Vocal Voices

We might as well. The IPCC is calling for a 'Plan B' because all the evidence points to a failure to meet even the conservative CO2 levels asked for decades ago.

because politicians are failing to reduce carbon emissions

and

It warns that governments are set to crash through the global CO2 safety threshold by 2030. Humans have tripled CO2 emissions since 1970, it says - and emissions have been accelerating rather than slowing.

And on the back of all this there is a warning from the UN that 'the dash for gas' is not the answer. Really? As if the politicians will take any notice.

Plan B. No mention of population: that would never do. No mention of the spivs and speculators: oh no. The "plan" is to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and then store it in rocks underground. Maybe it could be stored in the rocks the gas has just been fracked from? All of this is to be done using hyper-efficient machines which produced no CO2 in their construction or operation.

We might as well build a series of chimneys punching through the atmosphere and out into space. For those of us lucky enough to escape, the Earth would look like a celestial Catherine Wheel: very pretty.

Workingman wrote:Plan B. No mention of population: that would never do.

No. Because modern capitalism seems to depend on an ever growing world population.

Recently 67% of people polled said that the UK's population is too big and needs reducing.

In response, not one politician said anything.

Next year we will hit 400ppmv of CO2, averaged Globally, for the first time. UP from 280 as an interglacial high and 180 or so as an ice age low. (I looked them up today to be more accurate).

That means that we, Humans, have pushed the content of the CO2 in the atmosphere up by 42%. Not bad going for a bunch of smart monkeys. The effect of that can be seen in the wiki page on Milankovich cycles

Milankovitch cycles has been in a cooling phase for millennia, but that cooling trend was reversed in the 20th and 21st centuries due to warming caused by increased anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

Interestingly if you read up about CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere, it says that the regulating barrier for the current Antarctic Ice Sheets is around 600ppmv CO2. At that point, the Antarctic ice cap "Will" melt. Over time of course.

On the current emissions course, we will hit 600ppmv at around 2080 or even 2070 if they totally lose the plot.

Personally I've stopped trying to influence anyone about Global Warming. I don't care because people don't want to hear it. For me, Elysium is the goal. Easy access to space and space controlled habitats.

Because, honestly, we're neither clever enough or sensible enough to survive en-masse.

If we were sensible enough, when the first intimations came through about the impact of Global Warming, we would have all started to say "What little things can we do to mitigate our carbon footprint and what large things can government do to enable us to reduce it even more".

What was said? "I don't believe you and I'm not paying for anything and you're not going to use our money to pay for it either".

Neither clever enough nor sensible enough.

So now we get to suffer. My actions from now on will be to mitigate the impact on my own family.

I would dearly love to be at the court cases where the denialists are being charged with driving humanity to the brink. Sadly I won't live to see it. But you can bet that those who were easy meat to the denialist argument, will be the one's shouting the loudest for their heads.....

Suff.... I always find your postings so interesting.

You have a remarkable grasp of the most complex subjects, and have the knack of putting it in language that we can understand.

What a pity that there are not more people in authority with your talent.

Thanks for the compliment Aggers. I just try to say it as I see it and I see it quite differently from most. On either side. I think WM and I are more aligned on this.

Sadly people in government have a talent for staying in government. It's their best attribute....

My frustration with the whole thing basically falls on my trust of the numbers, the science, the chemistry, the physics and the processes.

When deniers bang on about the Earth having ice ages many times before humans existed they are right, but there are reasons. The Earth wobbles, its rotation around the Sun is an ellipse and that ellipse also rotates. The Sun has cycles and its journey around our area of the galaxy is also an ellipse. Our arm of the galaxy moves nearer and farther from the centre whilst also twisting. Collectively the whole thing takes about 280,000,000 years and even then we are never in exactly the same place in space. There are so many variables, but even so it is possible to observe and predict cycles that (have) will lead to ice ages. What we are going through now does not fit a natural cycle.

The oxygen we need to survive makes up about 20% of the air we breathe. There was a time when there was no free oxygen in the atmosphere, only the evolution of photosynthesis changed that and allowed oxygen to be deposited in air. There was also a time when it stood at 35%. Nobody really knows why oxygen dropped to its present level of about 20%. but one theory is that an equilibrium between oxygen exhaling organisms and those exhaling CO2 occurred allowing both sets to survive. It is probably as well that it did as we need about 12% just to survive, and above 24% oxygen becomes a poison. The numbers are so large that it is unlikely, but not impossible, for human activity to disrupt things except over many centuries.

CO2 by comparison is minuscule, at about only 0.04% of air. It has been as high as 0.7%, but that was about 540 million years ago and long before complex life, even as plants, existed. For most of the period that plants, insects, reptiles and mammals have inhabited the planet, well over 200 million years, it has tended to fall within a range of 0.0180% to 0.0285% on a 100,000 year cycle. Why, then, is it now going through the roof and why so far out of cycle? It has nothing to do with the Sun, Moon and Earth on their travels through the Universe. It isn't that photosynthesis stopped and that all the oxygen emitting organisms have died, or we would have too. And it isn't the evolution of a species CO2 belching dragons. It's us. It's the way we work, rest and play.... and breed. It's percentage is so small that it is well within what humans are capable of even in a short time-scale and even by accident. It is also still within a range which we have a chance of stabilising or even reversing. It sounds mad, but it is true... if only the will was there.

I was reading a blog today where it was seriously suggested that we build massive hydroponic towers to grow food. It was claimed that these sky farms could feed many more times today's population. It was loudly applauded and well supported. Anyone who pointed out the obvious flaws in the system was silenced by the knuckle-dragging red-neck brigade.

My frustration exactly. This planet is in a finely tuned balance which only requires a small push to tilt it off into another state.

At the start of the last Ice age there were more than 1M Homo Sapiens Sapiens on the planet. During the low point, we dwindled to 1,000 humans.

What kicked it all off?

3C change in temperature driven by the milankovich cycle, which drove CO2 down to 180ppmv from 280ppmv, a 100ppmv change. the last ice age spanned around 70,000 years.

What have we humans done in 200 years? circa 1.5C change in temperature and increased CO2 by 120ppmv. More CO2 change than an ice age and almost half of the change required to enact a full ice age.

Not bad for a bunch of smart monkeys......

The question is, will the same ratio of population decline follow in a warmer world. Because if it does then we would be looking at a population, globally, of 70Million.

Also the timescale we are doing this on is equally compressed. We have already caused 15,000 years of "natural" change in just 200 years. That pace won't just continue but will increase as the planet helps. Deforestation, methane release, greening of the arctic wastes, pine bark beetle destroying forests which then burn and massively reduce the forests capability to reduce CO2....

It's like the guy who jumps off the skyscraper. At each floor he is heard to say "Looking good so far". Our progeny will feel the THUD, when we hit the bottom....