Have we reached a tipping point?

[andym]

Can you tell me the carbon dating website you’re referring to? I didn’t see it above. Thanks.

Sure: answersingenesis.org. Its not a scientific website per se. They cover way more than carbon 14. Search for articles on carbon-14 dating, there are several.
I'm not trying to deny all or any evidence of climate change. I'm only saying that the evidence may at times tell a different story when appoached with a different world view.
Earth-friendly is great, but it also needs to be human friendly. Many times it comes across as: 'stop living cause the polar bears are dying.' That doesn't help win followers.

 

[Ctwoodtick]

I agree that the messaging needs to be people friendly. Maybe more importantly, messaging made most direct to people about how climate change is anticipated to affect humans as time goes on. I’ve often thought slogans like “save the planet” are too general.
I think people can have their cake and eat it too. With the innovation we see in technology overall, I bet we wouldn’t be giving up any luxuries we have now. The polar bears might dig it too.

 

[woodgeek]

Well, @andym, you are entitled to believe anything you like, and in this free country you can release any amount of pollution you like as allowed by law. Especially if it would be inconvenient for you to do otherwise.

But I just want to say that I find the phrase 'evolution scientists' hysterical, I'm going to be chuckling about that for awhile.

Scientists started out thinking the world was a few thousand years old, and then figured from literally HUNDREDS of different lines of evidence (not just carbon-14 and evolution) that it had to be far older. And in fact, those HUNDREDS of different lines of evidence all are consistent with one another, in line with an old earth. I agree that some of the lines of evidence (like carbon-14) can be off by some percentage, which gets larger as the sample gets older (bc all the carbon-14 has decayed, there's none left to measure). Which is when they switch to a different, longer lived isotope, of which there are dozens, and which all 'ladder' together back literally billions of years.

Which, of course, matches perfectly with what when we look out into space at distant galaxies. Which we can measure by a variety of independent methods to be billions of light years away. So now we need to suppose that the vast universe was somehow created a few thousand years ago with all that light we are collecting in telescopes in flight 99.9999% of the way to earth. Or that the speed of light somehow changed by a million fold, without any change in chemistry, nor any detectable change to the 6-th decimal over the last century.

The analogy is that a detective is sent one morning to the scene of a grisly murder. After looking around, he concludes that the time of death (and thus the murder) was 12 ± 3 hours earlier, the previous evening. For example, the blood spatters are dry and have turned color (consistent with lab tests on blood), the body is room temperature. Rigor mortis has set in (which takes several hours). But being a diligent detective, many other lines of evidence are collected. The pool of blood has soaked into the carpeting to some distance. The victim is dressed in the clothes he was seen in the previous day. There is a nightcap poured, but not drunk, and the coffee machine is clean and cold. The dinner dishes are still in the sink. Lights are still switched on throughout the house, as if he died when the sun was down. The victim's cat has eaten all of its food and water, and is acting hungry. And so on and so forth.

And then somebody walks in, and says the murder occurred literally just a tiny fraction of a second before the detective arrived (in other words, one millionth as long as 12 hours)! And argues that every single bit of evidence has an alternative explanation. Some, like the cat or the dishes, sure. Maybe he woke up and put the same clothes on. Maybe he likes to have a drink with breakfast. But others, like the body temp, the dried blood, and rigor mortis? How can you explain THOSE things?

And then the guy starts saying that HE'S a detective too (and flashes some odd credential), but he's not a 'body-temperature' detective, that has been discredited and can have errors ±50%. And asks the first detective if he was at the scene the night before, and so how can he really be 'sure' and asks how much does he gets paid to do his job? And then the new guy points out that he is a volunteer supported by donations of like-minded people, and thus completely 'independent'.

And so you see, it's really the word of one detective against another. They can't both be right!

 

[begreen]

I don't think this tangent is going to get very far is someone does not believe in the many measurements, facts, and principles in the fields of physics and chemistry, dating methods including radiometric dating, geology, astronomy, cosmology, and paleontology.

 

[andym]

Well, @andym, you are entitled to believe anything you like, and in this free country you can release any amount of pollution you like as allowed by law. Especially if it would be inconvenient for you to do otherwise.

But I just want to say that I find the phrase 'evolution scientists' hysterical, I'm going to be chuckling about that for awhile.

Scientists started out thinking the world was a few thousand years old, and then figured from literally HUNDREDS of different lines of evidence (not just carbon-14 and evolution) that it had to be far older. And in fact, those HUNDREDS of different lines of evidence all are consistent with one another, in line with an old earth. I agree that some of the lines of evidence (like carbon-14) can be off by some percentage, which gets larger as the sample gets older (bc all the carbon-14 has decayed, there's none left to measure). Which is when they switch to a different, longer lived isotope, of which there are dozens, and which all 'ladder' together back literally billions of years.

Which, of course, matches perfectly with what when we look out into space at distant galaxies. Which we can measure by a variety of independent methods to be billions of light years away. So now we need to suppose that the vast universe was somehow created a few thousand years ago with all that light we are collecting in telescopes in flight 99.9999% of the way to earth. Or that the speed of light somehow changed by a million fold, without any change in chemistry, nor any detectable change to the 6-th decimal over the last century.

The analogy is that a detective is sent one morning to the scene of a grisly murder. After looking around, he concludes that the time of death (and thus the murder) was 12 ± 3 hours earlier, the previous evening. For example, the blood spatters are dry and have turned color (consistent with lab tests on blood), the body is room temperature. Rigor mortis has set in (which takes several hours). But being a diligent detective, many other lines of evidence are collected. The pool of blood has soaked into the carpeting to some distance. The victim is dressed in the clothes he was seen in the previous day. There is a nightcap poured, but not drunk, and the coffee machine is clean and cold. The dinner dishes are still in the sink. Lights are still switched on throughout the house, as if he died when the sun was down. The victim's cat has eaten all of its food and water, and is acting hungry. And so on and so forth.

And then somebody walks in, and says the murder occurred literally just a tiny fraction of a second before the detective arrived (in other words, one millionth as long as 12 hours)! And argues that every single bit of evidence has an alternative explanation. Some, like the cat or the dishes, sure. Maybe he woke up and put the same clothes on. Maybe he likes to have a drink with breakfast. But others, like the body temp, the dried blood, and rigor mortis? How can you explain THOSE things?

And then the guy starts saying that HE'S a detective too (and flashes some odd credential), but he's not a 'body-temperature' detective, that has been discredited and can have errors ±50%. And asks the first detective if he was at the scene the night before, and so how can he really be 'sure' and asks how much does he gets paid to do his job? And then the new guy points out that he is a volunteer supported by donations of like-minded people, and thus completely 'independent'.

And so you see, it's really the word of one detective against another. They can't both be right!

I've read enough about the millions and billions to be somewhat familiar with it. Have you read any of the research I've refered to at answersingenesis.org?

I expected a response like this from someone sooner rather than later. I have hijacked the thread a bit. I realize this is not a religious forum so I will take it no further. No hard feelings. (I am open to further discourse via PM.)

 

[begreen]

I've read enough about the millions and billions to be somewhat familiar with it. Have you read any of the research I've refered to at answersingenesis.org?

I expected a response like this from someone sooner rather than later. I have hijacked the thread a bit. I realize this is not a religious forum so I will take it no further. No hard feelings. (I am open to further discourse via PM.)

It's a rabbit hole based on partial facts, myths, exclusion of important details and corroborating data in order to make an argument. There are other sites like this with similar conjectures.

 

[woodgeek]

I HAVE read the stuff on answers in genesis, and the creation museum, for close to 20 years now. I have read the published papers about the changing speed of light explaining the appearance of the universe (which is 10^18 times larger in volume than a young universe model allows with a constant speed of light). And all the stuff about the Flood causing erosion (the measurable rate of current erosion points to many landscape features being at least many tens millions of years old).

And frankly, none of it looks well done at all. Mostly just cherry picking single lines of evidence and 'what if'ing it as in my story above....and pretending that there aren't hundreds more lines.

Again, you are welcome to believe anything you like. Peace.

I have started a PM if you want to discuss further.....

 

[Groo]

When you discuss things like changing the world's climate, best to look at the big picture.
1) everything alive today has descended from living organisms that thrive in a much hotter Earth with a much higher CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
2) when the global temperature was warmer in the past, most of that extra heat was at the poles and not the tropics
3) we have a ridiculous amount of currently unusable amount of land were it's just too cold.
4) polar ice caps are not normal for Earth. Their existence means we are currently in an "Ice Age" now.

Add it all together, and it's not that big a deal. All the land lost to oceans rising will be made up by the greening of the tundra. It's not going to be 10 degrees hotter in Mexico if the Earth's temperature rises 10 degrees. Probably more like 3 to 5 degrees.

Life will go on.
The world is not going to end from Global Warming.

Now for my quack pot religeous theory;
Look how long it took between plants making celulous and for bacteria to developed to utilize that energy source. That many million year gap is what created our fossil fuel deposits.
In a few decades, we have bacteria starting to go after oceanic plastic islands.
Why did evolution take so long to utilize an abundant energy source back then? That doesn't really jive with how evolution has worked for a very long time now.
It almost seems like those fossil fuel deposits were left there on purpose, to be utilized by us to help bring us from the point where we were hairless apes, unfit for survival where we developed, into a species of thinkers preparing to leave the confines of our birth planet behind. We certainly couldn't do it as a bunch of savages using sticks to plant crops and rocks to hunt bunnies and squirrels.
I think it is all pre-ordained.

 

[Ctwoodtick]

When you discuss things like changing the world's climate, best to look at the big picture.
1) everything alive today has descended from living organisms that thrive in a much hotter Earth with a much higher CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
2) when the global temperature was warmer in the past, most of that extra heat was at the poles and not the tropics
3) we have a ridiculous amount of currently unusable amount of land were it's just too cold.
4) polar ice caps are not normal for Earth. Their existence means we are currently in an "Ice Age" now.

Add it all together, and it's not that big a deal. All the land lost to oceans rising will be made up by the greening of the tundra. It's not going to be 10 degrees hotter in Mexico if the Earth's temperature rises 10 degrees. Probably more like 3 to 5 degrees.

Life will go on.
The world is not going to end from Global Warming.

Now for my quack pot religeous theory;
Look how long it took between plants making celulous and for bacteria to developed to utilize that energy source. That many million year gap is what created our fossil fuel deposits.
In a few decades, we have bacteria starting to go after oceanic plastic islands.
Why did evolution take so long to utilize an abundant energy source back then? That doesn't really jive with how evolution has worked for a very long time now.
It almost seems like those fossil fuel deposits were left there on purpose, to be utilized by us to help bring us from the point where we were hairless apes, unfit for survival where we developed, into a species of thinkers preparing to leave the confines of our birth planet behind. We certainly couldn't do it as a bunch of savages using sticks to plant crops and rocks to hunt bunnies and squirrels.
I think it is all pre-ordained.

As Phil Collins said “THIS is the world we live in”. And in this world at this time, the trouble is not that we’ll have buy more shorts and tank tops to stay cool in the heat, but the world will change significantly in a negative way.
Nobody said that the world will end bc of climate change. It will just
However significantly impact life for people/animals. But, unfortunately, will live in a time where people feel entitled to make up their own reality. The ethno- centrism that leads humans to keep thinking that they’re special or chosen or whatever, is destructive.
Pride goeth before a fall.

 

[begreen]

It will be a different world for sure. How different is up to us, right now. So far the trends are not optimistic.

Plant and animal species at risk of extinction » Yale Climate Connections

The current rate of species extinction is far higher than the average during the past 10 million years.

yaleclimateconnections.org

Canada's last intact ice shelf just collapsed

The area of the Milne Ice Shelf is now reduced by 43%.

www.space.com

 

[woodgeek]

When you discuss things like changing the world's climate, best to look at the big picture.
1) everything alive today has descended from living organisms that thrive in a much hotter Earth with a much higher CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
2) when the global temperature was warmer in the past, most of that extra heat was at the poles and not the tropics
3) we have a ridiculous amount of currently unusable amount of land were it's just too cold.
4) polar ice caps are not normal for Earth. Their existence means we are currently in an "Ice Age" now.

Add it all together, and it's not that big a deal. All the land lost to oceans rising will be made up by the greening of the tundra. It's not going to be 10 degrees hotter in Mexico if the Earth's temperature rises 10 degrees. Probably more like 3 to 5 degrees.

Life will go on.
The world is not going to end from Global Warming.

Now for my quack pot religeous theory;
Look how long it took between plants making celulous and for bacteria to developed to utilize that energy source. That many million year gap is what created our fossil fuel deposits.
In a few decades, we have bacteria starting to go after oceanic plastic islands.
Why did evolution take so long to utilize an abundant energy source back then? That doesn't really jive with how evolution has worked for a very long time now.
It almost seems like those fossil fuel deposits were left there on purpose, to be utilized by us to help bring us from the point where we were hairless apes, unfit for survival where we developed, into a species of thinkers preparing to leave the confines of our birth planet behind. We certainly couldn't do it as a bunch of savages using sticks to plant crops and rocks to hunt bunnies and squirrels.
I think it is all pre-ordained.

Cute theory. Actually, I don't think so.

You ARE right that the earth has, over time, been both much hotter than currently (with no polar ice) AND much colder than currently (with the oceans frozen over all the way to the equator!). Life didn't like the latter condition very much at all, but it was down with the former hotter state.

The first rub, of course, with greening the tundra, is the lack of SOIL. If you were planning on making food the way we currently do, you might want to visit the tundra and the soggy peat beds that prevail up there. The first is kinda rocky, and the second is an acidic swamp (which if you drain it, might catch on fire and burn for a long time).

The second rub is that the previous changes in climate that were really large were also comparatively slow. And that gave ecosystems time to migrate. A forest can migrate easily, if the rate is a the range a seed can fly in a decade or two. a thousand miles in 50 years, not so much. Not to mention that our wonder national park system has fragmented those ecosystems such that they can't migrate between parks. Or over mountain ranges.

Both of these problems have technological solutions, but I find it hard to believe that a benevolent G-d would create global warming so that we would have to find (and fight over) those solutions.

I would love to see pictures of these 'islands of plastic' of which you speak.

 

[Ctwoodtick]

Tom Wessels has some good videos on co-evolution and the relatively slow speed that’s needed for nature to adapt to change. His more general videos on “forest forensics” are absolutely fascinating.

 

[begreen]

In today's news another milestone that I'd rather we didn't pass.

Climate Scientists Sound the Alarm: Warming Greenland Ice Sheet Passes Point of No Return

Even if the climate cools, study finds, glaciers will continue to shrink. Nearly 40 years of satellite data from Greenland shows that glaciers on the island have shrunk so much that even if global warming were to stop today, the ice sheet would continue shrinking. The finding, published today,

scitechdaily.com

 

[Groo]

As Phil Collins said “THIS is the world we live in”. And in this world at this time, the trouble is not that we’ll have buy more shorts and tank tops to stay cool in the heat, but the world will change significantly in a negative way.
Nobody said that the world will end bc of climate change. It will just
However significantly impact life for people/animals. But, unfortunately, will live in a time where people feel entitled to make up their own reality. The ethno- centrism that leads humans to keep thinking that they’re special or chosen or whatever, is destructive.
Pride goeth before a fall.

Yes, there are actually plenty of people claiming that global warming will result in an Earth unable to suport life. Those that k ow better do virtually nothing to correct that misconception.

The biggest problem with the environmental movement is the people pushing it. They are displaced communists looking for a new way to destroy capitalism. Some would no doubt say "great! Capitalism is destroying the planet! " that thinking does not at all jive with the way communism destroys the environment wherever it is implemented. Then the others talk about rising ocean levels while buying oceanfront property and flying in private jets.
I'm certainly not saying "trash the world" I am saying , look at it scientifically and not emotionally.
If you want to stop global warming, let's offer prizes for people that come up with solutions instead of clamoring for "solutions " that are just unrealistic delaying tactics. How could slowing the increase in the rate of fossil fuel use ever lead to our ice caps regrowing if they are already melting? If we are at 800million ton of CO2 production, or whatever a 5% increase instead of a 7% increase won't do crap.
All the false environmentalism makes me want to puke. Buy a tesla because its "emission free", well that sure isnt the case, but once you add in how tesla corperate works to make the cars unrepairable, they become ecological disasters. A car that can be fixed and updated is better than one that is rust totaled in a decade with just 5 digits on the odometer. I've purchased 3 new vehicles in my life. The first 2 suffered frame failures from rust while running like a top. I figure I have 5 more year on #3.

The Kyoto protocol was to do next to nothing apart from hamstring the western powers. China wasnt going to cut back. How about instead we implement tariffs based on the environmental impact to produce the item....you know pass laws that make it cheaper to produce something cleanly vs polutingly. If ever tighten regulations keep pushing production to countrys with looser regulations, your environmental laws make morepution,not less.

Remember all those people yelling "Believe Science!"?
Scientifically, global warming won't be near as bad as the doom-cryers predict.
Scientifically, the development of the Earth's fossil fuel reserves is a very curious event.


Ps. I'd rather my descendant deal with Global Warming, than the ice age we should be creaping into based on the periodic fluctuations in the Earth's tilt and orbit. An eternally unchanging global environment is not a realistic option. Ice sheets past Ohio would not be a planet conducive to human life without a mass die-off.

 

[peakbagger]

Its interesting to draw some parallels between the response to Global Warming and Covid. The origin is different but once it was in the wild many of the same climate deniers were Covid deniers. The deniers initially denied the science and thought they could talk there way around it as it inexorbably burned thru the vulnerable and then moved into the other populations. Meanwhile the scientists were pointing out the facts as they learned them and the Covid deniers ignored them. The places that folllowed the science got it under control while the ignorers are now seeing hospitals turn folks away and losing the elderly and vulnerable population. The climate change is just happening over centuries.

The earth will survive global warming, this is just a blip geologically, but humans may not. The current approach to climate change is big experiment and humans are the lab rats. I dont have kids and wont live to see the worst of it but no doubt peoples grand kids will and those grandkids will see a far different world without big changes in carbon production.

 

[woodgeek]

Well, Groo, I think you and I may agree on many facts and long-term solutions, even if we disagree on particulars, and which sources of info might be reliable.

The fact of the matter is that solutions to Global Warming DO exist. And those solutions are affordable, are currently being deployed at 'scale', will plausibly become 'stupid cheap' in the future as that scaling continues AND are certainly a very good deal when compared to the costs of 'business as usual'.

And future rolling those solutions will be done by all kinds of political systems. The capitalists will do them, the communists will do them, the oligarchs will do them, all for their own, usual reasons....money, power and politics. And in fact, they ARE scaling these solutions in China, in the EU, and even in the US of A, right now as we speak!

But there ARE some 'energy incumbents' that are making good money on the old system, and they have bought quite a few politicians in the US for many years, and they have some very good 'Big Tobacco'-type PR firms and lawyers and think tanks, that they have been using to prevent and slow the roll out of those solutions for decades now. So they can make some more money selling carbon at a rich price as long as possible.

So, when you hear that 'Solar panels take more energy to make than they ever produce' or 'There isn't enough lithium to replace gasoline' or 'wind turbines kill birds' or 'wind and solar are super expensive, and just built to get tax subsidies' or 'Teslas are junk that are worthless after a few years' or 'the Chinese are releasing more CO2 than the US, and will for decades' or 'Check out Al Gore's electricity bill...what a hypocrite!' or 'The Paris Accord requires the US to pay India to build a new energy system' or 'AOC want to ban hamburgers and windows in houses', etc, .... well, that is all misinformation created by those incumbents for their political purpose!

Business as usual energy will unambiguously make a pretty bad planet for humans and animals in 100 years. Much of the Fossil Energy you suggest is our divine inheritance will need to be **left in the ground** to prevent that outcome. But arguing hypotheticals in 100 years is pointless. Solutions being rolled out worldwide will avert the biggest disasters, and I happen to think that 'tipping point' language is alarmist and not helpful.

But that said, I think we have a moral duty to our descendants to roll out solutions as quickly and sensibly as we can. And that is going to look something like the Paris Accord (with the US rejoined), the Green New Deal, the Biden Energy plan and their equivalents in the EU, China and elsewhere. And we will still get to look at the sky through windows, and enjoy a good hamburger if we want (although I also enjoy a good Impossible Burger these days).

 

[ABMax24]

But there ARE some 'energy incumbents' that are making good money on the old system, and they have bought quite a few politicians in the US for many years, and they have some very good 'Big Tobacco'-type PR firms and lawyers and think tanks, that they have been using to prevent and slow the roll out of those solutions for decades now. So they can make some more money selling carbon at a rich price as long as possible.

One thing I want to point out is the attention this topic gets and how it actually can hinder change.

I work for big oil and gas, I construct the processing plants that help deliver supply natural gas to the main pipelines that criss-cross the continent. The fact is I wouldn't have a job if there wasn't a demand for the product we produce in the first place. There seems to be a very large group of mostly lower and middle class individuals that believe they are winning the climate change war by slandering and protesting against oil and gas companies, and then jump in their gas guzzling SUV's and drive home to their larger than needed homes and consider the job done. If they had spent half as much effort reducing their own consumption the world would be further ahead.

It's a similar thing to the war on big tobacco. If you want to reduce consumption reduce demand not supply. This was done somewhat successfully with the big anti-smoking campaigns of the last decades.

The world will only stop burning fossil fuels when one of 2 things happen, we burn the last lump of coal and the last drop of oil, or we reduce demand to zero. The first scenario would be catastrophic so we need to find a way to implement the second.

The fact is oil and gas will exist until it is economically unfeasible to continue to use. The best way to solve this is to make renewables cheaper, solar and wind are very much getting there, Tesla is working hard to put a dent in the car market, but we need a ten-fold increase in all three of these to make an appreciable difference.

 

[begreen]

They are displaced communists looking for a new way to destroy capitalism

That's quite a grand misstatement. Most of the papers I have read are working on solutions to keep economies going while shifting gears. Done right, it will create a lot of jobs. For example, there is nothing in this article about shutting down economies.

Decarbonize by 2035, electrify everything

Working with currently available tech now instead of waiting for something in the future, Griffith has laid out a detailed plan for transition. "Griffith begins with a core assumption: We need to make a plan to solve the problem with the tools available. It is unwise, for instance, to bet on a...

www.hearth.com

The fact is I wouldn't have a job if there wasn't a demand for the product we produce in the first place. There seems to be a very large group of mostly lower and middle class individuals that believe they are winning the climate change war by slandering and protesting against oil and gas companies, and then jump in their gas guzzling SUV's and drive home to their larger than needed homes and consider the job done. If they had spent half as much effort reducing their own consumption the world would be further ahead.

Agreed. One of the fastest and cheapest options we have at present is conservation. Been saying that for 40 yrs now. And in some ways we have made good progress. But the consumption of fossil fuel is not just the SUV owner. In part, because the price of oil and gas is heavily subsidized, transportation and therefore commodity prices are artificially low. If those subsidies were stopped and those funds redirected toward building better infrastructure, then the change can move quicker. Also, we have to deal with marketing. Right now the fossil fuel industry sees the handwriting on the wall. They know demand is decreasing. To compensate, they are currently building major new refineries to double or triple the production of plastics. This is in spite of the world being awash in a glut of plastics. Marketing will push consumption of more packaging and more plastics regardless of need. In the least, the fossil fuel industry needs to be held accountable. If they produce these plastics, then they need to be responsible for them, cradle to grave, or preferably cradle to cradle. Another push from the fossil fuel industry is in agriculture for more and more synthetic fertilizer use. This is in spite of the negative effects on the land, increasing costs and carbon positive footprint. Better living through chemistry is just a slogan and as time has shown there have been products that were best not to bring to the mass market.

Regardless of politics, there is a simple unavoidable fact. Infinite consumption of a finite resources is a dead end. The rest of the world is able to make do and have a good life while consuming much less than the average US, UK and Canadian citizen. Time we went on a diet.

 

[Groo]

Well, Groo, I think you and I may agree on many facts and long-term solutions, even if we disagree on particulars, and which sources of info might be reliable.

The fact of the matter is that solutions to Global Warming DO exist. And those solutions are affordable, are currently being deployed at 'scale', will plausibly become 'stupid cheap' in the future as that scaling continues AND are certainly a very good deal when compared to the costs of 'business as usual'.

And future rolling those solutions will be done by all kinds of political systems. The capitalists will do them, the communists will do them, the oligarchs will do them, all for their own, usual reasons....money, power and politics. And in fact, they ARE scaling these solutions in China, in the EU, and even in the US of A, right now as we speak!

But there ARE some 'energy incumbents' that are making good money on the old system, and they have bought quite a few politicians in the US for many years, and they have some very good 'Big Tobacco'-type PR firms and lawyers and think tanks, that they have been using to prevent and slow the roll out of those solutions for decades now. So they can make some more money selling carbon at a rich price as long as possible.

So, when you hear that 'Solar panels take more energy to make than they ever produce' or 'There isn't enough lithium to replace gasoline' or 'wind turbines kill birds' or 'wind and solar are super expensive, and just built to get tax subsidies' or 'Teslas are junk that are worthless after a few years' or 'the Chinese are releasing more CO2 than the US, and will for decades' or 'Check out Al Gore's electricity bill...what a hypocrite!' or 'The Paris Accord requires the US to pay India to build a new energy system' or 'AOC want to ban hamburgers and windows in houses', etc, .... well, that is all misinformation created by those incumbents for their political purpose!

Business as usual energy will unambiguously make a pretty bad planet for humans and animals in 100 years. Much of the Fossil Energy you suggest is our divine inheritance will need to be **left in the ground** to prevent that outcome. But arguing hypotheticals in 100 years is pointless. Solutions being rolled out worldwide will avert the biggest disasters, and I happen to think that 'tipping point' language is alarmist and not helpful.

But that said, I think we have a moral duty to our descendants to roll out solutions as quickly and sensibly as we can. And that is going to look something like the Paris Accord (with the US rejoined), the Green New Deal, the Biden Energy plan and their equivalents in the EU, China and elsewhere. And we will still get to look at the sky through windows, and enjoy a good hamburger if we want (although I also enjoy a good Impossible Burger these days).

I have seen no climate temperature solutions other than minuscule reductions in the growth of fossil fuel use. That is no solution. It is empty feel-good BS, like the stupid masks being forced on us.


"So, when you hear that 'Solar panels take more energy to make than they ever produce' or 'There isn't enough lithium to replace gasoline' or 'wind turbines kill birds' or 'wind and solar are super expensive, and just built to get tax subsidies' or 'Teslas are junk that are worthless after a few years' or 'the Chinese are releasing more CO2 than the US, and will for decades' or 'Check out Al Gore's electricity bill...what a hypocrite!' or 'The Paris Accord requires the US to pay India to build a new energy system' or 'AOC want to ban hamburgers and windows in houses', etc, .... well, that is all misinformation created by those incumbents for their political purpose!"

Do you deny that major Democrats are major hypocrites WRT environmental policies and their own actions?
Do you deny that Tesla's corporate policies make them drastically harder to repair and therefore much more likely to end up scrapped, than many other auto options?
Do you deny that windmills do in fact kill protected birds that no other business would be permitted to?
Do you deny that a mountain of aged out toxic solar panels will need to be dealt with in the very near future?
Do you deny that the various climate accords are about a whole lot more beyond just the climate?
Do you deny that the "green new deal" would basically outlaw meat and traditional housing? That was an insane proposal that included guaranteeing a living wage for peopleNOT WILLING to work!
Do you deny that renewable energy is not in fact affordable without tax incentives?

I love electric cars. I have made professional proposals for electric heavy equipment multiple times and the one I am working on now might possibly lead to another patent (but I suspect it is going nowhere). I have researched electric cars a great deal. I do not hate electric cars. I have always had a fairly short commute, and don't mind the cold, so an electric car would suite me better than a vast majority of the driving public. I live in a state that majorly inhibits electric cars though, so I will not likely buy one until the taxes implications change. I even like electric power enough that I even have an electric chainsaw. None of that makes Tesla a good company.

" I happen to think that 'tipping point' language is alarmist and not helpful." that was my main point. "The sky is falling!" does nothing good. How many time have we been told "X" will happen by year Y if we don't follow this ridiculous list of crap....and it obviously didn't happen. The best climate modeling in existence is pure garbage, yet people demand we conmpletely shift our whole lives based on them.

Here is another reason I don't fear the future;
Look at the Canadian plains. Think of how much food they will produce when we have higher CO2 levels (there is a reason the Pot-heads use CO2 generators in their grow houses) and a longer growing season. No need for a genocide against humanity. NYC and New Orleans will be screwed if our ice-caps melt, but humanity won't be.
Plants love high temps and high levels of CO2. Global warming might turn our planet truly green.

ps. I never understood the moral superiority of burning recently dead trees inefficiently over burning long dead trees efficiently.
I burn wood because I have wood to burn.

 

[begreen]

Where does 70% of the oxygen in the air come from? How does this process work? Where does that excess CO2 go and get absorbed? Hint - the earth is 70% water.
How sustainable is life as we know it if that oxygen supply starts dwindling?

I just posted a link on decarbonizing by 2035. Have you read it?

How to drive fossil fuels out of the US economy, quickly

The US has everything it needs to decarbonize by 2035.

www.vox.com

Wind turbines kill between 214,000 and 368,000 birds annually — a small fraction compared with the estimated 6.8 million fatalities from collisions with cell and radio towers and the 1.4 billion to 3.7 billion deaths from cats, according to the peer-reviewed study by two federal scientists and the environmental consulting firm West Inc."We estimate that on an annual basis, less than 0.1% ... of songbird and other small passerine species populations in North America perish from collisions with turbines," says lead author Wallace Erickson of Wyoming-based West.

So we should eliminate cell and radio tower and cats first, right?

State of the Birds 2014 Report

Download the Report Download a PDF of the print version of The State of the Birds 2014. Tap or click to download a print version of the 2014 report. Some elements of the report were online-only and are not contained in the print version. You can still access PDF archives of the online ver

archive.stateofthebirds.org

Solar panel recycling is already happening in Europe. It will grow in volume here too.

Solar Panel Recycling: How Does It Work?

As solar panels reach the end of their lifetime, it is important to understand the effects of solar panel waste, and the recycling process.

news.energysage.com

Please leave the political comments at home.

 

[woodgeek]

Do you deny that major Democrats are major hypocrites WRT environmental policies and their own actions?
Do you deny that Tesla's corporate policies make them drastically harder to repair and therefore much more likely to end up scrapped, than many other auto options?
Do you deny that windmills do in fact kill protected birds that no other business would be permitted to?
Do you deny that a mountain of aged out toxic solar panels will need to be dealt with in the very near future?
Do you deny that the various climate accords are about a whole lot more beyond just the climate?
Do you deny that the "green new deal" would basically outlaw meat and traditional housing? That was an insane proposal that included guaranteeing a living wage for peopleNOT WILLING to work!
Do you deny that renewable energy is not in fact affordable without tax incentives?

Yes Groo. I DO deny them. Every one of those 'facts' is either incorrect, or a trivial problem.

 

[semipro]

So we should eliminate cell and radio tower and cats first, right?

Or buildings?
Just one easily refutable "fact" from the long list of drivel above.

 

[woodgeek]

It's a similar thing to the war on big tobacco. If you want to reduce consumption reduce demand not supply. This was done somewhat successfully with the big anti-smoking campaigns of the last decades.

I think we agree. The Big Tobacco analogy is very apt. In fact, educating children in school about the dangers of smoking, warning labels on packs of cigarettes and a lot of well-done PSAs DID in fact significantly drive down the rate of smoking in the US. And later on, a lot of municipalities started having smoking bans in restaurants and other public spaces, reducing the effects of second hand smoke on non-smokers, and making smoking a much less social/popular activity.

You can look at that as a purely demand side solution, but I think you are totally missing my point. This was an example of science driven public policy (education and PSAs) reducing demand, coupled with sensible regulation (i.e restaurants and bars, not making tobacco illegal).

But the history of this story is tragic. The science re the dangers of tobacco was well settled by the early 1970s, and the educational campaign and PSAs and regulations didn't start until the early 1990s. Why was there a 20 year delay? Because the tobacco companies published junk science and junk PSAs and sold BS 'safer' products and yes, bought enough politicians, for 20 years. Until they couldn't do it any more, and a political sweep in 1992 effectively ended it once and for all.

How many new users took up smoking between 1972 and 1992, who have died (or will die) bc of it? Preventable.

The tobacco companies saying they were selling a legal product simply to meet demand did not make it right.

And yeah, energy companies sell a product which, unlike tobacco, is necessary! And not addictive.

But the science of global warming was settled 30+ years ago. And solutions related to conservation have been increasingly available that whole time. And major replacements for fossil energy have been cheap and available for close to a decade now.

And yet for that whole period, attempts at education, PSAs and sensible regulations (like EPA regs the car makers wanted) have been blocked by misinformation, fake PSAs, BS lower emission products (like mild hybrid SUVs), and bought politicians. Just like tobacco.

And so we will get demand reduction and scaled alternative energy solutions a decade or two later than if the energy incumbents hadn't imitated Big Tobacco's immoral tactics (often employing the exact same PR, legal firms AND people).

And how much ecological damage, extinction and loss of human life will be the consequence of that preventable 10-20 years of delay....we shall see.