I am unhappy with Dixy Lee Ray, but I don't know that she deserves a place in my 'Hall of Traitors.'

Where to put her, then? Well, I would give her credit for bringing some good points to the discussion, but I believe that she "dropped the ball" as a minimum. However, I don't recall that she had some personal or political agenda which the others I have placed on my list of traitors had. I think her books contribute something of value. Still . . . ???

Dixy prompted me to put on my thinking cap and also to get out my calculator. Why not put her in my 'Calculations' section. She illustrates to me, the necessity of working some things out for yourself. Run the numbers. Do your own calculations. Does it make sense? Don't take anyone's word for it. If you can't crunch the numbers backwards and forwards, then something is wrong. You can do it.

Dixy's assertions just begged me to do it myself.

One of Dixy's arguments for why we didn't need to worry about the carbon dioxide we were making was that nature made so much more in comparison.

I consider this her great disservice for two reasons: (1). It helped keep the focus on atmospheric levels, (watch this hand), while the real problem was being created indoors. The Department of Energy was partially responsible for the push to seal buildings, to "weatherize." I don't recall Dixy ever discussing the toxicity of CO₂, and she was once the head of the Department of Energy. (2). Dixy casually omitted one significant fact - - - that is, what nature makes, nature uses, out where nature is. We also have to depend upon nature to use the CO₂ which we produce. Thus, we are faced with "The Delivery Problem," how to get the carbon dioxide out of our neighborhoods and communities and out to the trees and oceans (and quickly). Nature doesn't have this difficulty. Did Dixy point this out? I don't think so. She allowed the argument to remain focused and stuck on trees.

One of the examples she used to show how much that nature made was the eruption of Mount St. Helens. Some 910,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide were produced by the volcano in the remaining seven months of of 1980 after the eruption (Trashing the Planet, HarperCollins, 1990, Page 37). Now that is a lot of CO₂, right? It would seem so, especially if we take her word for it. But, think about it for awhile.

A "volcano equivalent" I will define as the amount of dioxide St. Helens made during these first months. Now, how does this compare to anything we can get our arms around and understand? How does this compare, for example, to the amount of man-made CO₂ just in the Puget Sound region of Washington State each year?

Of course, there are volcanoes that make more, and there are many other volcanoes. And, what the volcanoes make together is a small part of the total. But, Dixy was using the example to show how much nature makes.

There is something else troubling about the Mount St. Helens example, or any volcano, perhaps. In the case of Mount St. Helens the carbon dioxide was being forcefully and violently ejected upwards from the opening that was already about two miles high. "Gases and particulate matter were propelled 80,000 feet, approximately 15 miles into the stratosphere and deposited above the ozone layer" (Page 37). This was from the eruption, and such force was not always present, still, this meant the dispersal was already considerable from the beginning. Also, the location was a very sparsely populated area. It was not our backyard or the community in which we are trying to live and breathe.

In Puget Sound, the "equivalents" are at ground level, and the sources are not spewing the dioxide towards the atmosphere with any great force. The Puget Sound Basin is almost a bowl, and carbon dioxide initially tends to go down, before Brownian motion, wind, and thermal action take hold and disperse it. This goes on at ground level, not two miles up, year after year after year, not for just the few months before the volcano goes dormant again.

The issue was and always will be local, not global. Do you know why? Dixy understood this:

"If we are really interested (as we should be) in reducing atmospheric CO₂, we should be vigorously pursuing reforestation and the planting of trees and shrubs, including in urban areas, where the local impacts on the atmosphere are the greatest." (Page 36)

She understood the local problem, yet she didn't jump on it. She could have said, "where local impacts on our local breathing air are greatest." She did not. She chose to go to "the atmosphere."

As further evidence that she grasped the 'local problem:

On the other hand, radon has become a national health problem because of our well meant but stupid insistence on sealing up our homes and buildings to conserve energy, without considering the possible ill effects." (Page 4)

Yet Dixy helped focus all the attention on what's "out there," and what we are being inundated with locally, especially indoors, is being ignored - - - no, it is being lied about and covered up! Our current Secretary of Energy, Bill Richardson, and probably every Secretary since Dixy have continued pushing for sealed buildings. Why?

Is the amount of carbon dioxide being produced in Puget Sound, or anywhere a problem? Yes, I believe so, locally. It is too concentrated at the source. In heavy traffic, for example. The real problem is indoors, but if the outdoor local level is increased, that means that the "fresh air" that is brought inside is not that fresh. This raises the lower limit, the baseline, of the best indoor levels that we can attain. It is the long-term effects upon us of elevated levels that is the real threat.

The trees can take care of themselves quite well. We are not trees. Dixy talked about the former, not the latter. Why?

She was a proponent of nuclear energy and a Democrat. I don't hold that against her. She was not a Socialist, that I am aware of. She was not a person who hated this country and would give the secrets in her care away to foreigners, was she? And, yet, she should not get off lightly. How do I know?

I've done the numbers.