Guest geology by David Middleton
I spent the past couple of days in Austin, Texas attending the annual meeting of the Applied Geodynamics Laboratory (AGL). The AGL is part of the Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) in the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin. The AGL was established to study salt tectonics. Salt tectonics (AKA halokinesis) is particularly relevant to oil & gas exploration because many of the most prolific hydrocarbon basins also happen to be salt basins. The AGL is sponsored by numerous oil companies and geophysical contractors, including my employer. I’ve previously written about one of AGL’s founders, the late Martin Jackson.
The first session yesterday was kicked off by Dr. Scott Tinker, Texas State Geologist and Director of the BEG, whose presentation centered on climate change. Since UT and Austin are deep in the heart of the Peoples Republic on Travis County, this wasn’t surprising. What many people may find surprising is that Dr. Tinker’s position was that energy, economics and environment were inextricably linked. Without energy, a society cannot have the means to protect the environment. I wish I had a transcript of his talk or had thought to record it. Dr. Tinker is undoubtedly a “lukewarmer” (as am I)… But he clearly gets the fact that energy poverty is far more dangerous than climate change. He stated that our industry is “getting killed on social media” and that it was our job as geologists to set the record straight. He closed his remarks by saying, “When someone asks you what you do, reply with ‘I work in the oil & gas industry, I lift people out of poverty. What do you do?'”
Dr. Tinker is an advocate of N2N (natural gas to nuclear) and chairman of the Switch Energy Alliance. He recently authored an OpEd on carbon pricng in UT News…
Aug 23, 2019
Carbon Pricing Is Not a Fix for Climate Change
By: Scott TinkerThere is much talk today about carbon pricing to reduce CO2 emissions and address climate change. Unlike many environmental pollutants that have a local or regional impact, carbon dioxide (CO2) is global — there is only one atmosphere. If actions taken to reduce atmospheric emissions in one region result in increased emissions elsewhere, then the one atmosphere suffers.
Some form of carbon pricing — carbon tax, carbon trading, carbon credits — is favored by many politicians, NGOs, academics and even some in industry. But the reality is that a price on carbon will not be imposed by developing and emerging economies because it makes their energy more expensive, and they are too busy trying to build their economies and lift themselves from poverty.
In the developed world, carbon pricing increases the cost of manufacturing and products, which in turn drives manufacturing to developing nations where it is more affordable because of lower labor costs and less stringent environmental regulations and emissions standards. Global emissions rise in the one atmosphere.
Said differently, the good intentions of carbon pricing have an unintended negative impact on climate change. This is not hypothetical. It is happening.
If carbon pricing won’t work, what will? Energy science tells us how to actually lower CO2 emissions into the one atmosphere in the time frame needed. Unfortunately, those who are the most passionate about addressing climate change seem to not like the answers from the energy experts.
[…]
So what options does energy science suggest will have a major impact on climate change?
Natural gas and nuclear replacing coal for power generation in major developing nations such as India, China and Vietnam would have a major impact. Carbon capture, utilization and storage; direct carbon capture from the atmosphere; and perhaps nature-based solutions such as increasing the size of forests would help, especially in fossil fuel producing regions such as the U.S., Russia, China and the Middle East.
[…]
These scientifically sound and economically underpinned energy solutions present a problem. Many are not favored by people who are the most concerned about climate change. Thus, politicians seeking climate votes continue to passionately promote programs and policies that won’t actually address climate change.
But we have a remarkable opportunity. The right can acknowledge the need to tackle climate change. The left can acknowledge the energy science needed to accomplish real global emissions reductions into the one atmosphere. And developing and emerging nations can continue to climb out of energy poverty.
Unfortunately, this appears to be far from happening. Climate politics seems to trump energy solutions in Europe and the U.S., and the developing world continues to burn coal.
Scott Tinker is the Allday Endowed Chair of Subsurface Geology and director of the Bureau of Economic Geology at The University of Texas at Austin.
UT News
While the “need to tackle climate change” is debatable, the only effective methods of reducing carbon emissions, while maintaining our liberty and prosperity, while also lifting about 3 billion people out of energy poverty are:
- Natural Gas
- Nuclear Power
- Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS)
This is a far bigger problem than climate change will ever be…
And this is the most cost-effective solution to both the real problem of energy poverty and the potential mild annoyance of climate change…
It is also undeniable that “those who are the most passionate about addressing climate change seem to not like the answers” and “politicians seeking climate votes continue to passionately promote programs and policies that won’t actually address climate change.”
It truly is a Bizarro World… Those who consider climate change to be an existential threat are least likely to support natural gas, nuclear power and CCUS. Instead they support Green New Deals that would destroy our economy and have no affect at all on the weather. Through increased use of natural gas, nuclear power and CCUS, we could actually make a serious dent in carbon emissions and help lift billions of people out of poverty without any self-inflicted economic damage.
‘I work in the oil & gas industry, I lift people out of poverty. What do you do?
This is what the greens like ocasio and Pocahontas do not understand. Ocasio said no children, as they will add to the carbon problem😐
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.foxnews.com/opinion/alexandria-ocasio-cortezs-latest-climate-fix-no-children-for-you.amp.
She uses cars and planes even though the subway station is 138 feet from her office 😐
https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2019/03/02/gas-guzzling-car-rides-expose-aocs-hypocrisy-amid-green-new-deal-pledge/amp/
In modern Progessivism, the real work and sacrafices are always up to someone else to do and pay for.
Shouldn’t that be:
“4 million people die annually due to cooking with renewable sources”
It could be worded that way… But, if they we’re cooking over a properly ventilated solar powered stove, air pollution wouldn’t be killing them. They’d be starving to death.
Let them eat raw tubers!
Thank you, John. “Let them eat raw tubers!” was good for a mid-morning laugh.
Regards,
Bob
Those people have big lunches because breakfast and dinner are cold. Also, they tend to burn things on one side, e.g. top of pizza, and just when you would like to have a hot bowl of soup on a gloomy day, it’s back to burning dung.
I nice concise statement of the lukewarmist view. I’l buy that.
I normally have no respect for “luke warmers” because they always seem to be compromising, and trying to please everybody, while actually pleasing no one.
But that general opinion changed today.
The article is well written and makes very important points.
If Scott Tinker, the Allday Endowed Chair of Subsurface Geology and director of the Bureau of Economic Geology at The University of Texas at Austin, is a luke warmer, then is is one smart luke warmer, and must have a huge business card too.
Geologists are real scientists.
Most “climate scientists” are politicians.
How many geologists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Answer: One
How many “climate scientists” does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Answer: Eight
One to supervise (a union man)
One to climb up the ladder with a light bulb (a union man)
Four to lift the ladder, and turn it in circles (all union men)
One activist, lecturing office workers in the area who are watching, about climate change and LED light bulbs
One politician, giving a speech to CNN reporters, who just happened to be there, about his leadership in replacing a regular old incandescent light bulb, with a “green” LED bulb
Some geologists are politicians… And some climate scientists are scientists.
One of the things I noticed at the AGL was the fact that the academic geologists with industry experience seemed to be more focused on results… But the pure academics certainly had informative presentations… Of course, apart from Dr. Tinker’s introductory remarks, all of the presentations dealt with salt tectonics, including a really cool presentation on the pre-salt paleogeography and paleoclimatology of the Gulf of Mexico.
I dunno, Richard. I’m an engineer & kinda choked on his “direct carbon capture from the atmosphere….” Might as well burn money.
DAC can actually be used for EOR or to generate synthetic fuels… Although the economics suck at current oil price levels.
CCS and DAC, without utilizing the CO2, don’t make economic sense under any conditions… unless government imposes massive carbon taxes.
Beng135; “…Might as well burn money…”
David; “…CCS and DAC, without utilizing the CO2, don’t make economic sense under any conditions… unless government imposes massive carbon taxes.”
Both of which accurately describe the CCS ‘value chain’ envisaged in Europe.
EU directives governing CCS forbid CCS to ‘interfere with’ oil and gas exploration; as far as I can tell,that’sjustified because the sequestered CO2 could theoretically be produced along with the IOR volumes at some point in the future which is kind of cheating because the only ‘value’ obtained from CCS in Europe is partial reimbursement of the thin air taxes or costs sunk needlessly on the dodgey CO2 trading scheme (and one has to permanently remove CO2 from circulation to obtain the corresponding tax credits). Even with recent efforts to recucsitate the flacid CO2 trading scheme in Europe, in their occassionalmoments of honesty, champions of the CCS ‘value chain’ will admit that the carbon (dioxide) price would have to at least triple for anyone to ‘create’ a business out of injecting thin air underground, literally out of thin air. ‘Tis why EU towers in Brussels is crawling with big oil lobbyists and other related green gobshites begging for a higher ‘price on carbon’ and for the donation of sums of other people’s money to pay the intial cost of establishing a new, lucrative (if the price is right) parasite business of collecting thin air from industry and sweeping it under the rug. For the politicaians, the benefit appears to be in convincing the more gullible voters that they’re all bravely saving the planet and are creating some of these mythical ‘green jobs’, presumably there are also some new committees to chair or oversight departments to manage.
An idea of the imagined opportunity can be gleaned here:
https://blog.sintef.com/sintefenergy/ccs/industrial-opportunities-and-employment-prospects-in-large-scale-co2-management-in-norway/
which seems to avoid the obvious question; faced with the needless expense of a CO2 ‘value chain’ (in addition to already being foisted with an uncompetative workforce, excessive rates of taxation and onerous red and green tape) won’t what’s left of European industry either die or simply relocate to China, India or Africa?
As for CCUS (CO2 based IOR), well what remains of the oil industry in Europe isn’t about to spend money buying expensive liquified thin air for IOR, quite aside from the inability to dodge some carbon (dioxide) tax, you can obtain seawater for free or use some cheap associated gas to inject into your offshore oil reservoir for pressure recovery. And in any case, the European oil industry faces an uncertain future once the school strike generation and their immediate elders become ‘representatives’ of their electorates.
As for pipe-dreams of direct carbon (dioxide) capture from atmosphere; would that not be most cost effectively achieved by simply planting some fricken trees? (yes, I know, there isn’t much grant money or gandiose virtue signalling value in something as simple as planting a tree or two).
I’m sure both responses noted I commented on direct capture.
As I recall, the CO2 in coal flue-gas was something like 12 -14%. Compare that to .04% for air. I won’t bother to calculate, but safe to say orders of magnitude difference. CCS on coal plants is a very big parasitic load as it is, but I still see David’s point from previous posts that it can be useful in certain circumstances. But DAC? Not even considering the infrastructure, the amount of electricity (where’s THAT going to come from?) required to extract & process any significant amount would be astonishing.
I recently did the math on a process currently being shopped to investors. IIRC, it might make sense if oil was $250/bbl.
DAC really requires a value for simply removing CO2 from the air. I don’t think the 45Q tax credit gets it there.
It all depends on ho stupid our government gets on this issue… And it appears to me that over time, it will get increasingly stupid.
Some power plants are starting to use O2 concentration units, with the ‘pure’ O2 used to burn natural gas (or coal) at a much higher and more efficient temperature. The exhaust from burning gas in O2 is CO2 and water, both of which can be recovered relatively easily.
CCUS in this kind of power plant can make sense, since the capture portion is not prohibitively expensive.
The collusion does it:
“4 million people “cooking over a properly ventilated solar powered stove, air pollution wouldn’t be killing them” die annually due to cooking with renewable sources”.
Hallelujah collusion.
you need to address poverty before suggesting using electricity or gas for cooking.
Who is going to pay for the gas pipeline to those using dung for cooking?
Who is going to pay for the electricity grid to isolated communities?
Who is to pay for the policing of the gas/electricity grid (unsafe tapping of oil pipelines occurs NOW?
Where is the water to come from if localised generation?
How are the end users going to pay for the energy they use?
Unfortunately localised solar generation will probably not be able to support electric cookers but of course would easily provide lighting and power for computers/phones
In many of these nations, natural gas won’t be the immediate answer. Coal-fired thermal plants will be the answer.
There are organizations that could help finance these projects, but they have to accept the reality of energy science and economics. And it will have to be a two-way street. These nations will need to clean up corruption and begin to responsibly develop their resources. Resource development brings in foreign investment. This also brings investment into the communities, schools, etc., as ExxonMobil does in Angola and other nations.
Perhaps the ‘third world emerging governments’ could pay for the gas, water and other necessary infrastructure rather than building and stocking nuclear weapons or building 5th generations fighter planes.
Thanks for asking.
Teewee,
Most of the Third World nations are doing neither of those.
Correct. The biggest problem is corruption on a scale that is epic.
Somehow poor people have been managing to solve those problems all by themselves for hundreds of years.
Of course modern leftists are convinced that only government can reduce poverty.
As always, the heck with evidence, good theories trump real world data.
Considering all of the western nations were even poorer in the past than most 3rd world nations now, how do you suppose they managed to build all of this supposedly unaffordable infrastructure?
It’s worse than imagined. The same purveyors of the prophecy of [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] global warming recount the good old days of great civilizations in equatorial spaces, thus the imperative for social justice, environmental justice, et cetera. Meanwhile, they are forcing immigration reform and displacing/disrupting nations, communities, and families in those resource rich regions.
how do you suppose they managed to build all of this supposedly unaffordable infrastructure?
Culture and mindset.
“ of course would easily provide lighting and power for computers/phones ”
Your assumptions seem to be …
barely functioning societies,
small homes,
low latitude (lots of sun)
Much of the USA first got electricity via investors or
cooperatives serving small towns. This did need “the rule of laws”
that many places seem not to have. So maybe easing poverty will
first require new forms of government for the places you have in mind.
ghalfrunt, who paid for the ones we have? Nobody gave them to us for free. Perhaps they can build a few to begin with and expand with any newly made prosperity, the same way most nations build themselves.
It is a poor strategy to wave a magic wand over an impoverished country and attempt over-night advance them a few grades into the 1st world without any maturation process. The only ones that strategy enriches are the klepotcrats while the country slides back to 3rd world dictatorship.
That’s the usual pattern, but Japan modernized into a first world dictatorship over roughly 30 years, from 1885 – 1915.
Just remember that even though there’s a common pattern that doesn’t mean something else won’t happen. Of course, planning on something better happening is also foolish.
What you say is true. What you miss is that no one tried to stop us and we did it while, today, many in the First World are trying to prevent the Third World from accomplishing the same.
“The dominant orthodoxy in development economics was that Third World countries were trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty that could be broken only by massive foreign aid from the more prosperous industrial nations of the world. This was in keeping with a more general vision on the Left that people were essentially divided into three categories – the heartless, the helpless, and wonderful people like themselves, who would rescue the helpless by playing Lady Bountiful with the taxpayers’ money.” Thomas Sowell
The problem today with the 3rd world is these”Wonderful Leftists” are activity fighting against the 3rd world obtaining reliable, 24/7 power and want to keep them stuck with “virtuous” unreliables and, thus, in the Dark Ages. Many NGOs and the UN spread money around to dictators and corrupt governments to achieve this end, see Agenda 21. Thus, the people die from smoke inhalation and remain mired in poverty because they don’t have access to reliable energy.
Neither a hospital nor a factory can be powered with renewables. These are the ones who fight against Africa’s use of DDT and genetically modified crops which, as in the case with rice, could prevent hundreds of thousands cases of blindness due to diets poor in Vitamin A just as DDT can prevent malaria.
These are also the same ones who wail about the Population Bomb but want to solve that issue by reducing the population of the poor people of color in the world which is not even a thinly disguised form of racism of the worst kind.
The poor nations have plenty of problems but their largest problems are the new Imperialists/Colonialists who insist on the Third World following their diktats as to how to live and what they should and should not have so they can feel good about Saving Mother Earth even though it’s done by sacrificing the poorest in the world.
Genetically modified crops: hope for developing countries?
The current GM debate widely ignores the specific problems of farmers and consumers in the developing world
Genetically modified crops: hope for developing countries?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1083872/
The current GM debate widely ignores the specific problems of farmers and consumers in the
“For many people in the First World, genetically modified crops have become the latest incarnation of evil biotechnology, which sacrifices humans and the environment for the sake of revenues and shareholder value. On one side of the heated discourse are people who firmly believe that GM crops pose a threat to human health and biodiversity. On the other side are mainly scientists who are convinced that genetic engineering of plants represents a technology with enormous potential for increasing food production in an environmentally benign way. This controversy has to some extent degenerated into a sterile, even hysterical debate, where important facts are largely ignored and where relatively few new ideas are introduced in order to find ways for using this technology in the safest possible manner….”
This sounds just like the AGW/CC debate, doesn’t it?
In rural Fran e and I guess most of rural Europe cooking is done usi g LPG in a “bottle”. Virtually every filling station sells this, as do most village shops. This would be a solution for most of the world.
Same here in my rural US area. I & most people surrounding me have propane tanks. Useful if power goes out (can use the stove-top but unfortunately not the oven as it uses an electric valve).
Ghalfrunt: You and hundreds of millions of others who think like you should be the ones to lift them out of poverty!
The problem with climate activism is that there seems to be not one person living today within a realm of reality and spending their effort and money on real-world solutions. They prefer to bleat the lie that in 10 years the world could run on solar and wind.
Bingo.
Get Bob Geldof to sing a few tunes.
(sarc.)
“Those who consider climate change to be an existential threat are least likely to support natural gas, nuclear power and CCUS. Instead they support Green New Deals that would destroy our economy and have no affect at all on the weather.”
Because they don’t actually believe that its an existential threat, thats merely a ruse. They believe that its a way to hobble the progress of their hated enemy Capitalism, while delivering their true desire: money, power and total social control.
I think that describes many of them… But I think most are just stupid people.
I saw a video of Hans Rosling and he put forth the notion of the present “peak children.” If what he says is correct, then perhaps we are near peak stupidity, although some would argue that stupidity is infinite.
There’s a strong argument that “peak children” is a real thing, though the world isn’t even close to it yet.
As societies gain wealth they always (thus far) reduce their birth rate, often to a less than replacement rate. The sociological argument for this is that children provide extra work capacity, but in wealthy economies that work is either prohibited (via child labor laws) or ineffective (because the work that’s available a child can’t yet do), and so the benefit to having children decreases to the point that children become a liability rather than an asset (economically). This has held true in every economy globally, so the pattern probably will extend into the future advancements.
If it does at some point enough of the world population will fall into a less than replacement birth rate cycle, and we reach peak children. What happens next is more speculative fiction than pattern extrapolation, but it might be a simple as a mass die off of those who have relatively weak genetic predisposition to procreation, the banning of birth control, or forced procreation a la Handmaids Tale (via machine instead, since resource pressure will only exist in extremely wealthy societies).
The takeaway from this is that reduction in poverty should equal reduction in population; presumably if poorer countries can be raised to the same levels of affluence, they should also experience a corresponding decline in birthrates. China’s failed attempts to reduce it’s population growth are now historical fact; I wonder if they can raise wealth levels at all strata of their society in order to experience this effect…. It seems to me to be unattainable as employment is not available on this scale, at least with the current emphasis on technology. My proposed solution for South Africa should also work for China, seeing as Mandarin China thrived on the recycling of nutrients; they even had special canals built for the purpose..
The supply of useful idiots is the ultimate renewable resource.
Useful idiots? Klem is right though, they all hate the free market, capitalism. Incredibly, lots of very successful and well off people also hate the free market, even if it’s what originally made them rich. They much prefer monopoly, whether privately or publicly borne, to freedom.
Yep.
“They much prefer monopoly, whether privately or publicly borne, to freedom.”
Luke, isn’t another name for that an “oligarchy”? I guess Rent Seekers also works, aka buying politicians for fun and profit.
If we have enough wind power to displace our CO2 emissions, that in itself is likely to cause some global warming. link
According to a recent WUWT story, wind power would require that almost all of America’s land be covered with windmills. That change in land use would surely have a huge environmental impact.
There are only two viable answers: nuclear and adaptation. Adaptation is by far the least expensive.
Particularly if we don’t bankrupt ourselves trying to prevent the weather from changing.
Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS)
Entirely without merit.
Nonsense. Over 300,000 bbl/d of US oil production is due to CO2 injection. DOE estimates that an additional 85 billion bbl of oil can be recovered with CO2 injection.
CCUS =carbon capture utilization and storage
CCUS has value even if reducing CO2 emissions doesn’t.
Why not just use air?
CO2 is miscible with crude oil.
Thanks for the word “miscible”, David. For those who’ve never heard it before (like me), “miscible” = forming a homogeneous mixture when added together.
Regards,
Bob
Well I had to look that up
Oil floats on top of water – immiscible.
At ages 6 & 7, I went with an uncle as he drained the water out of tanks of recently pumped oil. This was in north-central Pennsylvania.
http://vpasec.org/albums/OWStuff/album/Wood%20Tanks-04.jpg
At about age 16 I took a chemistry class.
Where do you imaging the modern version of “mixable” comes from? (those who didn’t know there was already a word for it or have a lisp?)
Same place we obtained (cringe) “irregardless” which means oddly the same as regardless
or inflammable which also oddly means its inverse.
My favorite fake word. If it was a word, “irregardless” would mean “without regardless” and “regardless” means “without regard”.
However, “miscible” and “mixable” aren’t exactly the same word and miscible dates back to 1570, derived from the Latin “miscibilis.” Not all mixable liquids are miscible. Miscible liquids won’t separate after mixing to form a homogeneous solution.
Air work also, it starts a fire below which in turn cooks the oil out of the rocks, I use to drive an air injection site regularly in the eights. One of my friends work there. Of course the real reason it was put in was to get around Carter oil price controls. One the air was injected the oil coming out of the wells in that field was considered new oil, and could be sold at market price.
Fire-floods can work under specific conditions. I don’t think there’s a lot of overlap with carbon dioxide injection.
Um, so why do they use CO2 to displace the 300,000 bbl/day, can”t they use straight air?
Solubility is most important (see Dave’s answer) and it’s a good idea to avoid formation of flammable mixtures.
CO2 is miscible with oil. Air is not, although nitrogen can be under certain conditions.
CO2 forms a homogenous mixture with the oil and flushes it out of the reservoir.
“straight air” has 23% oxygen in it. For a good reason why not to use it, google “fuel-air explosive”. Biggest non-nuclear weapon in the US Air Force inventory.
The rare instances when air is used, it’s generally to fire-flood a reservoir.
Question:
Does the CO2 remain “caught” when used this way?
No.
So, instead of “Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS)” shouldn’t it be “Carbon Capture Utilization and Release (CCUR)?
No, because the injected CO2 stays in the reservoir.
CCUS may certainly have value, but that isn’t the point, so you are being disingenuous (again). The point is that it is being offered as a “solution” to a non-problem, implying that it should be subsidized. If it does indeed have a positive monetary value, then just let the industry decide that. No need to employ the climate argument.
I view it as a solution to a potential problem. The vast majority of scientists view it as a real problem as do the people making our laws.
Even the Trump adminstration backs reducing emissions, CCUS and CCS. The 45Q tax credit for carbon sequestration has massive bipartisan support in our government.
There are two things that can increase the volume of oil recovered from CO2 EOR: 1) higher oil prices, 2) lower costs. The 45Q tax credit lowers the cost if the CO2 comes from anthropogenic sources. Most current CO2 EOR relies on natural subsurface sources.
If 500ppm is a potential problem, then life on earth should have ended back when levels were at 7000ppm.
“Even the Trump administration backs reducing emissions, CCUS and CCS. The 45Q tax credit for carbon sequestration has massive bipartisan support in our government.”
Generally speaking, whenever something has massive bipartisan support, it’s time to hide one’s wallet because you know Congress is coming for our money.
That is true. TSA had the support of 99/100 US Senators. That said, the only problem with the 45Q tax credit is that CCS gets $65/ton and CCUS only gets $35/ton… It still rewards unproductiveness.
To help, 12000 ppm before major effects on life. submarines often operate at 6-8000 ppm.
most green houses operate at 500 to 1000 ppm for plant fertilization.
Enhanced oil recovery using CO2 as a miscible fluid is not CCUS. The process recovers oil that would not have been recovered which then gets burnt releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere than was injected into the ground initially, there is a net release of CO2 because of this activity. It’s done to make a profit, not for reducing CO2.
Real CCUS would capture CO2 from some process, compress it, liquify it, pump it deep underground where it would be trapped for 1000’s of years. It’s a costly, energy inefficient, uneconomic process that works nowhere. The only thing more ridiculous is thinking this process can be applied to extracting CO2 directly from the atmosphere. If you want to extract CO2 from the atmosphere plant a tree, if you want lower CO2 emissions go nuclear.
Sort of accurate. However, EOR doesn’t increase the volume of oil we consume. It just sources more of it from domestic sources.
there is a rational energy debate of course, always has been and always will be but before we get there we must deal with the issue at hand which is the unrequited hatred of fossil fuels left over from the smog days of the 1960s. This new movement against fossil fuels is not rational but emotional but trying to put on a rational face in terms of climate change. The problem is it’s not working out the way they had thought that it would.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/02/03/hidden-hand/
Many mistakenly imagine that CO2 is a component of smog, so an environmental problem apart from the greening of the earth.
Whilst I whole heartedly agree with the sentiment I feel that the solution is still a loss for the sceptics. The admission by people to say they are Luke warmers is compromise suppressing the real emotions. People state they are Luke warmers because they feel they need to concede some ground or be accused of being some sort of flat earth lunatic. Why. Do we need to concede anything ? The reality is that if as occurred prior to the 1990s this global warming charade had not have been put on the agenda I dare say we wouldn’t be sitting here in 2019 saying “ my goodness it’s so much warmer these days than it was thirty years ago and the climate has changed so much I’m sure we’re about to become extinct. The thought would not have entered our heads.
Whatever the models say , whatever the media says, whatever the politicians , religious leaders , academics, public servants and business leaders say, there is none and has never been any evidence or proves that human induced climate change exists and if it does that it’s dangerous. CO2 is a life giver not a life taker. It’s like suggesting Mother Theresa should’ve gone to jail. We need to argue not for Nuclear or gas on the basis of emissions but that the only criteria for determining power supply is price and that the cleanliness of the power relates not to its CO2 emissions but it’s particulate pollution. As long as it’s clean in that sense and cheap and reliable that’s all that matters. Let market forces determine the winner. No subsidies.
Whilst we sceptics qualify our scepticism with saying we are Luke warmers the alarmists continue to claim a validated position. We have the high ground in terms of facts, morals and ethics let’s use that to our advantage. When one side deliberately manipulates past data they should not be given any concessions.
The answer is black or white. The correlation between global warming and CO 2 is so tenuous as to not exist as is the correlation between warming and a dangerous future. Yes global warming is man made but only by charlatans and unscrupulous media and politicians . Don’t let them get away with it.
I’m a lukewarmer because of the science.
David,
I’m a sceptic because of the science and the data. I’m quite sure that CO2 has caused some amount of global warming, but most of the warming is natural.
Think of the Little Ice Age. It lasted for centuries, ended around 1850 and represented a global cooling of around one degree C. The LIA was *very* bad for humanity. So, how much global warming has occurred since the end of the LIA? About one degree. In other words, this “climate crisis” is in reality the world recovering from the depths of the LIA. How can this be anything but a very, very good thing?
History is very clear: the warm periods over the last few thousand years have been times of great human wellbeing and advancement. It was the cold periods in between – the Dark Ages and LIA – when mankind suffered. So, the evidence strongly suggests that warm periods are of immense benefit for humanity. From the ice cores, it looks like each successive warm period was cooler than the previous one. Even now the planet is very likely cooler than the Medievel Warm Period, so any further warming will be of great benefit.
After a century of global warming (some of which had occurred by 1945) mankind is prospering as never before. Humanity is more prosperous, better fed, more healthy and living longer than ever before. One dramatic piece of evidence: the OECD human wellbeing index. It shows human wellbeing increasing throughout the last century and this one (though strangely it ends in 2010 – I wonder why?). And the increased CO2 is making the planet greener, for heaven’s sake. Do you really want to stop that?
So, if being a lukewarmer means you still think global warming is a problem rather than an unmitigated benefit, I would very much like to know why you think that.
Chris
I don’t disagree with you. I don’t think AGW has been or is a problem. I think it has the potential to be a problem.
Almost all of the instrumental estimates of climate sensitivity put the transient climate response between 0.5 and 1.5 °C per doubling of CO2. One doubling to 560 ppm shouldn’t be a problem. Two doublings might be, particularly for marine geochemistry. The aragonite saturation state might become too low for some marine calcifiers.
I view carbon emissions as a potential minor problem 100 years from now. And a problem that could be totally headed off with a few energy policy tweaks.
First off, there’s no way we can extract enough oil/gas/coal to get CO2 levels up to 1120ppm.
3C of warming will barely be getting the world back to where it was during the Holocene Optimum. I fail to see how that is going to be a problem, much less a big problem.
We can easily get past 1,000 ppm with fossil fuels. We don’t actually want to get to the Holocene Climatic Optimum. A 2 meter rise in sea level would be an actual problem.
While we are basically in agreement, I suggest the right wording is that CO2 could make the environment a degree C or two warmer than it would otherwise be. However, since we have no firm understanding of what temperatures will do naturally, we cannot predict future climates.
We can say that, historically, cold has been the enemy of Man, and far more common than warmth, so odds are great the warming will be beneficial, not harmful.
We can also say that Earth is currently only slightly warmer than the coldest climate of the Holocene. The warming since the 1600’s has been a good thing. I am confident that another 1-1.5 C won’t be a bad thing. When we start talking about 2-3 C it just gets “iffy.”
Pick any single year in history. We wouldn’t be where we’re at today or have any of the great things that we have IF people in that year based every single decision that they ever made, or any, on how they thought it might impact people born a century after they were all dead. Maybe that’s the definition of dark age. Plenty of bad things happened, too. So what? I guess if I was a victim of any of those bad things I might have a different perspective, but even that life up until the moment of calamity was probably pretty darn good compared to the lives of people who died at least a century before being born. Fretting about the lives of people born at least a century after we’re all dead, who will have remarkably better lives than we ever had, appears to be survivors guilt except we won’t actually be alive. Or maybe it’s actually envy for everything that they will have that we never will. A surprising number of youth today, especially amongst techies, think that they will not die because death is disease that will be cured. That delusion might be influencing their opinions. We actually shouldn’t worry, at all, about how the world will be for people born at least a century after we’re all dead. No one ever did before. They never owed it to us and we don’t either.
I don’t think Dr. Tinker is calling for that… And I know I’m not… But, very good points.
David,
I search in vain for even one study with empirical, measured and observed evidence in the atmosphere that proves CO2 drives Earth’s temperatures or warms it at all. I have yet to find it. There seem to be only models which have been highly inaccurate and which are programed to discount natural temperature variations as well as the influence of the sun, cosmic rays, clouds, cyclical weather patterns etc. We don’t even know all of the natural sources of CO2 nor how much some known sources, such as the 40K miles Mid-Ocean Ridge system which is ignored in all Climate Models as are all other natural phenomena.
Given all we don’t know about Earth’s climate system and given that the “CO2 drives Earth’s climate” theory, which is not about science but, politics, the destruction of Capitalism, financial gain for those invested in renewables, a NWO and control, it seems to me we should not take any action at this time to capture CO2 because we don’t know what the Hell we are doing or the effects it could have. We know increased CO2 has been hugely beneficial for Earth as has the minor warming we have had.
Our climate has changed drastically all through Earth’s geologic history, long before Man started using Fossil Fuels. Thus, I find it most difficult to be anything but a Skeptic.
Here are a few of many studies questioning or negating entirely the CO2 as a warming gas or as a driver of climate, especially, the tiny amount that exists in the atmosphere and the tinier amount added by Fossil Fuels.
New Insights on the Physical Nature of the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect Deduced from an Empirical Planetary Temperature Model
http://bit.ly/33asah7
‘No experimental evidence for the significant anthropogenic climate change’
Jyrki Kauppinen, Pekka Malmi
(Submitted on 29 Jun 2019)
A pdf (1.7MB) for download is available at https://arxiv.org/pdf/
Dr Zbigniew Jaworowski’s criticism’s of the assumed reliability of IPCC graphics merging pre-industrial CO2 data from ice cores with atmospheric measurements from 20C
“The basis of most of the IPCC conclusions on anthropogenic causes and on projections of climatic change is the assumption of low level of CO2 in the pre-industrial atmosphere. This assumption, based on glaciological studies, is false” http://bit.ly/2GpdJxl
FOCUSED CIVIL DIALOGUE ON GLOBAL WARMING
William Happer
http://bit.ly/2nGA8zc
What They Don’t Want You To Know About CO2. By Tim Ball
http://bit.ly/31OXRff
Atmospheric Radiative Heat Transfer in Context
http://brindabella.id.au/climarc/dai/RadiativeDelay/RadiativeDelayInContext170828.pdf
Deep sea carbon reservoirs once superheated the Earth – could it happen again?
Lowell D. Stott May 9, 2019
https://theconversation.com/deep-sea-carbon-reservoirs-once-superheated-the-earth-could-it-happen-again-113518
This one is really adds a new twist.
https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6001423/ points to another aspect of what I’m suggesting – evap. Low carbon cycle level could be BIOLOGIC cause of ice age ~3.5 MYA. If so, human CO2 from FF, pumping up carbon cycle, will restore a stable climate by increasing plant activity.
@Willis Eschenbach
Carbon Dioxide is a Cooling Gas According to NASA
http://bit.ly/2yDcsxt
…One part of NASA is now in conflict with its climatologists after new NASA measurements prove that carbon dioxide acts as a coolant in Earth’s atmosphere. NASA’s Langley Research Center has collated data proving that “greenhouse gases” actually block up to 95 percent of harmful solar rays from reaching our planet, thus reducing the heating impact of the sun. Carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitric oxide (NO) are two substances playing a key role in the energy balance of air above our planet’s surface tending to cool, not heat….
HOW THE EARTH IS GETTING COOLED; cutting edge science, in simple words
http://bit.ly/2IrnRpz
A NULL HYPOTHESIS FOR CO₂
Roy Clark
Energy & Environment
Vol. 21, No. 4, SPECIAL ISSUE: PARADIGMS IN CLIMATE RESEARCH (2010), pp. 171-200
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1260/0958-305x.21.4.171
I’m suggesting – evap. Low carbon cycle level could be BIOLOGIC cause of ice age ~3.5 MYA. If so, human CO2 from FF, pumping up carbon cycle, will restore a stable climate by increasing plant activity.
@Willis Eschenbach
July 3, 2019
Source:
Kobe University
New evidence suggests that high-energy particles from space known as galactic cosmic rays affect the Earth’s climate by increasing cloud cover, causing an ‘umbrella effect’.
http://bit.ly/2KH9aAg
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190703121407.htm
Thermal Enhancement on Planetary Bodies and the Relevance of the Molar Mass Version of the Ideal Gas Law to the Null Hypothesis of Climate Change
This method requires knowledge of the gas constant and the measurement of only three atmospheric gas parameters; average near surface atmospheric pressure, average near surface atmospheric density and the mean molar mass of the atmosphere.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324599511_Thermal_Enhancement_on_Planetary_Bodies_and_the_Relevance_of_the_Molar_Mass_Version_of_the_Ideal_Gas_Law_to_the_Null_Hypothesis_of_Climate_Change
Carbon Dioxide Not a Well Mixed Gas and Can’t Cause Global Warming
By: John O’Sullivan
http://bit.ly/2kiynGC
Human CO2 Emissions Have Little Effect on Atmospheric CO2
http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/journal/paperinfo?journalid=298&doi=10.11648/j.ijaos.20190301.13
Thermal_Enhancement_on_Planetary_Bodies_and_the_Relevance_of_the_Molar_Mass_Version_of_the_Ideal_Gas_Law_to_the_Null_Hypothesis_of_Climate_Change
It is seen therefore, that as far as this formula goes, no one gas particularly affects atmospheric temperatures more than any other gas. Therefore, there can be no significant net “greenhouse warming”…….
Thermal_Enhancement_on_Planetary_Bodies_and_the_Relevance_of_the_Molar_Mass_Version_of_the_Ideal_Gas_Law_to_the_Null_Hypothesis_of_Climate_Change
It is seen therefore, that as far as this formula goes, no one gas particularly affects atmospheric temperatures more than any other gas. Therefore, there can be no significant net “greenhouse warming”…….
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324599511_Thermal_Enhancement_on_Planetary_Bodies_and_the_Relevance_of_the_Molar_Mass_Version_of_the_Ideal_Gas_Law_to_the_Null_Hypothesis_of_Climate_Change
How a termite’s mound filters methane—and what it means for greenhouse gases
https://phys.org/news/2018-11-termite-mound-filters-methaneand-greenhouse.htmlTax Termites! pic.twitter.com/WgQawWfpRf
Robin Guenier in December 2013 to the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee’s inquiry for confirmation of that. http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/energy-and-climate-change-committee/ipcc-5th-assessment-review/written/4191.html
There are many more studies which do not pronounce CO2 as the guilty party.
I find it tragic that Science was captured by those with nefarious purposes and/or greed and that so much time and money has been wasted on “proving CO2 drives climate” when we could have been discovering so much about Earth and our climate system and advanced our knowledge. All this has been wasted in the pursuit of goals having nothing to do with science. If I am wrong, why do we still await even one study proving this empirically?
The way you see it should be obvious. I wonder why so many people don’t see it that way.
Chris,
Thank you for this post. It summarizes everything I know about history. I have a degree in history and what you said is spot on. The climate and geologic record completely supports what you said. That also includes the history of humans. I despise historical revisionism which includes the attempts to erase the Little Ice Age, the MWP and the rest. This revisionism alone would be enough to determine which side is right in this debate. They have no answer for how, in geologic history, there were times when CO2 was rising as temps were falling. So they simply claim it didn’t happen. The side that tries to suppress known history is the side that’s in trouble. The consensus was that the Earth was at the center of the universe but skeptics came along, at the risk of their lives, to say otherwise. The global warming “consensus” needs to look at history a bit more closely.
The relationship is complicated, goes both ways, and a lot of other factors affect temperature
Terry,
Thanks for the comments. As you have a degree in history maybe you would be able to give me some advice.
It’s often stated that mankind prospers when it’s warm and mankind suffers when it’s cold. I’m sure this is true, but some time ago it occurred to me that historical human wellbeing indexes could provide a striking proof of this. Ideally the index would go back far enough to show correlation – or lack of correlation – between the global temperature and human wellbeing. After a lot of googling I only found one: the OECD human wellfare index report:
https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/how-was-life_9789264214262-en#page261
The graphs are near the end. Unfortunately I think you need to register to access the report.
The index starts in 1820 and unaccountably stops at about 2000 (I think the report was published in 2014).
In a nutshell, the results show wellbeing steadily increasing since 1820 and then accelerating around 1950 and continuing to increase in a straight line. No sign of a “climate crisis” here!
But what I’d like to see is a similar wellbeing index going far further back in time e.g. covering at least the last two thousand years. I’m guessing historians have created such indexes, but I haven’t been able to find any. So, if you know of any such indexes – or of suitable places to search – I’d be very grateful.
Best wishes,
Chris
David there is no science in the global warming scam but there are illogical lies. Also, heat transfer and thermodynamics are engineering subjects, maybe engineering science but not plain science. I am a chemical engineer with experience in heat transfer particularly combustion and fuels. CO2 is a trace gas which all animals breath out and plants take in. We can not live without CO2 and hydrocarbons. CO2 has no effect on the climate. The saying that methane CH4 is worse than CO2 is a lie. CH4 takes in less longwave radiation than CO2 and it does not oxidise in the atmosphere. Even if it did would would not be greater than CO2. CH4 +2O2 > CO2 + 2H2O. According to the IPCC H2O is not a greenhouse gas and can ignored (except when they count it in the non-combustion of CH4)
I agree that there’s no science in the scam, but AGW is only 97% scam.
Oxidation of methane by hydroxyl radicals within the atmosphere is pretty well known.
Scissor, where did you read about Chemistry. There are practically no hydroxyl radicals in the atmosphere because they are so soluble in water. That is part of the methane cycle. Some small part of the methane in the atmosphere can get oxidised by ozone at the top of the stratosphere or by lightning to give molecules such as methanol ie CH4 +O3>CH3OH +O2 which is highly soluble. Greens who have no qualifications are good at putting out diversionary thought bubbles which have no reality. I suggest you learn something about Reaction Kinetics (but I suppose that is too difficult as it has lots of maths which scientists do not understand)
cement wrote “on the climate”
Let’s be clear. There are dozens of climate types;
Köppen-Geiger is a system of classifying climates.
A 3 Celsius degree overall change may shift some of the categories.
Where we live it will still be cold in winter, hot in summer, and quite dry on a yearly average.
Likely we would not notice a 1.5 increase or decrease. At 3 C° (5.4 F) we would notice, but we would still have cold winters and hot summers.
Yep and the Köppen-Geiger boundaries have barely shifted since 1900.
Thank you Zigmaster and Chris Wright – you saved me a lot of writing with your clear thoughts.
I generally agree with David Middleton and Scott Tinker, with the following exception:
Regarding the “lukewarmer” stance: I suggest it is technically incorrect, because in part:
“Increasing atmospheric CO2 clearly causes significantly improved crop yields, and may cause minor, beneficial global warming.
Atmospheric CO2 is not alarmingly high, it is too low for optimal plant growth and alarmingly low for the survival of carbon-based terrestrial life.
Other factors such as fossil fuel combustion, deforestation, etc may also increase atmospheric CO2. The increase of CO2 is clearly beneficial.”
Earth is not too hot, it is clearly too cold for humanity and the environment. Excess Winter Deaths (more deaths in winter than in non-winter months) exceed two million souls per year.
“Cold Weather Kills 20 Times as Many People as Hot Weather”
CO2 sequestration schemes that are justified on the basis of global warming alarmism are costly false nonsense.
Regards, Allan
Reference:
CO2, GLOBAL WARMING, CLIMATE AND ENERGY
by Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng., P.Eng., June 2019
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/15/co2-global-warming-climate-and-energy-2
Excel: https://wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Rev_CO2-Global-Warming-Climate-and-Energy-June2019-FINAL.xlsx
ABSTRACT
Global warming alarmism, which falsely assumes that increasing atmospheric CO2 causes catastrophic global warming, is disproved – essentially, it assumes that the future is causing the past. In reality, atmospheric CO2 changes lag global temperature changes at all measured time scales.
Nino34 Area Sea Surface Temperature changes, then tropical humidity changes, then atmospheric temperature changes, then CO2 changes.
The velocity dCO2/dt changes ~contemporaneously with global temperature changes and CO2 changes occur ~9 months later (MacRae 2008).
The process that causes the ~9-month average lag of CO2 changes after temperature changes is hypothesized and supported by observations.
The ~9-month lag, +/- several months, averages 1/4 of the full-period duration of the variable global temperature cycle, which averages ~3 years.
Based on the above observations, global temperatures drive atmospheric CO2 concentrations much more than CO2 drives temperature.
Climate sensitivity to increasing atmospheric CO2 must be very low, less than ~1C/(2*CO2) and probably much less.
There will be no catastrophic warming and no significant increase in chaotic weather due to increasing CO2 concentrations.
INCREASING ATMOSPHERIC CO2 CLEARLY CAUSES SIGNIFICANTLY IMPROVED CROP YIELDS, AND MAY CAUSE MINOR, BENEFICIAL GLOBAL WARMING.
ATMOSPHERIC CO2 IS NOT ALARMINGLY HIGH, IT IS TOO LOW FOR OPTIMAL PLANT GROWTH AND ALARMINGLY LOW FOR THE SURVIVAL OF CARBON-BASED TERRESTRIAL LIFE.
OTHER FACTORS SUCH AS FOSSIL FUEL COMBUSTION, DEFORESTATION, ETC MAY ALSO INCREASE ATMOSPHERIC CO2. THE INCREASE OF CO2 IS CLEARLY BENEFICIAL.
“Green energy” schemes are not green and produce little useful (dispatchable) energy, primarily because of the fatal flaw of intermittency.
There is no widely-available, cost-effective means of solving the flaw of intermittency in grid-connected wind and solar power generation.
Electric grids have been destabilized, electricity costs have soared and Excess Winter Deaths have increased due to green energy schemes.
______________________________________________
COLD WEATHER KILLS 20 TIMES AS MANY PEOPLE AS HOT WEATHER
By Joseph D’Aleo and Allan MacRae, September 4, 2015
https://friendsofsciencecalgary.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/cold-weather-kills-macrae-daleo-4sept2015-final.pdf
Cold weather kills. Throughout history and in modern times, many more people succumb to cold exposure than to hot weather, as evidenced in a wide range of cold and warm climates.
Evidence is provided from a study of 74 million deaths in thirteen cold and warm countries including Thailand and Brazil, and studies of the United Kingdom, Europe, the USA, Australia and Canada.
Contrary to popular belief, Earth is colder-than-optimum for human survival. A warmer world, such as was experienced during the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period, is expected to lower winter deaths and a colder world like the Little Ice Age will increase winter mortality, absent adaptive measures. These conclusions have been known for many decades, based on national mortality statistics.
______________________________________________
I agree with you that CO2 fertilization has been a very good thing, that Earth is not too warm or that cold kills far more people than heat. I don’t even think that a doubling of the pre-industrial CO2 concentration will be harmful. It’s beyond that where things get “iffy.”
Thank you David for your good comments.
Right about now, I believe (as we predicted in 2002) Earth will start solar-driven natural cooling, and the growth of atmospheric CO2 will slow measurably, and may even decline sporadically as it did in previous cooling periods*.
I would view an increase on atmospheric CO2 from the current ~400ppm to even 1200ppm as positive for humanity and the environment, but I don’t think it will happen, even if humankind continues to burn coal at ever-increasing quantities.”
_______________________________________________
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/05/new-paper-on-climate-sensitivity-estimates-1-1-%c2%b1-0-4-c-for-a-doubling-of-co2/#comment-909980
* Annualized Mauna Loa dCO2/dt “went negative” a few times in the past (calculating dCO2/dt from monthly data, by taking CO2MonthX (year n+1) minus CO2MonthX (year n) to minimize the seasonal CO2 “sawtooth”.)
These 12-month periods when CO2 decreased are (Year and Month ending in):
1959-8
1963-9
1964-5
1965-1
1965-5
1965-6
1971-4
1974-6
1974-8
1974-9
Data Source (2008 version of):
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
When you talk about CO2 levels above 800 ppm, it’s impossible to even guess if it will be good or bad.
It’s pretty clear that the Miocene wasn’t warmer due to CO2. It had to have been related to the configuration of the oceans and continents.
It’s when we go back to the Paleogene, that things get problematic, particularly for marine geochemistry.
It’s not really the pH that matters, it’s the aragonite saturation state.
“I don’t even think that a doubling of the pre-industrial CO2 concentration will be harmful. It’s beyond that where things get “iffy.””
If we as a species are unable to adapt to a very slow rise in sea level, then we don’t deserve to survive.
There’s no evidence to suggest that 1000ppm of CO2 will get us back to the Holocene Climate optimum. It happened without 1000ppm CO2, it can happen again, or go the other way, which would be MUCH worse than higher sea levels.
The trick is in keeping it slow. 1 meter over 300 years = no big deal. 3 meters over 100 years = big fracking deal. Fortunately, the latter is physically impossible.
Is there any ‘iffy-ness’ in the Green New Deal, or any other course the warmest’s are proposing? No! It is certain that the implementation of those ideas would lead to economic and social disaster.
So now we face Schneider’s dilemma. Do we try to win this ideological battle by exaggerating the threat that the alarmists pose to our well-being, or do we stick to the facts and reality in order to win our case?
The alarmists have answered Schneider’s dilemma by going full bore exaggeration, and I believe that will ultimately be their downfall. They may gain temporary support and a lot of attention, but they have sown the seeds of their own demise. It is hard to stick to reality and the facts when your opponents are going off like (or recruiting) angy children, but it is the most mature and sensible thing to do. It is the course of action that ultimately leads to winning the battle.
Consequently, I support David’s stance in this discussion. I agree with Zig and Chris and Allan as well. Their concerns are warranted and well-expressed. Yet I believe that David has answered Schneider’s Dilemma with a definitive adherence to science and reality, while the others have left the door open for emotionality and exaggeration.
Even as I wrote this response, I had to eliminate my on comment about the left being an existential threat to humanity. It is very tempting to pick up the sword of hyperbole and start swinging it around like our opponents do, but it is not the wisest choice. If we stick with rational, thoughtful ideas, and what the science really says, we will win the day, although we will lose a few PR battles along the way.
I am not suggesting that we lie down like sheep. I really think we need to take off the gloves and start fighting back much more, but not with the same language our opponents are using. We hit then over and over again with reality, and we don’t let their hyperbole go unchallenged…ever.
We can argue over the meaning of ‘lukewarmer’ over a few beers one day, but if we do it here and now, we only play into the hands of those we oppose.
David
I have had a chance to sleep on my original comments and am pleased to see they have generated some discussion. What I am really getting at is to the extent that AGW being dangerous is a theory it has failed miserably. You can still believe it’s right , only time will tell whether it become validated in the future..So far the only results that have been forthcoming in the real world of the climate labroratory is that it has failed. If this was a drug trialled by a pharma company the FDA would give it the thumbs down.
What any company will then do is tweak their formulation and try again or just give up. If as is often the case the company has run out of money or the ability to raise money the theoretical drug becoming a reality may be picked up by someone else, tweaked again , failed again and given up again. This process can continue several times before being thrown on their pharmaceutical scrap heap.There comes a stage when the failures of a theory are so comprehensive that the only conclusion is that the theory was wrong all along. In the climate change theory there are many examples of proponents like James Lovelock who has concluded that his theory is probably wrong.
Someone who through observation of the evidence of real world temperature data concludes that the theory is wrong but may be right if other factors change should not describe themselves as Luke warmers but are really true sceptics or maybe agnostics. If the results don’t fit the model the theory is wrong. In the real world of judgement in the climate change FDA the model has failed and if your aim is to cure the world with your CO2 reducing antidote you have blown your capital . In this reality the Placebo wins , doing nothing is better for the world than doing something because if some time in the future the world really is sick we won’t have spent the global budget and resources trying to cure a non problem.
It may be strange to criticise people like yourself as a Luke warmer because I think you are one of the more knowledgeable and noteworthy commentators on our side of the argument. But I think it’s time to discontinue the illusion that the dangerous AGW theory has any credibility whatsoever.
It may be semantics to complain about how someone describes themselves but I think the term Luke warmer gives some credence to a theory that on all measures of real data analysis has failed in all ways to be replicable
The hypotheses that AGW has been or is dangerous have clearly failed miserably. This is because the climate sensitivity has been consistently overestimated by the so-called consensus. John Christy lays this out very clearly here: https://www.thegwpf.com/putting-climate-change-claims-to-the-test/
Whether or not it poses a problem in the future is unknown. With a transient climate response of 0.5 to 1.5 C per doubling, there shouldn’t be any serious problems below 800 ppm. As you start moving above that, particularly above 1,000 ppm, it’s not so clear.
Lukewarmer simply gives credence to the indisputable facts that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the greenhouse effect is real, humans are the cause of at least some of the rise in atmospheric CO2 over the past 150 years. Lukewarmers are still skeptics. They are skeptical of the high climate sensitivity claims, they are skeptical of the models and they are skeptical of the solutions being proposed by governments.
“The trick is in keeping it slow. 1 meter over 300 years = no big deal. 3 meters over 100 years = big fracking deal. Fortunately, the latter is physically impossible.”
So what’s “iffy” to you?
What might happen in the 22nd century. I think we can tweak things now, to obviate a potential problem in the future at at an insignificant cost.
If 100 years from now, we need some extra CO2 to warm the world, we’ll know where it is.
David,
” I don’t even think that a doubling of the pre-industrial CO2 concentration will be harmful. It’s beyond that where things get “iffy.”
Are you certain about that?
A Clean Kill of the Carbon Dioxide-Driven Climate Change Hypothesis?
David Middleton / September 25, 2019
http://bit.ly/2m6WUzp
“Moreover the entire concept of an atmospheric greenhouse effect is controversial, for the rate of ocean-atmosphere equalization is uncertain.”
I’m sure it’s iffy.
This is a question: A Clean Kill of the Carbon Dioxide-Driven Climate Change Hypothesis? And questionable is iffy.
While it’s pretty clear carbon dioxide isn’t the primary driver of climate change, it clearly is a factor. If the transient climate response is 1.1 °C per doubling as John Christy estimates, humans have caused about 70% of the warming since 1978.
The fossil fuels industries say, “You’re welcome.”
Hi again David and all,
Regarding Christy and McNider and Lewis and Curry, I regard their calculations of climate sensitivity of ~1C/doubling as an UPPER BOUND of sensitivity, because they ASSUME that ALL observed global warming is due to increasing atmospheric CO2, whereas warming correlates much better with solar activity*, and CO2 is probably only a minor driver of warming.
CO2, GLOBAL WARMING, CLIMATE AND ENERGY
by Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng., P.Eng., June 2019
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/15/co2-global-warming-climate-and-energy-2
Excel: https://wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Rev_CO2-Global-Warming-Climate-and-Energy-June2019-FINAL.xlsx
[excerpt}
9. Even if ALL the observed global warming is ascribed to increasing atmospheric CO2, the calculated maximum climate sensitivity to a hypothetical doubling of atmospheric CO2 is only about 1 degree C, which is too low to cause dangerous global warming.
Christy and McNider (2017) analysed UAH Lower Troposphere data since 1979:
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/2017_christy_mcnider-1.pdf
Lewis and Curry (2018) analysed HadCRUT4v5 Surface Temperature data since 1859:
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0667.1
Climate computer models used by the IPCC and other global warming alarmists employ climate sensitivity values much higher than 1C/doubling, in order to create false fears of dangerous global warming.
_____________________________________
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/09/28/global-climate-intelligence-group-founded/#comment-2808876
[excerpts]
The failed catastrophic very-scary catastrophic global warming (CAGW) hypothesis, which ASSUMES it is caused by increasing atmospheric CO2, driven by fossil fuel combustion, will be clearly disproved because fossil fuel combustion and atmospheric CO2 will continue to increase, CO2 albeit at a slower rate, while global temperatures cool significantly.
This scenario has already happened from ~1940 to 1977, a period when fossil fuel combustion rapidly accelerated and atmospheric temperature cooled – that observation was sufficient to disprove the global warming fraud many decades ago.
Regarding Willie Soon’s recent video at
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/09/15/global-warming-fact-or-fiction-featuring-physicists-willie-soon-and-elliott-bloom/
Willie Soon’s best points start at 54:51, where he shows the Sun-Climate relationship and provides his conclusions.
* There is a strong correlation between the Daily High Temperatures and the Solar Total Irradiance (54:51 of the video):
… in the USA (55:02),
Canada (55:16),
and Mexico (55:20).
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod/offset:-1360/scale:1
Solar Total Irradiance is now close to 1360 W/m2, similar to near-lows circa 1915, 1960 and 1970. Atmospheric temperatures should be cooling in the near future – maybe they already are.
Alan,
I also tend to think these estimates are close to the maximum likely values.
Thank you David – we agree that 1C/doubling is probably an upper limit of climate sensitivity..
Furthermore, and this next statement is not really that important, but is of scientific interest:
“From the observational evidence, it is possible, even probable, that the sensitivity of global temperature to increasing atmospheric CO2 is much less than 1C/doubling, and may even be so close to zero as to be insignificant.”
The evidence is in Sections 1 to 7 here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/15/co2-global-warming-climate-and-energy-2
I don’t need to belabor this point, since it is purely scientific and practically not that important, because any climate sensitivity less than ~1C/doubling means there is NO global warming/climate change crisis due to increasing atmospheric CO2 – that is an important, credible and practical conclusion to the entire fossil fuel/CO2/global-warming/climate question.
CAGW is based upon a number of premises. Some are not wrong.
– We *are* warmer now than during the LIA, when temperature records began. How much is debatable.
– There is more CO2 in the atmosphere now than in 1850.
– CO2 does produce a greenhouse effect, and this is known for over a hundred years, albeit at about 0.7-0.8° C per doubling. On it’s own, we would have trouble breathing before we would melt anything of note.
As for the rest, such as feedbacks, habitat changes, etc., that’s what the food-fight is all about.
From the article Carbon Pricing Is Not a Fix for Climate Change.
Some form of carbon pricing — carbon tax, carbon trading, carbon credits — is favored by many politicians, NGOs, academics and even some in industry. “But the reality is that a price on carbon will not be imposed by developing and emerging economies because it makes their energy more expensive, and they are too busy trying to build their economies and lift themselves from poverty.” -NO SIR NOT TRUE.
That is incorrect in fact. Many of the Governments in developing worlds are members of the UN. They have implemented Carbon Tax or CO2 Tax for example South Africa – They cannot wait to get their grubby paws on the UN promises of transfers of wealth from the citizens of wealthy countries to the politicians and bureaucrats of the poorer countries. Not only that they have fallen for the next biggest biggest fraud of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (Global Goals) under the guise of environmental protection and poverty eradication. That is of course the Renewable Energy fraud. Renewable energy, especially wind energy the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time. Africa is embracing it because it allows governments to loot the energy companies. Eskom In South Africa is a prime example of the fraud and the politicians have committed to even more renewable wind and solar. Yay! more to loot.
David, Scott Tinker,
The geology of stratigraphies hosting salt domes and layers has puzzles that conventional geology is pressed to answer. My former boss, John Elliston, spent his professional geologic life formulating more plausible explanations for the puzzles, resulting in a book that leads the world on the role of colloids in geological processes. Easy Google search.
I inspected some salt domes to the north of Tehran. John went there a few weeks later to study the regional setting and ended up behind bars. In his innocence, he followed some geology too close to the Shah’s residence in the foothills. That was 1978. The shooting had started. I had the experience of being held hostage at gunpoint while the gendarmes checked my credentials and those of my pilot, whose costume was enhanced to show 5 shoulder bars.
Who said salt was boring? Geoff S
I’ve spent my entire career in salt basins. Salt is fracking cooler than schist.
I am in Nairobi attending the Clean Cooking Forum, with about 500 others.
It is UNTRUE that four million people die per year from inhaling smoke from cooking fires. Stop saying that!
Look into the genesis of the claim if you like, to see what BS underlies the actual claim, but at least get the claim right;
“About four million people are attributed to die prematurely each year from exposure to smoke from cooking fires.”
Attributed.
Exposure.
That which is attributed is not necessarily avoidable.
Exposure does not mean inhalation. The inhalation is attributed, not measured.
Inhalation does not mean absorption. Absorption is attributed.
Disease consequence from absorption is attributed, not measured. Shortening of a life is not “death from” which is a medical diagnosis. Shorting of lives is attributed, not measured, and applies to a population cohort on the basis of many estimations.
No deaths are claimed. Premature deaths (dying before the age of 86) are attributed by a series of estimations, a concatenation.
Also note that exposure time (duration) has no place in this calculation. If a person is “exposed” it is assumed they are affected and a disease will shorten their life, whether exposed for a minute or a year. All smoke is assumed to be equally toxic (the EPA-rooted claim for equitoxicity). No one believes all particles are equally toxic. Why should you?
No one believes exposure to an assumed concentration for ANY amount of time at all causes a given Relative Risk of disease and life-shortening.
This whole thing is based on assumptions. When you hear some say that 100,000 people are killed by… each year ask if they really mean “die prematurely” by one or more years, or are actually killed by the material/exposure/liquid and so on.
At best it will be “attributed premature deaths”, and will have no consideration of gender, income, genetics, innoculation history, diet, water quality or anything else. It is a made up number that serves a vague function for informing health policy, not a medical diagnosis. Whoever promotes such an erroneous concept is not aware of the difference between public health and medicine, let alone what the effect of smoke is (however detrimental it might be, or not).
All causes of death are “attributed”.
The only reason anyone dies is because they stop breathing. Everything prior to that is just a contributing factor true cause of death.
My father told me that the secret to a long life was to keep breathing. Engineer humor, but true, as discussed by Crispin above.
My high school football coach used to say, “You’ll eventually stop bleeding.”
I agree Crispin…show me the 4 million dead bodies. Having said that, many of the cooking facilities the the third world use and become sick with is because of improper ventilation of cooking with a high moisture fuel source that smoulders making toxic smoke. It isn’t because they burn dung, charcoal or wood scraps. What would be a simple game changer would be if each village had access to a mini pellet mill once a month, and grind up 60% wood sawdust, straw, weeds, charcoal, coconut husks etc and add 40% dung, and press that all through a pellet mill dried to 8% moisture and you have a a very fine fuel source that if it could be burned in a mini pellet stove with a 3″ chimney, there wouldn’t be a whiff of smoke. Could even burn it without a chimney because it is so low moisture content, since it will burn fairly clean is a vessel the size of a cup to a small pot depending how big a fire you need. It isn’t the renewable fuel they are burning that is the problem, it is the lack of some simple technology to upgrade their simple basic fuel to burn in a suitable simple stove. Fix the poverty through education and simple technology, and we will be ahead by a century.
A 3″ chimney? That is a mini stove. I did a quick search and didn’t find anything like that. A link would be appreciated. Also, are there any hand driven pellet mills?
A 3″ chimney would be overkill for a micro pellet stove. Probably a 1″ pipe would work for a cup sized burner. A 50,000 BTU/hour home sized pellet heater uses a 3″ chimney. A 100,000 BTU/hour super efficient NG furnace that heats a 2,500 sq ft house uses a 3″ chimney and it vents horizontally to the outside, not vertical. https://www.homedepot.ca/product/supervent-3-in-pellet-pipe-kit/1000102367
I have seen ultra micro pedal powered pellet mills, but then the problem will be kids being sequestered to pedal these things all day when they should be in school. Some of the micro pellet makers run on a 5 Hp Brigs and Stratton type engine, but if you want the micro hammer mill and a micro grinder, then you might need an all purpose 10-12 Hp gas engine or electric if the central village has electricity. Huge payback to making high density fuel pellets from scrap biomass and dung, compared to the energy input to run one. But the problem will be, how do you stop the corrupt Chief from hogging the pellet maker for his own greedy use while everyone else goes without. That is the current problem, which is massive corruption, which is why they are in the third world. Pellets are the future… especially uranium pellets.
This skookum mini pellet maker is made in the UK and looks like a 5-6 HP electric motor. Same equipment will also make animal feed pellets from local AG products and keep fresh a long time or shipped to other nearby villages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sayxjUk7uvA
Pellets made from grass clippings…
Ask, and you shall receive:
http://theselfsufficientliving.com/diy-rocket-stove-plans-to-cook-food-or-heat-small-spaces/
Thanks. Reminds me of some Kentucky hollow.
You’re arguing instead for using a metric of life-years lost, rather than lives lost – which I think is a better metric, even if one many people won’t understand.
If so, what’s the number? You appear to have done the research, so now many life-years are lost each year?
For those not quite following – if 4 million people die one year early every year, such as a lot of 85 year old dying who might have lived to 86, that’s one level of loss, but if it’s 4 million 25 year olds dying who would have lived to 86 that’s an entirely different level of loss. Both are the reported 4 million deaths per year, but very different life-years lost. This is the general standard we use in medicine.
One of the big problems is lack of data on deaths from lung problems in Africa. If a person is coughing, instead of a CT scan and biopsy, a cough will probably be treated with antibiotics – as happened to my brother in law in Indonesia (late diagnosis and death in a few months). Ultimately death will likely be from an acute lung problem: ie, ‘He/she got a real bad cough and died in a few weeks’. Whether it was TB, an acute lung illness or cancer will never be determined. Pneumonia will probably be recorded as cause of death. Globally the primary focus of pneumonia is children. Smoke of any kind increases the probability of a lower respiratory infection, so that at least some of the deaths purported to be caused by cooking fires are in infants and children staying close to mother and the cooking fire.
‘Show me the bodies’ is not a great response when there is no organised health care system to record deaths and causes of death. Even the Statistica quote below is an estimate. And if you do not believe that life expectancy is lower than the global average in Africa, you are pretty blind to the world you live in. The 10-year lower life expectancy in Africa is from many causes, granted. Cancer rates may indeed be lower than other regions, because cancer is generally a disease of the aged. However, cooking over open fires also causes increases in other respiratory diseases.
‘[T]he average life expectancy in Africa for those born in 2019, by gender and region. The average life expectancy across the whole continent was 61 years for males and 65 years for females. The average life expectancy globally was 70 years for males and 75 years for females in 2019.’
https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ACYBGNSmcAdYw6t55Qp6RL1JapVZQ0qbfQ:1573324047070&q=life+expectancy+africa%27&spell=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi3qMTn4N3lAhUK7J4KHWTnAW8QBQguKAA&biw=1517&bih=730
I don’t think I have seen a really scientific analysis of the issues involved with global warming; After all, we are living in an epoch that all scientists agree is termed “interglacial”, i.e. “Between Ice Ages”. Given this, is it wise to abandon technologies that allegedly warm the world, given the knowledge that past history indicates that sooner or later the right conditions for an ice age will prevail? I for one do not lay claim to sufficient knowledge to make a determination as to what is the best course, but intuitively I tend to the hypothesis that a warmer world is more manageable than an ice age. If my thinking on this is flawed, I will welcome any well thought-out and documented corrections…..
I don’t think that’s unreasonable.
Hello Tony Garcia
Re:
“we are living in an epoch that all scientists agree is an interglacial”
They also agree that interglacials don’t hold a constant temperature but go through violent and chaotic cycles of warming and cooling at millennial and centennial time scales. Pls see
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/06/11/chaoticholocene/
I have been banned from many blogs and sites etc for using that swear word “interglacial”. It’s like they don’t understand what it means.
It is not so much a “Bizarro world” if we understand that it is not about the environment at all, but about overcoming capitalism.
For many that is the clear motivation.
I have good news for Mr. Tinker: There is no need whatsoever to “tackle climate change”, as there is no problem with the climate, and even if there was, nothing we did would make any difference. This means that even the much-despised (because it’s black?) coal, of which there is an abundance, should most certainly be in the energy mix. And there is certainly no “need” for carbon capture, so, no, sorry, no “need” to subsidize that nonsense.
So, Mr. Tinker, how about we just let the free market decide on the energy mix we use here, and around the world, since there is certainly no one- size- fits- all. To each there own. Or do you have a problem with free markets?
Been making this argument for decades now. Nice to see it catching on.
Which might be why some are now ratcheting up the neo-Mathusism. Some realize that over a half-dozen-billion fatally impoverished people are going to be far more devistating upon the environment than CO2 ever could be. Many will have to go, and the “Green New Deal” is the mechanism that could make it happen.
I think more CO2 in the atmosphere is a very good thing.
Not much need for natural gas when Gen 4 molten salt small modular reactors make their appearance.
I do sometimes wonder what on Earth the Warmunistas would do if they were suddenly transported back to the Carboniferous epoch.
Heavily oxygenated atmosphere allowed the growth of things like centipedes up to 6 feet long, with poison fangs were common. Their descendants still thrive but are shorter, although there are some rather big ones in Vietnam. And then there’s the giant cousin of the modern dragonfly – my favorite bug – meganeura. Modern relatives are everywhere on this planet but considerably smaller than old Meg was.
Why such big bugs? Oxygen made up 20 percent of the atmosphere—about today’s level—around 350 million years ago, and it rose to as much as 35% over the next 50 million years. source – Smithsonian.
Nowadays it’s around 20%. So what is it that is really, really worrying those bewildered, uninformed psychobabblers who insist repeatedly that there’s “too much carbon in the air”, or some such thing? If the O2 level rises too much, we might see the return of those giant bugs, y’know. Just take a moment and think what it might be like to have a common green dasher the size of a shopping cart land on your front steps, or chase you and your electronic toys down the block.
Think about it for a moment: giant dragonflies invade New York City, chase politicians into the Hudson!
Now, THAT, and the sheer panic that follows, would be awesome.
If you intentionally throw off Nature’s balancing act, which is what these control freak politicians are trying to do (other than gouge money out of us peasants), you get consequences. When they talk about excess carbon or CO2, their own production volume should be measured and displayed everywhere they go, in addition to the CO2 volume produced every time they have an audience, big or small.
There were also massive wildfires back then. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/31/a-geological-perspective-of-wildfires/
The “fire window” is defined as an atmospheric oxygen content range of 13-15% to 35%. Below 13-15% fire will not ignite and if it gets above 35% it becomes almost impossible to extinguish.
Inertinite abundance provides estimates of past fire systems and atmospheric oxygen content. As vascular land plants became more abundant, atmospheric oxygen levels rose. The increasing abundance of vascular land plants and higher atmospheric oxygen levels led to an increase in the prevalence of fire.
Awesome!! Now THAT is real information that should be spread around, as thick as Mississippi mud, so that the difference between Then and Now and the consequences – REAL world consequences – can be understood. I think this should be brought up repeatedly!!
That volume of oxygen would make it nearly impossible for humans and other mammals to survive.
Awesome stuff!!! Thank you!!!
If we didn’t get eaten by giant bugs, we’d burn to death… Sounds like a SyFy Channel movie.
The movie to see is “THEM!!!!” Giant ants in the desert! There’s also “Earth vs. The Spider”.
Sometimes, sci-fi is much, much better than reality… and a lot more fun.
This is a bit off, but you gave a thought.
If CO₂ is so dangerous, pollutant and catastrophic in concentrations over 0.035%, there should by law, be a visible display of the CO₂ in all public indoor assembly places, being it the local pub, the cinema or the restaurant.
An adjacent display with the wording “Health risk, please leave the area in an orderly fashion!” should light up on levels higher than 0.07% or 700ppm (double the the safe level).
Interesting.
Office buildings are allowed to have CO2 concentrations of up to 0.1%. That limit isn’t because the level of CO2 becomes dangerous, but because it indicates the building is not being ventilated properly. Actual unhealthy compounds or oxygen deprivation may be occurring.
Now closing up shop and hitting the streets when CO2 levels reached 700 ppm might be something a lot of workers would support.
From this it would seem that humans frequently breathe air with far higher concentrations of CO2 than 700ppm. At the time this was written, the acceptable level in subs was 8000ppm but, I believe I’ve read they have lowered it to 5000ppm.
Claim: CO2 makes you stupid? Ask a submariner that question
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/17/claim-co2-makes-you-stupid-as-a-submariner-that-question/
Anthony Watts / October 17, 2012
From Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, something that might finally explain Al Gore’s behavior – too much time spent indoors and in auditoriums giving pitches about the dangers of CO2. One wonders though what the Navy submarine service has to say about this new research:
We try to keep CO2 levels in our U.S. Navy submarines no higher than 8,000 parts per million, about 20 time current atmospheric levels. Few adverse effects are observed at even higher levels. – Senate testimony of Dr. William Happer, here
This is backed up by the publication from the National Academies of Science Emergency and Continuous Exposure Guidance Levels for Selected Submarine Contaminants
which documents effects of CO2 at much much higher levels than the medical study, and shows regular safe exposure at these levels…
Data collected on nine nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines indicate an average CO2 concentration of 3,500 ppm with a range of 0-10,600 ppm, and data collected on 10 nuclear-powered attack submarines indicate an average CO2 concentration of 4,100 ppm with a range of 300-11,300 ppm (Hagar 2003). – page 46
…but shows no concern at the values of 600-2500 ppm of this medical study from LBNL. I figure if the Navy thinks it is safe for men who have their finger on the nuclear weapons keys, then that is good enough for me…
Further study seems as described in this article seems to revise the safe level indoors down but the entire question is still under study.
It would take millions of years for bugs to grow that big. We’ll run out of fossil fuels long before that could happen.
Oh, I don’t think so – not millions of years. More like about 10 years, since they don’t have lungs.
You lack imagination, Sport. They’d bump up their sizes very quickly. Bugs have shorter generation spans than mere hoomans.
I biologist told me the other day that if enough locusts congregate, hormonal changes cause them to swarm around, consuming much vegetation which increases their size. It wasn’t clear to me which came first — congregating causing pheromones — or the other way around.
Probably both, noaaprogrammer. It only takes one female locust to waft those pheromones in to the air, and they simply can’t help themselves!
“Unlike many environmental pollutants that have a local or regional impact, carbon dioxide (CO2) is global”
Dr Tinker’s solid and readily understood case for most of his points is, unfortunately, diminished by his support for the demonising of CO2.
Professor Richard S. Lindzen has this to say about CO2:
“The climate, a complex multifactor system, can be summarized in just one variable, the globally averaged temperature change, and is primarily controlled by the 1-2% perturbation in the energy budget due to a single variable – carbon dioxide – among many variables of comparable importance.”
The public, when confronted by the contrasting perspectives represented by Dr Tinker’s and Prof. Lindzen’s statements, cannot be expected to make sense of what’s being said and, assuming they don’t choose not to dismiss the matter, would, legitimately have questions that should be answered, among them:
As CO2 is essential to photosynthesis, the basis of all life on earth, how can it be termed a pollutant?
Can it be demonstrated that CO2 contributes significantly to global warming?
Is there a difference between human-made CO2 and “natural” CO2, such as is out-gassed by the world ocean, increasingly so as the seas warm?
What proportion of atmospheric CO2 is derived from human economic activities?
Is there a desirable, natural or “ideal” level of atmospheric CO2 and who decides what that is?
As CO2 levels in the atmosphere that fall below 200 parts per million would compromise photosynthesis, is there a greater threat to life on Earth from reduced levels of CO2 than from levels somewhat higher than those currently prevailing?
If the world’s governments achieve their collective aim of carbon-neutral economies, what will be the effect on global warming and climate change?
How is the result of this collective intervention measured; are changes in CO2 levels and average global temperatures capable of being correlated and how is the real-world outcome to be demonstrated to have been the result of collective government intervention?
What happens if the experiment goes wrong and average temperatures continue to rise or fall while CO2 levels fall or rise respectively?
Are the worlds governments capable of responding to such a scenario in a responsible manner?
Has a longer-term perspective been devised in relation to government “management” of atmospheric CO2?
If CO2 continues into the future to be viewed as a factor in climate change, should the world’s governments then consider ways of reducing the “natural” CO2 content of the atmosphere?
Who will determine how much naturally produced CO2 is to be removed from the atmosphere?
How is CO2 reduction to be balanced with the requirements of photosynthesis and food production?
Is carbon sequestration—natural and man-made—reversible by means of human technology?
If the oceans cool and reduce the level of out-gassing of CO2 to the atmosphere, how long would it take to devise a response that restores an “ideal”, or more importantly, essential CO2 content in the atmosphere?
What effect will reduced CO2 and a consequential reduction in photosynthesis have on the oxygen content of the atmosphere?
Is there an optimal oxygen/CO2 balance?
Is there real evidence that life will suffer if atmospheric CO2 rises to levels many times higher than are currently experienced?
Even Lindzen found that carbon dioxide causes warming. Lindzen & Choi demonstratd a sensitivity of 0.5-0.6 °C per doubling.
Tinker’s position isn’t inconsistent with Lindzen’s. He isn’t calling for drastic efforts to cut emissions, just ways to reduce them while still enabling poor nations to be lifted out of energy poverty.
During his talk at AGL he said a 5% increase in temperature will be difficult to deal with; but a lack of access to affordable, reliable energy will make life impossible in many places.
I must apologise to the readership and to David Middleton for the confusing, truncated way on which I quoted Professor Lindzen, thereby adding to the confusion that I seek, however marginally, to resolve.
Professor Lindzen’s full statement was:
“Now here is the currently popular narrative concerning this system. The climate, a complex multifactor system, can be summarized in just one variable, the globally averaged temperature change, and is primarily controlled by the 1-2% perturbation in the energy budget due to a single variable – carbon dioxide – among many variables of comparable importance.
“This is an extraordinary pair of claims based on reasoning that borders on magical thinking. It is, however, the narrative that has been widely accepted, even among many sceptics.”
Professor Lindzen described the “popular narrative” regarding CO2 and climate change. He agrees that CO2 levels in the atmosphere have increased, that the Earth has been warming (albeit only a little) and that man has played some part, but dismisses the catastrophic threat assigned to CO2. Dr Tinker describes CO2 as a pollutant.
My point is that, overlap or not between their perspectives, Dr Tinker’s and Professor Lindzen’s opinions, along with those of other expert commentators—who are not catastrophists—makes a reliable alternative to the catastrophic scenario, which many people find suspect, almost impossible.
When I say that many people find the catastrophic climate scenario suspect, I mean that, at one level, they go along with the narrative, while revealing in their behaviour that they deem it contrary to reason, absurd or greatly exaggerated. While I refer to the average person, in so far as such exists, climate activists behave in the same dichotomous way; we can discount the behaviour of attention-seeking personalities whose problems lie elsewhere.
I don’t disagree with this. It’s fairly close to my views.
It is impossible to “solve” climate change! It happens no matter what we do so, we can only adapt to it.
Energy poverty can be solved and has been in many places. Unfortunately, there are those who are trying to undo those solutions.
As energy becomes more expensive, people will vote with their feet and run away from those who are trying to force them back into poverty. It’s already happening.
Dr. Tinker is logically inconsistent. He seems to have rightly grasped that the idea of taxing to adding cost to anything that involves carbon dioxide emissions is a fool’s errand. But then he instead arbitrarily wants to add costs by adding technology to sequester carbon dioxide.
What we need here, or more correctly, what HE needs is a good plant biologist, who will explain that plants, all on their own, will sequester all the carbon dioxide that we emit, NATURALLY and FOR FREE, without us needing to lift a finger. All the money we spend on pollution mitigation should be aimed at real pollutants that actually harm biological systems and environments, not one of the few precious resources that plants need. Of course, the idea of pollution, like poison, is one of degree. Sometimes plants get starved for iron or phosphorus. But too much of these things can be toxic. So far as I know, no biologist has ever said that even 10 times the current concentration of CO2 would be toxic to plants or to people. Commercial greenhouses add CO2 to their interiors to the concentration of 1500 ppm, almost 4 times more than is found in the atmosphere, today.
And so now, if we can all just come to agree that CO2 is merely a bit player, accommodating some IR energy transfers within the climate system, that it adds no new energy, and that it and does not physically “trap” heat in the atmosphere, we’d all breathe much easier and realize that the ONLY sensible solution to CO2 emissions is to do business as usual and thank our lucky stars for the miracle that is our biosphere and the fossil fuels that the biosphere created.
A fraction of a fraction with low consensus of lab characterization with performance in the wild.
David,
This is a long shot but did you happen to run across Geary Schindel at the meeting in Austin? He’s a Karst Hydrogeologist/Geologist I worked with for a number of years before he left environmental consulting to work for the Edwards Aquifer Authority in San Antonio.
Regards
(The radical warmists) “seem to not like the answers from the energy experts”, because solving the alleged CO2 ‘pollution problems’ has never been the point. The goal is dismantling free enterprise democracy so as to get their hands on the levers of power. No more, no less.
It’s always wise to keep that in mind.
The very real danger involving increasing oxygen levels is hyperoxemia – excessive oxygen in the blood. You can get a vague idea of what it’s like if you hyperventilate: dizziness, weakness, loss of balance. Aside from unstoppable wildfires, the excessive atmospheric oxygen, which benefited bugs in the Carboniferous period, is more toxic than anything else.
Without the current lower level, most current animal species WILL die off. If you want to discuss an extinction event, that’s what you should look at.
So how come the dinosaurs got so big? Dinos and avians are related to each other. They had hollow bones like birds, didn’t chew their food, they had incredibly long necks, and likely possessed huge stomachs. These traits are theorized to be key in how they attained their enormous size. Almost all bird bones are hollow and pneumatized, to store oxygen.
And yet the USA does nothing about energy poverty on its own soil or elsewhere in the world. Over a century of fossil fuel has not brought an end to it.
Wrong, Griff. Poverty in the US, and globally, are at the lowest levels in the history of our species. We have seen unprecedented reductions in poverty, especially since 1990.
In the US, people at the poverty line are richer than 93$ of the world.
It is encouraging that Scott realizes that ” energy poverty is far more dangerous than climate change. He stated that our industry is “getting killed on social media” and that it was our job as geologists to set the record straight. He closed his remarks by saying, “When someone asks you what you do, reply with ‘I work in the oil & gas industry, I lift people out of poverty. What do you do?’”
The U S oil and gas industry has literally changed the worlds power relationships by setting the US free from the need to cater to the middle east oil producers in its Foreign Policy .Trump is now able to stop the US from engaging in endless foreign wars because of the improvement in seismic data interpretation and the development of fracking technology.
However Scott is still hooked on the Dangerous Global Warming Koolaid meme. See my 2018 Blog post at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-millennial-turning-point-solar.html
Some quotes :
” When analyzing complex systems with multiple interacting variables it is useful to note the advice of Enrico Fermi who reportedly said “never make something more accurate than absolutely necessary”. My recent paper presented a simple heuristic approach to climate science which plausibly proposed that a Millennial Turning Point (MTP) and peak in solar activity was reached in 1991……………… The empirical temperature data is clear. The previous millennial cycle temperature peak was at about 990. ( see Fig 3 in the link below) The recent temperature Millennial Turning Point was about 2003/4 ( Fig 4 in link below ) which correlates with the solar millennial activity peak at 1991+/.The cycle is asymmetric with a 650 year +/- down-leg and a 350+/- year up-leg. The suns magnetic field strength as reflected in its TSI will generally decline (modulated by other shorter term super-imposed solar activity cycles) until about 2650. ……………….
For the details see data, discussion, and forecasts in Figs3,4,5,10,11,and 12 in the links below.
See the Energy and Environment paper
The coming cooling: usefully accurate climate forecasting for policy makers.
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0958305X16686488
and an earlier accessible blog version at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-coming-cooling-usefully-accurate_17.html See also the discussion with Professor William Happer at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2018/02/exchange-with-professor-happer-princeton.html
The establishment’s dangerous global warming meme, the associated IPCC series of reports ,the entire UNFCCC circus, the recent hysterical IPCC SR1.5 proposals and Nordhaus’ recent Nobel prize are founded on two basic errors in scientific judgement. First – the sample size is too small. Most IPCC model studies retrofit from the present back for only 100 – 150 years when the currently most important climate controlling, largest amplitude, solar activity cycle is millennial. This means that all climate model temperature outcomes are too hot and likely fall outside of the real future world. (See Kahneman -. Thinking Fast and Slow p 118) Second – the models make the fundamental scientific error of forecasting straight ahead beyond the Millennial Turning Point (MTP) and peak in solar activity which was reached in 1991.These errors are compounded by confirmation bias and academic consensus group think.”
See also
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-co2-derangement-syndrome-millennial.html
Here is a series of videos by Dr. Tinker.
Ummmm….where ?
“Said differently, the good intentions of carbon pricing have an unintended negative impact on climate change.”
Spencer’s Third Law: For every social action, there it an equal and opposite reaction — unintended consequences.
Energy is life. Nature is at best indifferent and mostly a stone cold killer.
Agriculture is energy.
Medicine is energy.
Maintaining livable temperatures is energy.
Weather monitoring and warning is energy.
Education is energy.
Safe water is energy.
If these people actually cared about human lives they would be doing everything in their power to increase our access to and control over energy supplies. Instead they are doing the exact opposite.
Tsk Tsk – Exactly right our modern civilization was founded during the industrial revolution on the energy density of fossil fuels i e a frozen sunlight battery. Billions have been lifted from poverty in the last 25 years by the increased use of this resource by China and India and these countries are sensibly planning to further the increase use of this gift from nature for the foreseeable future.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was set up to select from the evidence and from time to time produce reports which would show that CO2 was the main driver of dangerous climate change and at the same time provide jobs and professional advancement for thousands of western left-inclined politically correct academic scientists .A second recommendation resulted in a meeting in Rio in 1992 chaired by Maurice Strong which produced the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change later signed by 196 governments.The objective of the Convention is to keep CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that they guessed would prevent dangerous man made interference with the climate system.
This treaty is a comprehensive, politically driven, political action plan called Agenda 21 designed to produce a centrally managed global society which would control every aspect of the life of every one on earth.
It says :
“The Parties should take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimize the
causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects. Where there are threats of serious or
irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing
such measures”
Apocalyptic forecasts are used as the main drivers of demands for action and for enormous investments such as those in the new IPCC SR1.5 report and in the work of Nordhaus who advocates a carbon tax .Nordhaus is quoted in the NYT as saying “If we start moving very swiftly in the next 20 years, we might able to avoid 2 degrees, but if we don’t do that, we’re in for changes in the Earth’s system that we can’t begin to understand in depth. Warming of 4, 5, 6 degrees will bring changes we don’t understand because it’s outside the range of human experience in the last 100,000 to 200,000 years.”
The Western elite academics proselytizing the warming scenario are closely following the UNFCCC Agenda 21 political plan of action by providing the politicians with scary scenarios .
Bernie Sanders says :” Climate change is the single greatest threat facing our planet. The debate is over, and the scientific jury is in: global climate change is real, it is caused mainly by emissions released from burning fossil fuels and it poses a catastrophic threat to the long-term longevity of our planet. If we do nothing, the planet will heat up five to ten degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century. That would cause enough sea level rise from melting glaciers to put cities like New York and Miami underwater – along with more frequent asthma attacks, higher food prices, insufficient drinking water and more infectious diseases.”
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed taxing the wealthy as high as 70% to fund a climate change plan she’s pushing called the “Green New Deal.” She also says “The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change”
Fortunately, Reality is finally beginning to intrude upon the dangerous global warming meme.
Curry, 2017 in “Climate Models for the layman” says:
“GCMs are not fit for the purpose of attributing the causes of 20th century warming or for
predicting global or regional climate change on time scales of decades to centuries,
with any high level of confidence. By extension, GCMs are not fit for the purpose of
justifying political policies to fundamentally alter world social, economic and energy
systems…..”
Scafetta et al 2017 states: “The severe discrepancy between observations and modeled predictions……further confirms….that the current climate models have significantly exaggerated the anthropogenic greenhouse warming effect”
Hansen et al 2018 “Global Temperature in 2017” said “However, the solar variability is not negligible in comparison with the energy imbalance that drives global temperature change. Therefore, because of the combination of the strong 2016 El Niño and the phase of the solar cycle, it is plausible, if not likely, that the next 10 years of global temperature change will leave an impression of a ‘global warming hiatus’.
Page, 2017 in “The coming cooling: usefully accurate climate forecasting for policy makers.” said:
” This paper argued that the methods used by the establishment climate science community are not fit for purpose and that a new forecasting paradigm should be adopted. Earth’s climate is the result of resonances and beats between various quasi-cyclic processes of varying wavelengths. It is not possible to forecast the future unless we have a good understanding of where the earth is in time in relation to the current phases of those different interacting natural quasi periodicities. Evidence is presented specifying the timing and amplitude of the natural 60+/- year and, more importantly, 1,000 year periodicities (observed emergent behaviors) that are so obvious in the temperature record. Data related to the solar climate driver is discussed and the solar cycle 22 low in the neutron count (high solar activity) in 1991 is identified as a solar activity millennial peak and correlated with the millennial peak -inversion point – in the RSS temperature trend in about 2003. The cyclic trends are projected forward and predict a probable general temperature decline in the coming decades and centuries. Estimates of the timing and amplitude of the coming cooling are made. If the real climate outcomes follow a trend which approaches the near term forecasts of this working hypothesis, the divergence between the IPCC forecasts and those projected by this paper will be so large by 2021 as to make the current, supposedly actionable, level of confidence in the IPCC forecasts untenable.”
Bernie’s wrong, and he’s deflecting, too.
Politicians and their ignorance, greed and lust for power are the single biggest threat to this planet.
More CO2 in the atmosphere is a very good thing.
‘we could actually make a serious dent in carbon emissions and help lift billions of people out of poverty without any self-inflicted economic damage.’
How people live is none of your business. Unless you are a colonialist. People who cook with dried dung don’t need to be fixed.
“Carbon capture, utilization and storage; direct carbon capture from the atmosphere; and perhaps nature-based solutions such as increasing the size of forests would help, especially in fossil fuel producing regions such as the U.S., Russia, China and the Middle East.”
Mr. Tinker makes many good points but carbon capture and increasing the size of forests are in direct opposition to each other.
Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds
nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth …
Also, the current absurd policy in Europe of burning biomass (forests) for fuel to replace coal also works against any increase in forests and increases CO2 emissions.
The Obvious Biomass Emissions Error
Anthony Watts
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/02/07/the-obvious-biomass-emissions-error/
“…As a result, the emissions numbers reported by Europe are wrong. Eurostat reports that Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions declined 16 percent from 2000 to 2016, but emissions from plants burning biomass and emissions from vehicular biofuels aren’t counted. European nations won’t face this obvious biomass emissions error, because without biomass, already difficult climate targets would become impossible to meet.
…In the name of cutting CO2 emissions, four of the six Drax generating stations were converted to burn wood chips over the last seven years, at a cost of £700 million ($1 billion). Hailed as “the biggest decarbonization project in Europe,” this facility now consumes about 9 million tons of wood pellets per year, shipped 3,000 miles from the US and Canada.
An estimated 4,600 square miles of forest are needed to feed the voracious Drax plant, with acres of forest felled each day. Replanted trees will take half a century to regrow. Despite the decarbonization claims, the CO2 emitted from the Drax plants are far greater today than when coal fuel was burned.”
Mr. Tinker was correct when he wrote this, “Unfortunately, this appears to be far from happening. Climate politics seems to trump energy solutions in Europe and the U.S., and the developing world continues to burn coal.” However, wanting to increase forests while engaging in carbon capture and without addressing the greatest threat to forests today, the Drax plants and others like them, is a major deficit in his potential solutions.
Unless the prehistorical research data is all just grievously wrong, CO2 just is not a concern at realistic levels. At all. It’s far more driven than driving, and apparently the world and life has done just fine at much, much higher levels than today.
Which is not to say that pollution is not a concern, in fact the “CO2 obsession” is taking all the wind out of the sails of dealing with other pollution issues.
Apart from the fact that controlling carbon allows you to control people, I really don’t understand why this is the “one and only” issue most of the energy of advocates is spent on. I mean, I was able to do the math at home and I get that math is scary to a lot of people, but, people, do the math. You’ll sleep better, and annoy other people less.
Of the FOUR methods Mr. Tillis suggests for ameliorating CO2, your summary only endorses the efficacy of three. His fourth idea:
If a concession to CO2 fear-mongers is necessary, it seems like this is pretty innocuous, and IS a green crowd pleaser that they would also subscribe to.
Planting trees and managing forests to minimize fire danger puts people to work and yields a harvestable product after the CO2-reapers have done their duty. Should satisfy everyone.
Ironically, environments with green spaces, dense forests, lush flora and fauna, and human habitation are an impediment to low-density, environmentally-temperamental large-scale Green solutions.
Tinker, not Tilis. He also suggests better energy efficiency. Which is also a good idea when it makes economic sense.
Replacing coal-fired power plants with natural gas advanced combined cycle already makes economic sense. While nuclear is expensive, it can replace coal MW for MW with zero emissions of anything. Carbon sequestration already makes economic sense if the CO2 can be used for EOR; however other projects like Petra Nova require either higher oil prices or some manner of subsidization… And the main reason for doing this is to keep coal-fired power plants in service. The one advantage that coal and nuclear power have over natural gas is resiliency. While I don’t care for subsidies of any kind, subsidizing energy that works (coal & nuclear) makes a lot more sense to me than subsidizing energy that only works part-time (wind & solar).
Remove all subsidies and let the market sort them out. Intermittency is a cost that if reflected in the price of primitive energy would make it completely uncompetitive for the foreseeable future.
I did not know that Lindzen and Choi had stated that CO2 caused some degree of warming.As Hottel and Schack
have written all the thermodynamics equations,where CO2 is not included,having no effect,have L&C above rewritten the eqations that are used by engineers and scientists the world over?
Lindzen, Roy Spencer and John Christy have all published papers demonstrating a sensitivty of 0.5 to 1.1 C. Christy & McSnider was the most recent.
There is no actual scientific debate about whether or not CO2 is a greenhouse gas and causes some warming. The only debate is about how much and what, if anything, to do about it.
What, exactly, is there to solve except cases of mindless hysteria?
We want to hear President Trump say “We do have a clean coal solution! This Carbon Capture Utilization System turns CO2 into good paying full time jobs and money.” “Let’s put the coal miners back to work”. Let’s rebuild their communities.
America has over 600 years of good quality coal available. We believe America needs to look at it’s energy situation. Coal should be used to produce electricity. Natural gas should be used for building space heating and by industry to produce all those things we consume daily. America’s oil should be used for transportation and to produce all those other products where oil is required. Using America’s energy wisely will provide energy for many years 24/7.
Renewables (solar and wind) should have it’s own grid network feeding electricity for America’s EV market. The worst that can happen there is if the batteries run out of charge, these vehicles park until they can recover. This industry needs to look at how much CO2 and emissions is being created putting this equipment together, and how much more to maintain it and then replace it.
Natural gas also needs to be consumed much better. 20% or more of this combusted energy leaves the appliances chimney and gets vented into the atmosphere as hot exhaust. With the technology of Condensing Flue Gas Heat Recovery the heat energy in the combusted exhaust can be recovered so what is being vented is cool exhaust. For every 1 million Btu’s of heat energy that is recovered and then utilized, 117 lbs of CO2 does not get put into the atmosphere. This adds up to be Tons quickly.
In every 1 million Btu’s of combusted natural gas are 5 gallons of recoverable distilled water. To get at this useable water the heat energy has to be removed. The cooler the exhaust is reduced, the greater the volume of water that is produced. Water is becoming a precious commodity.
At those locations where there is a lot of vacant land near the natural gas power plants, the heat energy can be recovered from the combusted exhaust and be used to heat and or cool large ranges of commercial greenhouses, in which food crops can be grown. The cooled exhaust can be analyzed, and if free from unburnt matter, can be blown into the greenhouse growing areas providing CO2 enrichment for the food producing plants. The created water can be used by the power plants in their cooling towers, or it can be treated, nutrients added and be used ti irrigate the food producing plants.
Everyone is talking about reducing CO2 emissions and increasing energy efficiency. The above is what we have to offer to help accomplish some of those requirements. https://youtu.be/RQRQ7S92_lo
America has over 600 years of good quality coal in the ground. We have another solution at dealing with Carbon or CO2. Our Sidel Carbon Capture Utilization System turns the Captured CO2 into good paying full time jobs and money.
The sorbent we use requires growing thousands of acres of our required large leaf vegetable. During the time it takes to grow these plants to maturity CO2 is being absorbed and put into the soil. These plants are at the same time giving us back O2.
Our CCU System requires no steam from the power plant, and only a minimal amount of electricity. This allows the power plant to produce more electricity, increasing it’s profitability. This CCU System creates earth friendly products that will be sold and transported by truck or rail from the power plant site. This System has an ROI which over time will be used to reimburse the Utility the cost of putting up the Sidel CCU System.
In 2010 when we decided we wanted to help the coal industry we wanted to design a Carbon Capture that would be a win-win for everyone. We were fortunate to find an industry that injected large volumes of CO2 into it’s process for purification purposes and had been doing so for over 60 years. We were able to take that proven process and remold it into a process that would in an atmospheric reactor absorb the CO2 out of the combusted fossil fuel exhaust.
We believe America needs to review it’s future Energy Policy. America has over 600 years of good quality coal available. This coal needs to be used to generate America’s electricity. Coal power plants can operate for 40 to 60 years or more.
America’s natural gas should be used first for building space heating and by industry to produce all those things we consume daily. If America can make good money selling it to other countries, so be it.
America’s oil should be used for transportation purposes, and to produce those other items that require oil.
Doing the above will keep America comfortable and moving forward for many decades.
Renewables (solar & wind) can be used to produce electricity, but should have it’s own grid network supplying electricity for EV’s. When the sun goes down and the wind stops blowing and the batteries run out of power, it’s time to park the vehicles. No harm done. The charging network can pay for the maintenance and up keep and replacement of these systems as required.
I have been trying for years to get the South African Government to implement a simple solution; Take CO2 from flue gases and feed it to algae growing in sewerage. Then DO NOT use algae for biofuels, at least not directly. We would be recycling nutrients, potentially water also, and slowing the return of CO2 to the atmosphere, and our corrupt municipalities would have a monetary incentive to treat sewerage instead of letting it flow into rivers we draw our drinking water from; We would also create directly and indirectly a large number of jobs, with a business model that can be implemented worldwide. (a potential solution to the migrant problem, with a resurgence of job creation AWAY from major population centres)
The huge problem with CCS that is frequently ignored is the Sequestration part.
We often see energy use projections for the “CC” part and now tech to do it. Things like 40% additional energy from coal to “capture” the CO2. That seems to be where the sexy, “we can do this”, hoopla exists for CCS.
But unless you have a lot ready oil fields that can take the “S” part and do it economically, doing the CC part makes even less sense. Especially at the Sequestration scale necessary to affect a nation’s actual emissions due to electrical generation. Even if you identify a few dozen suitable geologic repository sites around the nation, getting the liquid CO2 there is another energy intensive task as well as energy to pressurize and pump it into that deep formation. Then the local politics of permitting also takes over. There’s already a huge resistance for the ecoterrorists about building new pipelines as CCS goes against their “Keep it in the ground” schtick.
If you own pipelines already it is a license to print money because it is so hard to build new ones due to the environmentalists. In Canada I was told one company simply tried to expand an existing pipeline and were blocked. My sister in law works for a company that makes a product that goes into the pipeline to make the oil have less friction so more can be pumped through the pipeline. Warren Buffett owns the company.
If you live in a poor society for whatever reason, with no Social Services, by sheer necessarily you must have a large family, needed to do the labour required for your survival , such as growing food, plus someone to look after you in your old
age.
Allowing for the fact that in such a society many of the children will die,
then a figure of about 10 children per couple is not unusual.
So along come the well intentioned Westerners and provide both better
medical and food aid. Then they wonder why the population suddenly booms.
Solution is of course simple, only supply condoms, no food or medical aid.
Then along comes the Media, and while we are sitting down to a meal,
see a picture of a small child with a swollen belly, “”Only for a dollar a day”” .
The Western countries went through this same situation, but we did not have
the likes of the UN telling some other country that they should help us. We
helped ourselves the hard way. We dug coal and metals and developed things.
If we could get past the tribal chief or war lord, then Western aid should
consist of developing the coal and mineral wealth the same way we did it.
Put in a profit motive, yes that dreadful thing called Capitalism , it worked,
and the country will develop.
MJE VK5ELL
Transcripts / documentaries to offer:.
https://www.google.com/search?q=dr.tinker+transcript+Austin+geological+speech&oq=dr.tinker+transcript+Austin+geological+speech+&aqs=chrome.