How Humans Cause Climate Change

[AndrewMeronek]

Succinct.

[Burgerbob]

Pretty cut and dry.

[BGuttman]

Don't know if it's enough to convince the Kool-Aid drinkers, though.

[AndrewMeronek]

Don't know if it's enough to convince the Kool-Aid drinkers, though.

Sometimes it's just nice to have a reference like the above video as a starting point.

[CharlieB]

Sometimes it's just nice to have a reference like the above video as a starting point.

Thank you Andrew, for sharing that insightful video. The video very explicitly shows that man is a major factor causing recent global warming, most specifically by increasing the carbon dioxide content of our atmosphere. The primary source of that carbon dioxide is energy production. Now, what we need is a workable solution for the problem.
Several major factors, including a global population explosion, the industrial revolution, and advances in science and technology, have created a world that is now totally dependent on energy production. Nearly all of that energy originates with fossil fuels. In a Utopian world, we would simply stop using those nasty fuels.......but then what?
It is not possible to build enough windmills, or hydroelectric dams, or solar panels to replace the energy hungry needs of our present population.
I would be ecstatic to learn of a workable plan for a world freed of the atmospheric damage that man is continually causing to our planet. Sadly, everything I touch, from the alarm clock I smacked this morning, to this computer, to the to the 11:00 P.M. nightly news is the result of fossil energy. We humans have become addicted to an energy based civilization. We are not "destroying the planet," as some allege. The planet is very resilient, and over millennia, it will recover, as it always has. Will man still be around by then, or will we have been suffocated by our energy greed?

[BGuttman]

We have to treat carbon as a reusable resource. One way to combat the burning of fossil fuels is to use vegetation to sequester the carbon. The Amazon has been a great source of this sequestration but now the Brazilians have decided to trash it in order to generate money. We need to place a higher value to green vegetation.

I know it has a bad reputation, but nuclear power has no carbon emissions. If we could create safe nuclear power and establish a proper deposit for waste material that could also be a solution.

I agree that we are heavily dependent on the use of energy in various aspects of life and going back to the Paleolithic is not a solution.

[CharlieB]

Green vegetation, which absorbs carbon dioxide and produces oxygen is a good thing for the planet. Unfortunately, the population explosion requires ever more lumber, and land to be cleared to produce food. We have lost vast quantities of forests, and with that, a mechanism to clear the atmosphere of carbon dioxide. Interestingly though, a recent U.S. study has calculated the carbon dioxide/oxygen conversion of our current agricultural crops, and concluded that those crops are now consuming more carbon dioxide than the ancient rain forests that once covered the country. So, even if we restored all the rain forests to their Mesozoic grandeur, it still would not overcome the damage that our burgeoning population, with its enormous appetite for energy, is causing to our environment.
Though the referenced study addressed only the U.S., it seems reasonable that the result would be the same on a global scale.

There is an enormous store of alternate energy at accessible depths below the surface of the earth. Heat, without the necessity of nasty combustion to create it. No carbon footprint. No global warming. Steam to power our generators and heat our cities. The concept is already working in Iceland. One day, maybe that technology will be developed for use elsewhere with the same intensity as the oil fields were/are developed. Probably not until oil becomes scarce and expensive, probably not in our lifetimes, and definitely not in time to alleviate global warming. Meanwhile, we have to endure the added global warming induced by the hot air produced by politicians who promise to fix the problem.

[VJOFan]

I know it has a bad reputation, but nuclear power has no carbon emissions. If we could create safe nuclear power and establish a proper deposit for waste material that could also be a solution.

Bill Gates has figured out one way. It's just too expensive right now.
https://www.inverse.com/innovation/bill ... the-future

[paulyg]

Nuclear Power was the first target of the "green" religious cult. The damage done to the industry during the 1970s in the US by environmentalists is the original sin of that movement. A pragmatic approach to combating carbon emissions would see an electrification of western economies, with the electricity being provided by nuclear power. There simply is not enough electrical generation and distribution capacity to electrify our transportation sector, and renewable energy sources (not including nuclear) will never be sufficient to close that gap.

As it stands, moving to "renewable" alternatives without severely stifling and limiting power consumption would not be possible. There is not enough wind, hydro, and solar power to run the world. Those generation methods (especially solar) rely on resources that are not renewable. It's hard to take proposals like the "Green New Deal" seriously when they don't include investment in nuclear power. "Use less" energy is really a useless policy- people are going to use energy. If you think that limiting the population is the solution, I suggest you start with yourself.

I'll add that a commission of scientists decided that Yucca Mountain in Nevada was geologically suitable for storing nuclear waste long-term. However, Nevadans fought tooth-and-nail to prevent the waste from being stored there. Harry Reid specifically managed to derail plans for that facility, and now we're back to square one, which is storing tons of nuclear waste at the power plants, which is far less safe than storing it underground in the middle of nowhere.