Carbon – Earth’s miraculous worker and killer

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Carbon one of the most versatile elements. Novas and supernovas aren’t needed to make it. It only requires big old suns consuming their lighter elements from easiest hydrogen with a single electron and proton to progressively harder and heavier elements up to iron with 26 electrons and protons. All this info is on the periodic table first sketched out by Russia’s Mendeleev. In my lifetime scientists have created short lived elements that were also created in super explosions of the stars but who are so stuffed with electrons and protons that they lost the extras because of radioactive decay the process with releases life killing radiation like that found in atomic and nuclear bombs.

The ninety relatively longer lived elements have many characteristics and isotopes which are often prone to short half lives.

Carbon is one of the superstars. Humans discovered early in its history that it captures energy which can be released to cook food if only heat is applied to start a rapid oxidation process. Start wood on fire and you can cool a slab of bacon or start a forest fire. Leave wood underground long enough with other heavily carbonized fossil of animal and plant life and it becomes coal or oil either of which have even more energy packed in a smaller area. When this carbon has its energy released carbon atoms are released as simply gas molecules and when enough of them accumulate in the air they hold heat energy against the surface of the earth. In dinosaur times the Earth was near its peak warmth which allowed giant lumbering dinosaurs to live without need of insulating fur although feathers served the same purpose and probably evolved in the polar regions. The air is thinner there and the sun’s rays is diffused by glancing off or forging on though more atmosphere while landing on a surface like a shadow when the sun or moon is low to the horizon.

Cutting to the chase. This is only one of the ways understood by scientists for hundreds of years that carbon affects climate. Too back Donald Trump’s scientist uncle never explained this to the real estate con artist his brother was raising…..or was it his sister?

The oils and carbon atoms also found their way into the laboratory where it was discovered what a versatile element carbon was to industry. A little carbon in iron made steel. But of all the innovations nothing the spent energy vessels offered was anything like an huge array of plastics which were first used in large quantities in the post world war 1 years and ramped up in the second world war. Plastic nylons replaced caterpillar derived silk and gave our GI’s a lovely gift to give pretty women who had suffered great privation during the war. In my lifetime the clothes I war that had once all been cotton were replaced from refuse from Oil drilling. And when these plastic cloths were no longer shiny and new we did the same thing to them as we did with biodegradable cotton. We threw them away and in quantities that began filling up the invisible-sphere. That’s an invented word. But long before degrading plastic becomes invisible particles we can see it on barbed wire fences or blowing across streets and alleys or stuck in thorny bushes in the desserts of the world. Once the sun and wind and waves make is smaller it becomes the life that consumes it without being able to digest it. Then it accumulates in the larger predators that eat the tiny critters and as they eat meal after meal it begins to accumulate like poisonous mercury atoms in the flesh of the meat humans eat.

I found this easily enough in a Washington Post story from a week or two back. It brings to mind the breathless excitement of the Post war era about the future of plastics which could be found in popular movies of the Era. In Its a Wonderful Life poor Jimmy Stewarts wanderlust is killed by taking over his Dad’s Savings in Loan. His college buddy who got to wonder started a plastics business in New York as I recall. In the sixties movie The Graduate Dustin Hoffman’s character is given the one word of career advice by the family friend whose wife’s bed he will hop into. “Plastics!” Twenty years ago when there was some fear we were running out of oil underground I recall hearing a woman who was a petroleum expert wringing her hands on NPR telling a reporter it would be horrible if we ran out of plastics which were a wonderful byproduct of Oil production. She failed to anticipate the world described in the recent documentary on plastic waste that I highlighted in my column, “Hacked” a couple weeks back. That movie is “Buy Now” on Netflix.

From there now microscopic plastic bits like tiny saws flow through the blood stream and lodge everywhere the capillaries go right up into our brains and where ever they land they giggle their ragged little edges against cells that never had to evolve to withstand such sawing. The Science you don’t hear on Fox News polluted truth channel explains that our children are taking in these microscopic chainsaws in massive levels with as yet unknown results. Early dementia is one of a number of possible results from such contamination.

Now in addition to holding the sun’s heat in our skies and our oceans which by the way drive hurricanes and possibly mass die-offs and cutting our brains up there is another new problem of the micro plastics on Earth. Plants are taking them in and it is feared reducing the ability of plants to photosynthesize energy for plant growth to the tune of 7 or 12 percent. This will not only affect the human consumption of plants but the consumption of vegetation by all animals on the planet above ground or under the sea.

That was the story I skimmed on the New York Times which isn’t doing its best to hide the bad news as Fox and Friends of Trump.

Now I skim the news and I don’t always read very far but as I read what I think most people who are living in a cult would find worrisome I also saw the weak William Buckley Imitator, George Will, with an annoying headline on his blind man groping the elephant opinion column. [The Washington Post] How the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is like the human appendix

I will at least start it but the headline must spell out the astounding conclusion that news from NPR and PBS is unnecessary as the human appendix is usually considered a useless organ of the body. Useless perhaps but prone to life threatening infection which laid my son low when he was on his own but still fortunately on his parents COBRA Medicare policy which saved him $30,000 worth of medical costs when he was a lowly dish washer.

So I will read Will’s tripe but this is what I think. Today a lot of people with for something like FDR’s fireside chats to comfort them as Donald Trump marches America willy-nilly into the land of America hate. Yes, the public news bends over backward to tell an honest story whereas the Murdochs of Fox tell people bullshit that keeps them listening to Fox which converts ignorance into big earnings.

I know the increasingly addled Republicans would love to promote more ignorance and sleeping sickness and have had their guns trained on these sources of news that began with federal government backing. Prez candidate centenarian Robert Dole made sure when NPR was explaining in the ignorance heavy South to give Bible thumping broadcasters spots that would deny southern racists from hearing NPR’s largely accurate and non partisan news. Now Trump wants to do to follow Dole into the ignorance hole too.

MAYBE THESE 1200 WORDS WILL BE EDITED. IF I WAS DOING THIS FOR A COLUMN IN PRINT I’D NEED FOUR TO SIX HOURS MINIMUM TO CHECK FACTS AND WRITE CLEARER INFO. BUT I HAVE A LOT OF OTHER THINGS TO WRITE TODAY SO IT MIGHT NOT GET DONE.

About the author

Harry is a ferociously good natured eccentric in Duluth Minnesota who detests traitors dressed up as Uncle Sam. You can find somewhat better edited writings of his at the Duluth Reader "contributors." page. The URL is:

https://duluthreader.com/contributors/h/84/284-harry-welty