As we mentioned in February, Congressional action is underway to address the EPA’s action on Federal Rulemaking, concerning Greenhouse Gases. There are six principal greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone chloro-flourocarbons and water vapor. The suspect in question is carbon dioxide, or CO2 - the one EPA has chosen to regulate. Some of the other greenhouse gases: nitrous oxide, ozone and chloro-flourocarbons, are already regulated under the Clean Air Act - an act of Congress; not a regulatory construct of a government agency.

I would wager that most of us don’t fully understand what the greenhouse effect is. The term itself is misleading, as a greenhouse works by trapping heat within the structure and preventing the heat escaping by being lost through convection. A greenhouse gas absorbs radiation from a variety of radiation spectra and re-radiates the energy in the infra-red band – long wavelength energy – which warms the surface of the earth.   

As we illustrated in February, CO2 is a naturally-occurring chemical vital for life on our planet, which the EPA deemed: ‘endangers the public’s health and welfare’. We also illustrated – tongue-in-cheek – that if CO2 is dangerous, what about water, as it kills many more people each year? This may sound facetious, at first, but when you look a little deeper, the most potent greenhouse gas is water vapor…

While there is no doubt that CO2 levels in our atmosphere are steadily increasing – we were at 393 parts-per-million last summer – water vapor is a much more potent greenhouse gas, ranked as number one, with a relative contribution factor of 36% - 72% (CO2 is ranked at between 9% - 26%). Like all greenhouse gases, water vapor is a gas that absorbs radiation and re-radiates the energy in the thermal infra-red spectrum – the hot stuff. Work is beginning, at the Mauna Loa National Observatory – where the CO2 levels are monitored – to monitor the levels of water vapor in our atmosphere and to establish trends. It will be fascinating to peruse the results of this data assimilation.

So back to the EPA: if we are so concerned about greenhouse gases, EPA better get on track with water vapor too – a Hydrogen fuel energy shift would create huge emissions of water vapor. And, another important consideration should be methane, which, on a molecule-to-molecule basis, is about eighty times stronger as a greenhouse gas than CO2. Methane gas occurs naturally and is produced by the decay of vegetation and the digestion of ruminant animals, among other sources.

We need cogent policy on these issues; the Clean Air Act has done wonders for our environment. Chasing the ‘Global Warming’ rabbit around, without a full look at the scientific issues, is inherently dangerous. It becomes especially dangerous when a regulatory agency takes it upon itself to direct policy – or is someone else driving EPA to do this and discriminate against CO2 emitters? Energy is vital to our modern way of life, so we need to get this policy right.

As we’ve mentioned before, we have millions of acres of dead and dying forests here in the western United States – methane and CO2 emitters - and forest management and biomass energy can be part of our energy solution.
       
Patrick Heffernan, Montana Wood Products Association in Helena.