speaks well and has a good appearance, but doesn't have the mental capacity to understand global warming, elect Gov. Romney as President of the United States. He likely can't do any worse than Pres. Obama.