A Short Politically Incorrect Climate Conversation

By Larry Bell - I recently sat next to a woman on a flight from Houston which began with pleasantries regarding the purposes of our trip. When asked whether mine was for business or pleasure, I said that it combined a bit of both. I explained that I was on my way to do a media interview. --That led her to ask what it was that I do, to which I answered that I’m in the habit of writing quite a lot about topics that vary considerably, but frequently address stuff about climate and energy . . . often many politically incorrect aspects. --She asked, “You aren’t like that guy in Ohio that doesn’t believe in climate change, are you?”

Ready more at Newsman...
Hat tip: John H. Detweiler - "Mr. Bell has a good perspective on climate change." Read More......

The Party of Scientism, Not Science: The gruesome history of left-wing scientific fakery

In a commencement speech at Rutgers, President Obama took an indirect shot at Donald Trump and the Republicans: "Facts, evidence, reason, logic, an understanding of science: These are good things. These are qualities you want in people making policy . . . We traditionally have valued those things, but if you’re listening to today’s political debate, you might wonder where this strain of anti-intellectualism came from."
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Relief of Poverty: Four Centuries of Futility

More than 400 years ago, the British adopted the Poor Law system, under which local communities were made responsible for the relief of poverty. For the next four centuries the Poor Laws were amended again and again, as the following argument went to and fro: Was the system providing necessary relief or was it in various ways interfering with the natural workings of the labor market by subsidizing idleness and encouraging indolence.
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Do Liberals Know The History Of Their Own Ideas?

Given liberal-progressive movement’s obsession with youth and the minds of the young and its disdain for tradition, it should not surprise us that American progressives often treat history as an afterthought – a topic to be consulted only when one needs usable examples to advance a particular point for the duration of a particular argument. Remarks by Justice Scalia over the weekend offer just one further neat example of this dynamic.
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Bill Whittle: How to Stop the Civilizational Collapse

Bill Whittle, a warrior for conservatism, explains how the tide can be turned at the Freedom Center's Restoration Weekend (Videos). --(Snip)-- There is no question that the wheels are coming off of Western civilization. And the problem is that the wheels have come off of every civilization, and they've come off of every civilization in exactly the same way throughout history, starting with the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans. Same pattern every time, every time we see it. And I didn't understand it until very recently. --But just to make the case...

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Useful Idiot Cruise Control: Subverting the West

"It's a commie plot."
That phrase, common among kids in the '50s and '60s, has fallen from favor. But what's the likelihood that the non-stop succession of contrived or dubious threats which have assaulted American society and sensibility for decades, all having the effect of weakening the West, are in large part an orchestrated effort by those long-time enemies?
With no need to invoke conspiracy theories, reflect on some history:


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THE ‘REFUGEE CRISIS’: MUSLIM HISTORY VS. WESTERN FANTASY

One of the primary reasons Islamic and Western nations are “worlds apart” is because the way they understand the world is worlds apart.  Whereas Muslims see the world through the lens of history, the West has jettisoned or rewritten history to suit its ideologies.   This dichotomy of Muslim and Western thinking is evident everywhere.  When the Islamic State declared that it will “conquer Rome” and “break its crosses,” few in the West realized that those are the verbatim words and goals of Islam’s founder and his companions as recorded in Muslim sources—words and goals that prompted over a thousand years of jihad on Europe.


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Kim Davis and the Roots of Protestant Resistance to Civil Authority

Before a judge today ordered her release, Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee announced their plans to meet with Kentucky clerk Kim Davis whose refusal to worship at the First Church of Justice Kennedy and sign her name to same-sex marriage licenses landed her in jail over the Labor Day weekend. Had her stand happened a few short centuries ago, Huckabee and Cruz would likely have been joined by a few notable figures from Christian history — men like Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Knox — the men who first put the “protest” in “Protestant.”


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Democrat Congressman Echoes Munich: Iran Deal Will Bring ‘Peace In Our Time’

Someone needs to buy Patrick Murphy a history book.
The Democratic congressman from Florida, who is running for Senate in 2016, came out in support of the Iran deal Monday, unironically declaring the agreement between the world powers and Iran would bring “peace in our time.”
“I believe deeply in the unbreakable bond between the United States and Israel,” Murphy said in a statement. “This debate has proven to me that America and Israel are fortunate to have so many passionate, diverse voices who all want the same things: a nuclear-free Iran, a secure Israel, and peace in our time. In the interest of all three, I will be supporting this deal and voting against a Resolution of Disapproval in September.”


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The battle to erase history moves to New Orleans

HOT AIR - Did you really think they were going to stop with the Confederate Battle Flag? --Forget flags, kids. Now we’re going to tear down statues. And we’re not talking about statues which popped up during the civil rights movement in the sixties here… these are more than a century old. There are four statues at the St. Charles Avenue circle in New Orleans which are now going to be torn down if activists have their way. (I was stationed there in the early 70s and have been by the circle many times. It’s a beautiful display.) But Bobby Jindal is trying to figure out if there’s a way to stop it. Read More......

Democrats drop Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson from dinner name

Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson are history in Connecticut.
Under pressure from the NAACP, the state Democratic Party will scrub the names of the two presidents from its annual fundraising dinner because of their ties to slavery.
Party leaders voted unanimously Wednesday night in Hartford to rename the Jefferson Jackson Bailey dinner in the aftermath of last month’s fatal shooting of nine worshipers at the historic black church in Charleston, S.C. The decision is believed to be unprecedented and could prompt Democrats in other states with similarly-named events to follow suit.


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Did You Know the First Legal Slave Owner in America Was a Black Man?

Here’s something you won’t read about in the US history books. The first legal slave owner in America was black and he owned white slaves.
Anthony Johnson (BC 1600 – 1670) was an Angolan who achieved freedom in the early 17th century Colony of Virginia.
Johnson was captured in his native Angola by an enemy tribe and sold to Arab (Muslim) slave traders. He was eventually sold as an indentured servant to a merchant working for the Virginia Company.


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Five IMPORTANT Facts You Did Not Know About This Flag

The confusion caused by the similarity in the flags of the Union and the Confederacy was of great concern to Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard after the first Battle of Manassas. He suggested that the Confederate national flag be changed to something completely different, in order to avoid confusion in battles in the future. However, this idea was rejected by the Confederate government. Beauregard then suggested that there should be two flags. One, the National flag, and the second one being a battle flag, with the battle flag being completely different from the United States flag.
This is not the National Flag of the Confederacy. It is a battle flag. Three national flags were tried before the final design was settled on:


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As a Jew, You Have to Take Sides

I grew up Jewish.  When I was growing up, being Jewish meant you supported Israel.  I lived through the 1967 war (I was a toddler), the 1973 war (I was in third grade), and the “troubles” since then.  Israel always seemed invincible.  As I got older, things became more complicated.  Today I read about Jews of my generation who question their loyalty to Israel, who, in fact, disclaim Israel as their birthright, as if it were something that could be disclaimed.  Certainly, the images of dead Palestinian children can make anyone with a shred of human decency’s heart break.  I sympathize with those Jews who choose to remain “neutral” in the current difficulties.

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1000 years of European border changes

See the border changes that have occurred over the last thousand years of European history (3+ minute video) at YouTube (updated link).
(Hat tip: John H. Detweiler)
Note: In the comments section at there are challenges to the accuracy of this map, but for sure, the European continent has not been static. Keep an eye on Ukraine and the Crimean area. Read More......

History: Why is healthcare tied to the workplace?

(TIMELINE 2005: Gov. Romney is working on a universal health care plan for Massachusetts. Conservative and Liberal reforms are explored.)

Excerpt: While employers first started experimenting with health coverage during the war [WWII/FDR era], the next decade saw a huge expansion of corporate health benefits. Between 1946 and 1957, the number of US workers receiving health coverage through an employer jumped by a factor of 12. By 1957, firms were covering 12 million workers plus 20 million dependents. The employer-based system was well suited to the America of Dwight D. Eisenhower, a time when healthcare was relatively inexpensive-amounting to less than 5 percent of Gross Domestic Product, as opposed to nearly 15 percent today [2005]-and when many Americans spent their entire working lives toiling for one company.

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IMPRIMIS: Football and the American Character

By John J. Miller
Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.

When we talk about football, we usually talk about our favorite teams and the games they play. The biggest ongoing story in the sport right now, however, is something else entirely. It’s not about the Bears vs. the Packers or Michigan vs. Ohio State, but rather the controversy over concussions and the long-term health effects of head injuries.

On August 29, 2013, the National Football League agreed to pay $765 million to settle a lawsuit involving more than 4,500 players and their families, who had claimed that the league covered up data on the harmful effects of concussions. Although medical research into football and long-term effects of head injuries is hardly conclusive, some data suggest a connection. A number of legal experts believe the NFL, which will generate about $10 billion in revenue this year, dodged an even bigger payout.

Football, of course, is much bigger than the NFL and its players, whose average yearly salary is nearly $2 million. Football’s ranks include about 50,000 men who play in college and four million boys who play for schools or in youth leagues whose pockets aren’t nearly so deep. A Colorado jury recently awarded $11.5 million to a boy who suffered a paralyzing injury at his high school football practice in 2008. How long will it be before school districts begin to think football isn’t worth the cost?

Earlier this year, President Obama waded into the debate. “If I had a son, I’d have to think long and hard before I let him play football,” he said. He also called for football “to reduce some of the violence.” Others have called for a more dramatic solution: Malcolm Gladwell, the bestselling author of The Tipping Point and other books, thinks football should go the way of dogfighting. He would like to see America’s favorite sport run out of polite society.

(This is paragraph 5) So football’s future is uncertain. But the past may offer important lessons. After all, football’s problems today are nothing compared to what they were about a century ago: In 1905, 18 people died playing the sport. Football became embroiled in a long-running dispute over violence and safety—and it was almost banned through the efforts of Progressive-era prohibitionists. Had these enemies of football gotten their way, they might have erased one of America’s great pastimes from our culture. But they lost—and it took the efforts of Theodore Roosevelt to thwart them.

On November 18, 1876, Theodore Roosevelt, a freshman at Harvard who had just turned 18, attended his first football game. Destined for great things, he was enthusiastic about athletics in general and eager to see the new sport of football in particular. So here he was at the second game ever played between Harvard and its great rival Yale.

As Roosevelt shivered in the cold and windy fall weather, he watched a game that was quite different from the sport we know today. There were no quarterbacks or wide receivers, no first downs or forward passes. Before play began, the teams met to discuss rules. What number of men would play? What would count for a score? How long would the game last? They were like school kids today who have to set up boundaries, choose between a game of touch or tackle, and decide how to count blitzes.

Harvard’s veterans agreed to a couple of suggestions proposed by Yale. The first would carry a lasting legacy: Rather than playing with 15 men to a side, as was the current custom, the teams would play with eleven men. So this was the first football game to feature eleven players on the field per team.

The second suggestion would not shape the sport’s future, but it would affect the game that afternoon: Touchdowns would not count for points. Only goals—balls sailed over a rope tied between two poles—kicked after touchdowns or kicked from the field during play would contribute to the score.

In the first half, Harvard scored a touchdown but missed the kick. By the rules of the day, this meant that Harvard earned no points. At halftime, the game was a scoreless tie.

After the break, Yale pushed into Harvard territory and a lanky freshman named Walter Camp tried to shovel the ball to a teammate. It was a poor lateral pass that hit the ground and bounced upward, taking one of those funny hops that can befuddle even skilled players. In a split second, Oliver Thompson decided to take a chance on a kick from about 35 yards away and at a wide angle. The ball soared into the air, over the rope and through the uprights, giving Yale a lead of 1-0. No more points were scored that afternoon.

In a letter to his mother the next day, Roosevelt gave voice to the frustration that so often accompanies defeat in sports. “I am sorry to say we were beaten,” he wrote, “principally because our opponents played very foul.”

More about Teddy Roosevelt and what he did for football in a moment. But first, let me discuss briefly why football matters.

Love for a college football team, whether it’s the Texas Longhorns or the Hillsdale Chargers, is almost tribal. In some cases the affiliation is practically inherited, in others chosen. Whatever the origin, football has the power to form lifelong loyalties and passions and has supplanted baseball as America’s favorite pastime. Yet it almost died 100 years ago. Over the course of an ordinary football season in those days, a dozen or more people would die playing it, and many more suffered serious injuries. A lot of the casualties were kids in sandlot games, but big-time college teams also paid a price.

Football isn’t a contact sport—it’s a collision sport that has always prized size, strength, and power. This was especially true in its early years, when even the era of leatherheads lay in the future: Nobody wore helmets, facemasks, or shoulder pads. During the frequent pileups, hidden from the view of referees, players would wrestle for advantage by throwing punches and jabbing elbows. The most unsporting participants would even try to gouge their opponents’ eyes.

The deaths were the worst. They were not freak accidents as much as the inevitable toll of a violent game. And they horrified a group of activists who crusaded against football itself—wanting not merely to remove violence from the sport, but to ban the sport altogether. At the dawn of the Progressive era, the social and political movement to prohibit football became a major cause.

The New York Evening Post attacked the sport, as did The Nation, an influential magazine of news and opinion. The latter worried that colleges were becoming “huge training grounds for young gladiators, around whom as many spectators roar as roared in the [Roman] amphitheatre.” The New York Times bemoaned football’s tendency toward “mayhem and homicide.” Two weeks later, the Times ran a new editorial entitled “Two Curable Evils.” The first evil it addressed was lynching. The second was football.

The main figure in this movement to ban football was Charles W. Eliot, the president of Harvard and probably the single most important person in the history of higher education in the United States. Indeed, Eliot hated team sports in general because competition motivated players to conduct themselves in ways he considered unbecoming of gentlemen. If baseball and football were honorable pastimes, he reasoned, why did they require umpires and referees? “A game that needs to be watched is not fit for genuine sportsmen,” he once said. For Eliot, a pitcher who threw a curve ball was engaging in an act of treachery. But football distressed him even more. Most of all, he despised its violence. Time and again, he condemned the game as “evil.”

One of Eliot’s main adversaries in the battle over football was Walter Camp, one of the players in the game Teddy Roosevelt watched in 1876. A decent player, Camp made his real mark on football as a coach and a rules-maker. Indeed, he is the closest thing there is to football’s founding father.

In the rivalry between Eliot and Camp, we see one of the ongoing controversies in American politics at its outset—the conflict between regulators bent on the dream of a world without risk, and those who resist such an agenda in the name of freedom and responsibility. Eliot and other Progressives identified a genuine problem with football, but their solution was radical. They wanted to regulate football out of existence because they believed that its participants were not capable of making their own judgments in terms of costs and benefits. In their higher wisdom, these elites would ban the sport for all.

Into this struggle stepped Theodore Roosevelt. As a boy, he had suffered from chronic asthma to the point that relatives wondered if he would survive childhood. His mother and father tried everything to improve his health, even resorting to quack cures such as having him smoke cigars. Ultimately they concluded that he simply would have to overcome the disease. They encouraged him to go to a gym, and he worked out daily. The asthma would stay with Roosevelt for years, but by the time he was an adult, it was largely gone. For Roosevelt, the lesson was that a commitment to physical fitness could take a scrawny boy and turn him into a vigorous young man.

This experience was deeply connected to Roosevelt’s love of football. He remained a fan as he graduated from Harvard, entered politics, ranched out west, and became an increasingly visible public figure.

In 1895, shortly before he became president of the New York City police commission, he wrote a letter to Walter Camp that read as follows:

I am very glad to have a chance of expressing to you the obligation which I feel all Americans are under to you for your championship of athletics. The man on the farm and in the workshop here, as in other countries, is apt to get enough physical work; but we were tending steadily in America to produce . . . sedentary classes . . . and from this the athletic spirit has saved us. Of all games I personally like foot ball the best, and I would rather see my boys play it than see them play any other. I have no patience with the people who declaim against it because it necessitates rough play and occasional injuries. The rough play, if confined within manly and honorable limits, is an advantage. It is a good thing to have the personal contact about which the New York Evening Post snarls so much, and no fellow is worth his salt if he minds an occasional bruise or cut. Being near-sighted I was not able to play foot ball in college, and I never cared for rowing or base ball, so that I did all my work in boxing and wrestling. They are both good exercises, but they are not up to foot ball . . . .

I am utterly disgusted with the attitude of President Eliot and the Harvard faculty about foot ball . . . .

I do not give a snap for a good man who can’t fight and hold his own in the world. A citizen has got to be decent of course. That is the first requisite; but the second, and just as important, is that he shall be efficient, and he can’t be efficient unless he is manly. Nothing has impressed me more in meeting college graduates during the fifteen years I have been out of college than the fact that on the average the men who have counted most have been those who had sound bodies.

As this letter indicates, Roosevelt saw football as more than a diversion. He saw it as a positive social good. When he was recruiting the Rough Riders in 1898, he went out of his way to select men who had played football. The Duke of Wellington reportedly once said, “The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.” Roosevelt never said anything similar about football fields and the Battle of San Juan Hill, but when he emerged from the Spanish-American War as a national hero—and as someone talked about as being of presidential timber—he knew how much he owed not just to the Rough Riders, but to the culture of manliness and risk-taking that had shaped them.

Like Roosevelt, our society values sports, though we don’t always think about why—or why we should. My kids have played football, baseball, hockey, soccer, and lacrosse. As a family, we’re fairly sports-oriented. It has forced me to think about a question that a lot of parents probably ask at one time or another: Why do we want our kids to participate in athletics?

Many parents will point to the obvious fact that sports are good for health and fitness. They’ll also discuss the intangible benefits in terms of character building—sports teach kids to get up after falling down, to play through pain, to deal with failure, to work with teammates, to take direction from coaches, and so on.

It turns out that there really is something to all of this. Empirical research shows that kids who play sports stay in school longer. As adults, they vote more often and earn more money. Explaining why this is true is trickier, but it probably has something to do with developing a competitive instinct and a desire for achievement.

Roosevelt was surely correct in believing that sports influence the character of a nation. Americans are much more likely than Europeans to play sports. We’re also more likely to attribute economic success to hard work, as opposed to luck. It may be that sports are a manifestation—or possibly even a source—of American exceptionalism.

When Roosevelt ascended to the presidency, football remained controversial and Harvard’s Eliot continued his crusade for prohibition. In 1905, Roosevelt was persuaded to act. He invited Walter Camp of Yale to the White House, along with the coaches of Harvard and Princeton. These were the three most important football teams in the country. “Football is on trial,” said Roosevelt. “Because I believe in the game, I want to do all I can to save it.” He encouraged the coaches to eliminate brutality, and they promised that they would.

Whether they meant what they said is another matter. Walter Camp didn’t see anything wrong with the way football was played. Harvard’s coach, however, was a young man named Bill Reid. He took Roosevelt more seriously, because he took the threat to football more seriously. Indeed, within weeks of meeting with Roosevelt, he came to fear that Eliot was on the verge of success in having Harvard drop the sport, which would have encouraged other schools to do the same.

At the end of the 1905 season, therefore, Reid plotted with a group of reform-minded colleges to form an organization that today we know as the NCAA and to approve a set of sweeping rules changes to reduce football’s violence. In committee meetings, Reid outmaneuvered Camp while receiving critical behind-the-scenes support from Roosevelt.

As a result, football experienced an extreme makeover: The yardage necessary for a first down increased from five to ten. Rules-makers also created a neutral zone at the line of scrimmage, limited the number of players who could line up in the backfield, made the personal foul a heavily penalized infraction, and banned the tossing of ballcarriers.

These were important revisions, and each was approved with an eye toward improving the safety of players. Yet the change that would transform the sport the most was the introduction of the forward pass. Up to this point, football was a game of running and kicking, not throwing. There were quarterbacks but not wide receivers. It took a few years to get the rule right—footballs needed to evolve away from their watermelon-like shape and become more aerodynamic, and coaches and players had to figure out how to take advantage of this new offensive tool. But on November 1, 1913, football moved irreversibly into the modern era.

Army was one of the best teams in the country, a national championship contender. It was scheduled to play a game against a little-known Catholic school from the Midwest. The headline in the New York Times that morning read: “Army Wants Big Score.” The little-known Catholic school was Notre Dame. Knute Rockne and his teammates launched football’s first true air war, throwing again and again for receptions and touchdowns. And they won, 35-14. Gushed the New York Times:

"The Westerners flashed the most sensational football that has been seen in the East this year. The Army players were hopelessly confused and chagrined before Notre Dame’s great playing, and their style of old-fashioned close line-smashing play was no match for the spectacular and highly perfected attack of the Indiana collegians."

A West Point cadet named Dwight Eisenhower watched from the sidelines. He was on Army’s team but didn’t play due to injury. “Everything has gone wrong,” he wrote to his girlfriend. “The football team . . . got beaten most gloriously by Notre Dame.”

With that game, football’s long first chapter came to a close. It had reduced the problem of violence, and the game that we enjoy today was born.

The example of Roosevelt shows that a skillful leader can use a light touch to solve a vexing problem. As a general rule, of course, we don’t want politicians interfering with our sports. The only thing that could make the BCS system worse is congressional involvement.

At the same time, our political leaders help to shape our culture and our expectations. They can promise a world without risk, or they can send a different message. As a father myself, I can sympathize with President Obama’s cautious statements about football. At the same time, his comments would have benefited from some context: Gregg Easterbrook, who writes a football column for ESPN, has pointed out that a teen who drives a car for an hour has about a one in a million chance of dying—compared to a one in six million chance for a teen who spends an hour practicing football.

Americans are a self-governing people. We can make our own judgments about whether to drive or play football—and when we make these choices, we can make them in recognition of the fact that although sports can be dangerous, they’re also good for us. They not only make us distinctively American, they make us better Americans.

JOHN J. MILLER is director of the Herbert H. Dow II Program in American Journalism at Hillsdale College and national correspondent for National Review. A graduate of the University of Michigan, where he served as editor of the Michigan Review, he has also worked on the staff of The New Republic. A contributing editor of Philanthropy magazine, he writes regularly for newspapers and journals including the Detroit News, the Wall Street Journal, and National Review. He is the author of several books, including The First Assassin, a novel set during the Civil War, and most recently The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football. The article above is adapted from a luncheon speech delivered at Hillsdale College on September 9, 2013. Read More......

Republicans passed the first Civil Rights Act ever, in 1866

Grand Old Partisan, 8/9/2013, by Michael Zak - On this day one hundred and forty-seven years ago, the Republican-controlled 39th Congress enacted the 1866 Civil Rights Act. Nearly unanimously, Republican Representatives and Senators voted to override a veto by the Democrat president, Andrew Johnson. This was the first time Congress overrode a presidential veto of a significant bill. ✧ Senator Lyman Trumbull (R-IL) wrote the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which conferred U.S. citizenship on former slaves and other African-Americans. The law granted African-Americans "full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens." Republicans thereby accorded African-Americans the right to own property, engage in business, sign contracts and file lawsuits. ✧ Also, the 1866 Civil Rights Act contradicted the notorious Dred Scott decision, in which the seven Democrat Justices on the Supreme Court decreed that black people did not have constitutional rights. To prevent Democrats from someday repealing the Act, Republicans later enshrined its provisions as Article I of the 14th Amendment. ✧ Sadly, Democrats defied the 1866 Civil Rights Act and other Republican reforms. Democrat oppression of African-Americans would not be overcome until the 1960's civil rights movement.

Michael Zak is the author of Back to Basics for the Republican Party and blogs as the Grand Old Partisan, celebrating the heritage of the Republican Party. Read More......

Louisiana State Senator's "Why I Am a Republican" video generating buzz

KSLA TV, June 18, 2013 - Opelousas Senator Elbert Guillory made headlines when he switched from the Democratic Party to Republican in late May as he accepted the "Frederick Douglass" award from the @Large Conference, a group dedicated to recruiting black conservatives. Douglass was a 19th-century abolitionist and a hero to black Americans. ✧ On Sunday, he released a video explaining the move and urging others to join him in "abandoning the government plantation and the party of disappointment."

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WUWT: Dr. Vincent Gray on historical carbon dioxide levels

There are two gases in the earth’s atmosphere without which living organisms could not exist. ✧ Oxygen is the most abundant, 21% by volume, but without carbon dioxide, which is currently only about 0.04 percent (400ppm) by volume, both the oxygen itself, and most living organisms on earth could not exist at all. ✧ This happened when the more complex of the two living cells (called “eukaryote”) evolved a process called a “chloroplast” some 3 billion years ago, which utilized a chemical called chlorophyll to capture energy from the sun and convert carbon dioxide and nitrogen into a range of chemical compounds and structural polymers by photosynthesis. These substances provide all the food required by the organisms not endowed with a chloroplast organelle in their cells. ✧ This process also produced all of the oxygen in the atmosphere. ✧ The relative proportions of carbon dioxide and oxygen have varied very widely over the geological ages.

Read More (with charts): Watts Up With That?

I'm guessing they don't teach this stuff in school. Shameful, if not. --bc Read More......