podpolia

Take this with a grain of salt if you wish (I know I am), but according to Matt Drudge on 09/29/06, Al Gore has decided that “Cigarette smoking is a ‘significant contributor to global warming.’” The only other news outlet that I can find at the time of this writing that is also carrying the story is an editorial in Investor’s Business Daily, so the story is either that nobody is paying attention to Al Gore anymore (one can dream), the media aren’t interested in publicizing it for some reason, or he didn’t actually say it.
Regardless of whether or not he said it, this sounds like a fun argument to take a look at. Hokay. So.*

According to a scientific paper via the National Institutes of Health, South African cigarettes (which for my purposes I am assuming are just like the rest of the world, only made in South Africa) produce between 50 and 85 mg of carbon dioxide (CO₂). We will go with a worst case scenario here and assume that every cigarette produced in the world will produce 85 mg of CO₂.
Worldwide (at least as of 2004) there are 5,530 billion cigarettes produced and consumed per year. The CO₂ production of all of the cigarettes in the world for an entire year would be a total of 470,050,000 kg. Quite a bit, obviously. But how does this amount compare with the amount produced by the combustion of gasoline?
Believe it or not, one gallon of gasoline produces 20.35 pounds of carbon dioxide. You can do the stoichiometry for yourself if you don’t believe the federal government (I believe them, so I didn’t bother calculating it on my own. Also, I’m lazy.) That’s REALLY a lot of carbon dioxide — 9.23 kg per gallon of gasoline.
When one takes into consideration that the United States consumes, on average, 9.2 million barrels of gasoline per day (a barrel is 31 gallons), this means a considerably larger amount of CO₂ is being released into the atmosphere by American gasoline use on a given day.
In fact, the yearly production of CO₂ worldwide by cigarettes is equivalent to the amount produced by American gasoline usage every 4 hours, 16 minutes, and 53 seconds.
Does smoking cigarettes produce a lot of carbon dioxide? Yes. Is the amount statistically significant in the production of carbon dioxide? Not really. Plus, with the amount of carbon dioxide removed from the air by the tobacco plants, the total amount is even lower. I’ll let somebody else industrious calculate how much CO₂ the global tobacco crops remove from the air per year (remember: lazy).
This is not to say that cigarette smoking is good. I think it’s a vile habit, and can’t abide smoke myself. It messes with my lungs. Plus, I hate waiting in line at Sheetz behind people buying cigarettes. “What kind?” the cashier asks. “Two packs of Marlboro menthol Jacks 100,” the smoker says, or some similar string of branded rubbish. The cashier goes back and realizes they’re out of the Marlboro menthol Jacks 100s, but have the Marlboro Jacks 100s and the Marlboro menthol 100s. The smoker then says “You don’t have the Marlboro menthol Jacks 100s?” as though they thought the cashier was joking. The walking chimney then decides which of the two substitutes would be acceptable. The cashier then grabs the two packs, starts ringing them up, and stops again to inform the smoker that there is a ‘buy two get one free’ special on that particular type of little flaming death-sticks, and would they like a third pack for free? The smoker has to think about this one as well (and yes, I have actually heard people refuse free cigarettes). By this time, the people in line behind said smoker are visibly older, and could likely suggest several creative yet inappropriate and anatomically impossible ways for the smoker to smoke their cigarettes now that they have them.
And don’t even get me started on being behind people who are buying lottery tickets.

You’d think that the Senate would be one of the chief contributors to global warming (what with all that hot air). However, it seems there is at least a willingness to question the status quo on the topic. How widespread this is remains to be seen, however.

UPDATE 09/26/06 1.24PM: I also found an interesting little graph here that compares carbon dioxide concentrations in the air with global temperature over the past 600 million years. (See the bottom of the page). It doesn’t look to ME like those two are related the way people seem to be claiming.

UPDATE II 09/28/06 11.31PM: It seems the Senator’s speech has touched a nerve in some quarters — some people are furious that the status quo is being challenged. Kudos to Senator Inhofe for having the guts to stand up and present the opposing view.

Well, this is slightly unnerving. Hopefully the Bush administration has been doing more about this than just hiding it from the public. The Cold War may be over, but we don’t just have to worry about terrorism these days — states such as Iran, North Korea, and China can also be threats, and are likely to be much more dangerous threats than small independent terror groups.

You can tell that the elections are coming up — the Bush team is beginning to move to the offensive. On Sunday, Condoleeza Rice tore into Bill Clinton’s recent defense of his administration’s policy toward terrorism. Monday, Dick Cheney strongly criticized various Democratic figures for their positions on terrorism, national security, and Iraq. He managed to portray Democrats in general (and a number of important national figures in particular) as being inherently weak on matters of vital importance to the country.
This aggressive posture is clearly a support for Republican efforts in the 2006 election. The Democrats have enough weak points (and more importantly, points where they seem to be weak) for the administration to be able to gain some ground with a solid and well-coordinated offensive. Expect various other administration officials (such as Tony Snow) to also crank up the public pressure on the Democrats, while Bush remains more focused on illustrating his own position on the topics where the Democrats are being shown as weak. The plan is likely to be that Bush will be the standard-bearer for the Republican platform (a job which the President is naturally suited for), while his administration carries out the criticism — that way, Bush and his policies look good, and it does not appear that he’s trying to personally attack the Democrats to make them appear so. Negative press can backfire, tarnishing the criticizer as well as the criticized, and the White House seems to be consciously avoiding this.
The timing of this offensive is also pretty good. While a far more aggressive campaign of this sort could be waged, it could also not be sustained until November. This type of higher-level criticism can easily be maintained for the six weeks leading up to the election without looking like a smear job. At the same time, six weeks is a long enough time to actually maneuver public opinion. Opinion (particularly on a broad scale like this) takes a while to influence, but an increased effort like this should be able to make a reasonable difference over the coming weeks.
On the whole, the current White House strategy on the election (which I would presume was dreamed up by Karl Rove) shows a good deal of intentional planning and preparation. It remains to be seen, however, how well this particular battle will be carried out.

Via LGF, we have an interesting video clip of Brian Ross discussing the CIA’s ‘torture’ methods and how well they work.

It’s rare for me to say things like this, but good for you, Chuck Rangel and Nancy Pelosi.
It really is a pity that the coup against Chavez didn’t work out a couple of years ago… one fewer commie jerk in the corridors of power would be a good thing.