The Problem of Climate Change
It’s a touchy subject as the people involved in it seem to regard any doubts as sacrilege, and the scientists involved rather than acting as a collection of reasoning people who analyse evidence, seem to act more as a religious order and will attack anybody vehemently who has doubts. But such is the nature of belief. All I hear is that if you have research that supports man made CO2 based climate change you may be accepted for funding, but if you have research that doesn’t supports man made CO2 based climate change, or doubts it, it will be automatically turned down. Hardy the fiction of impartial analysis and investigation.
But, sadly the only way to counter such a pre-decided collection of data and models, and to be allowed to put your case across is to use the same methods that are used by beliefs elsewhere, and be definite about it, even if you are just doubtful or unsure. Basically saying ‘Science is my religion, and my belief is that man made CO2 is not reponsible for climate change.’ ‘So you’re prejudiced against my belief. Hardly proof of your claim for rules of equality, and a fact that you’re prepared to discriminate against me if you really decide you want to.’
The world climate is changing. There are too many records and statistics showing this seems to be happening for this to be doubted. How serious is it? All you can do is go on what has happened in the world’s past. I’m not talking about the past year, ten years, or even a thousand years. This is similar to the logic of, ‘what happened locally today, is what will happen in 100 years’ or a 1,000 years’ time worldwide.’ To get a real picture you need to look at the period covering the period since reasonable size multicellular life started on the planet; since about 300 million years ago. In most cases it’s by indirect evidence, so quite often is based on theory, and how you guess the theory works. It’s the scientific method; you find the facts, then try to form a theory that explains them, but you never, never, form a theory, then try to find the facts to fit them. The chances being wrong using this latter method are very much higher, as often you get ‘non-typical’ results ignored or not included. In such cases a thing called confirmation bias is the order of the day, rather than the exception. Sadly, a lot of big science and large institutions seems to choose this route, quite often based on status and personality cults. It’s often called a paradigm shift by scientists to save face, but to the common man it’s ‘boy was I fooled, I can’t think why I believed that.’ If you cherry-pick time periods, and decide trends from that, then you can get all kinds of invalid results. You often find rank or status is pulled at some stage rather than referring to evidence. ‘Trust me, I’m a top scientist,’ or ‘this is what the model shows,’ rather than ‘this anomaly can be explained by this directly collected data.’
We work on a lot of rules, some of which are from the distant past, most climate science being based on some form of these rules. All you can say in such cases is ‘may,’ not ‘is.’ To say this ‘is’ can be countered with the argument, ‘so you were there were you, collecting data under laboratory conditions?’ History is a reliance on the exactness of modelling, collective and biased views, regarding records as being exactly what happened by people who were area of what was happening. Time and environment changes things. Things are rarely as they were 200 years ago, so after 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 years you begin to suspect that exactness. The farther you go back, the more inexact, and in some cases have logically been proven never to have happened that way, especially by discovering subsequent details.
Take radio carbon dating. This is said to now give an exact date to about 50,000 years. The principle is simple; that living matter takes in a certain set unvarying amount of radioactive carbon 14 over its lifetime, and depending on the proportions left will give an exact date. Simple and exact, but the ratios are dependent on a curve, one that has been calculated by modelling that is still worryingly innacurate. So, we have a plant that may have lain dormant for many years, perhaps decades, taking in unknown quantities and proportions of carbon 14, living for a period, then dying, and all carbon 14 transfers including bacteria stop at that point, and then the environment staying exactly the same according to the decay curve, all happening in a sterile and unchanging environment. With special treatment it may be possible to extend this to 100,000 years, and we know modern matter treated this way could do this, and ancient matter gives consistent results, all checked by the same system that defines the curves and models. I’ve seen initial results of some tests and they are display sometimes to the nearest second. Similarly with ice cores, those laboratory created, laboratory stored, laboratory extracted, and conforming to values that fit the curves from models. Not really, but given enough consensus is exactly true. ‘To even think otherwise is unthinkable, you’re asking 1+1=2 to be doubted.’ No, you suspect things that claimed to be true that are unchallenged, and don’t suspect those things that have been challenged and passed after thousands of independent tests, not dependent ones. Again, if carbon 14 dating or ice cores are considered even a bit iffy, there’s a fantastic amount of money involved that will not go to institutions. Any claims about doubts can be shouted down by confidence levels, again a lot of iffy assumption dependent stats rather than tests. Saying you doubt, ‘you’re not a team player,’ with threats to your living result.
For an example, the theory ‘the world is ending in the next 2 weeks.’ Measure the light and heat from the period 13:00 to midnight and it shows that the world is ending, the light is slowly decreasing, as is the temperature, so the trend is downwards suggesting all life will perish within the next few weeks. You’re consistent, and everybody who does it the same way gets the same results. Do that for just the same time period around the world and you find this also true. QED. Measuring the whole 24-hour time period, and understanding times are different around the world, a paradigm shift occurs. Not really, you just cherry picked the time period to fit the theory.
To get a good picture you need to concentrate on the period that is probably since the first mammals developed, and since that’s also about 300 million years ago, so it’s a good idea to use this as the baseline. To do otherwise, you’re probably a guilty of cherry-picking the results to fit your theory. In geologic terms, it’s suggesting that because it was 10°C yesterday and it’s 20°C today, so tomorrow it must 30°C, and in a week’s time 90°C. Mammals survived since this time, so that in itself is proof what happened over that period was survivable by mammals. This is a truism, it not being true meaning we wouldn’t be here. Matrix style thinking can wait.
So, what has happened over the past 300 million years in terms of air components and temperature?
It hit a high of an average temperature of about 32°C 250 million years ago, about 30°C 80 and 70 million years ago, and 20°C 20 million years ago. The current average temperature is about 14°C, but for most of this period it was averaging 20°C. This would suggest that normally the temperature we have at the moment could be considered quite low, even the current high 16°C below the maximum potential. The lowest over this period was about 9°C, about 50,000 years ago, many thinking that the current temperatures may have been the lowest they’ve been for 270 million years, not 1 or 2 degrees or small fractions difference, but as much as an average of 15°C degrees lower. Recently finding temperate vegetation under the Antarctic seems to confirm this view, unless there was a major pole shift, in which case there isn’t anybody on the planet even preparing the slightest minimum level of preparation for the survivability of this event.
Oxygen has been changing a lot over this period from about 30% 300 million years ago to our 20% now with about 12% in the middle. The extra oxygen would probably the reason why much larger creatures could exist then, allowing for the less oxygen efficient activity of larger structures. Carbon Dioxide over the past 300 million years has ranged from about the same as it is now to 0.5%. It varied from about the 53% lower than as it is now, 700,000 years ago, to 0.5% (5000ppm) 230 and 170 million years ago, which is not 1 or 2%, but it’s a proportion 1350% higher than it is now, to a steady decline since then. Currently it’s about the lowest it’s been with plant life still surviving. Animals survived this level then, so a lot of the certain doom predictions with everything dying off from this are just pure fantasy; minus infinity to plus infinity; theoretical calculations. It wouldn’t be so comfortable if CO2 reached 1000% higher levels at 4000ppm than present, but the air would still be relatively breathable, despite all the nonsense that a 400ppm may make it not so.
In quantities it varies, 100 years ago being about 1,500 billion tonnes, now about 1,850 billion tonnes, but changing throughout the year by about plus or minus 50 billion tonnes, some years varying by plus or minus 60 billion tonnes. Historically it has varied from about 875 billion tonnes 700,000 years ago, through about 20,000 billion tonnes 230 million years ago to the 1,850 now. The high level was probably due to the Deccan Traps magma eruption when 3 million cubic miles of magma was ejected. In comparison Mount St. Helens was less than 1 cubic mile and about Vesuvius 1 cubic mile.
It’s said that Mount St. Helens released about 10 million tonnes of CO2, so it would be not unreasonable to suggest that the Deccan Traps released somewhere near 30 trillion tonnes of CO2, or 50 times man has ever produced throughout history, even if you forget what was burnt up during this phase.
Pressure is unknown, but since oxygen is a slightly heavier element than nitrogen, being about 1.43 gm/L compared to 1.26 gm/L, Carbon Dioxide being about 1.98 gm/L, and taking into account the varying levels of water in the air due to temperature, an estimated graph based on proportions would look like:
So, what does it mean for us? If all the theorists are correct, then unless we change our culture to just surviving on this planet until it is destroyed, and therefore every creature on it at that time, we can expect runaway temperatures until it turns into Venus and it is destroyed, so therefore every creature on it at that time will go too. Dead if you do, dead if you don’t. We are in a galactic shooting gallery, so it’s almost guaranteed that virtually all the major current life will disappear when there is a big hit. At least we will have the satisfaction that we saved all nature until that certainty happens. Life after humans, but nothing we know, as it will probably all have died with us when we went.
The heating of the earth will probably happen unless water damps it down, but average temperatures are not a base point for all latitudes. The poles will probably heat up a lot faster than the equator, simply because of water content, an increase in temperature making air more effective at water storage. So a 5°C average rise at the poles will probably mean something like an equivalent 2°C average rise at the equator. I would think it’s likely we’re going lose the ice sheets at both poles. The north polar ice sheet displaces roughly it’s mass, floating on water, but the south polar ice sheet also depresses the land it sits on, so that might rise aswell to give 100m of sea level rise overall.
So, the odds are in favour of the UK and Western Europe might end up looking something like below whatever we do:
If I was going to be pinned down to a guess, based on long term data I would think that it may happen over the next 7,000 years, or about an overall rise of 1.5cm per year. If the flood defences are currently having a problem with the current sea levels and surges, I would think flooding would become commonplace in those areas by 20 years time.
Why is it happening. The general consensus is that it’s due to man made CO2 heating up the planet, a few degrees making the planet uninhabitable in the near future. This is based on short term calculated values, with humans adding massive amounts of CO2 in the past hundred years almost to a level of 1/100th that the planet has experienced in the past when large creatures still roamed the earth and thrived.
The view is that over the last 100 years the level of CO2 has risen from 300 to 370PPM. The current consensus is that within the next 20 years we will have maybe a degree rise in temperature based on the level of CO2 going from 0.046 to 0.048%. So, continuing onwards to 0.4%, that suggests the average temperature should have been 215°C higher, with all life extinct 250 million years ago. Strange that we are still here and all the animals thrived, so the theoretical basis for this must be totally wrong, with other constraints coming into play. Water plays a big part in this, with more water vapour being in the air with temperature that gives more clouds and reflecting more sunlight, being almost self-regulating system. Checks and balances you see.
But, CO2 levels have been rising, and average temperatures have been rising. What are the connections and dependencies at each stage? A lot are unknown and the province of simulations and models, one simulation feeding a model of a simulation, the base conditions unknown, and the formulas linking the data based on theory with suspect and unincluded constraints. But, it appears to be happening. There is always the possibility that it is in fact the opposite, that climate change actually drives CO2 levels.
It is a question of balance and transfers. Air as it grows warmer it absorbs more water vapour. Water as it grows warmer can hold less dissolved gasses such as CO2. The oceans hold about 50 times the amount of CO2 as our atmosphere, the water surface air interface having many variations and interconnected variables, and is not even partially understood however much people say they do. So as the seas get warmer they will absorb less CO2, and pass what it holds it into the atmosphere. This means that if the climate gets warmer there will automatically be an overall increase in CO2 in the atmosphere. Basically, for each 10°C rise in average temperature the ocean can absorb and retain 30% less of its CO2, so at an average of 30°C the atmosphere will receive 15 times its normal level.
If you look at an estimated temperature level based on long term, not very recent and unknown variable history you get an overall picture of CO2 against temperature that looks something like the chart below. There are a number of anomalies that suggest the current temperature/CO2 models don’t indicated the likely position, the models not predicting what actually happened, so seem to be massively overexaggerated. Anomalies are a sign that you don’t really know what is happening or happened, the rules you give don’t work in the real world. The key point is 200 million years ago, the CO2 level was 4,000ppm, but the average world temperature was estimated to be about 20°C. The current climate models suggest that the average world temperature should have been somewhere around 420°C with all life on earth extinct, rather than the temperature about the same as present that was probably the reality.
We live in a system of systems of interrelated systems, none being completely independent and discrete. Each producing effects, and each having counterbalancing effects. Our own bodies are a system of checks and balances. The earth is no different, nobody knowing how the system interrelate and work. CO2 is part of that system, not being a discrete thing, where something produces a fixed level of CO2 and that defines temperature, however many people have this belief. CO2 is just one small part, and the fact that it currently is still a trace gas rather than a noticeable proportion also suggests that over the earth’s time period it may have an effect, but not the immense, dramatic, and end of the world view of it we currently have. It also might turn out to be an irrelevance, worrying about a minor detail while ignoring the massive detail. I have a problem with the quantities, with CO2 being one molecule having and massive effect when the proportion of about 2000 other molecules totally surrounding it has none. The proportion of gasses is about a can of coke for CO2 compared to the Full-Size Range Rover boot with the seats down in size for air as a whole, or chucking your large back pack into a houses swimming pool for effect.
At one point very long ago, before our oxygen-based life was common, the world had a level of CO2 of about 30%, that is 65000% higher than the current level (300,000ppm). It was home to life, but not as we know it captain, mainly plant based, who were having a field day, and was separated over time to extract the carbon and oxygen.
The plant cover now is absolutely nothing to that which we had 300 million years ago, even the Antarctic probably having a good covering. The world today is a bit of a desert throughout compared to then, likely having 100 times the plant life before humans even started, going down to its present levels before we even arrived on the scene.
Another problem is that the world changes in its distribution of CO2 in the Northern and Southern hemispheres through the year by about 10PPM, sometimes as much as 15PPM. The unproven assumption is that the CO2 level stays the same and merely moves from one place to another, from one part of the world to another. If this is not true, then one area during the year has a capability of losing 10PPM, and the other at the same time has an ability through the year of gaining 10PPM. That is, it all happens within one year, so a variation over the year of 2.7%, a yearly variation that has been happening before humans were around. So, if nature turns bad, it probably has the potential to wipe out all life using whatever system it does within 37 years. No oxygen or no CO2, the latter meaning no plants.
There is a consistent fall and rise through the year. It’s said that this is simply because the plants in the northern hemisphere cause this difference, although there is no large scale direct proof over time of this opinion, it’s again just ‘assumed,’ plants being pretty CO2 neutral. They take it up, reducing CO2 during the day, releasing it at night, taking it up when they are growing, releasing it when they die, but the change in amounts doesn’t really cover most of the CO2. But, temperature does change CO2 considerably in water due to temperature, reducing at the temperature increases, most of the sea cover being in the southern hemisphere. If you look at the temperature variances in the seas between the rise and falls, and overall through the years, they almost perfectly match the overall temperature of the southern oceans. So, when the sun is heating more of the north, the CO2 falls as the south seas are colder, allowing more CO2 to be retained, and when the sun is heating more southerly seas the CO2 is then released. The correlation is an order much stronger than the link between CO2 and global warming. The question is, ‘if it is not CO2 causing the rise in temperature, what is it?’ The main possibilities are: internal heat, where volcanic activity is entering a different convection phase under the oceans; overall suns heating effect, possibly by thinning atmosphere or change in aspect; man generating large quantities of heat; our overall activities causing a noticeable effect; changing the earth’s albedo, man or not man made; an effect we take for granted but is not stable or unchangeable; man made CO2, but not proven to be a direct link, only modelled and theorised as such. We know all about volcanic activity above, on the land, but very little is known about that below it, and it may be no coincidence that the magnetic poles are moving consistently faster and with more variation in the past 150 years than they seem to have varied or moved before.
To add to the mix we have the atmosphere, where cold air can hold as much CO2 as warm air, but cold air can hold a smaller water content than warm air, with height and less pressure losing water content, but keeping CO2 content. Of that warm air, the moisture content can be as much as 17.3g per cubic metre at 20 °C, about 1.5%. That water content itself is at a higher level can also retain CO2 within it’s structure, so warmer climes will show similar levels of CO2 as colder areas, the CO2 being partially retained by it’s water content, removing the water, removing it’s CO2, so it’s an uncalculated factor as is water generally if using dry air as your basis for anything. A bit like calculating aircraft capabilities using a vacuum chamber.
We often hear that Venus is a sister planet that went wrong, but this is based on the unproven assumption and theory that the two planets were similar originally. The theory that Venus was never like earth, and will never be is discounted, not by evidence, but by theory and models itself. It’s peculiar that exoplanet study after finding 3,000 planets still hasn’t discovered one even remotely similar to the earth. Probably just down to the methods being used; that by nature of its unique situation excludes a lot of planets from detection. A number of planets with characteristics ‘possible for life’ have been detected, in the way that fish and bricks are similar. But still only one basis for life discovered on our ‘perfect planet,’ and of 3,000, not one discovered that the majority of life we know could survive on, with our life having ‘no chance,’ it suggests that a lot of ‘life throughout the universe,’ are still fishing as hard as they can, always suggesting ‘likely’ or ‘possible’ when the chance is ‘extremely remote’ or ‘impossible.’
The likelihood from our own small area is that there has only existed one basis of life, it started from one place and moved everywhere else, never developing anywhere except from the conditions that existed in one cubic centimetre in space and time. All the other proposed locations being just fictional, and being from carefully selecting the facts to support the theory. The other option is that life is commonplace, having developed in various areas simultaneously and from a similar basis through synchronicity. The fact that everything is similar and that we don’t detect the difference of location being down to there being only one likely chemical route and formula possible. So, life is commonplace and all life everywhere is RNA and DNA based. The odds against two or three similar forms of life developing independently unless only one route is possible, are probably similar to finding 1.3 litre Ford Escort trees growing somewhere on an exo-planet.
Recently there was an announcement that the earth is trapping twice as much heat from the sun during the 14-year period from 2005-2019, not a small percentage as CO2 models suggest likely, but an almost 100% change, with the added unqualified and unsubstantiated proviso that it must be man-made, with some internal variability contribution, as the researchers can think of no other cause that can be possible. So, will we see a doubling of heat storage with every extra 70ppm of CO2? Too much of this and we will be hotter than the sun. How it does this is not explained, or with figures or examples, just vague references to this is what is happening, in a similar form to ‘it rained today, so it must be man-made. No detail of how this is possible, just take my word for it as a scientist.’ Double the heat retention from a 5% change in 15 years, when over a 900% higher level 200 million years ago only gave a few degrees difference doesn’t seem to make much logical sense.
The claim is that CO2 allows for massive retention of heat. If we look at hot deserts we find that the CO2 level is similar to most other places, water being quite low, but the largest range recorded is around 50°C between day and night. Up during the day, down each night, up again the next day, so with all this insulation, how is this possible? The places are not all very windy, so the heat doesn’t just flow out and in, but all this is ignored. Similarly, is the effects of clouds on temperature, with a nice sunny day recording 30°C in the sun, a cloud goes over and the whole column of air underneath drops by as much as 10°C in seconds. In hot countries where there is a solar eclipse, you find it gets very chilly almost immediately when this happens, so the retention capability of the air is very small. But if you live in areas where there is a lot of water vapour the loss is very slow, with very small drops in comparison to dry air. So where is all the heat being stored? Not in the air, this is just fiction, the densities not allowing for it, and the heat loss overall when the sun is removed also supports this. So, it must be the water or earth’s rocks and soil. But if clouds are missing at night, you can get frost and ice forming at least on the land, sometimes even in summer.
Fogs and mists are mainly results of differential temperatures between sea and land.
Does the heat just move? The planet is spinning around 1,000 miles an hour. It has a radius of about 3,950 miles, and is relatively circular, so 2*pi*r gives 24819 miles turning in 24 hours so 1034 miles an hour. But winds quite often are quite slow, so they can’t move too much heat too far.
Now, looking at the real world, rather than the modelled, theoretical, and fantasy. Our climate is changing. We need to also factor in that the Climate Change Industry/Religion is now the largest one on the planet, and will take no prisoners or discussion.
The various options:
Man-made CO2 and we’re prepared to do something about it, and it hasn’t gone too far to do this, well and good. But the world can’t agree even on the colour scheme of the leaflets at the moment, let alone really doing anything that would actually work, apart from cosmetic, superficial and self-deluding projects. That is, when you look at them closely you find a lot of clever CO2 accounting, and deliberately hiding missing contributory CO2 components being here and there. Pollution starts from, and we only count it from this point is the universal mantra of green labelled pollution. ‘Just ignore that bit, chemistry and physics isn’t everything.’ Sadly, wishful thinking never sent us into space or landed a moon capsule. Nobody is even thinking about this actuality.
Man-made CO2 and we’re not prepared to do something about it, and it hasn’t gone too far to do this, we’ve got problems. This is probably where we are for most people. I’m clean, I’m green, and my billion-pound production system is pollution net zero. Well, if you only count it from when its sold in the shop yes, maybe; but otherwise your nose is blocking the motorway. Nobody is even thinking about this actuality.
Man-made CO2 and we’re prepared to do something about it, but has gone too far to do this, we’ve got problems. Nobody is preparing for this eventuality.
Man-made CO2 and we’re not prepared to do something about it, but has also gone too far to do this, we’ve got problems. Nobody is preparing for this eventuality.
Man-made, but not CO2, and we’re prepared to do something about it, and it hasn’t gone too far to do this, we’ve got problems. Nobody is preparing for this eventuality.
Man-made, but not CO2, and we’re not prepared to do something about it, and it hasn’t gone too far to do this, we’ve got problems. Nobody is preparing for this eventuality.
Man-made but not CO2, and we’re prepared to do something about it, but has gone too far to do this, we’ve got problems. Nobody is preparing for this eventuality.
Man-made but not CO2, and we’re not prepared to do something about it, but has gone too far to do this, we’ve got problems. Nobody is preparing for this eventuality.
Not Man-made, but not CO2, and we’re prepared to do something about it, and it hasn’t gone too far to do this, we’ve got problems. Nobody is preparing for this eventuality.
Not Man-made, but not CO2, and we’re not prepared to do something about it, and it hasn’t gone too far to do this, we’ve got problems. Nobody is preparing for this eventuality.
Not Man-made, but not CO2, and we’re prepared to do something about it, and it has gone too far to do this, we’ve got problems. Nobody is preparing for this eventuality.
Not Man-made, but not CO2, and we’re not prepared to do something about it, but has gone too far to do this, we’ve got problems. Nobody is preparing for this eventuality.
And finally
Not Man-made, and not CO2, but is a natural fluctuation; we’re spending an awful lot of scarce resources and limited time, suppressing the worlds industries, and probably dooming ourselves to extinction in the process.
So just on the of numbers of options we have a 1 in 13 chance of getting it right; man-made, just CO2, it hasn’t gone too far, and we’re doing all the right things in the right way. Yes, if you say so; just ignore the hundreds of ways the solutions don’t add up, with everybody assuming they do because somebody with status says so. ‘I’m a theoretical physicist’ somebody claims, so I know all about meteorology, practical physics, geology and oceanography. Resources cost pollution. Biofuel power stations that burn existing forests, cars that cost sometimes 8 times the resources of a petrol counterpart, the largest differential for an electric car is 300 times the polluting resources, but at least think it’s green and clean.
Thousands of Zero emission 200 foot Wind turbines 140 feet wide, that use massive oil based fibreglass blades, rare metals that need massive amounts of refining and reworking, thousands of miles of resin bonded extra copper cabling and control mechanisms, put where people would be apoplectic about the landscape if a 12 foot high, 20 foot wide bungalow was sited there, and mainly all the parts imported from abroad, built using foreign technicians, and owned by foreign companies provided with compulsory purchases orders against the local populace, and power sold to mainly foreign based electricity companies and a foreign owned grid, sold at a premium to pay for it all to the UK public, all with certain amount to a massive amount of UK public funding, but it’s green, so any planning and accountability can go hang. Shame for a full 6 days in 2019 there was no wind power at all from the 20GW Wind Power provision, and no solar power at all at night from the 5GW Solar Power provision, and had to be provided at great expense from the gas, oil and coal backup systems that the government and populace want to dispose of. Talk about putting all your eggs in the same basket case.
If enough people shout something out it must be true. Anybody who watches things like ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ is familiar with the statistic of a UK audience who voted 81% for an answer and got it wrong. In the German version the figure is 89%, the US, 91% and poor Vietnam and Costa Rica 100%. Every person in the audiences voted wrong, and not just on one occasion.
So where are we: We as the whole world are concentrating on reducing CO2 levels, even if the alternative ‘green’ methods we use in a lot of cases produce more CO2 overall in the supply line. Everything new is additional pollution and additional use of scarce resources, what happened or had been produced in the past can’t be altered, and many companies build in technical obsolescence, phones or computers that no longer are supported by tweaks in their operating systems and the push for ‘latest version only’ financial systems, vehicles that fail because the electrics fail, so have a half-life of previous models they replaced. A cars manufacture is about 50% of its pollution, but a vehicle that uses twice the resources is more like 90% compared to what it is replacing, and a car that has a lifetime of 50% of previous models uses 100% of its pollution on account in its manufacture, so all use after production becomes additional pollution, above and beyond the fuel used however clean its claimed to be. We rely on inaccurate and hidden CO2 accountancy, amortised, defrayed, and discounted for ‘green’ imagined characteristics, compared to full cost figures for ‘non-green’ imagined characteristics. We are using up resources at a terminal rate, much of the green initiative pushing this consumption at a faster rate and constantly compromising energy and production resilience. It’s a fact that we now have less than 20% of the reserves we did 30 years ago, but we are using 100% more power constantly, so the risk of complete failure is about 10 times that 30 years ago.
We have vehicle emission laws that are based on religious type beliefs, certainly not the sciences of chemistry or physics. Basically, unless you claim vehicles are nuclear powered, the amount of fuel used of any type defines what level of emissions you produce. So, 1 gallon of petrol produces so much C, CO2, CO, oxides of nitrogen, N, when it exits the tailpipe. If you use 2 gallons of a fuel you are pumping out 2 times the amount of pollution compared to 1 gallon of fuel. Using catalytic converters, you can disassociate the gasses for a short time until they cool down and recombine, but the extra resources needed to produce them probably are equal to the amount where this happens. But what you get is immediate variable flow tested past a sensor, and if you get that flow right it’s clean, getting it wrong and it fails, but 30 feet away the eventual result is the same. ‘The system removes the CO2, but where does all the carbon go?’ Petrol is about 95% carbon, a typical gallon of petrol weighing about 3.3kg, so the weight is about 3.1kg of carbon. A typical car that lasts 15 years and does 10,000 miles a year at 40mpg would put out about 11-12 tonnes, or say 10 times it’s weight in carbon. A 20mpg car would put out 22-24 tonnes, diesel vehicles putting out about the same, higher mpg but a heavier carbon rich fuel. Unless a car puts out almost pure activated carbon particulates it puts out CO2, or CO which is a lot deadlier.
A rough guide is that a gallon of petrol produces about 10.5kg of CO2, Diesel about 12kg of CO2, LPG about 7.5kg. Manufacture of the vehicle for a car that lasts 15 years would probably bump that up to a total of 21kg for petrol, 22.5kg for diesel, 19kg for LPG. Using totals for use and emission, from power stations for the CO2 level, with a typical electric car using about 200wh per mile, so the equivalent for a 40mpg petrol car works out to about 2.6kg of CO2 for an electric car. But, if you factor in the extra cost of resources to produce an electric car at this time then you’re probably looking at 17.5Kg of CO2 in total.
If the car is replaced every 10 years then the figures of course work out differently at about 26kg for petrol, 28kg for diesel, 24kg for LPG and 25kg for electricity.
If the car is replaced every 5 years then the figures of course work out differently, at about 42kg for petrol, 45kg for diesel, 40kg for LPG and 47kg for electricity
The overall use is also variable, some electric cars only needing 20kwh and others needing 90kwh recharges, a difference between 1.0kg of CO2 and 3kg of CO2 on the electricity use alone, the full CO2 in production and use ranging from an extra 10kg to 50kg equivalent per gallon.
The actual difference is probably marginal, only relevant to marketing companies and believers who don’t question.
If you look at just oil and minerals, the location of new fields has been reducing year on year, so that with oil, extraction from shale measures is now economic where it was thought of as totally uneconomic 50 years previous. The fiction is that with modern technology and efficiency levels it has become possible, but if you look at the resources needed to do so they haven’t changed much at all. Because of scarcity the price has risen so that previously too expensive resources now come into the range for production whereas they didn’t before. Another example is lithium, with limited supply and massive demand it now commands a price 10 times the price it was 20 years ago. Copper has gone up 3 times in the same period. So, to extract it and supply it you can now use up to and equivalent 3 times the copper resources you did 20 years ago to get the same thing. Oil was about $3 a barrel in 1970, about $20 now, but reached a high of $102 per barrel in 2012, so shale oil became economic due to the price, allowing for its revaluing at 5 times the price in resources. The trouble is, that if you use 3 or 5 times the resources to obtain something you use up the world’s resources 3-5 times as fast, so fields that would have lasted 150 years are now depleted in 30-50 years, within a lifetime. It’s said there is enough shale oil to last 1,000 years, but the fact is that with each percentage it’s actually harder to get at, the richest supply going first, then the middling supply, until you’re left with the poorest supply that needs 10 times the resources of the best to extract. You’re basically left grubbing around for what’s still there, so re-opening of old depleted wells that became uneconomic will probably happen. The use of natural gas is increasing at a rate of +4% per year, so at that rate, in 100 years, 50 current years’ worth will probably be used each year, totalling about 1,200 current year’s supply. Without production change I wouldn’t be surprised if shale oil also starts to run out around this time and the current UK price of about £6 per gallon is somewhere near £600 per gallon in current day values, plastics becoming the sole domain of the super-wealthy, with a value that of gold.
Just imagine the antiques roadshow: ‘This is a plastic straw produced in the 2020’s, one of the last of its kind. See the intricate detail and exquisite moulding, do we have £100,000?’
If there was an aggressor today it will be an economic one, with jump or we cut off your resources, especially power, food, and finance, with extremely fragile and easy to damage supply lines and communications. You want to fight a battle, try it without any power, with a freezing or candlelit populace. Without storage, wind and solar is fickle and unreliable beyond belief, but the ethos is so what if nobody has power, including industry and the city for 6 days. Exit UK, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, and possibly the US through systemic collapse stage left.
Conclusion, is there a conclusion? One thing is evident, we need to live on more than one target in the universe. Extinction for all animal life on this planet is very likely, if not certain, but probably not from pollution or CO2. We are using up resources at an exponential rate, and our alternative lifestyles are not as green and clean as claimed, using up at least as much if not more resources, and causing as much as, if not more pollution. We need to work out full environmental costs of everything, not just refusing to acknowledge or trying to hide it under clever green accountancy. 1 tonne of pollution is 1 tonne of pollution, producing 1 tonne. Saying it’s 0.5 tonnes of pollution because 0.5 tonnes is said to be green, or shifting the pollution to other countries and saying it is no longer our problem doesn’t work in the real world. We need to allow discussion not totally suppress it if it doesn’t agree with your ethos, as what has happened with all climate change discussions. We are running out of time and I still have my doubts about what is really causing it. The world says ‘you cannot have doubts, we don’t like people who are not team players,’ and reject them without thought as such.
Science is about inquiring, stifling or dismissing being ‘not science,’ but dogma, and many scientists seem now to be guilty of this way of thinking, ‘Oxygen is what we need for breathing, the square root of 4 is 2, unicorns populate swindon; so you all doubt these; you’re pretty ignorant,’ and going into discrediting people using mathematics to prove 2 x 2 is 4 and the oxygen content of the air, with added character assassination to cover unicorns. Black and white, all or nothing being the argument, when all that in fact is doubted is the last one. Direct cause and effect, 100 models and 100 theories being no more likely to be correct than 1 model and 1 theory, just force of numbers swaying peoples opinion through diffusion. The truth needs no defence or justification. Nobody needs innuendo or name calling to justify it’s position, but that seems to be happening an awful lot in the debate, activists with warped views and religious fervour winning the day, suppressing all arguments or discussion as ‘case closed, you lose, end of discussion.’ In science the case is never closed. If you say that it is, you’re not a scientist, even though you may have that name, or be called it.
We also hear that the temperatures are causing ‘bleaching of the reefs.’ And that life will probably cease in places like the Barrier Reef, but the facts are that some of the most populated reefs are in places with seas hotter than the Barrier Reef, and there is no chemical reaction or dying involved in this ‘bleaching.’ The colour of the reef is changing, so it would be better saying that the reefs are going paler to be more accurate. But then again, this would damage the sermon, and the new priests of science wouldn’t like it.
One thing does seem obvious. If it does turn out not to be man-made CO2 produced climate change, science is going to take a major hit in trust and validity, and religion may take off again. People will take the view, ‘none of them actually knew what they were doing or talking about in the first place,’ so all research will be scrutinised with jaundiced eyes, so most big science and big projects will probably be terminated, and by dint of refusing to countenance alternatives or act impartially, the people who are currently funded to do it would be directly responsible. The medical profession is already rife with distrust, with mistakes and bad choices constantly happening. The current limited service and risk panicked operation being an example of this, the belief by the medical profession that there is no problem there, when probably for a number of people it will be terminal. ‘Don’t trust me, I’m a Doctor…., or Scientist.’
Finally, what are my best guesses? The temperature is rising, probably due to a number of causes, the sun having cycles, and so does the very hot material under the earth, the result being the seas are warming up and releasing their CO2. CO2 was a trace gas and still is a trace gas, the definition of trace being ‘barely perceivable,’ not the deity that controls all life on earth that it’s claimed to be. The sun and water are probably those. It’s odd that all of it coincides with everything after the Carrington event, including things that seem to be totally ignored as irrelevances to the problem, but may in fact turn out to be ‘other symptoms’ of the change.. Coincidence or not coincidence, that is the question? We are recording changes, but everybody is currently assuming everything is due to man made CO2 produced climate change, rather than climate change altering the balance of CO2. If I were to guess, I would guess that we are currently coming to the end of one of the Pleistocene’s ice ages, the ice caps being what our short-term humanity is familiar with, so we regard it as being the only normal possible. Anything else is taken to be an existential threat to all life on the planet. The designation of the anthropocene being arbitrary and based solely on a belief in man made CO2 based climate change. If it turns out not to be man made CO2 then the anthropocene doesn’t exist, and is a fiction from believers.
Looking at 300 million years data rather than yesterday morning’s in geologic, or a minute ago in stellar terms, the normal earth will probably be no ice caps and an average temperature around 23° C. It is currently 14° C, way below average, but not as cold as ‘snowball earth,’ so we’ve probably got something like +9° C to go whatever everybody in the world does. I’m hoping that it doesn’t get as bad as the earth is capable of, showing us a 32° C, or +18° C rise. That sort of thing could really put a dampers on the sort of lifestyle we are used to, and would be a shame if it caused all civilisations on the planet to fail and not be discovered again, a thing that may have happened before, societies reverting to primitive levels for tens of thousands of years. The change will probably be much greater at the poles than the equator, which will probably become uninhabitable inland, but we will probably find temperate vegetation growing in the areas of the north and south poles, again.
I may be wrong, as I am nowhere near as clever as a lot of climate experts and naturalists imagine themselves to be, but the same proponents of man made CO2 produced climate change say it is impossible for them to be. Such a thing society and regulations will not permit. Time, and no preparation whatsoever for this contingency may be telling as to humanities fate. And if we are the only civilisation on this planet to rise to our level, we could be the end of life in the universe, certainly on this planet. Shame if we flunked elementary existence because we were terrified of unicorns.
If you look at plants as organisms that have developed and been modified by their environment rather than producing, or just being simple objects in or of that environment, you see them in a different light. They are not just isolated life that exists in a particular environment, they like us, are conditioned to it. We have problems outside certain standards such as levels and types of ultraviolet light. We grew up and evolved to survive to a certain level and partially use those levels. Our eyes did not simply react to certain frequencies, those frequencies produced eyes that evolved to use those frequencies that were provided. Plants have been around a lot longer than people, probably by a factor of 100 times, so they will have developed to work within what would be a standard environment for them. If this is true then the standard or normal environment would be that at which they would best flourish, and that environment if you test plants is around 1200ppm of CO2. After this point plants gain little for increases, but below that point the growth and efficiency of plants is quite dramatic, failing at around 120ppm. Below this you would probably find all plant life, apart from some really hardy specimens, completely dying off. No lush fields, gardens, forests, just deserts. Above 1200ppm and the gains are equal in proportion to that below the point, as long as they don’t go below 120ppm, then plants can’t survive. So, plants effectively are suited to 1200ppm, which probably is the normal condition for the earth, that level probably being where the earth has spent most of its life around. The level of 300ppm, and the current one of 400ppm are probably abnormally low conditions for the earth, a thing that happens occasionally, and endangers all life on the planet, rather than what should be. We were born into 300-400ppm. This environment we take as what should be, and anything that is outside this is considered abnormal, aberrant and abhorrent, so must be feared rather than maturely endured as part of what’s natural.
Creatures develop, thrive and evolve into the environment they find themselves, and plants are suited to 1200ppm. Homo sapiens sapiens are a recent species and thrive in the environment they have developed in. If we had the facility we would probably not have found that homo neanderthalensis or denisova were inferior in any way, just that they were the optimum for their time period and environment, and since the environment changed, a new optimum species, sapiens simply replaced them. They were no longer optimum for the new environment, but sapiens was. We were a lighter weight version designed to operate in a 120-1000ppm CO2 atmosphere, but could tolerate 2000ppm. 4000ppm starting to cause distress, and 6000ppm damage. It’s not a fluke that we breathe out about 4000ppm.
The earth is complicated, with dependent systems within systems, but for all that it is a pretty damped and forgiving system, water being a great regulator. For example, the ozone layer is created by and protects us from UVC from the sun. Without UVC we wouldn’t have the ozone layer, as oxygen molecules are split by it, but the ozone that it creates absorbs most of the UVC, allowing only certain wavelengths such as UVA and UVB through in the exact quantities that we can work in. Not really, we just developed in an environment with those quantities, too much causing mutations, not all of which are bad, and too little causing us a problem with necessary vitamins.
We live on a world with limited resources, and my view is that it probably isn’t CO2 that is in the driving seat. To limit CO2 we are using those resources up at a much faster rate. Equate new price with energy and resource consumption. A simple consideration would be choosing a £30,000’s worth of resources in say an electric car to save the environment from the pollution that a £15,000 worth of resources that a petrol car requires. When you work out the true total full life costs you find that the overall difference in pollution is pretty marginal at best, especially if the car is changed for another new ‘cleaner’ one before the end of it’s life. So all it boils down to really is you’re claiming clean, but using twice the limited resources and endangering the planet faster to call it that. Marginal, but the claim is ‘well, I’m saving the planet, and I’ve got the certificate to prove it.’
The sun is a curious creature, humans only being aware of it and doing well when it behaves itself. It’s taken as ‘this is the way it is,’ serene and unchanging, and anomalies and problems don’t happen with it. This is just an assumption taken from about 70 years advanced study of a potential 9 billion years, or about 0.0000008% of it’s life. A bit like predicting how a person life will go by observing 17 seconds of their life. Solar activity seems to be very high for longer than expected periods recently.
Lastly, ‘why do polar bears not hunt penguins?’
The farthest north penguins, a sub-antarctic bird are found is the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador in the nothern part of south america, on the equator, so 0°. Polar bears, a very close relative of the brown bear, can be found as far south as Newfoundland or 51°N. Brown bears could be found in the past as low as 15°N. But other species are common to both poles and all the seas inbetween, such as seals. But why? I’ve never been happy with the answer; ‘they just are.’
The answer is that polar bears and penguins are later additions, limited by a certain environment, and since they are not that much different than their more temperate versions, are specialised for a particular short term enivironment. Polar bears are not usually found within 500 miles of the north pole, and penguins are not normally found within 1300 miles of the south pole.
An interesting article from the Independent on Yahoo:Global Covid shutdown has no long-term impact on climate crisis, UN sayshttps://uk.news.yahoo.com/global-covid-shutdown-no-long…It’s odd isn’t it, that the massive worldwide shutdown and restrictions that overall reduced emissions by maybe 50% in 2020 didn’t show up as even a blip in world temperature fluctuations. The suggestion is ‘the problem must be larger that we thought, and there must be even more drastic action taken.’If you take another article about the bushfires in 2019 that also didn’t make a blip: https://www.9news.com.au/…/d3c377c2-7b0a-4506-b466…The world systems aren’t as known and predictable as many people claim.