NASA and a pair of California universities have published the first global satellite maps of the key greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in Earth’s mid-troposphere, an area about five miles above Earth.

[social_buttons] An article posted at NASA.gov says:

A research team led by Moustafa Chahine of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., found the distribution of carbon dioxide in the mid-troposphere is strongly influenced by major surface sources of carbon dioxide and by large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns, such as the jet streams and weather systems in Earth’s mid-latitudes. Patterns of carbon dioxide distribution were also found to differ significantly between the northern hemisphere, with its many land masses, and the southern hemisphere, which is largely covered by ocean.

Now, forgive me if my view is skewed of late by emotion related to all things super-important-turned-ridiculous — extreme polarization over the environment, politics, economics — but I see something like this that NASA has provided, and I feel two quick reactions:

1. Great. More valuable information with which to improve our future.

2. Shit. More valuable information that half of this American society will immediately, mindlessly dismiss as only being part of a hoax, a conspiracy, another wacky idea from those horrible liberal wackos.

That is what everything seems to have spiralled down to for me, since the economy and politicking — and, seemingly, humanity — has found a bottomless pit of hell.

Is it just me? Or are we absurdly divided on everything these days? Are we, as a result, paralyzing ourselves as an American society, and as a global society?

Are we just solidifying our angry oppositions to one another, disregarding sense — and science — to the extreme, all for the sake of….of….what?

I can’t even guess why someone would vow that science is so flat wrong about climate change, especially when those same naysayers — we’ll use Sarah Palin for an example, albeit one completely devoid of credibility — use science (“It’s the weather patterns.”) to dispute NASA’s proof that CO2 emissions have something to do with humans, particularly American humans.

And yes, I realize that the NASA information does not actually point fingers at humans. But if you read the article/press release put out by NASA, it doesn’t take much thought to connect the dots. If CO2 largely originates on surfaces at middle latitudes, such as the U.S. and Europe, it’s not hard to figure out we just might be playing a significant role in that.

Of course, those who want to first identify me — or anyone — as a liberal, are likely to ignore all facts and thought and just go for the jugular. That’s what we do nowadays. That’s what our leaders teach us to do. And we elect those leaders to set our examples and guide our society.

Whatever happened to community, commonality, efforts of all contributing for the good of society? Maybe those washed down the outhouse pit with our collective prosperity, moral priorities, hope, common sense, human decency and general sanity.