The 2019 UN Emission Gap report indicates that global emissions must drop 7.6 percent per year from 2020 to 2030 for the 1.5°C goal and 2.7 percent per year for the 2°C goal.
The UN report says a 30 billion ton CO2 equivalent cut by 2030 is needed to reach the 1.5 degree target. However, the world is tracking to an 8.3 billion ton CO2 equivalent increase. The 2-degree celsius temperature target would need a 14 billion ton CO2 equivalent reduction from 2018 levels. There is a 38 billion ton CO2 gap for annual emissions between where we are going and where the UN report says we need to be for the 1.5 degree target and a 22 billion ton CO2 for annual global emissions by 2030. The world would need to cut about 4 billion tons of CO2 equivalent each year from 2020 to 2030 for the 1.5 degree target or 2 billion tons per year of CO2 equivalent each year from 2020 to 2030 for the 2.0 degree target.
Eliminating all emissions from the USA (6.2 billion tons per year), Canada (0.5 billion tons per year, Europe (3 billion tons per year) and Japan (1 billion tons per year) would be about half of the global emissions gap for the 2.0 degree target.
Globally eliminating all coal power usage would be about 10 billion tons per year. Germany has been trying and failing to eliminate its coal for energy usage by mainly building a lot of solar and wind power for the last thirty years. China and India are still building more coal power. China is at 13 billion tons of CO2e per year of annual emissions.
The world could offset the 38 billion tons of CO2 by planting 50 billion trees every year fr 20 years. If the trees were fast-growing trees that matured within ten years then this would offset about 41 billion tons of CO2. This would also need to be combined with preserving existing forests. Currently, the world has a net loss of trees and forests.
A new study of trees from the journal Science indicates that adding 1 trillion trees could store 200-830 billion tons of CO2. The world has room for 900 million hectares of trees. This would be over 1 trillion trees added to the existing 3 trillion trees. 5% of this would be about 50 billion trees per year.
The additional trees could be cut down in 20 years and the wood stores the CO2 unless they decay or are burned. Another batch of trees could be grown. If a breed of faster-growing trees are used then every 12-15 years a batch of a trillion trees would offset all of the CO2 produced by civilization.
The best (non-drone) tree restoration projects are restoring billions of trees at 30 cents a tree. This means 1 trillion trees would be $300 billion. Drone planting of trees can use 4000 drones, and 2000 people to plant 10 billion trees per year at about $1 billion per year.
Total global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including from land-use change, reached a record high of 55.3 billion tons of CO2e in 2018. Fossil fuel CO2 emissions from energy use and industry, which dominate total GHG emissions, grew 2% in 2018, reaching a record 37.5 billion tons of CO2 CO2 per year.
“There is no sign of GHG emissions peaking in the next few years; every year of postponed peaking means that deeper and faster cuts will be required. By 2030, emissions would need to be 25% and 55% lower than in 2018 to put the world on the least-cost pathway to limiting global warming to below 2 degrees and 1.5 degrees, respectively,” the report says.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
And that would be “Climate Science”?
We’ll all be dead and snow will be a thing of the past in 2010.
The Global Carbon tax is the reason the hysteria is being pushed.
We all know the +2°C is impossible to do. at best we maybe could stay below +5°C. but even this is most unlikely because nothing is being done. CO2 is just getting more every year. nobody is trying. Today already some countries have reached +1.6°C in 2019.. and 2030 is still far..
A bad vhs copy of an episode of reruns of Nimoy’s “In Search of…” tv series from the early 80s?
They’re not worried about reducing CO2, they’re worried that somebody will stop them doing what they’re used to. Since that involves burning tons more fossils every year than even their parents did, their worries are well founded. But there are a lot worse things they should be worried about.
For the kind of fast results you’re talking about, you’d need sequestration of CO2 from the air or ocean ( same effect, they equilibrate ). Just reducing the amount of CO2 being added will only marginally slow warming, not reverse it. To avoid overshoot, we’ll need mass adoption of nuclear power – since solar, wind and storage need far more hardware – plus enhanced weathering on a scale similar to current coal mining. Probably albedo modification too. If there was some way to stop the big Antarctic glaciers melting from underneath, that would be nice as well.
If CO₂ emissions were to be magically reduced to target levels and in the prescribed time frame, that means the consequences of higher CO₂ levels will be avoided. But, ironically, the climate denying loons will be able to claim they were right all along because all the predictions and models were wrong.
The only way the scientific literature that supports AGW can be shown to be correct is if no action is taken.
Thanks to job killing regulations(Ex: Clean Air Act of 1963), between 1970 and 2005, atmospheric aerosols and particulate matter was reduced by ~53%.
If you discover a problem and you do something to mitigate the cause, others can later claim with a straight face that all the alarmist predictions about the problem were false, they can then use that to justify the belief that future predictions of all inconvenient problems are equally wrong.
Science papers can’t act forward through time either, that’s because scientific research has nothing to do with headlines and stories in magazines and newspapers.
~
There was a valid basis for the cooling research, there was actual cooling back then—Aerosols and Particulate Matter.
Here’s proof there is no global warming…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSDLRm3jhc8. No less than Spock came back to earth, no doubt to save the whales, and made this scientific documentary. Same scare mongering we see today.
Look at that graph and tell me that humans are responsible for the atmospheric co2 increase over the last few centuries.
Now look at your graph and the bottom chart and tell me with a straight face that a uneven exponential growth can produce a linear graph like that.
CO2 started rising way before humans had put any significant amount of co2 into the atmosphere.
All those co2 graphs from ice cores have been proven* invalid by several papers telling that after a few bars of pressure, diffusion effect takes place and smooths out spikes , which means you get a smooth graph that shows little to no variation. Whereas other records, like stomata records, show large variations, that actually correlate with temperature and don’t ignore Henry’s law(as co2 is supposed to outgas from the oceans).
Furthermore it’s only natural that co2 is rising since we are still climbing out of the little ice age, and oceans lag in temperatures for decades to centuries.
But some say that it has to be the co2, because the sun hasn’t changed, but that’s a complete lie as there are several datasets that show many fold more than IPCC graphs, and there is more to the sun than it’s temperature(namely sunspots).
*I forgot the names of the studies, but Dr. Murry Salby mentioned them in his lecture that can be found on youtube, and it’s 1 am so I don’t have the time to look through them.
Does it really matter which?
When it comes to money, people will lie, cheat, steal and even murder for it. Just because people have some letters after their name doesn’t mean that they are immune to lying.
Oh, by the way, competition would also have the effect of lowering tuition at colleges and universities…but, instead, they have been going up lock-step by about twice the rate of inflation for over 40 years.
If you’d like to look at an article that discusses your religion (global warming) and how science works (and there’s precious little science in GW), here it is: https://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2019/11/avoiding-coming-ice-
There is NO proof that a slightly warmer planet will hurt anybody. We are currently going through a MASSIVE global greening that the models and papers did not predict.
I’ll take any bet you want that we don’t bake the planet and we are all happy and prosperous 50 years from now. Models have blinders on them, as they cannot put everything in. Declaring CO2 bad, doesn’t make it so. The science deniers are people like you who open up your comments with personal insults. You have to frame the other person as a dolt because you lack evidence! Scientists have been predicting earths doom since the 1800’s. Here we are. The 70’s ice age thing was a real concern back then. Idiot scientist promoted the idea of spreading industrial soot on the ice caps to help melt them and prevent a new ice age. That is what alarmists do, not scientists. Science has a history of shaming ideas and people, following consensus, only to be wrong later. Its all a power and money grab by elitists and they have their troop of “useful idiots” to carry their water.
If you are throwing around morality as your basis for telling others what to do, then nobody can tell anyone what to do nor force them to do it. By its nature, forcing others to do something is immoral, you imp.
I look at these charts and think, “what a waste of electrons and time to produce.” According to “scientists” the planet has been on the verge of getting too hot or too cold since the 1800’s. Let’s all just agree that the planet gets hot and cold. I live near a lake that is the remnant of a massive lake from centuries ago. The local liberal press is crying over climate change and claim the lake is evaporating and may disappear in the future. News flash, the lake has been evaporating for centuries.
China’s scheme is hot air, read the fine print. It’s a coal power intensity scheme aimed to make the sub-critical coal plants more efficient. Pricing tiers based on plant size. So if you operate a small sub-critical plant you are measured on how well you operate against other small sub-critical plants. That is – burn better coal or better thermal efficiency. So all in all that is good because only about 10% of the coal power is ultra-supercritical.
But the pricing is odd. A small, dirty plant can make money (above the target) while a USC plant would lose money (under the target) even tough on the whole the USC is far more efficient.
See the problem? Doesn’t phase out coal, but tries to make the dirtiest plants cleaner (a shift to HELE coal). This could have been done via just ordering the plant operators to clean up their act. Besides, the scheme isn’t even working yet.
The US only has 1 USC coal plant, while China has 90. Eventually, as the US supercritical coal plants retire (in about 20 years) they will be replaced by something else. Some US plants are being retrofitted as advanced USC, which is great. All without carbon trading or pricing.
nothing serious will happen because temperatures will stop increasing or despite increasing temperatures?
What ever the media hype, it was not reflected proportionally by the science. Which means it is qualitatively different to the current AGW problem.
That doesn’t qualify as proof scientifically I’m afraid..
Proof by induction. QED
It’s an oversimplified rejoinder to an oversimplified comment.
If Prickly Pete wants to argue that more CO2 is good, he can’t just trot out a 4 word bumper-sticker. Because everything is more complicated than that.
So you accusing the world’s climate scientists of a giant conspiracy?? You obviously don’t know how science works. Scientists compete across the globe. It is in one scientist’s interest to poke holes in another’s study. This is the self-correcting mechanism that eventually uncovers fraudulent papers when they do appear.
There is also no proof that the sun will rise tomorrow. Science is actually about assessing the weight of evidence supporting or not supporting a given hypothesis. How much evidence is there supporting the idea that it is from a big fusion reactor in the sky? None. The correlation between sun activity and climate just doesn’t hold up. You only have to look at the scientific literature on climate to see that the weight of evidence is overwhelming for GHGs. 1000s and 1000s of papers published each year, summarised for your convenience in the IPCC reports.
Having accepted the scientific evidence supporting AGW, the next step is deciding on policies. This is more open to debate but most economists favour a carbon tax, which can potentially be offset to be revenue neutral.
CO2 is plant food until high temperatures or an extreme weather event kills them. The evidence of good vs bad effects has been summarised in IPCC reports. Read them.
Why? Because without strong CO2 policies the USA has no moral grounds telling other countries what to do. As if Trump cares? So its voters such as yourself that hinder the USA from pressuring countries such as China and India.
China has in-depth and detailed carbon trading markets ready (with a relatively quick ramp to $16 target price expected) that they started working on in 2011.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_national_carbon_trading_scheme
If the USA starts pricing carbon at the same target price, China will do it too.
I predict two things:
(1) Carbon dioxide levels will continue to rize unabated
(2) Nothing serious will happen
As a corollary, even if there will be no shortage of food or any natural disasters, this will not stop the greenies from getting their pants in a twist for the next few decades, until it’s like beating a dead horse. And at that time, they will find a new holy cause to chase and try to change the lives of everybody else. Whatever the time, there must be a stupid hysteria going on.
It would seem that the IPCC always predict a warming of about 0.3 degrees per decade, and we have about 0.15 degrees per decade. I’ve checked that claim against the first IPCC report, and it was true for that one at least.
So, if the IPCC always over estimate the warming by a factor of two, why should be trust them now when it comes to future projections?
You don’t think that is a little bit simplified?
You get more of what you subsidize. You get less of what you tax.
Simple economics.
At the same time solving the problem is super easy – nuclear. Existing tech, proven, works. Then the “step up” transformational tech (e.g., 4th gen nuclear, hydrogen) will come, sooner rather than later because the current tech being developed (even it it’s “just around the corner”) can be easily modeled to assess the impact on the future climate.
No one at the IPCC is running models with the “what if” all of OECD builds out nuclear and hydrogen, for example. The existing models are based on political basis, not on economic ones. Kinda hard to “muddle through” while relying on completely unreliable models.
“Do you know how many warming papers have since been published?? Thousands and thousands. Try to get things in perspective.”
——————————
Do you know how much money in research grants have been paid to produce those papers? Billions and billions. Try to get things in perspective.
True, but if we make policy on the assumption of breakthrough technology, we’ll be in big trouble if it doesn’t work out. If we work to solve the problem with what we know will be available, we can at least muddle through. Then if someone invents aneutronic fusion or something, so much the better.
Oh, and if GW is such a threat, then why are we (i.e. the West) allowing China and India to do whatever TF they want to in terms of emissions? We have actually cut back on emissions fairly substantially (it is good economic sense in the long term to have your power production and motor vehicles pollute less, as that is an indication that they are operating efficiently), whereas these 2 nations have gone way beyond anything that we’ve ever spewed into the atmosphere, with no end in sight. Why is ONLY the industrialized West targeted, hmmmm?
…the world economy in an effort to cut our emissions by 10% or 25%, and risk billions of lives in the wars that would inevitably follow (check out the 1930s and 1940s if you don’ t think that economic calamity produces war), perhaps it isn’t worth it (especially if a nuclear war would release immense amounts of CO2 and other greenhouse gases).
4) Assuming that there is warming, that we’re responsible for a large percentage of it, and that we can actually do something meaningful about it without too much disruption, the next question is: “Would it actually be beneficial?” Yeah, that’s right, I’m challenging the very first assumption that you and others of similar mindset have, which is that global warming is a bad thing. Maybe, just maybe, it would be a good thing. After all, higher CO2 means faster growth of plants (the ultimate source of all of the food that we eat), and warmer temps mean longer growing seasons in many areas. Yes, it could and almost certainly would have negative effects also, but you and those of similar mindset have utterly ignored the positive aspects of GW – IF IT EVEN EXISTS.
What is hilarious is that you use the word “consensus” in anything having to do with science. Science isn’t politics, in which he who has the most votes wins, it is about FACTS. The simple fact is that there is simply no proof of warming CAUSED BY MANKIND.
You global warming folks have to answer 4 questions, and haven’t satisfactorily answered ANY of them:
1) Is there, in FACT, any global warming. The fact that measurements from decades ago were done in different locations, at different altitudes, probably further from cities and other heat sources, and that we don’t know exactly how the instruments involved were calibrated (esp. in Turd World locations) seems to indicate that we just don’t know.
2) If there is actually global warming, what is the cause? Maybe, just maybe, it is the big fusion reactor in the sky – after all, you could fit 1,000 Earths inside of it, so it is bound to have a rather large impact on our climate. The fact that the Martian ice caps were receding a bit several years ago would tend to confirm that theory – unless you believe that DIck Cheney had Halliburton ship a bunch of SUVs up there. So, even if we add to GW, are we responsible for 1% of it? 5%? 10%? 50%? NO ONE has ever talked about this.
3) If there is warming, and if Mankind is responsible for a large percentage of it, is there anything that we can actually do about it, in practical terms? IOW, if we’re going to collapse (continued)
The important thing to remember about global heating is that it does not matter. Whether it is getting colder, hotter or staying the same. No matter what the cause. It is a sufficient but not required reason to leave the planet, as G. K. O’Neill pointed out. Then, the problems can be addressed. Population relief. On and on. Start with the easy one, Space Solar Power.
“global” carbon tax? never will happen. But look at the chart you posted. The US/Europe is already tapering, and China and India are starting to reduce the growth rate. This has not been achieved by some “tax” or “concerted effort” or any speeches made in the UN. It comes from free-market enterprise. And since the 1990’s – way before Greta was born.
Reducing energy costs by making power more efficient is a very effective sales tool. Companies make more profits by selling cars that go further on a gallon of gas. Turbine companies sell more turbines if it can save costs for the utility (eg by using natural gas). As a farmer if I use less fertilizers because I use the latest agri-science then I am better off.
The culprit has been China. They don’t operate with the same market incentives. Then the really big question is what about the developing countries – when will they be able to afford energy-saving tech?
There isn’t even a point in doing the math here, it’s bloody obvious the 2deg goal can’t and won’t be met. So we are heading for a RCP 5.0 or 8.5 model? But – none of these IPCC RCP models take into consideration drastic CO2 reductions in short time frames. For instance, assume CO2 ppm gets to 750 by 2050 (which seems likely) but then DROPS to 300 by 2070, what happens then? Ie what if the “tipping point” is really a significant and speedy reduction in emissions due to rapid adoption of not-yet-proven technologies?
We will still have melting Antarcticas by 2100? By how much? The sensitivity analysis of current IPCC models is appallingly deficient. The IPCC isn’t very imaginative in their modeling. They assume CO2 reduction is slow, multidecadal because their models are based on (slow) change to EXISTING technology (e.g., shifting from coal to natgas fired power plants, or slow improvements in fuel efficiencies). That public policy is based on this is mind boggling. It’s like the old days when kings would rely on astrologers to predict the crop yields.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Sh1t is also plant food, but if somehow there was a layer of sh1t falling over the entire planet I wouldn’t be rejoicing.
Global warming papers published now, global warming evidence gathered since the 1970s, does absolutely nothing to prevent the headlines and scare stories from existing in the 1970s. Science papers can’t act backwards through time.
The 70s were about the coming ice age Marcus. That was the scare, that was what was hyped. I was there and I was (still am) a science wonk. It was not until the 80s that global warming started to become the new worry (after nuclear winter).
Having studied the topic I have changed my POV on the topic eight times since the 80s.
My BIG problem with the current science of climate change is that it has become dogmatized by the left and folks who want to treat the topic with very unscientific hyperbole. Funding goes towards those who set out to “prove” the theory as that is where money is at.
If the leftist were really interested in science they would not ignore contrary evidence nor make statement like, “the science is settled” or my favorite, “deniers should be thrown in jail”. This is not science and far more reminiscent of the Catholic church’s war on those who went against the settled science of the Earth being the center of all, or that the heavens never changed.
Stop distracting with irrelevant noise. 4C is the difference between pre-industrial temps and the last ice age. Business as usual for another 10-20 years puts us almost certainly well beyond that in terms of a rise. We will also be way beyond the tipping points recently highlighted in the news (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0) and once that happens who knows where we’ll end up. “uninhabitable” just means something extremely uncomfortable. Whether we’ll survive as a civilisation is debatable. Do you really want to settle that debate experimentally because of politics?
Do you know how many peer reviewed scientific papers supported the cooling hypothesis from the 1965 through to the 79?? A grand total of 7. Even then, global warming literature dominated with 44 papers. Do you know how many warming papers have since been published?? Thousands and thousands. Try to get things in perspective.
OK, anyone using a claim of uninhabitable planet is simply indulging in fantasy and can be safely ignored. Indeed it’s probably not safe to pay attention.
It’s always good conserve ecosystems, to replenish them. We need the world’s energy companies to heavily invest in technology like fusion, etc. I’m also a proponent of large vertical farms.
Farming works the way it does now, certainly. The idea that there is something wrong with making it better, more efficient, is baffling. The same goes for energy production. What we have now most definitely produces energy. But, why not make it better? Yes, this means an eventual large-scale shift in industry. …. So, what? We can just deal with it. We’re great at adapting to the negative. We should be great at adapting to the positive (keeping in mine that any kind of change comes with some growing pains).
Ridiculous hyperbole.
No, there really was a scare in the 1970s about the world going into an ice age. You can look it up.
I know it seems ridiculous now but this is a real thing that was actually proclaimed at the time. With international conferences, papers, graphs, even fictional disaster stories etc. bases on what was, at the time, science.
An amusing connection is that the global warming movie “The Day After Tomorrow” was actually based in part on the global cooling novel “The Sixth WInter” (which I read as a child). Which is why the movie actually spent most the time featuring ice, freezing etc. And there were a bunch of scenes (such as one with wolves) that make no sense at all in the movie, but were part of the more complex plot of the book.
As long as the fossil fuel industries have the money and power to prevent any meaningful reduction in fossil fuel usage they will do so. The average temperature will continue to increase until there are enough deaths to reduce fossil fuel usage since nothing else will work.
Nonsense. An “uninhabitable” planet is already inevitable, the question is on the time scales involved. Surely the Sun itself will heat the Earth up so that only bacteria may remain alive within the next two or three billion years. As for direct CO₂ toxicity, it must rise from the current 400 ppm to about 70 000 ppm in order to directly kill; I would like to see how much CO₂ we need to emit to reach those levels in ten or in one hundred years…
Until the temperature or extreme weather event causes death.
10 years to do something before an “uninhabitable” planet is inevitable. Remember there is a 40-50 year lag between CO2 conc and equilibrium temperature and a lot longer for equilibrium sea level rise.
Hilarious. I can’t believe you’re bringing out the 70s Ice Age cliche. Why don’t you Flat Earthers start taking Science seriously? After all, it does enable all the tech this blog is all about.
As for Mann, “more than two dozen reconstructions, using various statistical methods and combinations of proxy records, have supported the broad consensus shown in the original 1998 hockey-stick graph, with variations in how flat the pre-20th century “shaft” appears. The 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report cited 14 reconstructions, 10 of which covered 1,000 years or longer, to support its strengthened conclusion that it was likely that Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the 20th century were the highest in at least the past 1,300 years. Over a dozen subsequent reconstructions, including Mann et al. 2008 and PAGES 2k Consortium 2013, have supported these general conclusions” (Wiki).
Speak for your ignorant self.
I for one and I think many here actually think science is the best source of info we have.
You can believe your favourite blog or Fox News if you want but don’t think the rest of us are that stupid.
CO2 is Plant food.
There is a warming trend at sea (a much larger heatsink than land), and what’s more, it would be strange if there wasn’t a warming trend considering that actual greenhouses…actually work.
No sea temperatures are going up, based on NASA data from https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oisst . Satellite data is showing a cooling trend in the upper atmosphere and a warming trend in the lower – as expected if CO2 is radiating head in both directions (cools higher as it escapes into space, warms lower as it radiates back to the ground).
See the graph here
http://icdc.cen.uni-hamburg.de/index.php?eID=tx_cms_showpic&file=3077&md5=0b22795f14a4733212353c71732a24028468f254¶meters%5B0%5D=YTo0OntzOjU6IndpZHRoIjtzOjQ6IjgwMG0iO3M6NjoiaGVpZ2h0IjtzOjQ6IjYw¶meters%5B1%5D=MG0iO3M6NzoiYm9keVRhZyI7czo0MToiPGJvZHkgc3R5bGU9Im1hcmdpbjowOyBi¶meters%5B2%5D=YWNrZ3JvdW5kOiNmZmY7Ij4iO3M6NDoid3JhcCI7czozNzoiPGEgaHJlZj0iamF2¶meters%5B3%5D=YXNjcmlwdDpjbG9zZSgpOyI%2BIHwgPC9hPiI7fQ%3D%3DThere
Turns out the alarmists in the 70’s were just too early!
I think you are right. Fear as a tool to move us away from fossil fuels. Yes to conservation and protecting the environment, but an uninhabitable planet in 10 years due to a 4 degree increase is a bit much. What’s the difference between a Calgary winter and a Dubai summer? Maybe 60 degrees C or more, yet people still manage to get out of bed and go to work. One thing that is never mentioned though, humans evolved on the equator. We are warm weather animals.
Germany is not trying and failing to eliminate coal in the last 30 years because of choosing renewable energy, it just gave precedence, wrongly in my opinion, to focus on eliminating nuclear energy first. It is only now that it is setting serious targets for coal.
The calculation of the land available for forestation is far less than calculated by the The global tree restoration potential according to several bodies in the countries who have checked the land allocation maps created by the The global tree restoration potential project as reserves, arable lands and too dry lands to grow trees were also included.
There are several several renewable energy solution the can provide base load power for all our needs that we haven’t paid enough attention to. Here is one that caught my eyes recently. It is not suggested in the article but it looks that the rust panels discussed here can be layed in the ocean floor. Pretty sure that there is enough space that can be used to generate all our power needs without causing harm to the environment according to the data used here.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190730092630.htm
Ever notice how there’s ALWAYS a scare out there for the public related to the environment – a “new Ice Age” in the ’70s, all of the variations of global warming/climate change/Western energy consumption bad since then – and that each and every one of them involves a “solution” that takes more of the money of the average person and restricts the rights of the average person, all to the benefit of government? Well, I have.
Global warming and all of its associated scare-mongering is just a huge scam, perpetrated on ignorant (not stupid, mind you, but ignorant – of facts and the science behind them) members of the public by TPTB. The basis for it is a FRAUDULENT (not mistaken, but FRAUDULENT) “hockey stick” from Mann; the simple fact is that the temperature of the Earth has not only not risen since 1998, it has fallen. We’re near to a Grand Solar Minimum https://watchers.news/2018/03/30/study-suggests-modern-grand-solar-minimum-in-2020-2053/, meaning that most people are going to freeze their asses off, and within the lifetimes of most of us. There will be large amounts of ice in the Delaware River near Trenton, NJ once again (like at Christmas, 1776). Global Warming is a scam, and any climate change that there might be (like a Grand Solar Minimum) is as a result of that 800,000 mile-diameter, yellowish, fusion reactor in the sky.
That’s unfounded alarmism
RIP planet Earth… you had a good run.
Personally, I still believe conservation of ecosystems and reducing emissions is a good idea.
But I disagree with the methods and hidden agendas. The only way is forward: we need more technology and rational solutions to the fact we exist and that people deserve a good standard of living everywhere, not impoverishment and self effacement.
Better energy sources, more rational usage of resources with technical growth (e.g. GMOs taking less land not ‘organic food’ taking more), even active technological solutions like ocean fertilization or tree planting as Brian posits.
We can’t expect that options based on cultural blaming, shaming and reviving religious piety and self flagellation would really work.
Most of your audience are more worried about the negative effects of reducing CO₂ levels. Such as, less CO₂ means less plant food available. The next glaciation —which wasn’t expected for another 20k years before the industrial revolution, and subsequently pushed back 50k-100k years into the future due to the all the CO₂— will arrive a bit sooner if you reduce CO₂ levels. Less CO₂ will mean more people freezing to death. etc etc.
You have your work cut out for you convincing them otherwise, not that it would materially matter if you succeeded.
Flow batteries as cheap as pumped storage at California costs to build and operate will be around by 2025. That cost comparison will probably take another 10 years to be true in other parts of the world that are less wealthy.
Flow batteries can act as a “grid replacement” for congested grid areas or parts of grids that only experience 5 hour peaks Monday-Friday, so will eventually get built large scale whether or not there is a carbon tax.
It’ll take around until 2030 to bend the curve to flat on world auto GHG emissions with electrification of autos.
I don’t expect any major change in emissions worldwide until about 2035 without a global GHG tax large enough to bridge the cost difference (only about $15 per tonne CO2 is needed) to push out already built coal plants early enough.
You can see the rate of increase curve getting flat starting about 2010 here.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-region