But none of it is relevant to the fact of global warming. None of it can touch that.
The real question is then how do we be utilitarian, i.e. optimize the outcome for real people. Now, for over next 50-100 years before all the fossil carbon is gone. Then what? The temperature and the sea level will continue to rise until they level out, stabilize, in up to 300 years. 3 degrees and 30 feet. At least. And more. The Antarctic ice sheet will be long gone and the oceans will keep thermally expanding. For thousands of years.
How is it in the self interest of India, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Brazil, Egypt to industrialize and then starve and thirst and burn and drown?
Or are we clever enough monkeys to prevent the latter with a quadrillion dollars’ worth of infrastructure?
Without any energy infrastructure. Without massiveredundant solar, wind, wave, tide energy capture, HVDC transmission, and storage (there’d be no real excess; desalination).
We need that now. For then. For 60 years max for oil. Less for gas. and at least 70 for coal (all that lovely brown coal…). Then what? In a much hotter, much smaller, world.
Obviously, there are needs best met by fossil fuels. But, to remain dependent on them is foolish when the cost and availability run out. Even 20 years ago, I spent a little time in some refugee camps in North Africa, and the families had light at night from solar panels connected to a 12 volt car battery, no candle required for a decent light into the evening hours. Now with LEDs, a simple setup could provide good lighting, and charging of the ever present phones.
Cooking needs more energy, of course, so LP gas is probably going to be around for a while, as is wood where available. But just because the poor may not be able to afford clean energy, does not mean those who can afford it should not try to use renewable resources as much as possible.
Also, I looked up Vijay Jayaraj, and see he has a masters degree, but primarily is a journalist/writer for groups of a certain persuasion, in other words, a shill. I am sure some he writes has some truth, but ignores other truths.
3 Likes
T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
189
Using the same logic, cigarettes don’t cause cancer because banning cigarettes would hurt the tobacco industry.
Do those two BIoLogos people at COP30 have degrees in physical chemistry? IF Jayaraj is a shill, so are these people.
T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
191
Can you point to anything in Jayaraj’s article that refutes the conclusion that increasing carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels is increasing global temperatures?
We need to ALL get real here. Bill needs to stop being a denialist and the rest of us need to work according to the way of the world. Give devils their due. Vijay has a point. Shill or no.
Would love to see analysis of this site
That’s too big an ask.
My gut reaction is that the same essential water for life will drown us as well.
T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
195
This paragraph says a lot:
“Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is known as a greenhouse gas because it is one of several gases that have a warming effect on the atmosphere. However, its warming power is small compared to that of the primary greenhouse gas: water in the form of water vapor and clouds. Having even greater influence over long-term climatic changes are solar cycles and variations in the Earth’s orbit and axial tilt.”
What is ironic is that groups like these will still deny the relatively small amount of greenhouse gas warming contributed by CO2. They will also deny the consequences of small amounts of warming.
Without the greenhouse effect, the Earth’s average surface temperature would be as cold as −18 °C (−0.4 °F).[1][2] This is of course much less than the 20th century average of about 14 °C (57 °F).[3][4] In addition to naturally present greenhouse gases, burning of fossil fuels has increased amounts of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere.[5][6] As a result, global warming of about 1.2 °C (2.2 °F) has occurred since the Industrial Revolution,[7] with the global average surface temperature increasing at a rate of 0.18 °C (0.32 °F) per decade since 1981.[8]
The overall greenhouse effect is about 60F, most of that being water. The amount of added warming from anthropogenic CO2 is 2F, so a pretty small increase at first blush. But what impact will that warming have? We are already seeing those consequences across the globe.
And the talk about CO2 as plant food . . . talk about your red herrings. As you say, it is like arguing floods don’t kill people because plants need water.
One reason I wanted to have this thread visible again was to point to @jstump’s COP30 diary:
One of the great values of having Jim and Colin at COP30 is that people from the countries most affected by Global Warming come to this and represent themselves and their citizens’ interests. In spite of Jim’s and Colin’s non-scientific credentials, they are educating theselves on the issues first hand.
Yes, it does – indirectly. Climate change is causing Arctic permafrost to melt, which is resulting in methane emissions. See Arctic methane emissions - Wikipedia. I know, you don’t think that burning fossil fuels is contributing to climate change. But your climate change denial arguments have been dealt with by mainstream climate science.
I was confused by that at first as well, but a lot of methane is released into the atmosphere in oil and gas production, so indirectly, through its production, burning fossil fuels does contribute to methane release.
Yes it does. Ah! See Andy7 3 up. AND, God knows what will happen when the sea bed warms: methane clathrate.
And all of us that have done chemistry to senior high and above, which includes nearly all non- and anti-denialists here (even I’ve done 1st year undergraduate) know that CO2 → CH4 is achievable by the Sabatier reaction (CO2 + 4H2 - Ni/Ru @ 350 C & 3 MPa → CH4 + 2H20).
Just stop the denial Bill, it’s irrelevant. De facto you already have by defending anthropogenic CO2 driven global warming. How is that? You thought that denial could work here? How? That’s rhetorical Bill. Good to have you on board.
We’re ALL on the same side here.
You just need to join up the dots. What do we do when ALL the fossil carbon is gone in a century? Along with Antarctica? And all coastlines below +10m? Etc, etc, etc, etc. You know know, like cat 5 hurricanes being the norm. All boreal, taiga and temperate forests and tundra and other peat bogs burnt, including all their methane. If we haven’t prepared for it with massively redundant sustainable energy? So the Earth can heal over a thousand years or three? So we can start worrying about the next ice age in 15,000 years?
As an aside, my daughter lives near a big liquified natural gas plant. At times they have a giant flare to burn off escaped natural gas when filling the tankers (many of which go to Europe, by the way) which at night lights up the sky, and they refer to as the Eye of Sauron. Evidently it is too hard to recapture the gas that boils off and leaks in production, so they burn off what they can.
The big tower like structures on the right of the pic are where they are building an offshore oil rig, and those are the jack-up legs under construction.
20+ years ago we were walking on the south bank of the Thames by the awesome tidal barrier, when a very close tanker decanting station did the same. My son exclaimed ‘Blade Runner!’. All we needed was Vangelis.
Where is the correlation between the rise in temperature since the little ice age and the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide? The impression is often given that the rise in carbon dioxide is linear, but, it is actually much stronger after WWII. The steep part of the carbon dioxide rise correlates with the end of colonialism when newly independent states shifted from merely supplying labor and raw materials to their governors, chose to initiate their own industries and the first need was electricity. Hence construction of coal-fired power plants.
This set of data leads to a lot denial…denial that there was a medieval warm period where Norse were farming in Greenland and growing grapes in Vineland. Below are those data straight from the published paper with 2-sigma uncertainties.
I am guessing that the Alarm Complex will switch to demonizing methane as the connection to carbon dioxide wanes. One note states that methane from manure produced by agriculture is a major source of methane. Are we to presume that the manure from the BILLION squirrels roaming around in our backyards decays in a methane-free way? The flaring of methane shifts the molecules from methane to carbon dioxide. Indeed, it would be useful to capture that flared methane and use it for home heating. We have states who prohibit pipelines that might carry such methane. As if prohibiting burning it, will halt the production.
Please list the URLs. These are screenshots and not screenshots from the cited papers but secondary presentations. Actually, if you’ve read the cited papers, could you do us a favor and drop the URLs for those?
