Maybe

You say that the CO2 level in the atmosphere is rising exponentially. How do you know that is a fact? I assume that you read it somewhere, and all that proves is that somebody else said it before you did. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it's not true, I'm just saying that you have no direct knowledge of this, you're just repeating what somebody else said. You said that you can't believe everything you read on the internet, but then you go to the internet to check out your facts. Is the printed page any more reliable than the internet, or the television? It all comes from other people.

Of course, some people are more reliable than others, but how do you know which ones? You put your faith in scientists, and I guess I do too, more or less, but most of those guys are getting paid by the government, directly or indirectly. If one of them came up with some data that contradicted what the government wants us to believe, would his funding be cut? I don't know for a fact that it would, but I think it's a pretty likely possibility. This doesn't mean they're all lying through their teeth, but it doesn't mean they are beyond reproach either. All I'm saying is that you should take everything you hear or read with a grain of salt.

I noticed in the email conversation you sent me that the subject of water vapor came up. Funny, but you don't hear much about that in the usual climate change discussions. (They are calling it "climate change" now instead of "global warming". That way, whether the Earth gets hotter or colder, it's still our fault.) I know that atmospheric moisture has a lot to do with weather and climate, but I'm not sure if it's a cause or an effect, maybe a little of both. All that stuff is cyclical in nature anyway. What goes around comes around, sooner or later.

Then there's the volcanoes. I remember, the year that Mt. St. Helens blew its top, there were also a couple of volcanoes that erupted in Asia too. The following summer was kind of cool and cloudy, but we didn't get a lot of rain out of those clouds. This bartender I knew (How's that for a reliable source?) said that a lot of what looked like clouds in the sky that year was really dust and ash from those volcanoes, and it was blocking the sun and making our weather cooler. I had no reason to doubt his word, and it made sense to me. Of course he probably didn't make it up himself, he probably read about it or saw it on TV. Then again, volcanic eruptions must put a lot of carbon into the air too but, if the sunlight is blocked from hitting the ground in the first place, maybe the greenhouse effect never gets a chance to take effect. Somebody should look into that.

Over the last several decades, I have read numerous times that the violent crime rate in the U.S. was generally trending downward. This has been attributed to a number of factors, not the least of which is the aging of the population. It's only recently that I've been hearing about the theory that the increase in concealed carry permits has anything to do with it. If the crime rate was already going down, I don't think it's fair for the gun people to take credit for it. What I would like to see is some numbers that tell us what percentage of violent crime is committed by people with concealed carry permits, and if that percentage has been increasing or decreasing. That would be more relevant. Some body should look into that too.