Climate Doomers Demand We Change Everything Instead of Guilt-Free Actual Fixes

There is another doomer scenario that civilization will collapse because of climate change. This new doomer report is from the Australian National Centre for Climate Restoration.

All of the climate change doomer scenarios assume that the only way to adjust the atmosphere over the next several decades is to reduce emissions from vehicles, energy generation and industry to zero. These are huge challenges. There are already 1.5 billion fossil fuel using cars and trucks. There are over 25000 Terawatt Hours of energy being produced each year and 75% is fossil fuel based. Agriculture, industry, and building also produce CO2 or global warming gases.

They model how long it will take to change everything. They look at how fast we are going to change everything. They realize that we are not changing everything fast enough. They then repeatedly ask that everything be changed. This has failed for decades. They do not look at what has been improving the situation.

Every global agreement (Paris, Kyoto, Copenhagen) so far has not reduced the amount of global warming emissions for the past few decades. It has not gotten less each year. The amount of emissions has increased each year. These demands for bad plans keep failing. The response is they must scream louder and demand faster progress on change everything.

If we use an analogy to climate fixing to global deaths per year. There are 57 million global deaths every year and this will likely increase to 100 million per year. This means the 7.8 billion people in the world today will be wiped out within 100 years. The doomers would say that the only fix would be to make every person immortal. The doomers would scream louder that science has not made everyone immortal yet and they would keep screaming for faster immortality.

We all see the flaw it that analysis. It does not look at births and only at deaths. There are 135 million births every year so that the deaths are offset.

The doomers claim that planetary and human systems will reach a point of no return by some date.

The doomers on climate all assume that CO2 and gases cannot be removed from the atmosphere at large scale. If reducing the emissions is too hard and takes too long then let us look at better offsets.

Shockingly… the Change Everything Demand is Stupid, Has Failed and Will Fail

The reason that emissions have not been reduced is that it is telling every industry and every country to become very poor or to stay very poor. Another part of the ask is to get rid of every car, plane and replace it with an electric vehicle powered by solar panels.

You owe $200,000 in student loan debt and $20,000 on your credit cards. The National Centre for Climate Restoration tells you all of your spending must drop to zero. No spending on food. No car. No house. It is the only way. Getting a better job or a second job is not something they can think about or consider.

From the time of the industrial revolution, humanity has generated about 2.3 trillion tons of CO2 and we now have 1 trillion tons more CO2 in the atmosphere than there was around 1800. Where did the other 1.3 trillion tons of CO2 go? Almost half was absorbed into the soil and plant mass and more than half went into the ocean.

Our CO2 problem would be twice as bad if not for the soil, trees and ocean.

By doubling the existing CO2 absorption process of the soil, plants and ocean we can offset the excess CO2 and other gases. This is not just the 50 billion ton per year amount generated by the vehicles, buildings and factories but the whole 1 trillion tons.

Below are Three Examples of What Will Work to Fix the Climate

There are examples for how we can scale up the tree planting process by more than double and how we can fix the soil and oceans. The other advantage is that we will not need to wait for Everything (cars, planes, factories and buildings) to all be fixed or replaced. We also do not require people to change cars, planes and factories and buildings. The rest of the economy can proceed or better we can phase or swap out those other things at a manageable 1% per year.

The problem with the solutions that will work for the doomers and many of the climate people is that those who produce the emissions do not get to suffer and are not forced to repent.

The world and climate will easily be saved and fixed in 40 years but the climate sinners do not repent or suffer. Many who are sane will view this as an advantage but many climate crusaders will not like the lack of suffering, the lack of repenting and the lack of guilt.

Trees

There are roughly 3 trillion trees on Earth — more than seven times the number of old estimates. A 2015 study by Thomas Crowther finds that human activity is detrimental to tree abundance worldwide. Around 15 billion trees are cut down each year, the researchers estimate; since the onset of agriculture about 12,000 years ago, the number of trees worldwide has dropped by 46%.

The researchers calculated there is enough room on the planet for an additional 1.2 trillion trees. An average individual tree can hold 1 to 10 tons of CO2 in its trunk. If we assume an average of 4 tons per tree then about 300 billion trees would hold 1 trillion tons of CO2. More detailed calculations indicate that the 1.2 tillion trees would store about 160 billion tons of CO2. This would not be enough to erase the entire CO2 deficit. The CO2 deficit is 1 trillion tons total since the start of industrial revolution and 50 billion tons per year. Tree planting would offset ten years of emissions.

15 billion trees are lost each year and about 9 billion trees are planted for a cost of about $50 billion per year.

Biocarbon Engineering can speed up tree planting by 100 times using drones. 4000 drones planting 2 trees per second can be used to plant 10 billion trees per year. The trees take 10 to 20 years to mature.

Regenerative Agriculture for Better Soil that Absorbs CO2

There are claims that regenerative agriculture can restore soil and absorb lots of CO2.

General Mills is trying to get 1 million acres using regenerative agriculture by 2030.

Iron Fertilization of the Ocean

In 2012, 100 tons of iron was used to fertilize the ocean off of BC, Canada and to increase salmon fish stocks. There were record high salmon levels in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016. The iron fertilization generated a plankton bloom visible from space and it probably weighed 3 to 30 million tons.

Of the carbon-rich biomass generated by plankton blooms, half (or more) is generally consumed by grazing organisms (zooplankton, krill, small fish, etc.) but 20 to 30% sinks below 200 meters (660 ft) into the colder water strata below the thermocline. Much of this fixed carbon continues into the abyss, but a substantial percentage is redissolved and remineralized. At this depth, however, this carbon is now suspended in deep currents and effectively isolated from the atmosphere for centuries. The surface to benthic cycling time for the ocean is approximately 4,000 years.

500 plankton blooms per year would sequester 50 billion tons of CO2 per year. Each plankton bloom could be generated for less than $1 million each.

SOURCES- Nature, youtube, National Centre for Climate Restoration
Written By Brian Wang

121 thoughts on “Climate Doomers Demand We Change Everything Instead of Guilt-Free Actual Fixes”

  1. The link above didn’t work, but I wandered around on his site a bit…

    I left this inquiry:

    Comment: Please present some peer-reviewed research into the relative proportions of wind-borne dust vs water-borne soil as transport mechanism of minerals into the oceans.

    Surely you can produce some wind-transport maps showing the tonnage of soil moved.
    seems to me that only in vast desertified areas would there be significant wind-transport…

    Just off the top, your premise seems completely specious – even obviously missing from your scenario of ocean water evaporating and being transported onto the land,
    and then the return path of runoff water carrying soil from bare uncovered ground into the oceans.

    Agriculture has a pretty consistent pattern of destroying soil fertility and depth wherever it has been practiced – with some exceptions

    Your premise that excessive ground cover is a significant problem affecting ocean productivity feels like a gigantic somewhat specious stretch.

    But hey, I don’t know, and as someone who purports to know, I am sure you have the data and evidence to substantiate your claim.
    I am open to being wrong-ified.

  2. My point was that the modern environmental movement is dramatically anti-human (energy deserts kill) and should be confronted for it. I am BigCat77. Burning things is not evil, no matter what your new religion says. As we find more efficient and effective energy stores (the atom), carriers and ways to use them we will, not to is inhuman. Until then appreciate the truth of history, take plenty of salt with the latest Malthusian you meet and love everyone, even if they make a living in a suddenly sinfully energy sector.

  3. >> cooling WHICH THEY WERE VERY MUCH SURE WAS GOING TO HAPPEN AND KILL US ALL.

    That’s BS. I was there, and I was a scientist, not a kid, so I know firsthand that that wasn’t the opinion of the scientific community. A quick read through the scientific literature published in those years shows that it was the opinion of a very small minority. Yeah, Time and Newsweek ran with it, which says a lot about journalism.

    >> the Sun is most likely electrical in nature, not nuclear

    That’s BS too.

    https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap980605.html

    Nuclear reactions generate neutrinos. We detect them coming from the region of the Sun. Duh.

  4. If we had a better solution, we’d be using it. Pound for pound, nothing packs more bang for the buck than fossil fuels.

  5. So the Greeks invented Democracy. They had a rule where the citizens could vote to exile those they didn’t like. Because in the end we are a “pack” and as a “pack” we decide if any particular individual is member of the pack because he helps the pack to survive or he is not a member of the pack because he hurts the pack and reduces the chance of the pack to survive.

    So, the answer is as a member of society I have the right to determine how much profit is too much. But this right is somewhat diluted. There are rights that are even more fundamental and direct.

  6. Pass a certain point profit becomes greed. If a man eats a plate of food then he was hunger. If he takes another plate of food and pisses in the pot then he is greedy and wicked. Because an action may not be evil when small does not mean it is evil when large.

  7. I am “everyman”. If an MRI uses a lot of power it is because we are poor engineers. We are no where near the physical limits of energy efficiency.

  8. I guess it is possible to profit by accident but it isn’t the way it normally works. The fundamental driving force behind capitalism is raw naked greed. If it wasn’t then people would be satisfied after their tenth billion but they are not.

  9. To me it’s the fact that those who produce emissions continue to profit without being required to pay any of the remediation costs, while the rest of us are left with the tab.

  10. This is interesting and quite positive. Ocean iron fertilization produces valuable food as a bi-product. The problems is… we have a very bad problem right now. I still think that there are alternatives to fossil fuels that will be cleaner and cheaper.

  11. An advance civilization wouldn’t wantonly waste energy. An office that uses energy efficient lighting and energy efficient computers would not need to burn a lot of energy. Same goes for hospitals, homes and transportation. Using one erg more than necessary is waste.

  12. Might as well prove up is up and down is down. Its is a “Given”, if not for profit why would a person risk his capital.

  13. So I used to work for a utility. During a number of summers we lost power to many of our customers. It seems that people have been spending their money to buy computers, big tv, and our nemesis air conditioners.

    When I started working the only thing on my desk was a pen, a writing pad and a phone.

    Consumption went up then the summers got even hotter.

    Re-enforcing the grid takes money that in the end comes out of our customers pockets. The PSC doesn’t want that to happen.

    This is how it works, the lights go off and we get a little money to fix things. Rinse and repeat.

    So in the end the power will always fail somewhere during a bad heat wave.

  14. Why do we need high density energy for? The Industrial Revolution is over. This is the Information Age.

    We need to grow up and learn to be frugal. There are just too many of us for us to be wasteful.

  15. Happens to be true. Rebut my statement by providing a reasonable alternative instead of trying to call me names. By the way, I was always a left winger so I did not need to be radicalized.

  16. I suppose… but you notice he didn’t answer me which actually gives me a bit of satisfaction. 😉

  17. BigCat77 was talking about the beginning of the use of fire by humans, and how it may have changed us back then.

    “Slash and burn” is still agriculture and modern.

    Even 50,000 years ago is far later than the beginning of cooking.

    Shrub clearing in Australia where fire is natural and common is not the same thing as cutting down trees and burning them.

    Trees often survive fires…especially in areas where fires are common.

    And none of this is “fossil fuel”.

  18. They burnt a lot of trees just to clear the forest – they didn’t have steel axes, and clearing the thick bush gave them better conditions for finding food. After the aboriginals arrived in Australia, 50,000 years ago, there is a marked change in the vegetation. They used ‘firestick farming’ to clear the land. The few nomadic subsistence farmers left also use ‘slash and burn’ agriculture. As farming methods improved, the pressure on the forests increased. England cut down all its forests for iron smelting, firewood, building and ships, and had to start importing timber from North America to keep the Royal Navy going. In New England, until they started mining coal, there was a major shortage of wood. The forests have only grown back because food is cheaper to grow in the Midwest, and coal and gas are cheaper than firewood.

  19. Why do you expect the grid to fail in the future, when the economy has grown for another few decades?

  20. Energy density of wind and solar can’t improve, it’s limited by the low power density (and intermittency) of the ‘fuel’. Geothermal is steady power, but in most places also pretty low density. Carnot efficiency of fossil fuels gets up to around 50% for ultrasupercritical coal or combined cycle gas turbines, about 37% for pressurised water nuclear, only about 10% for geothermal.

  21. Humidity makes a difference. 115F with 90+ humidity will kill some people. And 4C is 6F and when you are already at the edge then it doesn’t take much to push you over. Let us be realistic until large number of people start dying in First World countries there won’t be much of a push to stop burning fossil fuel so I see the average temperature going past 4C easily. I figure it will take 135F to 140F to kill enough people so the rise must be at least 10C to 15C for us to stop.

  22. The difference in temperature between, say, a Calgary winter and a Dubai summer is 60 deg C plus. Yet people still manage to get out of bed and go to work. Cold places are heated and warm places are cooled, I don’t see 4 deg making any difference to that. I think there have always been doom and gloomers and those that think the end is nigh. It seems a big coincidence and an even bigger dose of bad luck that the end really is nigh right when you are kicking around.

  23. My religion used to demand the sacrifice of the first born. You know, the first of all things belong to the lord. But we don’t do that anymore since children are much more valuable due to our low reproductive rate.

    Now my religion is math and science. What I do is crunch the numbers and go where it leads. The idea is not to pick a side and hold on to it as if it is a faith but to be flexible enough to see the trend and change your mind if required.

    As for my old religion it was Judeo-Christianity. It wasn’t just the Phoenicians that sacrifice children, all Canaanites did so.

  24. Our industry is always under transformation. Very few pieces of equipment last more than a decade or two. Asking that the new replacement equipment to be more energy efficient that the old is not unreasonable especially when the new equipment will be cheaper to run because it uses less energy. Also one of the side effects of reduced energy demand is reduced energy price.

  25. Average temperature isn’t the problem. What is the problem is the temperature during a heat wave. Highest temperature recorded for some states: Arkansas 120F, Georgia 112F, Texas 120F, South Dakota: 120F. Add 9F to 18F to that and you have a problem. As for air conditioners do expect the grid to fail and do expect there are poor old people who don’t have air conditioners. People in America have died during heat waves and they will continue to die. The only difference will be the amount.

  26. Engineering isn’t static. Energy density can improve. Also, we could use a really long extension cord. There is broadcast power (aka microwaves) and laser beaming.

  27. Well, if you keep claiming that the poles will be melted in 10 years, that large swaths of land will be uninhabitable, that countries will be inundated in just a decade and it never materilizes, are you not a doomer? You see, Gary, it is not the first time the greenies have “warned” us of impeeding catastrophy so there is a track record of their predictions…

  28. This story has things mostly right. The biggest challenge to restoring this planet to a healthy natural condition where our having shown we might take care of it results in it, Nature, taking care of all of us, is just getting on with it. Here’s how the attack of the ‘climate doomers’ is seen in real life. http://russgeorge.net/2019/05/31/vox-news-pox/

  29. Well, you seem to be glossing over how erratic our weather has gotten and how the climate zones are shifting a bit each year… and the sea level really is rising… just go live in Miami if you don’t believe me.

    You seem to be ignoring how cheap solar/wind power is getting and how expensive nuclear power has gotten. The last two attempts to build nuclear reactors in this country basically failed because of cost over runs and one of them even caused Westinghouse to go bankrupt. Face the facts, there are going to be no more fission power generation facilities built here ever again.

  30. While a lot of coal is exported…probably the vast majority. The power source used domesticly is still mostly coal.

    Maybe things have changed a little since 2015? I doubt it has been huge. 2015 it was 73% coal, 13% natural gas, 7% hydro, 4% wind…

    https://www.originenergy.com.au/blog/about-energy/energy-in-australia.html

    I think the condemnation is warranted. Those are some pretty sad figures.

    OK found a more recent report https://www.energy.gov.au/sites/default/files/australian_energy_update_2018.pdf

    Does not look like it has improved by much.

    Also, I noticed that transport energy use is as high as electrical use. In the US, transport is 29% and electricity is 38%. And the US has a lot more hills and mountains, and less efficient vehicles. Shows what highways can achieve. And the US has a lot more urban sprawl as well.

    Australia : 3,132 Km of expressways.
    U.S. : 108,394 Km of expressways.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_road_network_size

    If it was population proportional to the US, Australia should have 8,150 km.

    That is one of the reasons I think we need to double the US highway lane miles. When it is moving, it is very effective, when it is bogged down in traffic, it is a fail.

    And no, it is not that Australians use a lot less less electrical power per capita. Fairly comparable: US 12kWh/capita, Australia 10kWh/capita. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption

  31. China alone has over 1000 new coal plants in the pipeline for Asia and Africa. They do not believe in the climate crisis.

  32. Too bad reality isn’t contingent on what you or Glenn Reynolds choose to believe.

    AGW is only a catastrophe for those with little options in this world.

  33. Hello again Mark. May I suggest something? Could you not become religious instead? That way, you could be just as fervent in your beliefs and you would not hurt me or my kids. How about it? Just don’t go for any crazy religion, that’s all.

  34. But comparing a complete transformation of all our industry and 5000 iron fertilization runs per year must surely be pretty straight forward? And one is infinitely cheaper, don’t you think. That is, if you are really about reducing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and not some environmental flagellant…

  35. You are correct about the logarithmic nature of the radiation forcing, but I think you are to pessimistic about the carbon repositories on earth.

    Generally, the amount of any mineable substance is an exponential function of price. Therefore, you cannot say that there is not sufficient coal/oil/gas to get 9 times more in the atmosphere. For the right price there is.

    Second, the oil companies only prospect so that there is sufficient gas/oil/coal to prospect in the next decade. Anything else would be a waste of resources. It also means that if you look at the “reserves” of oil/gas/coal, you are only looking at what the energy companies could be bothered to prospect right now.

  36. Oh come on! Are you telling me that if you increase the average temperature of the Mid Western States, they are warmer than any inhabitable country in the world right now? Because that would be the inevitable conclusion from your statement.

    But let’s spell this out for your. Let’s take Iowa. Average is 9 deg Celsius [1]. Now, let’s see. Bangladesh has plenty of people. Average temperature 18-26 degrees temperature over the last 200 years [2]. So, you are saying that it is possible for about 160 million people to live at a temperature of ~25 deg C, but the Iowans will die in droves if their average temperatures go beyond 13 degrees C? And the Iowans would not buy more air conditioning during this time…?

    Your line of arguing is just so stupid…

    (1)
    http://www.city-data.com/states/Iowa-Climate.html

    (2)
    https://tradingeconomics.com/bangladesh/temperature

  37. Yes, it’s very humorous. All the bigshots take their private jets to the climate summits to discuss how the common man must not drive his car so much. Hahahaha!

  38. I think you have to account for:

    • the cost of growing a seedling to the stage of being ready to plant.
    • the cost of transporting the man, his tools, and 1000 seedlings out to some remote area where there is land available. The man probably wants transport home again too, or accomodation out there (plus food etc).
    • plus the direct cost of planting the seedling
  39. I think what you are saying is mostly (through my eyes mind, of course, upside down) because we’ve seen the major impace for climate-alters-atmospheric conditions due to the earth’s water cycles-wtfis earth (the Third Industrial Revolution) anent 70% percent water? Shouldn’t we be able to figure this out if a couple of guys arched to moon? Do you really think climate change is unstoppable if the earth is 70% WATER! I can’t belittle benthic cycling, but, it is obvious why the trout turbine was culled (obfuscated) from human technologies OnGoInG.EVOLVING.DEVELOPMENT(S). Climate affects every part of earth’s surface, from the silt (HOWITGOTTHERE) in the bottom of the ocean to the tops of high matter places; essentially, climate is the shape of the earth’s suface, oganic matter and inanimate solid structure, all of it. Blow sand incessantly against a structure will eventually pit the structural material which the sand forcefully contacts. Why?:*:half life is decay, (Nature is built by one to one units) the body’s cellular structure, plants, apples, CELLULAR STRUCTURE! Decay and growth are fundamental by the simple mechanism of one to one ratios, talk about fine tuning, imperceptible diminishment, imperceptible increase…
    Allow me to suggest, if you want to do something about climate change, read American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips. (Oil & coal are beneath the surface of earth, the primary pulse of the book. Alien Technology Documentary by Scott McClintock-Hosted by Stacy Keach

  40. If we planted trees and spawned biomass blooms in the oceans, what would the tinfoil hat crowd have to winge about?

  41. The problem with the solutions that will work for the doomers and many of the climate people is that those who produce the emissions do not get

    to suffer and are not forced to repent.

    It must be so comforting to be able to rage against delusions of one’s own making.

  42. The nuclear and fossil fuel industries are not trying to hold back fusion progress. The laws of physics are the problem, and nothing I have seen augers well for any quick progress in development of fusion power.

  43. Jerry, you have to read the username as the first words of the body:
    “Once the CO2 nazis decide to go ‘all in’ with nuclear, I’l give them some credence.”
    Make sense now?

  44. Ocean fertilization doesnt work (the effect is negligible).
    Planting more trees,… ehm shrink cities ???
    Regenerative blabla is wishfull thinking.

    Spoiler allert its realy going to be shit as we’re to late.
    Dont believe me watch the wheater records.
    I am not doom thinking, because i be gone by the time it turns havoc.

    It might slow down if we all work 4 hour a day, and shrink our economic impact

  45. First there is a cost for just keeping things the way there are because none of our equipment has infinite life. There is a cost to find new fossil fuel and to produce it. Then there is a savings associated with using renewable and with using higher efficiency equipment.

    So in the end you have to compare the Cost and Savings of one scenario to the Cost and Saving of the other scenario. And you need to include the externalities because the dike around New York City to keep the sea out isn’t free.

    From the cost trend of renewable I think renewable will be the winning way. At worst renewable and EV will get us 60% of the way to a carbon free future. And nukes may get us the other 40%.

  46. In the Florida Panhandle, where I live, there are many more trees than 100 years ago. A century ago, almost everyone survived by subsistence farming. Tree farming produces many more trees than native forests. Young growing trees use much more CO2 than mature trees. All this territory used to be beneath the sea, caused no doubt by the Fred Flintstone Global Warming that melted the polar ice caps.

  47. >4% C is >7% F. For starters, the Southern and Mid Western States of the USA. Most coast lines (hard to breather under water). Lower altitudes of South America, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, South East Asia, Southern part of China. Middle of Africa, and the Middle East.

    There is a limit to the temperature/humidity that people can tolerate. People has died in heat waves almost every year. And dying doesn’t decrease with increase in temperature.

  48. We already had the upside. Fossil fuel was easy to use by the primitive technology of the early industrial age. Probable was OK for use by a billion or so people. But not OK for extensive use by 7 to 12 billion people. We now have better options, we shouldn’t continue using it because some oil executive CEO bonus depends on us doing so.

  49. The trouble is persuading enough people it’s ‘broken’ so you can be a hero and come up with a ‘fix’ for the supposed problem.

  50. The whole damn thing from ‘Deniers’ to ‘The Science Is SETTLED!’ to ‘Doomers’ is simply smearing all those who don’t agree on whatever stance you’re pushing.

    I WANT to see fossil fuels only needed for chemical feedstocks and lubricants. I WANT to see nuclear power replacing CO2 emitting power plants. I WANT to see working fusion – which I think will only be possible with the widespread adoption of nuclear power.

    I WANT to see a bit of damn reality from our politicians and activists so instead of “We only have five years to save the planet!” they go “Okay, we’ll be working on making things better in the long run.” I WANT to see attention paid to the surface stations that are outside urban heat islands, that don’t seem to be showing any signs of long-term warming.

    But in order to get the attention they crave, the CAGW adherents HAVE to shove forward a Doom & Gloom narrative. You NEVER get good media attention from “You know, things aren’t that bad right now, and here’s what we’ve got in the works to make things better down the line.” That’s a non-event. Things are ALWAYS worse now than they’ve ever been!

    Attention gets clicks. Clicks gets money. Money buys media time. Media time gets more attention. And in order to get media time, you MUST have an imminent catastrophe, else you just won’t be taken seriously.

    The Science is Settled, ya know!

  51. Or antibiotics and vaccination. An easy solution for horrible problems. In fact, all the hard solutions don’t work because , ahem, they are too hard to implement…

  52. US exceeded the Paris agreement for CO2 reduction – simply by going to natural gas. Fracking made it easy (relatively) to extract.

    So – environmentalists started screaming about fracking, insisting it must be stopped.

    I do see a trend – solutions that actually work are never encouraged, instead they go for ‘better’ solutions like wind and solar, which are quite expensive and not practical for much of the planet.

    Nuclear power is CO2-free. But do you see them pushing it hard? If we have only 5 years to save the planet (a constant refrain for the last 30 years) then you’d think they’d be all-in on building nuclear power plants.

    My conclusion after watching all this for the last 30 years is that it’s not about ‘saving the planet’ – it’s about pushing THEIR ideas on the rest of us whether we want them or not, and whether they’re workable or not isn’t even a consideration.

  53. Do you have any links to that? As far as I know, the only reactor they even managed to start never got to an operational state.

  54. Environmentalists don’t want the problem solved.

    “It appears to be a blatant violation of two international resolutions,” Kristina Gjerde, a senior high-seas adviser for the International Union for Conservation of Nature told the Guardian. “Even the placement of iron particles into the ocean, whether for carbon sequestration or fish replenishment, should not take place, unless it is assessed and found to be legitimate scientific research without commercial motivation. This does not appear to even have had the guise of legitimate scientific research.”

    One must not make a profit off a solution!

    Silvia Ribeiro, of the international anti-technology watchdog ETC Group, also voiced her horror at any development that might allow humanity to escape from the need for carbon rationing. “It is now more urgent than ever that governments unequivocally ban such open-air geoengineering experiments,” she said. “They are a dangerous distraction providing governments and industry with an excuse to avoid reducing fossil-fuel emissions.”

    There’s only one solution allowed, and that’s what THEY endorse. Environmental remediation be damned – they’ve got a purity test and they’re going to enforce it on everyone.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/04/28/iron-fertilisation-of-the-oceans-produces-fish-and-sequesters-carbon-dioxide-so-why-do-environmentalists-oppose-it/#5287e1617419

  55. They probably did not cut down many trees either. They likely just collected dead twigs, branches, leaves, pine needles… If you are a hunter gatherer, greenwood is not so great. Old dry stuff burns better.

  56. LOL No really, when I was a young(er) idiot, I got in a year-long argument with my electric company because they tried to screw me, so I just didn’t pay them until they met me half way. xD It had to be one of the worst battles I ever picked. I will never eat instant ramen ever again.

    I work for the internet now, though, so the connection isn’t a problem. :D. But, that computer… HOURS of cranking, ten minutes of uptime. T_T So many feelz.

  57. Bit of a strawman there. Brian did not mention high atmosphere SO2 release. That was an early and expensive idea.
    I am not against the near elimination of fossil fuel. Though shutting down the last 10% could be ludicrously expensive. And removing the first 20% with geoengineering ludicrously cheap…even potentially heavily money making.
    And the CO2 obsessed people often ignore methane, which I think may be more responsible for some of the warming in the last 30 years.
    We have to address both the production and removal of CO2. And we have to address methane and also catch the last few produces of CFCs. They are still being made illegally in China. That needs to be eliminated. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/23/china-factories-releasing-thousands-of-tonnes-of-illegal-cfc-gases-study-finds

    And this is going to sound off the wall, but I think we underestimate the effect we have made eliminating most of the whales. By eating lots of krill and zooplankton there would be more phytoplanction sucking up CO2. They also move nutrients to areas where they have been less plentiful allowing more phytoplankton to grow more widely in the oceans. Even the mist they make exhaling and the foam in their wake may reflect more light back into space.
    https://www.nature.com/news/world-s-whaling-slaughter-tallied-1.17080

    98% of the heat of global warming is held in the oceans. The heat absorbed by deserts is mostly radiated out into space at night.

  58. What puzzles me a bit, is that periods in Earth history with high CO2 levels (and hence higher average global temperatures), such as mid-late Cretaceous and early Cenozoic, are generally associated with a moist, lush and green Earth. And periods with low CO2 levels with cold, drought and ice ages.

  59. Combustion and fossil fuel are not synonymous. In fact, early humans probably used fossil fuels very rarely.

  60. I have been pointing out this irrational desire to see us suffer for our sins rather than actually making money as we transform to a more efficient, productive and sustainable future since at least 2006.

  61. How much oil and methane produce in earth from sun effect and leak up after millions of years?

    What happen with all organic material that go down below earth crust with water?

    We know that seabed leak oil and gas and that water in super critical form came first.

    That create metal pipes, but after came often helium that is alfa radiation that have met electrons on its way up.

    After that came methane and often oil.

    Seabed is typical 15 km and have the dubble density compared with continent plates.

    Himalaya is floating so high for the plates that colliding under is so thick in total.

    The sorting plant started when the earth cracked up and platetonic started.

    Continents are getting older, thicker and lighter, the sea bed younger thinner and heavier, now the seabed is on average 220 million years with double density against continents.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon

  62. I wonder what happens with all organic material that goes down below the crust with seabed and seawater?

    Why do the find more than more oil and gas below sediment or fossil ever have been find?

    Seabed leaking oil and gas that serve ecosystem that often start with chaetopod most methane froze and follow the seabed to next tun in under earth crust.

    How can the find big gas and oil reservoars outside continental plates deep in seabed if it is fossil?

    My calculation is that 100 TW oil and methane creates below seabed and flow true up under millions of years.

    Calculate for your self.

    The sun radiate 170 000 TW 29% reflects back to space, ocean may take 85 000 TW and most become heat but some organic material that end up on the seabed, most been eaten and transformed to chemical heat but some goes down under.

    To all that has photosynthesis few percent effect.

    I guess that oil and gas cant be sustainable for that will take argument from the expensive climate politic?

    http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181221-japans-grand-plans-to-mine-deap-sea-vents

  63. Realclimate have no answer for my questions.

    I have studied all relevant disciplines for 30 years and was a CO2-treat believer until I get harder argument against.

    2001 was the first scientific study that clam to have detect higher greenhouse effect as function of higher level CO2 but was not.

    Earth out radiated spectra from 1970 compered with same region 1997.

    Zero less out radiated in the wavelength that only CO2 act as greenhouse gas 15Âľm.

    The next and last so far was also publish in Nature.

    Read that and understand that the cherry picking they do prove the opposite, just change time or regions and you will find that no signal have been detected from higher level CO2 in earths atmosphere.

    If you have new data that no one els have then make my day and publish them so I can get better argument for mass production of modern nuclear and with that create a global welfare.

    Com on show us what you can.

    https://phys.org/news/2015-02-carbon-dioxide-greenhouse-effect.html?fbclid=IwAR3oxe4s9w1KrFHfahDDsloYCu83cOnrGwYFxz4Tswb7yAo4nhGie2skYFc

  64. If you were serious you’d try your arguments with real climate scientists, e.g go over to Realclimate and try your luck with experts not armchair web pundits. Alternatively publish a paper. If not, who’s the science denier??

  65. Why is the coolest and less life friendly global climate in this interglacial reference climate?

    Why not the 2C higher average global temperature some 8 000 years ago or the 2,5 C warmer the interglacial before or the 5C warmer before this ice age?

    How many believe that 0,3 C warmer will create a global climate catastrophe?

    Forget about sea level the whole crust are floating in equilibrium, if you want to find historical sea level compered with earth center it can just be found where seabed met continental plates on the beach and the continent have not been pushed down from land ice.

    Some part of South Americas west coast.

    There is 4-10 times more water in or below earth crust than oven in oceans.

    https://www.sciencealert.com/earth-swallows-way-more-water-than-we-thought

    I know that same water get up in super critical form, helium metan and often oil came after.

    Water high temperature and pressure give H2 and O2 most will get in rocks but subductionzones swallows all organic material as well as seabed and water. Check Deep Water Horizon and learn that they was just km above the seabeds under side way deeper than any sediment hav been fond.

  66. Climate activists are science denier.

    The global average temperature goes up from human activity but not with higher greenhouse effect from CO2 (no one have been able to detect it, ca 150 ppm give the maximal effect and that´s why no satellite or weather balloon could detect it).

    But out radiated energy increases with the power of four to the temperature, that´s why desert are cooling.

    Sahara radiate 16% more energy than the region would have done if it was covered with thick forest.

    The last 20 years had as much area as Amazonas transformed from desert to forest or plantages.

    Now when sea water to freshwater is down to 2,5 kWh/ 1000 liter all warm desert will be forest and plantages.

    Try to calculate Brian Wang.

    Two surfaces with albedo 0 of the same size, one with 50 C and the other with – 80C

    The have – 15 C as average temperature.

    If the get the same temperature and still same out radiated energi the average temperature get up 22 C.

    That´s why all ice age theories have changed temperatures differences, no changed greenhouse effect.

    Climate politic has nothing to do with climate or environment, just power out of reach for ordinary people.

    UN is just one example.

    Why cant any climate activists support the CO2- treat with science?

    How can so many believe in this doomsday religion?

    Reduce humanity with 75% or mass produce modern nuclear that create 4 times as much energy and create a global welfare is two example the climate activists should propose.

  67. That’s about 4.5 doublings (3500ppm). At about 8C that tells you the sensitivity right there (about 1.8C per doubling). The current sensitivity looks to be about 1.6C per doubling based on how much we’ve had 0.8C give or take for about 0.48 of a doubling. And bear in mind for the folks (like me) that can do and understand science, we’re talking about *doublings*. It gets harder and harder to push the temperature up as you go. To get to those 8 degrees we need to burn 9 times as much carbon as we’ve already burned. Which is quite frankly impossible. In other words, worst case is likely somewhere around 3C even at maximum pedal to the medal business as usual. Because we’ll run out of fossil fuels.

  68. AGW is horseshit.

    I’m old enough to remember doomer global cooling magazine articles. They suggested covering the poles with carbon black might increase solar absorption enough to counter the cooling WHICH THEY WERE VERY MUCH SURE WAS GOING TO HAPPEN AND KILL US ALL. Even as a kid I remember thinking that was unbelievably stupid, even if they were right about the cooling (billions of tons of carbon black, spread it across the poles… Yeah, we can do that! And we can totally do it faster than nature can cover it up with snow again! No problem!).

    Fact of the matter is the scientific establishment can’t bring themselves to face the fact that the Sun is most likely electrical in nature, not nuclear. If they can’t even entertain a new theory that fits the observations better than old one, why should we take them at their word about something like AGW (especially considering the amount of fraud that’s taken place in promoting it)?

  69. You can promote offset technologies all you want but without proper incentive they will not be implemented in time either. Hence whether its offset technologies or emission reductions, a technology neutral carbon tax or cap and trade system is required.

  70. I think with the amount of green house gas in the atmosphere we won’t have to be afraid of an ice age any time in the near future. One nice thing about doing carbon capture is we’d have a big valve someplace that we could turn to eliminate an ice age…

  71. First off calling people that want to cut back on green house gas emissions “Doomers” is little more than a propaganda smear job. We are wasteful now and improving our efficiency is good in the long term (except for those that build seawalls and sell fossil fuels.) Sure the aggressive targets that are adopted won’t be met. Doing the kinds of things you propose are nobrainers that we should have been doing all along but we can’t rely on them alone, we have to be more efficient and be willing to change things a bit.

  72. For the love of all that is holy, yes, PLEASE plant more trees. MOAR TREEZ. However, we also do need to reduce emissions (opinion; not a scientist). But, I see disruptive technology being more of a saving grace, too.

    Fusion power may take hold more quickly than the public might imagine, even with other nuclear and fossil fuel industries that are firmly dug in trying to halt its progress. It’s just not feasible for them to stop it, thinking they can stop it is a pipe dream, it’ll never happen. That’s where the money will be, so they should get on the bus or be left behind (again, opinion). I’m talking short term, i.e. power plants, not a small reactor with direct energy conversion on every vehicle (though I suppose that could eventually happen, of we don’t kill ourselves off).

    Though, if we do suddenly hit a cold snap, I’m down. Few thousand years of Frosty the Snowman weather would be nice (says the guy from Texas who’s never lived through an entire harsh winter). I’d love to live through every single millennium of that. I’ll just find a way to become immortal , like… huh. Well, like Edward Cullen, or… Edward Cullen. ^_^

    Lord Cthulhu our Father, please forgive me of my typos.

  73. nazis decide to go ‘all in’ with nuclear, I’ll give them some credence. Until then, its clear that they want a political issue to exploit, not a solution.

  74. I have read numerous accounts of the powerful and economic effects of ocean fertilization. The salmon example undoubtedly paid for itself.

    Allan Savory (Savory Grazing System) says grass management can build carbon in soils, on a global scale. I have seen this work, (especially suited to marginal soil & arid climates) and it pays for itself with additional livestock carrying capacity. Of course this would not help global elites justify their insistence on a meatless, moral future.

    https://youtu.be/-4b8SFSIGK0

    https://youtu.be/vpTHi7O66pI

  75. Sorry but you have blown the costs of mitigation out of all proportion.
    From the Stern Report (2011):
    “Overall, the expected annual cost of achieving emissions reductions, consistent with an emissions trajectory leading to stabilisation at around 500- 550ppm CO2e, is likely to be around 1% of GDP by 2050, with a range of +/- 3%, reflecting uncertainties over the scale of mitigation required, the pace of technological innovation and the degree of policy flexibility. While cost estimates in these ranges are not trivial, they are also not high enough seriously to compromise the world’s future standard of living – unlike climate change itself, which, if left unchecked, could pose much greater threats to growth (see Chapter 6). An annual cost rising to 1% of GDP by 2050 poses little threat to standards of living, given that economic output in the OECD countries is likely to rise in real terms by over 200% by then, and in developing regions as a whole by 400% or more.”
    So the problem is not impoverishing society, it i the transfer of wealth from the oil and coal industry to renewables. Look, I am all for technological fixes but the problem is that, just as we are not reducing emissions voluntarily, we are also not implementing offsets to the required degree either voluntarily. Offsets also cost money. Where does the money come from? This is why a carbon tax makes the most sense and why economists have been promoting it for decades now. Offsets would be funded through credits.

  76. The Azolla “event” took 2 million years.

    3500ppm to 650ppm so about 0.0014ppm change per year. We’re at 1000x that rate of increase right now.

  77. Combustion has saved more human lives than can be counted. Some say cooking of food was key to us becoming human.

  78. I love this article, thanks so much for writing, I have been saying this same thing for years. But Why is your tree planting so expensive, $2.50/tree? Simple but specialized hand tools should get production in reasonable conditions to 1000/day/man. Or does this also count the cost of land for 25 years for each tree to mature?

  79. Trees, soil and the ocean have already kept 1.2 trillion tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere over the last 200 years. This is what has worked and we need to scale them up by about three times. The world does plant 9 billion trees every year. We need to take it to 27 billion trees every year. Then we are not negative 6 billion trees we are plus 12 billion trees. We can do it the hard way and expensive way which is scaling out $50 billion per year on planting to $150 billion per year and/or we try the drone planting for about $1 billion per year.

    Power plant changing already has had trillions spent on solar and wind. This got us close to about 5% of energy in solar and wind. 20% is hydro and nuclear. The estimate is 48 trillion to switch out the rest of the fossil fuel power. This is before we get to 1.5 billion cars and trucks, planes and ships. Then the factories and changing the farming. Then the buildings.

    Brute force tried and true tree planting can work at $100 billion extra per year.

    One million people planting 200 days per year would each need to plant 100 trees per day.

  80. Problem: We have to chase animals to hunt them, they run away. Easy solution we eventually came to use: Take control of the herds, look after them, build fences.
    Problem: Everthing is a long walk away. Easy solution we eventually came to use: Ride horses, ride trains, drive cars, ride bicycles, fly aircraft
    Problem: Rowing a boat is hard. Easy solution we eventually came to use: Hang a sheet of cloth in the air and the wind does the work for you.

    etc. etc.
    We tend to forget these things, because they are just normal practice now. But compared to getting the same results doing things the old way it’s actually very easy and low effort.

    It isn’t always a scam.

  81. Patrick Mellor, paleoecologist and biologist indicates that 80% of the time the Earth did not have any ice.
    https://palladiummag.com/2019/01/28/ancient-upheavals-show-how-to-geoengineer-a-stable-climate/

    The Carboniferous drawdown, around 300 million years ago over a period of tens of millions of years, CO2 concentration declined tenfold from over 2000 ppm to about 200 ppm. This carbon drawdown was caused by the evolution of land plants before terrestrial herbivores and fungi became adept at digesting wood. Huge forests proliferated across the continents, and dead trees simply lay where they fell, without decomposing efficiency, until eventually buried by subsequent vegetation.

    Millions of years of this process sequestered enough carbon to raise the oxygen concentration of the atmosphere to 35% (today it is 20%).

    Glaciation did not occur on Earth for another 270 million years. Much of the coal we burn now represents carbon removed from the atmosphere during this ice age.

    The second example, the Azolla event, was only discovered in the last 20 years. In the early Eocene, global surface temperatures were 8 ℃ higher than today. Tropical forests extended almost to the poles, and atmospheric CO2 concentration was 3500 ppm. Azolla grew and covered the arctic Ocean.

  82. No.
    This is culture war “weak manning”.

    Yeah, you’re going to find some lunatics who actually want millions of people to suffer for not being green enough (Hi Luca!)
    But it isn’t anything more than a small minority. And treating everyone who disagrees as enemies and accusing them of evil intentions isn’t going to get us to practicable solutions.

    The actual problem is more subtle: It’s not that they don’t want easy solutions, it’s that they don’t believe easy solutions.

    And this is often a good heuristic. We are so often presented with “easy” solutions to our problems (fat loss, muscle gain, high return investing, house renovation, dating…) and most of the time the “easy solution” turns out to a scam. Most of the time in our experience we reluctantly conclude that the only actual, working solution involves hard work, expense and sacrifice.

    So when someone comes along and says “Here’s a huge, major problem, but there is an easy solution and by-the-way the easy solutions happens to benefit me, the person offering the solution, but that’s just a coincidence.” Well the response, especially if you already distrust that person, is to dismiss it as a scam.

    However, with a bit of thought, we can think of many, many times that the “easy solution” turned out to work just fine.
    Problem: We keep getting sick, people are dying. Easy solution we eventually came to use: Wash your hands, don’t empty the sewage into the drinking water
    (to be continued)

  83. What will cost more is changing out every car, plane, factory, power plant and building.

    Using less or switching light bulbs like Al Gore mentioned slows the increase in emissions and that was what happened for the last three decades. But now the concern is that we go from 1 trillion tons of extra CO2 to 2 trillion tons extra in about 20 years by adding 55-65 billions of CO2 equivalent every year.

    The Paris agreement is to slow the increase to 55 billion tons per year instead of 62 billion tons. most of the change is supposed to 1 billion ton per year slower growth from 2025 to 2030. But the each nations own promises are only tracking to about 20% commitment.

    The environmental drumbeats are to hold the line at 1.5C or 2C warming from our current already 1.2C warming. This would require the hockey stick of massive change which will not happen.

    Just changing all of the power plants would mean 20 times the $250 billion per year on solar and wind because that is only adding 160 TWh per year. We need to put in 3200 TWh per year for 8 years. Plus this also requires doubling the global electrical grid to all of the new wind and solar farms. Plus wind has to drop out of the equation within about 3 years at the faster rate because massive wind farms will cause regional warming as global wind is reduced. Wind and solar do not cut it on decarbonization.

    https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/06/what-are-the-actual-promises-and-commitments-related-to-the-paris-agreement.html

  84. The Australian climate change debate is of huge. It has been hugely ineffective except to waste huge amounts of resources.

  85. In your mind, is there any upside to fossil fuels? Is there downside at all to not using them?

  86. what you say is right, and helpful, in terms of what to do, but so is much of what the doomers say. The simple fact is that not much at all has worked—easy or hard—so far … certainly not worked enough (simply put, in terms of emissions). Aside that is, from the shift towards renewables, which is significant (and which is somewhere between easy and pretty hard I think … I say this in Australia where many are pushing for yet more coal mines despite the country being very well suited to renewables). Too much of the climate debate (internal to those who actually think it’s happening) is choosing between one approach or another. I suspect we need lots of different approaches, even if they seem incompatible in terms of ideas, from the everyday and the easier to doomsdayers telling us to get a hurry on because the world’s going to end. The media and much of media culture is always telling us to choose, usually within a set up between only two alternatives. Now there’s something stopping us getting very far on a whole lot of issues. 🙂

  87. From those graphs I think it is pretty obvious our stable warm period is fleeting. Unless that pattern is breaking we aren’t going to keep the warmth even if we tried.

  88. Our civilization grew up in a world with relatively stable climate. Mucking it up so some oil company execs get a bonus isn’t a good idea. There are large parts of the world that become uninhabitable at 4 degree C increase in the average temperature. And there isn’t a cap as to how high the temperature can get other than we stop burning fossil fuel because we decide to or we stop burning fossil fuel because we are extinct.

  89. Producing fossil fuel and using fossil fuel pollutes and sickens and kills people. The solution is not to pump SO2 aerosol into the atmosphere and hope for the best. The real solution is to stop using fossil fuel.

  90. Why do some people assume that using less will cost more. That’s insane. After the Arab oil embargo America quickly make changes that resulted in savings of billions every year. Increases in cost for using more efficient technology is always temporary and it happens only at the start of the innovation. Soon after cost comes down and savings grow. I remember how bad the first CFL bulbs and LED bulbs were. They sucks. But they got better and cheaper every year. And people who love to guzzle oil should be happy with the greenies since they make oil cheaper by using less.

  91. Take a look at the Younger Dryas region we came out of into the Holocene about 10k years ago. Also look at a 100k year graph. The temperatures are usually much much lower, like super glaciation cold. Every once in a while there is a massive spike and it dies back down.

    At the end of the Pleistocene about 15k years ago there is massive heating out of nowhere, and it dies back down. Then there is another kick at about 12k years, and it seems to catch and we have the Holocene. Now if you only look at the Holocene it has a constant downward trend to today. The Holocene includes the mini ice age which seriously set back humans, and we haven’t come close to reversing that overall cooling trend.

    I’m not an expert but it looks like we need to be terrified of cooling. I could easily be proven wrong but I’m starting to think doubling our C02 might be one of the best things we accidentally did.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas
    https://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/Temp_0-400k_yrs.gif

    The Holocene is this tiny warm period on the left of this 400k year graph.

  92. “The problem with the solutions that will work for the doomers and many of the climate people is that those who produce the emissions do not get to suffer and are not forced to repent.”

    Well said, Brian.

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