Wayne Gilchrest: “Congressman Bartlett is talking about peak oil, the idea that our energy from oil is a finite resource, it is limited.…”

“Congressman Bartlett is talking about peak oil, the idea that our energy from oil is a finite resource, it is limited. And what I would like to do, in conjunction with that, is to give a perspective on one of the legacies of the age of oil, and that is global warming, heating the planet, upsetting that delicate balance between what the Earth has been used to for thousands of years, and the natural range of fluctuation in the climate, to what we have done in less than 100 years as a result of burning fossil fuel, oil in particular. So here is how I would like to proceed. Number one, the Earth has a livable climate. The biosphere, which is the area of the planet that contains life forms that we have become familiar with is possible because of something called the greenhouse effect. Now, in our atmosphere, we have oxygen, water vapor, methane, carbon dioxide, a number of different chemical mixes which provide us with the air we breathe and the type of atmosphere that produces, in part, the climate that we have, hence the greenhouse effect. It is warm enough and cool enough for life, as we know it, to exist. Now, one of the most important greenhouse gases, other than water vapor, other than oxygen, other than methane--all of these contribute to the greenhouse effect--is carbon dioxide, or CO2. Now, even though carbon dioxide is less than 1 percent of the makeup of our atmosphere, it is critical in the heat balance of our planet.”