The one point that can get people off the global warming obsession train

The dose makes the poison. ... All things are poison and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone is the thing that makes it not a poison.

—Paracelsus, 1493–1541, credited with being the father of toxicology

Climate alarmists play the "hide the magnitude" game. If they didn't, they would soon be out of business.

Politely ask a few of your friends how much of the air they're breathing is CO2. I've done that, and the typical answer, when I can get one, is twenty percent or more. (Most people have no idea and would rather not guess.)

Climate alarmists rarely talk about the actual quantitative composition of our atmosphere. The impression they give is that (1) a substantial part of the air that surrounds us comprises carbon dioxide; (2) that the proportion of carbon dioxide is increasing rapidly; (3) that the increase is primarily the result of human activity, mostly from burning fossil fuels; and (4) that if CO2 continues to increase, it's game over for humanity. Recently, the rhetoric has escalated from "climate crisis" to "climate emergency."

The actual magnitude tells a very different story. Carbon dioxide constitutes four one-hundredths of one percent of the air we breathe (or 400 parts per million). That is an extremely tiny fraction of the atmosphere.

What constitutes the rest of the air around us? Seventy-eight percent of the air we breathe is nitrogen, 21 percent is oxygen, 0.9 percent is argon, and 0.1 percent is other gases. The other gases include methane (0.00017 percent); nitrous oxide (0.00003 percent); and water vapor, which varies from 0 to 4 percent.

How can such a small magnitude of CO2 be dooming humanity? Furthermore, how can climate change alarmists be absolutely, positively certain that if CO2 continues to increase, it will be lights out for life on Earth?

During the Cambrian period 500 million years ago, CO2 constituted over 5,000 parts per million of the Earth's atmosphere. Then, 150 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period, CO2 was 1,700 parts per million, more than four times what it is now. Life thrived during those periods. How can 400 parts per million be a threat to our existence?

Before humans started burning fossil fuels about 200 years ago, CO2 made up 250 parts per million of our atmosphere. It has been growing at about one part per million per year for the past 150 years. In other words, a very small magnitude is growing at a very slow rate. Is there any reason that rate will accelerate when it hasn't in a century and a half?

If the tiny magnitude were more generally known, people would want explanations. It defies common sense that such a small magnitude could be responsible for certain catastrophic changes. The least we ought to be is skeptical.

The catastrophists have not been asked to explain because they have successfully suppressed widespread awareness of the magnitude of CO2 in the atmosphere. If more people were aware of the actual percentage, there would be far less global warming panic. More people would stop listening to the doomsayers.

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◼ The one point that can get people off the global warming obsession train at American Thinker July 29, 2022

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

There's got to be lots of Biden buyer's remorse out there now

The Biden administration has been a disaster from day one. All sentient persons know it, even those in deep denial.

Before Biden became president, our economy was humming along, as it usually does. To keep it working well, the main requirement was to keep out of its way and to keep bureaucrats and politicians in check. Joe Biden did the exact opposite and we're all paying an enormous price for it.

The millions of Americans who voted for Biden cannot be surprised about how it's turned out. Joe Biden had a fifty-year history of being an embarrassingly incompetent and corrupt politician. His voters were willfully blind to that reality. How many of them lament voting for him?

Anyone who voted for Biden-Harris enabled this disaster. We are now saddled with two and a half more years of deliberate damage done by this administration. The policy choices made thus far have been so harmful that even Democrats are looking for ways out. However, there is no obvious way to end the destruction until 2024, thirty months from now. A President Harris would just be more of the same.

Democrats and the media pretend there's still a possibility that Biden will run for a second term. There is no way that will happen, but they have to go through the motions so as to keep him from being a lame duck this early in his first term.

Democrats ought to be furious at their party leaders, and many of them are. Those leaders are responsible for Biden and Harris being in the White House. Joe Biden was supposedly the best they had. But he has been the worst president in our country's history, and all the other candidates would have been just as bad or worse.

For the past many years, the Democrat bench has been a totally uninspiring, unimpressive, motley collection of losers. Now they're even talking about having Hillary run again in 2024.

Relatively few voters actually voted for Joe Biden. Most voted from a basis of intense hatred — primarily of Donald Trump, but also of Republicans in general.

Why do Democrats hate Trump so much? The main reason is his effectiveness in defeating the Democrat agenda. They hate him because he's not a John McCain, Mitt Romney, or Mitch McConnell. They hate too the fact that he's not a wimp. Conservative Republicans love fighters; progressive Democrats love spineless weaklings. Trump is a plain-talking, take-no-prisoners fighter and the opposite of an establishment swamp creature.

Trump knows how to get things done. He got things done despite the most resistance ever experienced by an American president. Democrats lied about him and sabotaged him from the very beginning.

The Democrats got their wish. They prevented Trump from winning a second term, at least for the time being. To accomplish that they sold their souls. The party is paying, and will continue to pay, a high price for doing so. It is hemorrhaging voters. Democrats now realize that November will bring electoral carnage in its wake. One of the truest of all adages is "cheaters never win." ____________________

◼ There's got to be lots of Biden buyer's remorse out there now at American Thinker July 13, 2022

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.