Short Quiz

[johnkarls]

.

1. Since Bill Clinton’s Kyoto Treaty negotiator, Vice President Al Gore, defied the 95-0 Senate vote before his departure for Kyoto NOT to agree to anything that exempted China or India (as a result of which Clinton refused to submit the 12/11/1997 treaty to the Senate for ratification through the 1/20/2001 end of his term), was Kyoto essentially a treaty between the European Union and Russia?

2. Since Kyoto permitted greenhouse-gas (GHG) violators to “buy pollution rights” from countries whose GHG emissions were BELOW permissible levels -- SUCH AS 1997 RUSSIA BECAUSE OF THE COLLAPSE OF ITS ECONOMY FOLLOWING THE 1989 IMPLOSION OF THE OLD SOVIET UNION -- did a lot of political commentators opine that Kyoto was simply a way for the European Union to “buy off” the world’s Co-Super-Power (in terms of nuclear missiles) Russia for the loss of its Eastern-European Empire and the absorption of most of that Eastern-European Empire by NATO and the European Union?

3. Did Russian President Vladimir Putin announce in 2003 that he would NOT sign the Kyoto Treaty because, inter alia, GLOBAL WARMING WOULD BE BENEFICIAL TO RUSSIA BECAUSE IT WOULD INCREASE THE GROWING SEASON OF FERTILE SIBERIA?

4. Was savvy-negotiator Vladimir Putin able to extract the promise of ZILLIONS from E.U. countries for his GHG “pollution rights” before signing Kyoto?

5. Would the voters in E.U. countries have sat still for giving Putin those ZILLIONS if their pols had admitted that they were really paying ransom for Russia’s former Eastern-European Empire to be absorbed by NATO and the European Union? Which might be considered “life and death” by those Eastern European countries but inexcusable altruism by voters in Western European countries?

6. Is the FAILURE of the United Nation’s just-concluded Paris Climate Summit to adopt any ENFORCEABLE goals (UNLIKE Kyoto’s which WERE enforceable, at least on paper, though most signatories violated them), due to the fact that proponents of GHG restrictions have FAILED to make the most, and perhaps only, rational argument for worldwide action?

7. In other words, don’t global-warming “winners” like Russia/Siberia effectively more than counter-balance the “losers” such as Venice whose St. Mark’s Square regularly flooded even before Kyoto and which might eventually be forced to enclose its lagoon with, probably, Dutch-technology dikes?

8. While much public opinion shrugs off claims that virtually every weather disaster that occurs is due to global warming? And, even if true, that global warming is somebody else’s problem rather than a reason to ruin one’s own economy?

9. Doesn’t our focus book, The Sixth Extinction, point to the real threat of greenhouse-gas emissions???

10. Whether one believes in evolution or a divine creator, can’t we all agree that nature exhibits an incredible balance between the earth’s zillions of species???

11. And do we appreciate that virtually all of the medical discoveries in human history have been the result of biologists (or doctors/inventors acting as biologists) observing which species are harmful to humans and what the natural enemies to the harmful-to-human species are???

12. After all, we know from High School Chemistry that the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements displays the existence of only approximately 118 different atoms -- but we know that those atoms can be combined into ZILLIONS, if not an infinite number, of different molecules -- so does it make any sense for medical research to be following a “needle in a haystack” approach of examining all of the ZILLIONS of actual and potential molecules to find a cure for a disease, rather than simply looking to nature to discover the natural enemies of that disease???

13. Do any of us have any personal stories illustrating this principle???

14. So if The Sixth Extinction threatens to render as much as 50% of the world’s current species extinct, aren’t we really losing forever the practical ability to find cures for as much as 50% of the world’s diseases that afflict human beings???

15. Haven’t we already studied a part of this problem without realizing its implications???

16. For our 9/11/2013 meeting on Enforcement of Ocean Conservation, didn’t we study how when carbon dioxide comes in contact with the oceans’ water, it spontaneously produces carbonic acid (CO2 + H2O > H2CO3)???

17. And although carbonic acid (the fizz in carbonated drinks) is generally thought to be harmless (unlike carbolic acid, C6H6O, which is highly toxic), carbonic acid itself is highly toxic for virtually all aquatic creatures except jelly fish???

18. And that 30%-50% of all of the carbon gases in the earth’s atmosphere are absorbed by the earth’s oceans, and that the increase of carbon gases in the earth’s atmosphere is the principal reason why the earth’s oceans will soon contain nothing but jelly fish???

19. Which is why many fish restaurants no longer feature the favorite dishes of your youth, BECAUSE THEY NO LONGER EXIST???

20. And why many, if not most, fish restaurants in Japan already feature jelly fish as a “delicacy”???

21. Has President Obama responded to our Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail campaign following our 9/11/2013 meeting to SIMPLY SEEK ENFORCEMENT of the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (which 164 countries in addition to the European Union have signed) which enforcement would halt other threats to the oceans such as bottom trawling with nets whose rollers can take the nets safely over obstacles as tall as sky-scrapers and which bottom trawling, when compared to bull-dozing rain forests, destroys EACH YEAR 160 times as much ocean bottom as the annual destruction of rain forests???

22. Is the apathy of American and world opinion vis-à-vis ocean conservation reflected in the paucity of “views” of our Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaign vis-à-vis Enforcement of Ocean Conservation in the first section of http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org, contrasted with the average number of “views” of our other 24 Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaigns???

23. Is the failure to make the most compelling argument for combatting greenhouse-gas emissions (foregoing forever finding cures for as much as 50% of human diseases), the only failure of our politicians???

24. In other words, aren’t our pols guilty of accepting campaign contributions from producers of conventional energy (both companies and countries, though in the latter case through intermediaries such as lobbying firms or charitable foundations of the pols since direct contributions are illegal), to ignore the only energy source that (A) will halt the increase in greenhouse-gas emissions 100% (vs. insignificant chipping away à la Kyoto, Paris, etc.), (B) will halt the increase in greenhouse-gas emissions immediately, and (C) will, because it is so much cheaper than any other energy source, make it unnecessary to, inter alia, invade China to force it to stop bringing on stream a new monster-size coal-fired electric-generation plant EVERY WEEK???

25. If you do NOT think so, how do you explain the failure (at least so far), for our THREE Six-Degrees-of-Separation E-mail Campaigns following our 4/9/2014, 9/11/2013 and 10/10/2012 meetings to get our pols to support thorium fission which is so safe that it is INCAPABLE of exploding (the reason why the U.S., following the SUCCESSFUL 18-month continuous-demonstration thorium-fission project conducted by the U.S. National Nuclear Research Laboratory at Oak Ridge TN in the mid-1960’s, turned instead to uranium and plutonium)??? And which is so cheap (virtually all of the “sand” in India’s beaches comprises thorium), that it is breath-taking to think of how many international political problems (poverty, balance of payments, Middle East politics, etc., etc.) would be solved overnight???