{"id":56607,"date":"2021-02-02T07:56:37","date_gmt":"2021-02-02T12:56:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=56607"},"modified":"2021-02-02T07:56:37","modified_gmt":"2021-02-02T12:56:37","slug":"climate-change-and-the-mitigation-myth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=56607","title":{"rendered":"Climate Change and the Mitigation Myth"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Climate Change and the Mitigation Myth<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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It is not nice to be told that you have been diagnosed with a terminal condition. It is even worse to be given false hope that if you did this or that you could mitigate the problem or turn it around when it cannot. If a medical practitioner does this, they lose their job. But climate scientists do this frequently, and probably to keep their job. It is virtue-signalling to agree with national and international climate agreements which propose that we can fix this by reducing (mitigating) our carbon footprint and carbon emissions\u2026 and so continue \u2018business as usual\u2019 and live happily ever after.<\/p>\n

My response to this is in three sections:<\/p>\n

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  1. Anthropogenic (human-induced) warming from greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions must be understood in\u00a0the context of the natural carbon cycle<\/strong>, which until about 150 years ago was in equilibrium.<\/li>\n
  2. The mitigation myth<\/strong>\u00a0is that we can reduce the effects of worsening climate change by reducing anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions e.g., net-zero by 2050, or earlier.<\/li>\n
  3. The big problem is not climate change. It is\u00a0global ecological overshoot<\/strong>: when our ecological footprint exceeds biocapacity or sustainability. Global warming is a result. Overshoot leads to collapse and eventual extinction. The planet is now in irreversible collapse.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    1. The Carbon Cycle is out of Equilibrium<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Greenhouse gases (GHG) are necessary in the atmosphere to keep the planet warm at an average of 15\u00b0C surface temperature.[1]<\/a>\u00a0The level of\u00a0natural GHGs<\/strong>\u00a0in the atmosphere has been in equilibrium for millennia because the earth has both emitted and absorbed natural GHGs in mostly equal measure (the natural carbon cycle). This all changed with the industrial revolution, about 1750. Since then,\u00a0anthropogenic or human-caused greenhouse gases<\/strong>\u00a0have almost doubled the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, and this has been the main driver of global warming. The problem has been compounded by the destruction of carbon absorbing plants and forests.<\/p>\n

    \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Climate Change and the Mitigation Myth It is not nice to be told that you have been diagnosed with a terminal condition. It is even worse to be given false hope that if you did this or that you could mitigate the problem or turn it around when it cannot. If a medical practitioner does […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[2648,112,141,1004,386,30895,30896,3197],"class_list":["post-56607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-anthropogenic-climate-change","tag-carbon","tag-climate-change","tag-co2","tag-greenhouse-gases","tag-mark-brimblecombe","tag-mitigation-myth","tag-overshoot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56608,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56607\/revisions\/56608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}