In this blog post we’ll find that answers are often elusive. Just as you sneak up on understanding, you find you have more questions. To quote the old computer software adage “this is a feature—not a bug.”

Evaluating the depth of our understanding requires us to ask questions—or others to ask questions of us. How else could we possibly accomplish evaluation? We have to live with the explanations that serve as the deep inner workings of our answers. Given the brain’s abhorrence of cognitive dissonance, we must seek harmony and peace with the implications and consequences of our answers.

Here’s an approximate transcript of the podcast Questioning Our Conclusions:

In the previous two podcasts we’ve been wrestling with this question: Why is it pollution when we burn fossilized organisms and release CO2 and yet living organisms which constantly release CO2 are not a problem?

We generated this question in the core of thinking four weeks ago through a consideration of point-of-view and motivation. Two weeks ago, we moved this question into the working layer of thinking and used it to ask additional questions about assumptions, facts, and relevant concepts. Today we’re going to try to answer the question by logically marshaling concepts and evidence. I hope you’ll join me for the final installment of this season.

Pretty much every environmentalist who tries to address the CO2 contribution of humans and life forms in general comes to the same conclusion. Here’s what the environmental activist organization, The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) says:

“Does the collective exhalation of carbon dioxide from all those people contribute significantly to global warming?

No. Human beings do exhale almost three billion tons of carbon dioxide annually, but the carbon we exhale is the same carbon that was “inhaled” from the atmosphere by the plants we consume.”

This is a simplistic answer, but one that is basically accurate if we paint with broad brush strokes. I suggest you listen to the previous podcast where I wrestled with this issue in more detail. Broadly speaking, the NRDC answer simply affirms the concept of a carbon cycle. CO2 is converted by plants and other autotrophs into organic compounds that are eventually broken back down to CO2 because they serve as food for consumers and decomposers. CO2 capture and eventual release is the essence of carbon cycling.

Naturally occurring organic compounds are manufactured by the metabolism of 30 million or more different kinds of living organisms on the planet. You may notice organic, and organism contain the same root. Indeed until 1828 when Frederich Wohler synthesized the simple organic compound urea from inorganic chemicals, scientists in general agreed that it takes an organism to produce an organic compound.

This means that fossil fuels composed as they are of  organic compounds that were in the bodies of prehistoric organisms are also part of the carbon cycle. They were produced by natural metabolic processes through food chains that started with CO2 just like today’s life forms. These organic molecules have been locked deep in the earth in a form that makes them less likely to be targeted for degradation by bacteria and other decomposers. They are still intrinsically biodegradable to CO2. Of course, they can also be burned as fuels resulting in the release of CO2 (and generally other gases since combustion isn’t as efficient as cellular respiration).

There is no debate about where the carbon locked in fossil fuels came from. The debate is whether we should remove that carbon from sequestration and utilize the energy it contains. Environmentalists typically call us to “leave it in the ground.” Many people feel that this is wishful thinking given our industrial and economic realities. Modern civilization has been powered by fossil fuels since the industrial revolution began around 1760.

Thinking in terms of an admittedly imperfect analogy may be helpful. Let’s liken fossil fuel deposits to a nest egg you’ve been building for decades in anticipation of retirement. Here’s the question to move our thinking forward: When would it be wise to liquidate the nest egg? The answer, of course, is to leave it alone if your current economic needs can be met without touching it. In terms of the analogy that means we should leave fossil fuels alone provided we have other energy sources that are adequate. However, our current energy situation is more like children who inherit a nest egg that was created generations ago. Our parents and now us are used to tapping the inheritance for our living expenses. If we perceive the nest egg is big, we’ll have little motivation to find alternative income streams.

My dissertation research in the 1970’s on generating biofuels from cellulose was motivated by scarcity. America had gas rationing because of the Arab oil embargo from 1973-1974 and the effects of that embargo persisted into the early 80’s. I developed a model system using a consortium of bacteria that degraded cellulose (the most abundant organic molecule on earth) and released methane and hydrogen gases. It could have been commercialized, but oil was cheaper than the cost of developing alternatives—sound familiar?

At this point we can ask another question: Is spending the nest egg a moral question or a question of wisdom? Environmentalists twist themselves into pretzels trying to make it a moral question with existential implications. I think it is clearly a matter of wisdom. Remember that fossil fuels are the remnants of living organisms which used their metabolism to convert CO2 into organic molecules. The existence of fossil fuels is directly due to the carbon cycle. There is nothing immoral or sketchy about the origin of these organic compounds (unlike some stashes of money in nest eggs). Further, there is nothing inherently immoral about spending the fossil fuel inheritance and releasing CO2. It may be unwise, but it is not immoral.

Perhaps you’ve noticed a shift in the kinds of questions I’m asking. Part of the process of answering big questions involves linking a few powerful concepts and pushing them for implications. Here in the output layer a good answer is one where we’re comfortable with the implications and the long-term consequences of our explanation. Inevitably that means we evaluate our thinking through thought experiments that use concepts and principles. If I believe I understand these ideas and can explain how to answer the question, then I must also accept the implications and consequences of my answer. If not, then it’s back to the drawing board.

Let me give you an example of the inconsistency of the environmental community that shows deep internal schizophrenia. Let’s introduce a question to guide our thinking: Since all naturally occurring organic compounds are biodegradable, should we insist that all synthetic compounds also need to be biodegradable?

Organic chemistry has come a long way since the synthesis of urea in 1828. Perhaps you remember the old TV slogan “plastics make it possible.” It’s hard to imagine modern life without plastics. Plastics are organic polymers and are made synthetically. They are very durable. News stories abound of floating islands   of plastic in distant oceans and microplastics in our bloodstreams. Plastics persist, environmentalists say, because they are non-biodegradable. This means that the carbon they contain is sequestered, removed from the carbon cycle. Non-biodegradable means they won’t ever contribute to CO2 emissions. So, this is a good thing…right?

I think you can feel the tension already. Synthetics should be biodegradable; they should participate in the turns of the carbon cycle. If the organic carbon in synthetics is degraded, eventually it will be released as CO2 and that’s bad —or is it?

Scientists have long maintained that plastics can’t be broken down and that has led environmentalists to decry plastic in all forms including bagging groceries and even plastic drinking straws. It turns out that at least some plastics are biodegradable. A PhD student at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research recently found “The bacterium Rhodococcus ruber eats and actually digests plastic. . . . into CO2 and other harmless substances. . . . It is . . . another part of the answer to the question of where all the 'missing plastic' in the oceans has gone."

There are two interesting admissions here. There is ‘missing plastic’ in the ocean. It’s unaccounted for. In the graduate student’s words later in the same article:

“If you try to trace all our waste, a lot of plastic is lost. Digestion by bacteria could possibly provide part of the explanation."  

“A lot of plastic is lost”, and we don’t know where it has gone. That’s the scientific reality.

The second reality is that at least one bacterial species (and probably others) can degrade the organic plastic into CO2 causing it to re-enter the carbon cycle. So, hooray—right?

Not so fast says a news article on this same research published in the UK Telegraph:

“Researchers said it could technically be possible to use the bacteria to clean up more plastic in the ocean, but warned it would require growing “stupendous amounts”.

Such a scheme could also end up producing alarming amounts of carbon dioxide, which would be damaging for the planet.”

There you have it. We don’t want CO2 release even if it means non-biodegradable plastic, but we don’t want plastic to persist in the environment either. We can’t turn back the clock to a time of innocence before plastics either.

Inconsistencies like these are not merely “gotcha” moments. They are inconsistencies in the logic of the argument. They show that someone doesn’t really understand and therefore they’re not in a position to move forward with a solution.

Another inconvenient truth is the failure of Biosphere 2 as a closed system to achieve anything close to control over CO2 levels. I detailed this in the last podcast. Work with model systems must be successful before we even think about applying those solutions to global problems.

We must resist the tendency to “just do something.” An uninformed action usually leads to unintended consequences. Think kudzu if you live in the southern U.S. History is replete with many examples of unfortunate unforeseen consequences from the actions of scientists who oversold how much they understood.

Remember that we are dealing with a natural carbon cycle. We could profitably ask here, “What are the attributes of natural cycles?” This is a conceptual question. One major characteristic is that cycles are self-balancing.

An example would be in prey/predator relationships. The squirrel population in my yard is kept in balance despite an abundance of acorns by a very small population of owls and hawks. More squirrels attract more predators. Fewer squirrels and some predators look elsewhere for prey. So let me suggest that in a self-balancing carbon cycle, an increase in CO2 release through respiration or burning should eventually result in greater CO2 capture. This doesn’t just mean planting more trees as some simplistically suggest.

Green plants of all types fix CO2 meaning that they convert it into organic carbon that is no longer a gas. Single-celled aquatic photosynthetic populations create cyclic blooms when conditions are favorable. Perhaps we haven’t deviated enough from the setpoint for CO2 levels? This would be like the furnace cycling on and off in response to a constant thermostat setting. Frankly, I trust the self-balancing character of the cycle more than human intervention at this stage in our ignorance!

I confess that I am also skeptical of the ability to accurately infer CO2 levels in the past. Too many assumptions must be made regarding CO2 measured today in air bubbles taken from ice cores, for example. Even if we grant all the assumptions and buy the environmentalist story line, we must then recognize that our planet has a history of surviving both significantly higher and lower CO2 levels. What is clear is that life has survived and even flourished in conditions that seem to have been markedly different from the present (think tropical forests in Antarctica or the Ice Ages at another point in the earth’s history). Were these shifts due to variations in CO2 levels, a lower luminosity to the sun, or something else entirely? I don’t think science is well positioned to answer this question. The answers inevitably come through the filter of worldview.

In my worldview the earth is a well-regulated system that humans have stewardship over, but not ultimate control of. Global management is God’s business. Wise stewardship is a human responsibility, but even unwise human actions will not overwhelm the global control systems.

Gen. 8:22 assures me that God has everything under control, and nothing can upset His plan for the earth:

Gen. 8:22 in the ESV says “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

I know some of you may still feel unsatisfied with where we are in answering the focus question, which again is:

Why is it pollution when we burn fossilized organisms and release CO2 and yet living organisms which constantly release CO2 are not a problem?

I would concur that we haven’t fully answered the question. A question this big should be approached from many different angles and a short series of podcasts will not suffice.

As a partial summary answer I offer this: All the carbon on earth is part of the carbon cycle, sequestered carbon in fossils as much as carbon in living organisms. We are not obligated to spend (burn) the fossil fuel nest egg. Whether we choose to burn it and for how long is a wisdom issue. Wisdom seeks the best means to the best ends. It considers the implications and consequences of our answers. Asking penetrating questions about how much we really understand before taking new actions is prudent. Evaluating our options periodically and not letting inertia from the choices of previous generations guide us  is also wise.

Questions always lead to further questions including revisiting our answers when we learn more. Considering our journey so far, here’s a question for you to chew on: Since biofuels are inherently renewable, doesn’t it make sense to invest in these as God-given assets that may be better stewardship than using the finite resource of fossil fuels?

For me the answer is an emphatic yes. In asking questions about the array of biofuels, hydrogen makes the most sense to me since it is the most energy dense and its combustion produces water vapor and no carbon compounds. My preference is to use hydrogen in a fuel cell where it generates  electricity. If you want to hear me talk about this, I’ve posted a link to a video where I discuss this option. Go to the blog post at deepanddurable.com where you’ll find a link to the video as well as links to all my sources cited in this podcast.

Thanks for your interest and engagement through this podcast season on the power of questions. If you have questions or comments on anything I’ve said this season or suggestions for future podcasts, please contact me through deepanddurable.com

Noam Chomsky recently wrote about explanation and I want to leave you with his thoughtful analysis:

“Any human-style explanation is not necessarily correct; we are fallible. But this is part of what it means to think: To be right, it must be possible to be wrong. Intelligence consists not only of creative conjectures but also of creative criticism. Human-style thought is based on possible explanations and error correction, a process that gradually limits what possibilities can be rationally considered.”