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New research on forests and oceans suggest projections of future warming may be too conservative, with serious consequences

January 31, 2021

New research on forests and oceans suggest projections of future warming may be too conservative, with serious consequences

How much will the world warm with ongoing fossil-fuel carbon emissions? It’s a big question that preoccupies policymakers and activists, with important discussions about when the world will hit two degrees, are we really on a path to four degrees of warming with current Paris commitments, and so on.

And the answer is that the world is likely to warm more than current projections, if two recently published pieces of research on the terrestrial and ocean carbon sinks are any guide.

Warming projections and carbon sinks. Future warming projections come from complex climate models, which combine historic data, current observations, equations that encompass current understandings of the bio-geo-physical processes, and some assumptions about processes where direct observation or modelling is more difficult.

About 30% of the carbon dioxide (CO2) that humans are pouring into the atmosphere mixes with the top layer of the ocean (making the water more acidic and posing a growing acidification threat to ocean life), about 30% is absorbed by the terrestrial biosphere (trees and plants), and about 40% stays in the air, heating the planet.

Assumptions about those processes in the future fundamentally affect projections of future warming. If these ocean and terrestrial carbon stores (or “carbon sinks”) become less efficient, then a greater proportion of human emissions will stay in the air, and warming will be faster than currently projected for a given level of emissions.

So the models make assumptions about these carbon stores:

For the terrestrial carbon sink, it has been observed that with more CO2, plants grow faster because there is more CO2 “food” for them to absorb. This is known as the “fertilisation effect”, and while there are highly divergent sink trajectories from Earth system models, the models “nevertheless agree on continued futures increases in sink strength due to the CO2 fertilisation effect.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

NET ZERO — Everyone, from countries to companies, is talking about it – But what does it really mean?

December 6, 2020

NET ZERO — Everyone, from countries to companies, is talking about it – But what does it really mean?

BEWARE — Turns out that not all Net Zeros are created equal – Some are “greenwashing” with big loopholes to slip through. —

ClimateAdam

“You see, everyone from countries to companies are announcing their net zero targets. But there’s a lot hiding behind this little number. And sometimes net zero can mean nothing at all. Let’s start be looking at this crucial little word: “net”. This simply means that overall emissions have to add to zero. So there still can be some emissions, they just need to be cancelled out by absorptions…say by planting trees to suck carbon out of the air. But not all “net zeroes” are created equal. Some are cast much wider than others. And some have much bigger loopholes to slip through. Take my own country – the UK. Last year, the UK made history by setting a net zero target for all greenhouse gases by [the year] 2050. But don’t celebrate just yet. The fine print shows that the UK is happy to make others do the hard work. The target allows the UK to get other, poorer countries to clean up our mess, absorbing the carbon dioxide that we’re emitting. … But our enthusiasm should have just as many loopholes as the announcements themselves. Because if we’re not working hard to end our emissions, then these announcements really do mean zero.” —ClimateAdam

Below is my repost of an embedded 6-minute video of ClimateAdam’s expose of the fine print and greenwashing accompanying “net zero” pledges of emission reductions by 2050. Accompanying Adam’s brilliant analysis is my transcript of his narrative, some added images, and, at the bottom, an embedded video of Adam’s related flick, “Too Late to Stop Climate Change.”

Alternatively, watch Adam’s video, without my transcript of course, by clicking on the following linked title to his You Tube site.

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…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Great Reset

November 12, 2020

The Great Reset

The Great Reset Report is now available in the store. For our clients, this is available in a download PDF $29.95 because it is very important to understand who is behind this entire Coronavirus Scam and what are the objectives.

This report goes into great detail about a well funded & well-organized coalition to not just impose vaccines and depopulate the world, which may even be a ploy knowing they will not vaccinate China or Russia, but to actually destroy the world economy to end fossil fuels and impose by bribery and collusion their vision of how the world should function to stop Climate Change and impose by decree ZERO CO2.

We are facing massive unemployment as they wipe out industry and continue to try to keep people locked down to reduce CO2. For two months, Britain needed less electricity and they shut down coal plants. There is a fleet of cars that remain unsold and even Hertz was forced into bankruptcy. They have shut down tourism and Southern Europe will not survive without massive bailouts blowing the entire debt situation to insanity.

There are even two types of vaccines they have been developing. The first is the standard where they inject you with a portion of the virus. But Gates has also funded vaccines that operate totally differently. They are targeting your genetic DNA to alter it under the pretense it will prevent COVID-19.

Most people do not realize that former Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany who admitted he acted like a dictator to create the Euro denying the German people any right to vote on the question, was caught in 2000 with massive bribes he had taken and the CDU even distanced itself from him.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Anthropogenic CO2 Emissions are Fate

September 15, 2020

Anthropogenic CO2 Emissions are Fate

Mill, Halsey, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

I developed a model of Global Warming based on the anthropogenic perturbation of the Carbon Cycle. The essence of this model is a rate equation for the evolution of the carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in the atmosphere.

The interesting results from this model are projected trends for the CO2 concentration and the average global temperature during the next century. The character of those trends — whether rapid rises, shallow plateaus, or diminishment into the future — depend crucially on the magnitude of our civilization’s emissions of CO2, and whether those anthropogenic emissions increase or decrease with time. In the real world at present, they are increasing.

I have now been able to include the effect of linearly increasing or decreasing anthropogenic emissions into my Carbon Balance Model, which has been significantly improved.

This model also includes the effect of the increase in the rate at which atmospheric CO2 is absorbed by photosynthesis and the surface waters of the oceans, because those absorption rates are increasingly stimulated by the higher levels of CO2 in the air. This process of absorption-enhancement cannot continue indefinitely as the atmospheric CO2 concentration increases, but at what point of elevated CO2 concentration it saturates and then absorption largely shuts down, is unknown.

The third process included in the model is that of the slow absorption of atmospheric CO2 by the chemical reactions of weathering on the surfaces of rocks and soils. CO2 not “quickly” scavenged from the air by photosynthesis or the surface waters of the oceans will stay airborne for 12,000 to 14,000 years. The ~2,500ppm spike of atmospheric CO2 that occurred 55.5 million years ago took 200,000 years to clear away.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Net Zero Emissions Lie

September 13, 2020

The Net Zero Emissions Lie

Cutting carbon emissions has become a central focus of countries and companies alike in the past decade. The oil majors are racing to ‘go green, Microsoft has pledged to go ‘carbon negative’, and over 20 nations have either committed to or achieved net-zero carbon targets. For public companies, the incentives to go green are clear, with a recent boom in ESG investing, the continued threat of activist divestment, and a growing body of government regulation. Meanwhile, for governments, the environment is becoming an increasingly important electoral issue and political parties are eager to be seen as being proactive on the issue. But just as the ESG investment boom has led to an increase in the phenomenon of ‘greenwashing’, countries who are eager to make grand statements about being carbon zero within a decade or two may be overselling exactly what it is that they are doing.

Climate change is, by its very nature, a global problem. With that in mind, it is possible for one country to reduce its carbon emissions to zero without any reduction in the level of carbon emitted worldwide. As long as that same country continues to trade and consume, the carbon-reliant products it needs will simply be imported from a nation without any limits on carbon emissions. To claim ‘real’ net-zero emissions, countries would have to go significantly further.

That isn’t to say that the net-zero initiatives are entirely without merit. Increasing renewable energy usage, building more energy-efficient homes, and electrifying transportation would all have a tangible effect on decreasing global carbon emissions. But, as economist Dieter Helm points out in his recent book, if an individual state wants to truly become a net-zero carbon emitter, then it would need to have a carbon tax at its border as well as reducing its production of carbon domestically.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Possible Future Trends of CO2 Concentration and Global Temperature

September 10, 2020

Possible Future Trends of CO2 Concentration and Global Temperature

Wildfire smoke and power line, northern California. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Carbon dioxide gas (CO2) has been accumulating in the atmosphere since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution (~1750), because increasingly voluminous fluxes of that gas have been exhausted from the lands and the oceans, and are beyond the capacity of natural CO2 sinks to absorb completely.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, carbon would cycle through a variety of processes that sustained the continuation of life, death, evolution and rebirth, and that all meshed into one grand balance. That balance is called the Carbon Cycle.

The explosive growth of human activity, numbers, exosomatic power, economic wealth, military overkill, and hubristic political pretensions, all spring from the access to and profligate use of heat-energy liberated from fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide is the exhaust fume from our Promethean exertions for greater conquests — and wealth.

The carbon dioxide exhausted by our civilization’s generation of heat-energy, and from our massive exploitation of once virgin land areas, is an increasingly destabilizing perturbation of the Carbon Cycle. This perturbation is called Anthropogenic Emissions.

The imbalance of the Carbon Cycle reverberates through the natural world in many ways that are increasingly harmful and dangerous to Planet Earth’s habitability for ourselves and for many other animal and plant species. The central reality of this complex of growing threats to the viability of the Biosphere is called Global Warming.

Carbon dioxide gas traps heat radiated towards space, as infrared radiation from the surface of Planet Earth, reducing our planet’s ability to regulate its temperature by cooling to compensate for the influx of solar light that is absorbed by the lands and the oceans, and stored by them as heat.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

We Can’t Grow Our Way Out of Poverty

July 8, 2020

WE CAN’T GROW OUR WAY OUT OF POVERTY

For more than half a century, economists and policymakers have focused fanatically on growth as the only feasible way to end global poverty and improve people’s lives. But in an era of planet-wide ecological breakdown, that comfortable conventional wisdom is crashing to an end. Jason Hickel lays it on the line.

Everything is about to change in the field of international development.

In 2018, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) grabbed the world’s attention with its report stating that to avert dangerous climate breakdown we need to cut global emissions in half by 2030 and reach zero by 2050. It would be difficult to overstate how dramatic this trajectory is; the challenge is staggering in its scale.

We know it’s possible to accomplish rapid emissions reductions with co-ordinated government policy action, ratcheting down fossil fuels and rolling out renewable energy infrastructure. But there’s a problem. IPCC scientists have made it clear that it’s not feasible to transition quickly enough to stay within the carbon budget if we continue to grow the global economy at existing rates.

More growth means more energy demand, and more energy demand makes it all the more difficult to create enough renewable capacity to meet it.

Think about it this way. With business-as-usual growth, the global economy is set to roughly triple in size by the middle of the century – that’s three times more extraction, production and consumption than at present, all of which will suck up nearly three times as much energy. It will be unimaginably difficult for us to decarbonize the existing global economy; impossible to do it three times over in the short time we have left.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Green Energy Delusion – We Can Never Get to Zero CO2

May 10, 2020

Green Energy Delusion – We Can Never Get to Zero CO2

This interesting documentary exposes the falsehood about green energy and the outright lies we are told that somehow this will save the planet. They call it BioMass energy which is cutting down forests and burning trees that consume CO2. The carbon dioxide released when burning wood (about 1900g CO2 for each 1000g of wood burnt) they then claim is balanced by the fact that this carbon was taken up by the tree from the air when it grew. So this part of the emissions is carbon-neutral. What they are saying is that they are releasing the CO2 the trees took out of the system rather than adding to the present level.

Coal is an important source of energy in the United States, and the nation’s reliance on this fossil fuel for generating electricity is growing. The combustion of coal, however, adds a significant amount of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere per unit of heat energy, more so than the combustion of other fossil fuels. Coal is formed when dead plant matter decays into peat and is converted into coal by the heat and pressure after being deeply buried over millions of years. In other words, coal is also carbon-neutral under this same BioMass theory that coal represents plants that simply consume CO2, and it is not being released back into the atmosphere. Burning coal does not create CO2, it is also just releasing it as they burn trees.

Destroying forests to burn trees under the claim that BioMass energy is renewable because they can just grow more trees is pretty absurd. The only REAL energy that does not produce direct Co2 is nuclear. Nuclear power reactors do not produce direct carbon dioxide emissions. Unlike fossil fuel-fired power plants, nuclear reactors do not produce air pollution or carbon dioxide while operating.

The Recent History of GDP Growth, CO2 Emissions, and Climate Policy Paralysis, All in One Table-Runner

April 30, 2020

The Recent History of GDP Growth, CO2 Emissions, and Climate Policy Paralysis, All in One Table-Runner

Note: I began designing this table-runner just before the COVID-19 pandemic blew up in the United States. In the time I have been embroidering it, rates of death and misery have soared while wealth generation and carbon emissions (the two subjects of this work) have ended their decades-long rise and have plummeted. A deadly virus is a terrible means of slowing greenhouse warming. Whenever we come out the other side of the pandemic, we must pursue a rapid, humane, ecologically sound, and guaranteed-effective course of action to drive greenhouse emissions down to zero. Here’s how. — P.G.C.

The color of money is the color of calamity

This table-runner illustrates, from left to right, the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration from 1946 to the present. Each year is represented by two adjacent stripes: one in gradually deepening shades of green representing that year’s U.S. gross domestic product (adjusted for inflation) and one in increasingly intense shades of yellow-orange-red, representing CO₂ concentration.

There are nine shades for GDP and eleven for CO₂, with shades indicating roughly equal intervals of increase in each. The shades of both types of stripes darken as the years go by, in accordance with the increases that occurred in both GDP and CO₂. (For hi-res, zoomed-in images of the table-runner, see here.)

The shades of yellow-orange-red in the table-runner darken more and more rapidly as the years pass, illustrating how emissions of CO₂ accelerated as industrial output and fossil-fuel use rose more rapidly throughout the world. The concentration of CO₂rose at an annual rate of about 0.8 ppm from 1945 to 1980; 1.5 ppm from 1980 to 1995; and 2.1 ppm from 1995 to 2019. (The United States accounted for almost 20 percent of the rise in atmospheric CO₂ during those years.)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Carbon capture could require 25% of all global energy

December 8, 2019

Carbon capture could require 25% of all global energy

Preface. This is clearly a pipedream. Surely the authors know this, since they say that the energy needed to run direct air capture machines in 2100 is up to 300 exajoules each year. That’s more than half of global energy consumption today. It’s equivalent to the current annual energy demand of China, the US, the EU and Japan combined. It is equal to the global supply of energy from coal and gas in 2018.

That’s a showstopper. This CO2 chomper isn’t going anywhere. It simply requires too much energy, raw materials, and an astounding, impossibly large-scale rapid deployment of 30% a year to be of any use.

Reaching 30 Gt CO2/yr of CO2 capture – a similar scale to current global emissions – would mean building some 30,000 large-scale DAC factories. For comparison, there are fewer than 10,000 coal-fired power stations in the world today.

The cement and steel used in DACCS facilities would require a great deal of energy and CO2 emissions that need to be subtracted from whatever is sequestered.

Nor can the CO2 be stored in carbon capture sorbents – these are between the research and demonstration levels, far from being commercial, and are subject to degradation which would lead to high operational and maintenance costs. Their manufacture also releases chemical pollutants that need to be managed, adding to the energy used even more. Plus sorbents can require a great deal of high heat and fossil fuel inputs, possibly pushing up the “quarter of global energy” beyond that.

As far as I can tell the idea of sorbents, which are far from being commercial and very expensive to produce, is only being proposed because there’s not enough geological storage to put CO2.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

IEA Sees $90 Crude Ahead Of Oil’s Downfall

November 14, 2019

IEA Sees $90 Crude Ahead Of Oil’s Downfall

Global oil demand will plateau around 2030, according to a major new report, but the decline in demand is way too slow to head off the worsening effects of climate change.

Oil demand begins to flatten out in the 2030s “under pressure from rising fuel efficiency and the electrification of mobility,” The International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its widely-anticipated annual World Energy Outlook.

However, the agency does not see a peak in CO2 emissions through 2040, even in a scenario that incorporates some intended policy targets. The IEA says that an expanding economy and growing global population outweigh efforts to cut emissions. Reducing emissions will require “significantly more ambitious policy.”

“The dissonance between the rising trend for CO2 and the commitment of countries to reach an early peak in emissions was especially striking in the light of the latest scientific findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” the IEA said, referring to the rather dire conclusions from the IPCC report in 2018, which found that the world is running out of time to make deep and far-reaching cuts to emissions.

As Reuters reports, some groups criticize the IEA for consistently predicting strong oil demand growth. “The IEA is effectively creating its own reality. They project ever-increasing demand for fossil fuels, which in turn justifies greater investments in supply, making it harder for the energy system to change,” Andrew Logan, senior director of oil and gas at Ceres, told Reuters.

With that said, renewable energy is growing fast and taking a growing slice of all new investment. The IEA sees solar becoming the single largest source of installed electricity capacity by 2040, surpassing coal in the 2030s.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Trees and the TMEX

November 1, 2019

Trees and the TMEX

Just before the recent federal election in Canada, the Liberal party committed to planting two billion trees over the next 10 years, the cost of which is to be “offset by forthcoming revenues from the Trans Mountain pipeline.” However, a closer look at the proposed deal shows that sequestration of carbon dioxide by two billion trees will never compensate for the additional emissions generated by the expansion of the TMEX pipeline.

According to the Liberal Party pamphlet, over a ten-year period, planting a total of 2 billion trees is estimated to absorb and store about 30 million tons of carbon dioxide. How does that compare to the emissions caused by the new pipeline?

The TMEX, when operational, is intended to increase the capacity of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline by 590,000 barrels a day. Production in the tar sand region will ramp up to meet this newly available capacity. That’s the whole point of building a pipeline. Mining and refining bitumen from the tar sands deposits produces large emissions of greenhouse gases. According to the Oil Climate Index, emissions from the tar sands are estimated to be as high as 174 kg of equivalent carbon dioxide per barrel of crude.

Doing the math, we can calculate that ramping up production by 590,000 barrels a day will generate an additional 37.5 million tons of greenhouse gases a year. So over a ten year period, the TMEX pipeline will generate emissions of about 375 million tons of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e). During the same period the 2 billion trees will sequester less than one tenth of the carbon in these emissions. To put the additional pipeline emissions in context, 37.5 MtCO2e a year is greater than the combined emissions of the cities of Calgary and Toronto, which in 2016 were respectively 18.2 and 18.3 MtCO2e/year. So operationalising the TMEX pipeline is like adding two major Canadian cities to the landscape.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Are Electric Cars Good for the Environment?

October 29, 2019

Are Electric Cars Good for the Environment?

This article is Part 5 of an 11-part series analysis of Tesla, Elon Musk and EV Revolution. You can read other parts here.

My wife loves driving the Model 3, not for all the selfish reasons I like to drive it (it is fast and quite the iPad on wheels) but because she feels she helps the environment. Is she right?

Unlike an ICE car, which takes fuel stored in the gas tank, combusts it in the engine, and thus creates kinetic energy, Tesla takes electricity stored in the battery pack and converts it directly into kinetic energy. That’s a very clean and quiet process. However, the electricity that magically appears in our electrical outlets is not a gift from Thor, the thunder god; it was generated somewhere and transmitted to us.

As I write this, I am slightly disturbed by how the topic I am about to discuss has been politicized. I am not going to debate global warming here, but let’s at least agree that an excess of carbon dioxide (CO2) and carbon monoxide (CO) is bad for you and me, and for the environment. If you disagree with me, start an ICE car in your garage, roll down the windows, and sit there for about 20 minutes. Actually, please don’t, because you’ll die. So let’s agree that a billion cars emitting CO and CO2 is not good and that if we emit less CO and CO2 it is good for air quality.

Roughly two-thirds of the electricity generated in the U.S. is sourced from fossil fuels. The good news is that only half of that comes from coal; the other half comes from natural gas, which produces half as much CO2 as coal (though it has its own side effects – it leaks methane). Another 20% of U.S. energy comes from nuclear, which produces zero carbon emissions. The remaining 17% comes from “green” sources, such as hydro (7%), wind (6.6%), and solar (1.7%).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is Global Warming an Existential Threat? Probably Not, But Still a Serious Issue.

August 13, 2019

Is Global Warming an Existential Threat? Probably Not, But Still a Serious Issue.

During the recent presidential debate, a number of candidates suggested that global warming represents an existential threat to mankind, and thus requires dramatic and immediate action.

Governor Jay Inslee has been particularly generous in the use of this term, but he is not alone. Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have said the same thing, as have several media outlets and environmental interest groups.

Some of these folks also claim that the window for action on climate change is closing–Jay Inslee suggests that the next president will be the last able to take effective steps. Others suggest 10 or 12 years.

But are these existential threat claims true? That is what we will examine in this blog.
An existential threat is one that threatens the very existence of mankind. Something that is a simply a challenge or an inconvenience is not an existential threat. An existential threat must have the potential to undermine the very viability of human civilization.

As described below, global warming is a serious problem and its impacts will be substantial—but in no way does it seriously threaten our species or human civilization. And with reasonable mitigation and adaptation, mankind will continue to move forward—reducing poverty, living healthier lives, and stabilizing our population.

What do current climate models tell us? These models are run under specific scenarios of emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gases (see figure). In one, RCP8.5, we simply continue doing what we are doing, with escalating use of coal and oil. Not much renewable energy. Many believe this scenario is too pessimistic. Much more reasonable is RCP 4.5, which has modestly increased emissions through 2040, declining after 2050. I suspect this one will be closer to reality.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Do electric cars take more CO2 to build than they save?

July 2, 2019

Do electric cars take more CO2 to build than they save?

EVs take a lot of CO2 to manufacture but should save more over a lifetime of use

Electric vehicles generate about 25 per cent more CO2 than the manufacture of gasoline powered vehicles largely die to the massive lithium batteries. (Getty images)

Listen 2:33 (click on above link to listen)

This week’s question comes to us from John Stinner in Prince George, B.C. He asks:

Do electric car batteries take more CO2 to make than they save?

Olivier Trescases, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Toronto suggests that this is a very important question to answer given the projected increase in the use of electric vehicles in the coming years.

Trescases says there has been research to suggest that the amount of CO2 produced by the manufacture of an electric vehicle is 25 per cent greater than that generated in the manufacture of a gasoline vehicle.

The difference is largely due to the massive lithium battery required to power the vehicle.

In terms of CO2 emissions from driving, EV-related emissions depend on where the electricity comes from. In the United States, even considering the various sources of electricity, the total emission of CO2 over the lifetime of the vehicle is still 50 per cent less than the emissions from a gasoline-powered car.

In the future, that number will increase as more electricity is generated from wind and solar power.

As well, lithium batteries are likely to become smaller and more efficient, and will therefore generate less CO2.

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