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I have a Climate Change Question
cbxjeff
Member Posts: 17,601 ✭✭✭✭
It's on the news everyday and I have a question. Has anyone looked into what would be the improvement to the world's climate if the USA produced zero emissions?
It's too late for me, save yourself.
Comments
Yes. No improvement to the world but a great addition to politician's bank accounts. That is what it is all about.
To answer that question first let's state how much the Earth's atmosphere weighs: 5.5 quadrillion tons
That is 5,000,000,000,000,000 tons.
Carbon Dioxide emissions for the US are estimated at 5.1 billion tons per year.
that's 5,100,000,000
That's .0000909090% of the mass of the Atmosphere.
Yes, it would make a change, but it will take years for it to have a noticeable impact.
Each year about 8,000,000,000 tons of coal are burned worldwide, each ton producing 4,172 pounds of CO2 so that yields 1,668,800,000 tons of additional CO2 each year or .00003034% of the weight of the Atmosphere.
So to me it looks like attacking "Global Warming" by shutting down coal use is like attacking a glacier with an icepick. Yeah, you're doing something but what's going to change?
Part of the problem is that too many people are getting wrapped up in short-term data. Coal burning really took off after WWII as mechanization reached parts of the world that were not industrialized prior to the War.
Consider that the coal we are burning comes from plants that grew during a period of an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Giant plants and animals need lots of O2 to survive so it had to be in the air that they breathed.
Also consider the limestone that makes up a lot of the rocks in the world. Limestone is Calcium Carbonate, CaCO3. The ancient ocean soaked up a lot Carbon Dioxide to make all that limestone. That did not happen quickly.
So what I'm saying is that while cutting coal usage will help doing it in a way that just shifts the load to other fossil fuels isn't going to do any good. Unless we cut our demand we won't cut the "greenhouse gases".
And current "green energy" sources won't help much. Wind and solar have their limits.
We've got to either cut our demand or make a huge investment in fusion energy.
We need to do some serious thinking, not just reacting, to the information that's available. Quick and easy solutions, like shutting down all coal burning, is short sighted and won't help.
Notice that all the politicians and other talking heads never talk about conservation -- they're too busy doing the "Chicken Little" dance and wanting "The Government" to DO! SOMETHING! NOW!!!!
That's just my two scents.
The world’s forests will be defoliated by invasive species long before climate change makes an impact.
Mankind is a species on the planet. Like any species we are active participants in it's ecology and environment. What ever we do the planet will absorb adapt and move on. We really aren't that important and are nothing but a blip in the lineal time line.
That being said you have to have your head buried in the sand not to realize what we do does affect the planets environment. You also have to have a big inflated opinion of mankind to think we can actually alter the changes this planet continues to go trough just as it has done for billions of years. As it did before we came and as it will do after we are gone.
The commercial with the boy .... I am only 6 yrs old.. you figure it out .
It's changing, but it's not man made, Co2 levels have little effect on it. We have been going through a polar shift, so much so that the compass numbers on airport runways have had to be changed. As the poles shift, the Earth's magnetic field weakens. That protects us from most meteorites, but more importantly, solar radiation. Right now the Sun is in a cycle, the bad part of the cycle, when the magnetic field is weak. We just dodged a big bullet too. There was a coronal mass ejection that blew out into space that was huge! If it made a direct hit on the Earth, the EMP blast would slap us back to the stone age.
During the Solar Cycle 10 between 1855 and 1867, a big one smacked the Earth, on Sept 1-2 of 1859. The Carrington Event. Telegraph operators got knocked out of their chairs, lit telegraph poles on fire, and a couple of telegraph offices too. Fried the Trans Atlantic cable. Some of the telegraph operators disconnected power, and could still send/receive messages. The sky changed colors, the northern lights could be seen as far south as the Caribbean, and the Southern lights as far north as Northern Australia.
Telegraph was the only real electrical tech in 1859. Today, that would kill anything electrical we have, including what we need to make new ones. Pretty much start from scratch.
The early Earth's atmosphere was mostly carbon dioxide. Much later oxygen began to accumulate, a highly corrosive gas that produced a planetary crisis of its own. Plants adapted. Now we think of it as normal.
@The artist formerly known as Dano made the claim "Lots of weather disasters going on world wide that hasn't happened in over 100 yrs. or more. Say what you will, but things are going on that many have no explanation for".
With all due respect, that's a load of crap.
world climate summit gave china a 10 year pass
So these disaster are happening now that haven't happened in over 100 years. That shows me that in the past the weather pattern was close to what it is now , so we did nothing to affect weather. I read about the glaciers melting and a 4000 y/o Viking village being uncovered, OHHH globull warmng, it tells me 4000 y/o the weather was warmer because they didn't chip out the glacier and put the village under it . Globull warming is the biggest scam ever pulled off on the world for the benefit of lining politicians pockets.
As Scout5 stated we are just one of many species on this big old globe. Unfortunately when a species becomes overpopulated usually dire consequences are generated. The world has finite land mass, atmosphere and natural resources. Those of you that hunt may have seen what happens in the animal world when overpopulation occurs. What happens when there are to many deer or rabbits for a region? Starvation and disease step in and the populations crash to a small enough level that their environment can recover. Mankind should be a little bit smarter than the other species, but observe our response to Covid and tell me how much smarter we really are. The earth goes through climate cycles but saying our actions can't exaggerate the intensity or frequency of those cycles is being a bit short sighted. Don't get me wrong, I am not advocating to convert to all, so called, green energy. Instead I believe we should be putting our resources into adapting to a changing world. We could cut the U.S. emissions to zero and it would be a wasted effort because of the overpopulated countries like China and India increasing their emissions because of their population pressure. We should be putting our efforts into insuring a stable food supply, better engineered homes to deal with changing weather, replacing and building new dams for both energy and water, and a myriad of other things to insure a decent quality of life. Instead we are using or maybe wasting precious land and resources for solar and wind production. We are an adaptive species and if we would quit following the loudest panic screechers in the room , we might actually survive instead of crashing like those overpopulated deer and bunnies do. Bob
If the Covid shutdown didn't make a difference nothing we do will. No amount of regulations will reduce emissions as much as we did in 2020.
If every person who truly believes that humans are causing climate change would simply commit suicide, that would fix the problem.
I have a BIL in Australia that worked in brushfire prevention. The biggest problem he had was "Feral Olives" -- olive trees that had been brought in by Europeans. They are prolific and their wood is very oily so they burn, hot, fast and easily.
Another case of humans causing their own problems.
I know right its like thinking humans have anything to do with water quality lol
It's all about the money.
In actuality, the warming of the planet has made it more green..........as in more plant growth.
The earth cycles from warm to cold and cold to warm and we can't stop it.
60 yrs ago, we were taught that we WOULD begin to enter into another ice age within 25 yrs. The best data available supported that theory and there was no debate in the meteorological community. Where is that data today?
The climate change alarmists have NEVER, to my knowledge, provided any evidence that earth's climate has, at any point in world history, remained static. They only declare that it is changing. I would suppose that has been the case since "the 6th day".
I am an old man but when I was a young boy we had corn sprouting mid or late March.Now its still cold weather in March and its usually mid May before corn is up.I know that I am not smart enough to say why the weather has changed.Mankind change it? Has it always been this way? Most likely its in Gods natural plan that we dont understand yet.
I was born in 1955 . Daddy was a farmer and we killed hogs every winter and cured it in the smokehouse . Winters were always cold enough not to worry about the meat not keeping . Fast forward to 68/69 or there abouts . Weather got so warm we had to buy block ice to pack around the meat to prevent spoiling . Tried another year or two to keep at home but by that time the weather was too warm . We had to carry it to town to the freezer locker to have it cured .
At the end of the last Ice Age, the Sahara Desert was just as dry and uninviting as it is today. But sandwiched between two periods of extreme dryness were a few millennia of plentiful rainfall and lush vegetation.
During these few thousand years, prehistoric humans left the congested Nile Valley and established settlements around rain pools, green valleys, and rivers.
The ancient climate shift and its effects are detailed in the July 21 issue of the journal Science.
Probably all the cars and plastic straws around back then.
There was a reason the Vikings named it "Greenland"!
Solar cycles have been recorded since 1755, currently we are in the 25th cycle. It started in 2019, and will peak in 2025, so we have a couple of more years before it lightens up.
Apparently increases in CO2 concentration occur after temperatures rise. Imagine that. Warmer globe = happier plants = more CO2 produced.
The Lag Between CO2 and Temperature
Climate Myths: Ice cores show CO2 increase lags behind temperature rise
Ice Core Data Help Solve a Global Warming Mystery
It wasn't that long ago the so-called experts were telling us we were going into an ice age. We have gotten just smart enough to think we can actually control of this planet. I think our government spending more than it takes in will ruin peoples lives long before any actual natural calamity does us in.
"weather disasters going on world wide that hasn't happened in over 100 yrs. or more."
Sooooo.....one question. Did global warming cause these "weather disasters" over a hundred years ago too!! Asking for a friend 😁
I completely agree that the Earths climate is in flux and always has been before and after man. It doesn't mean spewing chemicals into the atmosphere is a good thing though. As with our water sources anything we can do within reason to improve our environment can't be a bad thing. Ask any Sea bird with its neck stuck in plastic and man has an impact on the planet.
No doubt that pollution is killing the planet. BUT carbon DIOXIDE is not the problem. Plastic is a WAY bigger issue(probably the biggest) but that doesn't make money, so the politicians don't push that. Those people don't give 2 craps about the planet, they want money and power. IF they really cared, and really thought carbon DIOXIDE was killing the planet, then they wouldn't all have MULTIPLE houses and private jets!
Amen to the worries about plastics in the oceans. Now how about disposable masks that were absolutely useless during use and are now clogging up reefs?
Mike55: “IF they really cared, and really thought carbon DIOXIDE was killing the planet, then they wouldn't all have MULTIPLE houses and private jets!”
How many of them were at Obama’s recent birthday party, unmasked, riding SUVs to his house from their private jets?
I hate being lectured by these virtue signaling cretins.
There have been at least 5 Ice Ages in Earth History. The latest peaked around 650,000 years ago. Well before I had an SUV or ANY human was burning more than a campfires worth of carbon. The cold hard fact is that it is going to KEEP getting warmer until it starts getting cold again. Where do you think all that carbon in the coal came from (trees from the previous interglacial period is the answer) Anthropomorphous global climate change is a scam that while Al Gore did not invent he is clearly in on the profit side of. Nothing we can do will change the fact that it will keep getting warmer and then turn into a snowball again. Should we continuously strive to be better stewards of our home. Yes. But at what cost? Even dogs don't * in their own beds. (usually, my one daughter has a special ed dog... but I digress) Be efficient, reduce waste, don't pollute, but don't fall for the whole "The sky is falling crap"... </rant>
Props to my friends out there. FU to the haters.
Nice to see you post captfun.
What happened to the hole in the ozone layer? Is it still there?
gjshaw,
The Capt should have been promoted to Major by now.
A little stroll down climate hysterics memory lane...
January 1961
December 1973
July 1976
January 1977
Leonard Nimoy piece, 1978
December 1979
February 1992
Nanuq, thanks for the historic lesson. I'm gonna use all your hard work!😀
The sun controls the earth's climate such that man's impact is negligible. A proper analogy is to take a blow torch to a pipe you're holding in your hand. The freak-outers would claim your hand is what's heating the pipe.
And fiery auto crashes
Some will die in hot pursuit
While sifting through my ashes
Some will fall in love with life
And drink it from a fountain
That is pouring like an avalanche
Coming down the mountain
+1911
Hear, hear. Have you ever stood in a hot field and felt that blast of heat hitting you from the Sun, and thought about it?
Imagine if that heat was from a campfire. How big would the fire have to be if it was 20 feet away to burn you like that? How about if it was 20 miles away? How big is that fire?
Now consider it's 96 million miles away. And it burns like it does. DAMN that's a big fire.
And we think our pathetic CO2 emissions are able to modulate that amount of energy hitting our planet?
Pleeeeeeease.
Here is an interesting article that provides some inconvenient facts that the climate screechers don't pay any attention to. If it doesn't mesh with their dogma it is ignored.
They have screeched their C02 theory so long and loud it has become accepted as truth even though there are scientific studies that dispute it. Sounds kind of like they learned from a certain Nazi propaganda minister. Bob
@BobJudy now that right there is what "science" is all about. Someone posts their findings and data and makes a bold claim. Other people take that data and attempt to disprove the claim. Nothing is ever "settled". Not in the world of science.
Climate change is......... "Talk about a conspiracy theory! That is the mother conspiracy of all conspiracies."
Just sayin. Carbon Dioxide is NOT killing the planet. Plastic, chemicals, etc. in the water and strewn about the land IS killing the planet and all that inhabit it. Everyone who is pushing CO2 as the issue are simply lying and making big $ off the lies. We ARE killing the planet, but CO2 is NOT the issue.
Also, it has ZERO to do with the temp of the planet. Temps ebb and flow, always have and always will! QUIT throwing trash out the window and into the water. That's a much better way to save the planet than to install wind mills that have to be thrown in the LANDFILL when they break.