|
Trump Administration Acknowledges Climate Change – Predicts Large Rise In Global Temperatures
The Trump administration admits that climate change will increase the global temperature more than anticipated:
Last month, deep in a 500-page environmental impact statement, the Trump administration made a startling assumption: On its current course, the planet will warm a disastrous 7 degrees [Fahrenheit] by the end of this century.
A rise of 7 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 4 degrees Celsius, compared with preindustrial levels would be catastrophic, according to scientists.
That increase though, says the Trump administration, is no reason to stop emitting gases that, for a large part, cause such warming:
But the administration did not offer this dire forecast, premised on the idea that the world will fail to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, as part of an argument to combat climate change. Just the opposite: The analysis assumes the planet’s fate is already sealed.
“The child already fell into the well, there is no longer any need to cover it.”
The administration uses such faulty reasoning to eliminate regulations that are supposed to limit ‘greenhouse’ gas emissions. It is set to allow higher emissions from cars and trucks.
For millions of years plants on earth used the energy from the sun to convert carbon dioxide and water into hydrocarbons. Where those plants were later covert with volcanic ash or sunk into the sea, geologic pressure and time converted them into coal, oil and gas. Since the start of industrialization humans have used an enormous amount of these dead plants to generate energy. Coal, oil and natural gas – the hydrocarbons – oxidize in exothermic reaction. They burn and give off heat which humans transform into various kinds of usable energy. The emissions from such fires are basically the stuff from which the plants were created – carbon dioxide and water.
A large part of the energy from the sun that hits the earth is reflected back into space. Carbon dioxide and other gases (Methane) in the atmosphere lower the reflection rate of the earth, they trap the energy (heat) the sun shines onto earth within the atmosphere just like the glass of a greenhouse traps the heat inside. Spectroscopic measurements from space over several decades show a decrease of reflections from earth at the spectral range of carbon dioxide. Long term measurements on earth of carbon dioxide concentrations correlate strongly with the general temperature increase.
All this is well known and not controversial. But, as John Maynard Keynes said, in the long term we are all dead. Humans are not willing to give up on their personal comfort and profits for the benefits of far away future generations. The 2015 Paris agreement to limit carbon dioxide emissions was largely a scam. Hardly any country stuck to the endorsed targets. After the Fukushima disaster the Merkel government in Germany decided to shut down nuclear power plants but increased the use of brown coal for electricity production.
bigger
It was a ‘populist’ decision, sold as a “green” policy even as it was the opposite, and contradicted the commitment to decrease emissions. The Obama administration allowed a huge increase in fracking which, next to the hydrocarbons, releases a large amount of other greenhouse gases.
The decision by the Trump administration is wrong. Yes, we will likely not be able to stop a global temperature increase in next few decades. But future generations also deserve our compassion. We must still do our best to limit the long term increase by ending the use of hydrocarbons wherever possible.
It will not be easy to replace hydrocarbons as a source of energy. Large amounts of electric energy are difficult and expensive to store. We need a certain locally distributed base capacity in our electricity networks to provide energy when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow. For now nuclear energy is still the most climate friendly way to generate this base capacity. It also creates highly toxic waste that is extremely difficult to get rid of.
The effects of climate change, higher temperatures, rising sea levels and generally more extreme weather, will hit the poorest people the most. This within the U.S. as well as in a global frame. The consequences will be mass migration on a never before seen scale, widespread lack of consumable water and large violent conflicts arising from both.
Two countries may hope to profit from the rise in global temperature as it will increase their access to natural resources that are currently covert by ice. The U.S. (with Canada) and Russia may be the winners of the trend. Most other countries will be losers.
While short term human greed will likely prevent a reduction in hydrocarbon use, and a slowing down of climate change, there may be other effects that could suddenly turn the trend. A large volcanic eruption or a big asteroid impact could cloud the earth and bring back (much) colder times. Some yet unknown effect in the atmosphere that is not anticipated in current climate models could stop or reverse the current trend.
The human race is able to adopt to extreme climates. Humans can live in deserts as well as in the arctic. But such extreme climate zones do not allow for high density populations. The current number of people on this planet may prove to be too high to sustain. Climate change itself, through large scale conflicts and famines, may well provide for its own natural regulation. Reduced to some 100 million individuals humanity may well survive. Nature will not be compassionate in effecting such.
@161 Grieved
I suppose it is to my detriment that I view most attempts to fix the problem of technological pollution as half-assed and not wholly-innocent of greedy and monopolistic intentions. Furthermore, as I lay out below, these attempts further dull authentic thinking about human organization around technology, in general. In other words, thinking about technology is A#1.
…
I view the overall push to promote the concept of AGW or climate-change into the collective unconscious of humanity as just another tool in the toolbox of globalists. The concept when used politically, breathes a demonic presence into an otherwise natural concept. The climate is always changing and sometimes this change is sudden and catastrophic to forms of life coexisting during these epochs. But, like a Golem, the concept has been brought to life as a tool for God knows what final aims of those who promote it.
But humanity is the animal par excellence for adaptation. With our current forms of food delivery and innovation, our plight may be manageable during upcoming instances of catastrophic climate change. I am not passing judgement on these futurist forms of technology, because that is another topic. I am merely saying that humanity will probably weather creeping forms of disruption. Cataclysmic events, however, are a different story.
As I said in a prior post, like Trump as a symptom of these destitute times, and not the cause, oil is likewise such a symptom of a godless epoch of technology for its own sake. You see, it is fine to be disgusted by oil and the poor relationship to the natural world that combustion has engendered, but we are fooling ourselves if we think that throwing up wind turbines and solar rooftops everywhere in its place will provide the understanding of our relationship with the world through technology that we so desperately long for in our heart of hearts.
This is a fine essay on Heidegger’s thought on the dangers of western technology during this modernist age and the need for poets in these “destitute times.” Here is a snippet:
The threat to man does not come in the first instance from the potentially lethal machines and apparatus of technology. The actual threat has already afflicted man in his essence. The rule of enframing threatens man with the possibility that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more final truth.
You see, we will have only hidden this potential truth even better if we were to eliminate fossil fuel burning and then pat ourselves on the back saying: “You see, we did it.” And in its place, with wind turbines and rain barrels under every gutter, we will have condemned the question of technology to future generations, relegating the authentic purpose of thinking to the abyss. Call it gobbledygook if you wish, but an analogy might also be made with the phenomenon of Trump in a post-Obama era. Slick Barry put on some nice window-dressings to the picture of Americana, didn’t he? But with Trump, the question of Empire is more pronounced and more apt for seizing, wouldn’t you agree? But immediately we are seeing a movement of questioning hijacked by political and reactionary forces. In effect, they are saying: “Anyone but Trump!” But there isn’t much foresight or thinking in this proposition is there? The same can be said for fossil fuels: “Anything but burning fuels!” And likewise, we would be missing an opportunity in these destitute times if we were to replace one method of concealment for an even more dangerous form: ignorance of the question in general through our own self-satisfaction. Just as Trump is a symbol of the need for this question to emerge, so are fossil fuels regarding the question of technology.
…
As for Russia and their commissioning of numerous nuclear-class icebreakers for the Arctic, this could be for two reasons:
1) Russia knows that the Arctic will be thickening with ice in the future and they are readying themselves accordingly, or
2) Russia will take advantage of increasing melting in the Arctic to open up new trade routes through previously normally-frozen passageways.
I lean towards number 1 because I have read more titles (yes, I can’t understand scholarly articles very well, so I just go by the titles) of articles which dismiss climate alarmism as of recent than slick, MSM productions of climate alarmism featuring pics of emaciated polar bears and breaking ice shelves.
The way I see it, the same forces of propaganda are at work with both these images of emaciated polar bears and pics of Omran, the bloodied Syrian-boy of White Helmet fame.
“WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING!” “WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING!” “WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING!”
Feel the desperation in their attempt to sway your permission on such vile actions of meddling in other nations’ affairs as dooming the world’s poor to various carbon-credit schemes to suck up more wealth and control to TPTB.
Nevermind that, as in the ice extant graphs I originally linked you to from the Danish Meteorological Institute, you can clearly see that extant, while never differing drastically in overall volume from year to year, does show rapid change in local ice variations. A polar bear may wake up to find his local stomping grounds warming, yes, but ancient humans found themselves conversely awoken in ice ages struggling to survive, too. They use all of these images and pseudo-science to cynically prop up their narrative. Bastards!
To what purpose?…god only knows.
Posted by: NemesisCalling | Oct 1 2018 18:09 utc | 231
Guerrero @249
I very much doubt that the plan you are so enthusiastic about is really feasible at the scale that would be required.
“Not feasible”? Why? NAWAPA was already feasible back in the 1950’s, authorized by congress and ready
to break ground. Engineering was never the problem. In Libya the government did something similar, piping in water several hundred kilometers to the parched population centers on the Mediterranean
coast. If Libya could do it, WHY do you think that the United States would not be able to build it?
of course the United States could do this if the political will existed.
It seems obvious to me that, in the scenario outlined by you, those with out access to water will just be left to die.
Not at all. The idea is to irrigate and transform the Great American desert. Problem with that?
Those in Mexico and Latin America seeking water may well migrate towards US but will encounter a large wall. Should these unfortunates seek to breach this wall then they will be shot.
Who are you kidding? Guerrero has 3 million+ people in the United States. I know dozens of them.
My old football pals are in Arizona, Chicago, Carolina, New Jersey, Kansas, and Ohio. Yeah right,
they’re going to be shot. Ha! Look: make the wall a thousand feet high, so long as employers pay their tickets they’ll be going, as always; one thing you should know is that there are virtually NO unemployed Mexican wetbacks in the United States. None. These people are in high-demand because they are good workers. Half the people I know are up there, including my in-laws; twelve of them, twenty including their kids, are living nearby O’Hare Airport. All of them work multiple jobs and are highly regarded by their employers for productivity and good attitude. Everybody says they can get another job anytime becasue there is a steady demand for these Mexican day labor, folks who sing when they work and who arent going to rob you, or when they get fired come back and stick-you-up, etc. Don’t think that I approve. I don’t.
I always tell people that they will be sorry if they go up there; that they’ll return home a shadow.
We can see evidence of this in Israel where the European colonisers shoot the locals and keep them penned into an area lacking resources including adequate water.
I don’t know what you are riffing on. It has nothing do do whatsoever with anything I have said.
On and let me assure that (in the context of severe water shortages) both Trumpists and Anti-Trumpists will be okay with such action.
I am saying to recall the NAWAPA Plan and divert the enormous amount of fresh clean water
flowing into the Artic Ocean, to bring it south where it will do some good topping off the aquifers
and providing for irrigated agriculture as far south as Chihuahua Mexico. What is wrong with that?
People don’t have to fight over water. There’s more than enough being wasted every second as we talk.
Someone estimate the volume of clean water being wasted into the salt sea every second of every day?
Latin American countries need to shake off US influence and work together for the common good.
Now, there’s some good political advice worth taking. Which side would
you
be on?, I wonder.
Posted by: Guerrero | Oct 2 2018 17:23 utc | 266
|
