Climate
Climate change is all around
Creeping on us, makes no sound
Always something else to do
The cars, the wars, a bank or two
The answer: easy! has been found!
Leave that carbon in the ground.
Can we resist these fuels so useful?
And live each day carbon neutral?
On the climate problem, surely there has been progress by some measures. Renewable energy sources have indeed grown, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of total energy use. Yet the problem is accelerating. Below are three separate metrics illustrating the acceleration.
Efforts to date have been too little, too late.
Global Temperates
In 1970 Global temperates were increasing about 0.2 °C/decade. Today the rate is about 0.35 °C/decade.
For those who insist the Earth is just way too large for human activity to make much difference, here's a curious fact.
- Total human enercy production/consumption is estimated at about 17.7 TW (in 2012).
- Total radioactive decay on the planet amounts to about …
Here's an idea. Use electric trains to pull very heavy loads uphill during periods of low electricity use. Then, when you need it, let gravity pull the mass back downhill generating electricity. Will it scale to the power levels actually needed? I dunno, but it's an interesting (and apparently old) idea.
Read about it in the March 25, 2014 issue of Scientific American.
Joel Pett, a cartoonist with the Lexington-Herald Leader, has brilliantly captured the silliness of opposition to climate friendly policies with the caption:
"What if it's all a hoax and we create a better world for nothing?"
The cartoon itself is widely reproduced on the internet, but I haven't paid the fees to reproduce it here. Still, you should be able to find it at one of these links:
- …
WHAT’S NEW Robert L. Park Friday, 11 Sep 09 Washington, DC
[snip]
4. CONTRACEPTION: THE CHEAPEST WAY TO REDUCE GREENHOUSE GAS.
While the United States is focusing on reduction of greenhouse emissions by
technological means, the Optimum Population Trust in the UK issued a press
release this week comparing the cost of reducing CO2 emissions by
technological means to the cost of an equivalent CO2 reduction by investing
in family planning. It concluded that family planning is five times more
effective.
[snip]
THE UNIVERSITY OF…
The following presentation and manuscript (links below) were prepared at the request of the Office of Honorable Al Gore & Mrs. Tipper Gore for presentation at a 'Solutions Summit' panel on ‘Nanotechnology and New Materials’ held May 1, 2008 in New York City.
The roundtable was chaired by the former Vice President as part of a broader discussion about solutions for the climate crisis. He believes, and do I, we have only a limited time to solve this planetary emergency. The discussions themselves were off the record but Mr. Gore is preparing a new solutions-oriented…
From Nature Materials, February 2009, Volume 8 No 2
Commentary
An inconvenient truth about thermoelectrics - pp83 - 85
Cronin B. Vining
…