(Photo credits: NOAA)
By WUWT regular “Just The Facts”
We are pleased to introduce WUWT’s newest addition, the WUWT “Extreme Weather” Reference Page.
Realizing the difficulty in selling “Global Warming” when the globe hasn’t warmed in the last 16 years, the Warmists are now attempting to convince the public that CO2 has somehow caused “Extreme Weather”. This “Extreme Weather” meme follows a number of other ill-fated Warmist narratives including “Climate Change“, “Ocean Acidification”, “Global Weirding” and “Climate Disruption”.
Being the skeptical sort I looked at the Big Picture and noted that “There is no evidence of a recent increase in “Earth’s Temperature” due to “Climate Change,” which could have caused “Extreme Weather” to arrive and become the “new normal”. However, this observation got me labeled an “Extreme Denier” and “Tamino seemed disappointed that I had not attempted to debunk claims that there’s been a ‘dramatic increase in weather-related catastrophes.'” As such, with the help of an array of WUWT readers and articles, we crowdsourced the WUWT “Extreme Weather” Reference Page. I leave it to you to review and decide for yourself whether you think there has been dramatic increase in “Extreme Weather”.
As in the crowdsourcing thread, if you have any suggestions for additional credible 3rd party data on weather extremes, please post them in comments below and we will review them for inclusion. It is interesting to note that I provided Bill McKibben with an opportunity to submit non-anecdotal empirical evidence in support of the “Extreme Weather” meme and he apparently had none to offer.
In addition to our “Extreme Weather” Page if you have not had the opportunity to look through some our other Reference Pages it is highly recommended:
- Atmosphere Page
- Atmospheric Oscillation Page
- ENSO (El Nino/La Nina Southern Oscillation) Page
- “Extreme Weather” Page
- Geomagnetism Page
- Global Climatic History Page
- Global Temperature Page
- Ocean Page
- Oceanic Oscillation Page
- Polar Vortex Page
- Potential Climatic Variables Page
- Scafetta’s Solar-Lunar Cycle Forecast -vs- Global Temperature
- Sea Ice Page
- Solar Page
- Spencer and Braswell Papers
- Tropical Cyclone Page
- US Climatic History Page
- US Weather Page
Please note that WUWT cannot vouch for the accuracy of the data within the Reference Pages, as WUWT is simply an aggregator. All of the data is linked from third party sources. If you have doubts about the accuracy of any of the graphs on the WUWT Reference Pages, or have any suggested additions or improvements to any of the pages, please let us know in comments below.
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@Mwhite:
Why? There are plenty of other places out there that already cover it. I give a short introduction to it here:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/broken-reasoning-and-hot-air/
then proceed to talk about why it’s a broken idea.
The ‘short form’ is the notion that full spectrum light hits the earth and warms the dirt and land. This, then, radiates Infrared light upward, that whacks into CO2, water vapor, methane and other “greenhouse gases” and is absorbed. Those, then, reradiate that IR both up and down. The “down” part causes the surface below to warm more than otherwise. This causes more water to evaporate that acts as even more GHG. Repeat and do recursion until dead in a boiling sea of steam…
The ‘short form’ of the problems with it are (strongly edited in number and length):
1) We’ve had warmer times before and there was no increased water vapor runaway tipping point. We didn’t have death and destruction. Life was good and it looks like there is a negative feedback that stops warming just a degree or two warmer than now.
2) We’ve had LOADS more CO2 in the past. Yes, prehistoric times. Still, it was there. No evidence for ‘greenhouse warming’ from it. Heck, even had ice ages with about 10x the present CO2 level in the air.
3) The AGW idea ignores that evaporation is followed by condensation at altitude and precipitation. That ‘added water vapor’, being lighter than air, promptly rises to the base of the stratosphere, condenses (radiating heat off to space) and falls as rain. Far from being a ‘green house gas’ and causing a ‘tipping point’, increased evaporation is the working fluid in a cooling system with negative feedback on the warmth of the planet. See any thunderstorm for an example.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/spherical-heat-pipe-earth/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/what-does-precipitation-say-about-heat-flow/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/gives-us-this-day-our-daily-enthalpy/
4) The AGW idea ignores that surface warming increases convection and physical transfer moves heat to the top of the atmosphere (where it can be dumped to space) very quickly. On the order of hours. This is easily observed on any single day as the sun rises, thermals start, then the sun sets, and thermals end. It has been measure in peer reviewed papers and the heat moves on the order of hours. It simply isn’t ‘stored’. Any increase in ‘back radiation’ can, at most, cause the convective engine to run a bit longer during the warmer part of the day.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/12/28/ignore-the-day-at-your-peril/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/does-convection-dominate/
paper that does the measuring:
http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/31/68/93/PDF/angeo-19-1001-2001.pdf
Remember, this is just a sample of why the GHG thesis is terribly broken. If any ONE of them exists, the thesis is toast. But there isn’t just one, there are dozens.
So tell me again why we ought to explain something that doesn’t work?
Remember folks, they used to call it Catastrophic Anthropogenic Runaway Global Warming. Then they dropped the ‘runaway’, then the ‘catastrophic’, then the ‘global warming’. Then they picked up on ‘Climate Change’ which is slowly being replaced by ‘Extreme Weather’. It’s like a game of soccer where they have people hanging onto the goalposts which they constantly shift, just to win the game.
Compare and contrast this shift from George Monbiot.
How can you take someone like this seriously folks.
Pat Ravasio says:
December 9, 2012 at 12:20 am
“like Stewart Brand have come to this way of thinking because they know it is the easiest path to a manageable C02 level, and they believe there isn’t enough time to fully shift to renewables. They may be right.”
Now first of all, we don’t have to do anything to “manage” the CO2 level, plants are doing the managaing much better.
(Sahara, Sahel, greening, video
http://notrickszone.com/2012/01/03/der-spiegel-the-ground-zero-of-climate-change-is-becoming-green-expanding-sahara-is-a-myth/
Booming biosphere part 2; CO2 the cause
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/24/the-earths-biosphere-is-booming-data-suggests-that-co2-is-the-cause-part-2/
)
Second, re renewables, two problems:
a) no economic mass storage. It’s snowing outside my window, we can have 40 days of no wind energy production during winter during a blocking high here in Germany, we would be dead without said storage.
b) Renewables are uneconomic.
“Only stupid ideas need the help of government.” (Thomas Jefferson)
HOW uneconomic? Currently renewables (wind solar biomass) cost the German ratepayer 20bn EUR subsidies a year, that’s 0.66 % of GDP, and deliver about 1.5 % of our energy needs (electricity is 1/7th of our total energy needs)
So, ignoring the storage problem, we could get to 100% by spending about 50% of our GDP.
We can’t produce enough GDP surplus to pay that, meaning our civilization would collapse and we would be back to a hunter-gatherer existence. (High cultures collapsed when they had to expend more than one calory to harvest three calories. That’s the threshold under which a statist organized culture is no more possible.)
Remember, this ignores the storage problem. My estimate would be that deploying a mass storage solution like Methane synthesis would drive up the losses in energy conversion to another 50% so that would double the cost; we would spend 100% of GDP for the energy needed to produce the GDP, leaving exactly nothing for food, housing, etc.
Economy is not always that nice and cosy “spend ourselves to prosperity” (c) Krugman. Economy is about survival.
E.M.Smith says:
December 9, 2012 at 3:20 am
If I may play Devil’s advocate, there are weaknesses in your arguments. Points 1 and 2 are quite good, this is the sort of thing I say myself. But the rebuttals I face are – Yes, C02 was higher in geological times but then so were temperatures (about 10 deg.C higher). As for the ice age at the end of the Ordovician, I get the response ‘weak sun’. The latter argument is easily refuted because just before that ice age (when the sun was weaker still) temperatures were much higher and when C02 levels fell at the start of the Silurian the Earth pulled out of the ice age.
However, your remaining points are not sound. Water vapour does not rise to the Top of the Atmosphere (TOA). It rises and as the air cools it condenses. It gives up its latent heat and warms the atmosphere. The atmosphere then re-radiates back to the surface of the Earth. It can only radiate because of the greenhouse gases. The net result is that the surface of the Earth is warmer than it would otherwise be without the greenhouse gases. Furthermore, it doesn’t matter how the thermosphere is heated, evaporation, thermals or whatever, when heated it will radiate back to Earth making it warmer.
At some altitude, a point will be reached where greenhouse gases can radiate directly to space., as you say. This will cool the upper atmosphere. At this ‘effective radiating height’ a radiation balance is achieved between the incoming solar insolation and the outgoing infrared. Thus the ‘effective temperature’ at this ‘effective radiating height’ will be about 255K. This sets the top of the lapse rate gradient. As you descend from that height the atmosphere becomes warmer according to the lapse rate until the surface of the earth is reached. The surface of the Earth is thus warmer than 255K. The more greenhouse gas, the more ‘back-radiation’ and the more greenhouse gas, the higher the ‘effective radiating height’.
Chiefio, it very unlikely that AGW theory has developed without anyone else being aware of the existence of thermals or evaporation. Isn’t it? But this is the sort of thing you see all time.
You seem to be saying that atmospheric CO2 makes the Earth more efficient in how it uses the suns energy. I truly fail to understand why man should find advancement by making the rock he lives on less efficient.
I am sure you see the same thing and understand the relevance when contemplating the distant, and frozen, past.
MikeB says:
December 9, 2012 at 4:23 am
“Chiefio, it very unlikely that AGW theory has developed without anyone else being aware of the existence of thermals or evaporation. Isn’t it? But this is the sort of thing you see all time.”
One of the biggest weaknesses in climate models is modeling convective fronts. Why? Because they come in any scale. The description in a climate model is a STATISTICAL one – in one box of the simulation MANY instances of the same process are supposed to happen so a statistical description can be valid. (Like the ideal gas law does not describe SINGLE molecules correctly it describes the behaviour of huge amounts of molecules very well)
Now, when you have ONE convective front a thousand km long and your simulation box is only 100km on each side (and a 100m thick) the statistical approach breaks down. The simulation does not describe reality anymore.
And that’s what happens, and that’s why the GCM’s CAN’T reduce the box size ever more even though the computing power is available now. That’s also the reason why they now have every student run a simulation up to the year 5000 – they don’t have any other use for the computing power they can buy and no other way to waste all the taxpayer dough they sit on.
So in short, they are aware of thermals, but they can’t simulate them very well. Another reason why their models fail so hard.
MikeB~ in your devil’s advocate piece to Chiefio, you keep using the line ‘radiating’ or ‘re-radiating’ back to the Earth. Is there NO % that radiates upwards? Why does it All go back into the lower atmosphere, and what is available to take it up?
“My guess, and it’s only a guess, is that over 1/3 of the sceptics on this blog used to be Warmists.”
…yep, 1/3 plus 1.
Otter says:
December 9, 2012 at 2:03 am
You have PR correctly pegged. It’s a broken record that just keeps going in circles with no resolution, but plenty of repetition.
mwhite says:
December 9, 2012 at 2:31 am
So, someone explain the “greenhouse effect” again????????????????????????????????
————————————
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Come on folks! Stop feeding the troll! she did this on another thread and we were all quite pleasant – but this is a repeat trolling and needs sorting………(c’mon mods!)
[sure . . but you can ignore her or put her right, that is your right here too . . mod]
Has anyone compared the “environmental damage” of 1Billion people razing the forests for soot-heavy fuels, vice 6Billion using clean fossil fuels in efficient machines and centralized, managed facilities?
Pat,
Have a look around your room can you see anything plastic there? your computer monitor? perhaps a laptop? an LCD/LED screen, your TV, your wallpaper, paint, your shoes and very likely some of the clothes on your back. Now walk up and down your town’s high street, during the day. Count everything made from plastic.
Next time you type stuff on your computer, look at those keys .. Are they wood? Glass ? No, they are PLASTIC .. Plastic is made from O I L – Oil. If was not for the research done by Big Oil and Petro-Chem you would still be using pen and paper. So there is nothing wrong with Big oil, they have done a lot for the economics of the world.
Now, your website. You know? I agree with some of that stuff.. We should spend more cleaning up the environment – nothing wrong with that, I support that. Someone else mentioned that we hve been clearing the environment up for years, I remember the London smogs – they were really scary. I wonder if anyone has researched if cleaning up the environment has anything to do with warming – if black soot reflects sunlight cooling the planet, then removal of it from the atmosphere would have the opposite effect, no ?
If the money spent on AGW was redirected to cleaning up the rivers, air and land then we would be even cleaner – and probably warmer still.
@Patricia: This is a tangent, but it may amuse you. In my “Notes From Skull Island” I list nearly 20 things that we climate contrarians (“skeptic” is too mild a term) would be doing differently if we were in fact well organized and well funded, as we are sometimes accused of being:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/05/out-manned-but-what-happened-to-the-science/#comment-760039
Another (very incomplete) list I assembled is a Denier’s Credo–40 items we deny–starting at this comment and continuing thru several more downthread:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/23/climate-ugliness-goes-nuclear/#comment-1155993
Here is a highly concentrated list of contrarian arguments by Lucy Skywalker:
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Curious.htm
Jimbo assembled this amusing list of six contradictory threats from GW:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/24/another-mankind-as-evil-carbonator-even-way-back-then-study/#comment-581958
God bless E.M.Smith, Anthony Watts and all those who contribute to the making of WUWT. And a special thanks to trolls like Pat Ravasio who really get the comments going, too bad though that the trolls do not add anything substantive to the discussion.
I decided to Google the name Pat Ravasio; I found this on Twitter:
“Working to end #climatechange denial. Hoping American leaders will face the clearly evident fossil fuel induced environmental crisis threatening life on earth.”
So just another typical econut with little idea of reality and no idea of the science.
Kev-in-UK is right to say: “Stop feeding the troll.”
My apologies for doing just that.
DirkH says:
December 9, 2012 at 4:01 am
Whenever I mention blocking highs the greenoids seem to think we’ll be able to get greenoid power through the interconnects. Non of them seem to know that a blocking high can cover the whole of Europe for weeks on end, and it’s not just in Winter. Heatwaves do the same.
DaveE.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
More resources over at the world’s most viewed web site on climate and global warming.
Remember, cold kills; warmer is better.
Pat Ravasio says:
December 8, 2012 at 7:07 pm
“I’m getting alot of kick back, but still no one who expresses any true heart for a cause that clicks with me as legitimate.”
Well, I’m against cronyism (this might annoy you as you are probably an Obama voter) and I see the renewables subsidies (which, as I mentioned, cost every member of the German public 250 EUR a year) and all the rest (cap & trade, carbon taxes, Kyoto) as the biggest con of history; and the science of CO2AGW as a politication of science with the purpose of enabling this supermassive fraud.
If that leaves you cold, you are surely very much in favor of James Hansen rewriting the temperature history of the planet and of falsification of the science that we used to have.
As liberals often proclaim that there is no objective reality I wouldn’t be too surprised by that. I’m an objectivist and I will have nothing of that; exactly nothing.
James Hansen’s rewriting of temperature history enables NASA to collect 1.2 bn USD a year, BTW:
http://notrickszone.com/2012/04/12/nasa-abdalatis-response-to-50-esteemed-professionals-is-managerial-negligence-an-embarrassment/#comment-92515
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/FY12-climate-fs.pdf
That’s why his superiors don’t reprimand him for his scientific malfeasance. A small facet of the worldwide con.
I think useful “proxies” for snow and rain in the southwest would be the water levels of Lake Mead and Lake Powell. This data seems to have emotional traction with the CAGW crowd.
Pat,
If you want to stop using fossil-fuel-based power, no one will stop you. The rest of us are content to live with our central AC and heating and internal combustion engines. You are free to return to the days of the horse and buggy, ice boxes and wood stoves. I’m sure the Amish will welcome you with open arms.
CO2 is an essential plant nutrient that supports all animal life on our planet. Larger amounts in the atmosphere boost food production and are good for humanity. We should give financial incentives and other rewards to those companies that emit the most.
P.S.: There is not a shred of empirical or experimental evidence to support the theory of runaway anthropogenic global warming. The science is all on the side of the “skeptics” (i.e. climate realists).
You guys are doing nothing but encouraging Pat Ravasio to continue hijacking threads on this blog. You have given her more responses to her two posts on this blog than she has received from a year of postings on her own blog. Likewise, we have probably given her site more traffic in the past week than it has seen in a year. If she continues to troll for attention, ignore her.
MikeB says:
December 9, 2012 at 4:23 am
If I may play Devil’s advocate, … Water vapour does not rise to the Top of the Atmosphere”
————————————
No one believes that, Mike.
No one believes the water vapor emits at top of atmosphere.
People who try to get you to agree to the infrared-opaque particles – gas particles – warming us,
have to get you to claim that these gas molecules in blocking a significant portion of the sun’s out-bound energy – that’s inbound to us –
these molecules are only a sparse population of infrared interactive actors, in the first place.
And, the sun’s wall of incoming infrared is a flood of incoming light. Every time there’s an impingement on an individual gas molecule in the lower atmosphere where the refrigerative cycle goes on, there’s a whole lot more infrared light impinging on it from above, than from below.
The sun’s input, in total energy, from it’s side, is far, far greater. So, each time a molecule of gas deflects an energy charge from below, back downward
it deflects many more, before they ever get to earth. So the net effect is cooling.
Let me put it to you in terms that might be more simple.
I’m in a video game. I have a gun, which fires rounds at many zombies coming at me from one direction, and I have teammates beside me who occasionally walk in front of me as I shoot zombies. Ok? So, sometimes I shoot a teammate, but I shoot many more zombies than teamates, and ostensibly this killing more zombies than teamates, is winning. Ok? the object is to make sure that you don’t lose as many teammates as zombies do, and none of your teammates is killed by zombies, only you kill them, because well, you’re watching tv and the teammates are generated by the game so they don’t mind if they’re killed off because they’re just artificial
At the end of the game, I look at the scoreboard. Now, whichever side has the most losses, loses, side with the least losses, wins. I find I killed 250 zombies, but that I accidentally shot 6 of the computer generated teammates as they got in the way.
Most kills is winning,
Least kills is losing,
The course of the game led to 250 of the zombies dying,
the course of the game led to 25 of my side dying,
Who won?
We KNOW we have each, individual gas molecule, where EVER it is, high or low – rejecting more from the sun side, than from the earth side, simply because there are a lot more light charges coming from the sun’s side, than earth’s.
Now each time, I put up, one more gas molecule,
it’s true I block one more earth-generated energy charge,
back toward myself,
but the total number of energy charges I reject, is from much more concentrated stream from the sun’s side, t. Therefore,
I wind up blocking, many more from, the sun’s side.
To a global warmer, blocking more energy from the sun side, than from the earth side,
is called heating
the planet.
And if I put up more gas, and block 35% of the sun’s incoming radiation, instead of the 30% it’s blocking now, that’s called WARMING.
Yes it is. To Green-House Gassy-Odies
that’s called ‘Heating.’
Greenhouse Gassers,
want you to look at them and tell them that,
if you have a shoe box in space, with a 5 watt light bulb in it,
that if you slowly turn it,
having put a thermal sensor on the surface of that box then spray paint over it, black,
wrapping the shoe box in light screen material that blocks ten percent of the energy from the sun, makes the surface of that box, get hot.
And that by taking an additional piece of screen, which blocks another 10% of sunlight energy
and wrap it around the box too, thus blocking 20% of the sun’s energy,
the surface of the box is going to now get hotter.
And that if I took yet another piece of screening material and blocked a total of 30% of the sun’s light from striking my shoe box,
GoofyGas Groupies want you to believe them and answer on a test question at school,
that the surface of the box, is now hotter, than before,
when you were allowing 100% impingement of energy.
No?
Let’s see…
Oh I know –
The claim is,
” the earth might be putting out more heat than the sun from inside the amosphere. So if it blocks equally both ways, maybe it really IS warming, by this time.”
Well, there’s a way to check on this Hansen-Odie-Ology.
Take a thermal sensor, lay it on a rock. Paint it black.
Take another thermal sensor, lay it on the other side of the rock, paint it black.
Lay it in the sun with the top exposed to sunlight, the bottom exposed to radiation from the earth into the rock’s surface.
After several days, return and check the total average energy into the top of the rock (sun side) AFTER the sun’s energy has made it all the way through the atmosphere
and total average energy from the earth, into the bottom of the rock.
Do you think there is anywhere near as much energy pinging off the earth side of your rock, or local gas molecule, as pinging off the sun’s side?
In the video game you had a simple equation: to win you must kill more zombies.
In the Greenhouse Gas Fantasy you have a simple question. Do you add more heat if you add more gas?
In the video game you have a simple question: if you fire twice as many bullets next game and kill 500 zombies,
but you kill 50 teammates,
are you going to lose that game?
Greenhouse Gas Fantasizers believe that if you reject 10 but cause yourself to retain one,
you don’t have a 9 to 1 ratio rejected/kept.
Kev-in-Uk says:
December 9, 2012 at 6:44 am
..[sure . . but you can ignore her or put her right, that is your right here too . . mod]..
I and others have tried that elsewhere – in a pleasant manner, but for some reason this doesn’t seem to matter?.
Now, I may not be the sharpest, wittiest or most educated commenter on WUWT, but I can certainly spot a troll, especially ehen they are repeating the same basic questions on different threads in an OBVIOUS flaming or disruptive type manner. I have no desire to fall out with any mods, but to be honest, I would have thought it was your job to try and reduce trolling? I was just making an observation that I thought you guys would have made for yourselves!
see Peter Millars comment above too……
I certainly don’t have the time, desire or inclination to ‘put her right’ when it is clear she is simply flaming the thread.
regards
Kev
Pat Ravasio says:
December 8, 2012 at 5:41 pm
If not, please explain what you have to gain by continuing to deny that there are environmental problems that could be solved by a reduction in the use of fossil fuels? Can you justify that the continued and increasing use of fossil fuels is a good thing for our planet?
=======
No one is denying that “there are environmental problems that could be solved by a reduction in the use of fossil fuels”.
The real question is “what is the alternative”? What measures do you propose to replace fossil fuels? The problem is that our economies are reliant on fossil fuels and without a cost effective alternative we end up trading away our prosperity in an attempt to change the weather decades in the future.
Simply asking the poor people of the world to do without, such as is proposed in the Kyoto Treaty and similar “Cap and Trade” schemes are no solution. This simply gives the rich a license to pollute, while holding back billions of people on the planet from enjoying the benefits enjoyed by the rich.
While it could be argued that a tax on pollution is a better solution than “Cap and Trade”, we already have enormous taxes on fuel. Check for yourself how much of the price of a gallon of gasoline is taxes. This has not stopped the use of fossil fuel. Instead it raises the cost of everything, driving manufacturing and jobs offshore to places such as China and India.
High taxes force companies to relocate to places with lower taxes so that they can be competitive on today’s global economy. How can a company pay high taxes and compete with a company that pays low taxes. The problem is that by driving companies to relocate in China and India to remain competitive, this reduces the jobs at home and reduces the tax base.
This leads to deficit spending as we see in the US, with enormous debt burden placed on future generations. With this debt comes great risk to the future prosperity of the US, as more and more of the taxes paid go to servicing the interest on the debt, until the country is bankrupt.
While at the same time, the pollution that is no longer created in the US, but rather is now being created in China and India, that pollution does not remain offshore. It is carried by the wind back to the US. So in the end, these policies have not reduced pollution, they have simply sacrificed the financial well being of the citizens of the US.
Kev-in-UK,
Judging from the fact that ‘What did I tell you’ was able to post his gibberish, it is apparent that the moderators will allow just about any post to stand as long as it doen not violate a few simple rules.
There is probably no way to ‘put her (Pat) right’ since she, like most trolls, is only posting to get the attention here that she fails to attract on her own blog. As I suggested earlier, to ignore her and therefore deny her the attention she wants is the best way to get rid of her.
kirkmyers says:
December 9, 2012 at 8:22 am
Pat,
You are free to return to the days of the horse and buggy, ice boxes and wood stoves.
===========
The Great Horse Manure Crisis of the late 1800’s points out the problem in trying to return to the horse and buggy age. Before fossil fuel became widespread, cities we quite literally being buried in horse manure. With this manure came flies, with the flies came disease.
The pollution from wood stoves is much worse than the pollution from fossil fuel. In many cities you are banned from using wood stoves to heat your house because of the air quality problems it creates. That doesn’t begin to consider the number of forests that would need to be cut down to replace fossil fuels.
When someone says they want to get rid of fossil fuel, the question to be asked is what do you propose to use in its place? How do you know the alternative will not cause worse problems?
What people forget is that nothing is completely good or completely bad. Every solution you can propose to reduce fossil fuels will in itself has its own problems. When you eliminate one problem you create new problems in its place, always.
For example, when you go to the doctor to cure an ailment, you may have solve the problem of the illness, but have created a new problem of paying the doctor’s bill. What you hope is the doctor’s bill is less of a problem than the ailment. If its is not you don’t go to the doctor.
Equally, if you go to the doctor with an infected finger, you don’t want the doctor to cut off the hand as a cure. The hand comes with a lot of benefits that will be next to impossible to replace once it is gone.