Thank you Ernest. I try to provoke thought and discussion about our impact on our planet. If people don't agree with me I don't mind so long as they have looked at the information available and made an informed decision rather than just quoting from one activist group or another. I posted this in one of Helios' hydrogen threads that sums up some of my thoughts.


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There are a lot of difficult questions out there and very few answers that can be backed up with real data.


Conspiracy theories abound; The Climate Activists are sure there is a plot by the governments and the oil industry to hush up the  ‘FACTS’. The right wing are sure that all this climate stuff is a leftist, Marxist plot to take control of the world. Quite a few on both sides are making quite a lot of money by selling schemes that get government subsidies. Most wind and solar generation systems are harvesting subsidies as are biomass. Where do the subsidies come from? Answer, the consumer.


I am in full agreement that we need to reduce our impact on the planet. The questions are how and how quickly. Reducing the population is the obvious but impractical way. If we try and look at how big the problem is and how rapidly we have to do something we rapidly get sucked into the world of climate modelling. This is where it starts to get dubious and has far too many unknowns. The effects of cloud cover were discussed in a recent E&T article, clouds can make things hotter and colder.

If you look back in history there was concern about global cooling in the 1970s followed by a fairly rapid temperature rise of around 1°C. This unexplained rise kicked off the current climate change movement/panic. Subsequently temperatures have remained fairly stable as the IPCC noted in AR5 (I am waiting to see how they deal with this in AR6 next year). Global CO2 levels have been rising fairly steadily during this time so It is very hard to make a sensible correlation. If the CO2 levels are not coupled to temperature then why should we do anything at all? If they are coupled then what is the sensitivity (temperature rise for a doubling of CO2 level in the atmosphere)? If the temperature continues to rise what is a safe limit? How do we know and justify that? Various proxy temperature measurements suggest that the earth has been warmer and cooler in the past and has survived. There are a wide range of temperatures across the planet that seem to be capable of supporting life. How do we even measure ‘Global Temperature’? Do we take a series of measurements on a grid around the globe and take an average? Do we take measurements where we can, apply weightings and take an average? How are the weightings justified?.


A couple of charts from the UK Met office:

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/diagnostics.html


Hadcrt4 is a global measurement which is also split into northern and southern hemispheres here to show the difference, note they have changed the scales the anomaly in the north is twice that of the south (why is there a such a difference?).

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/


Hadcet is the longest measured temperature series based on three stations in central England. This shows the clear 1°C rise in the 80s followed by flattening as well as a bigger, ~1.5°C, rise in the 1700s. Who noticed that?


Once we have got some justifiable answers to the above what do we do about it? Is the problem ‘Greenhouse gasses’ or is the problem all the toxic pollution load, over use of resources and destruction of natural habitats. Unfortunately a large amount of the green movement is fixated on greenhouse gasses and ignores the rest as it conflicts with their views/aims. All the renewable solutions solar, wind, biomass and hydro are not very green. They require large amounts of resources to build often using materials where significant pollution is produced (rare earths, cobalt, etc) and due to their low energy density destroy quite large areas of natural habitat. Let’s flood the valleys for hydro power, cover the hills with wind turbines and solar panels, chop down the trees for biomass and try and live and feed ourselves from the rest. I know this is a little exaggerated but do the sums to see how much are you need due to the low energy density of these sources.


So what should we do? First try not to do more damage. The indiscriminate rollout of wind and solar is simply wasteful. Both do have their places but solar PV north of Spain is pointless as is placing wind turbines too close together so they shield each other. If you burn fossil fuels to manufacture wind and solar you actually make things worse in the short to medium term. Don’t shut down/scrap things before they have reached the end of their useful lives. Replace your transport system with an electric one when the existing one wears out. Nuclear with breeding and reprocessing is probably the best primary energy source available to us. It does need to move along from the older designs which were optimised for weapons grade plutonium manufacture to more flexible systems with much higher fuel burnup. The small modular reactors look interesting as do the various new physics although there is a lot of materials technology problems to be dealt with. The spent nuclear fuel is a small but rather unpleasant problem that can be largely be dealt with by reprocessing. Another important point is reduction in demand, but again don’t scrap usable housing and machines replace them with better when they wear out. Can we do this by 2030/5, no. Can we do this by 2050, probably not. Can we do this by 2100, probably. Is that too late, probably not.

Thank you Ernest. I try to provoke thought and discussion about our impact on our planet. If people don't agree with me I don't mind so long as they have looked at the information available and made an informed decision rather than just quoting from one activist group or another. I posted this in one of Helios' hydrogen threads that sums up some of my thoughts.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


There are a lot of difficult questions out there and very few answers that can be backed up with real data.


Conspiracy theories abound; The Climate Activists are sure there is a plot by the governments and the oil industry to hush up the  ‘FACTS’. The right wing are sure that all this climate stuff is a leftist, Marxist plot to take control of the world. Quite a few on both sides are making quite a lot of money by selling schemes that get government subsidies. Most wind and solar generation systems are harvesting subsidies as are biomass. Where do the subsidies come from? Answer, the consumer.


I am in full agreement that we need to reduce our impact on the planet. The questions are how and how quickly. Reducing the population is the obvious but impractical way. If we try and look at how big the problem is and how rapidly we have to do something we rapidly get sucked into the world of climate modelling. This is where it starts to get dubious and has far too many unknowns. The effects of cloud cover were discussed in a recent E&T article, clouds can make things hotter and colder.

If you look back in history there was concern about global cooling in the 1970s followed by a fairly rapid temperature rise of around 1°C. This unexplained rise kicked off the current climate change movement/panic. Subsequently temperatures have remained fairly stable as the IPCC noted in AR5 (I am waiting to see how they deal with this in AR6 next year). Global CO2 levels have been rising fairly steadily during this time so It is very hard to make a sensible correlation. If the CO2 levels are not coupled to temperature then why should we do anything at all? If they are coupled then what is the sensitivity (temperature rise for a doubling of CO2 level in the atmosphere)? If the temperature continues to rise what is a safe limit? How do we know and justify that? Various proxy temperature measurements suggest that the earth has been warmer and cooler in the past and has survived. There are a wide range of temperatures across the planet that seem to be capable of supporting life. How do we even measure ‘Global Temperature’? Do we take a series of measurements on a grid around the globe and take an average? Do we take measurements where we can, apply weightings and take an average? How are the weightings justified?.


A couple of charts from the UK Met office:

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/diagnostics.html


Hadcrt4 is a global measurement which is also split into northern and southern hemispheres here to show the difference, note they have changed the scales the anomaly in the north is twice that of the south (why is there a such a difference?).

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/


Hadcet is the longest measured temperature series based on three stations in central England. This shows the clear 1°C rise in the 80s followed by flattening as well as a bigger, ~1.5°C, rise in the 1700s. Who noticed that?


Once we have got some justifiable answers to the above what do we do about it? Is the problem ‘Greenhouse gasses’ or is the problem all the toxic pollution load, over use of resources and destruction of natural habitats. Unfortunately a large amount of the green movement is fixated on greenhouse gasses and ignores the rest as it conflicts with their views/aims. All the renewable solutions solar, wind, biomass and hydro are not very green. They require large amounts of resources to build often using materials where significant pollution is produced (rare earths, cobalt, etc) and due to their low energy density destroy quite large areas of natural habitat. Let’s flood the valleys for hydro power, cover the hills with wind turbines and solar panels, chop down the trees for biomass and try and live and feed ourselves from the rest. I know this is a little exaggerated but do the sums to see how much are you need due to the low energy density of these sources.


So what should we do? First try not to do more damage. The indiscriminate rollout of wind and solar is simply wasteful. Both do have their places but solar PV north of Spain is pointless as is placing wind turbines too close together so they shield each other. If you burn fossil fuels to manufacture wind and solar you actually make things worse in the short to medium term. Don’t shut down/scrap things before they have reached the end of their useful lives. Replace your transport system with an electric one when the existing one wears out. Nuclear with breeding and reprocessing is probably the best primary energy source available to us. It does need to move along from the older designs which were optimised for weapons grade plutonium manufacture to more flexible systems with much higher fuel burnup. The small modular reactors look interesting as do the various new physics although there is a lot of materials technology problems to be dealt with. The spent nuclear fuel is a small but rather unpleasant problem that can be largely be dealt with by reprocessing. Another important point is reduction in demand, but again don’t scrap usable housing and machines replace them with better when they wear out. Can we do this by 2030/5, no. Can we do this by 2050, probably not. Can we do this by 2100, probably. Is that too late, probably not.