The Climate Change Ignorance of Millenials
If the hair doesn’t go up on the back of your neck when reading this sort of thing, it damn well should.
It was a moment of the kind that changes lives. At a press conference held by climate activists Extinction Rebellion last week, two of us journalists pressed the organisers on whether their aims were realistic. They have called, for example, for UK carbon emissions to be reduced to net zero by 2025. Wouldn’t it be better, we asked, to pursue some intermediate aims?
A young woman called Lizia Woolf stepped forward. She hadn’t spoken before, but the passion, grief and fury of her response was utterly compelling. “What is it that you are asking me as a 20-year-old to face and to accept about my future and my life? … This is an emergency. We are facing extinction. When you ask questions like that, what is it you want me to feel?” We had no answer.
Softer aims might be politically realistic, but they are physically unrealistic. Only shifts commensurate with the scale of our existential crises have any prospect of averting them. Hopeless realism, tinkering at the edges of the problem, got us into this mess. It will not get us out.
Oh really?
The entire premise rests on the belief that there are exponential tipping points beyond which there is no redemption, ever, when it comes to climate — and we’re driving the Earth’s systems in the direction that will reach them.
Let me point that there is no scientific evidence for that position. None whatsoever.
There is, however, nearly-irrefutable evidence for the converse. It rests in the fact that we’re here, today, on this rock.
What am I referring to? What are known in concert as buffering reactions.
The Earth possesses them as does every living thing on the planet both through physical chemistry and, in the case of living things, biological process. This is irrefutable fact.
You are alive because of such buffering reactions. One of hundreds in your body, which is a complex biochemical process, deals with respiration. The process of biochemical reactions that produce energy in your body result in CO2 and other waste products (uric acid, etc) being released.
The CO2 in the blood stream is a dissolved gas and dissolving a gas disassociates the ions in question; the result is a small amount of CH2O3, or carbonic acid, being present in the blood. That in turn slightly lowers blood pH since acids, by definition, have a lower than neutral pH.
Your body reacts to this by increasing the respiration (breathing) rate. The CO2 is thus expelled from the body and the carbonic acid is removed, slightly raising the pH of the blood. Your breathing then slows.
Let me emphasize something here: The change in pH as a result of this process is extremely small; normal blood pH ranges from 7.35 to 7.45 (7.0 is neutral.)
Yet your body, indeed that of every animal that respires, is tuned to these extraordinarily small changes and responds with a buffering reaction that attempts to reverse that change. It does so automatically and immediately — within seconds.
Most people believe that the body keeps arterial O2 saturation in the blood at almost-100{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} by direct biochemical measurement. Not so. This is why you will suffocate silently and painlessly if you breathe an atmosphere that has no oxygen in it.
Your body doesn’t think anything is wrong because there is no increase in CO2 level nor change in blood pH, there is no respiratory response or distress (breathing faster trying to get what little O2 may exist), you just pass out and die.
Now if you are chronically diseased (such as by smoking for decades) then this reaction will become damaged. Normally, without a secondary mechanism to regulate respiration, that condition would immediately kill you as your O2 saturation would fall below lethal limits or your blood pH would go out of the required range to support life.
It doesn’t, because the body has a secondary mechanism; it can directly determine O2 saturation to some degree and if your CO2 sensing mechanism is damaged to the point that it doesn’t function properly it is capable of taking over sufficiently to keep you alive. But that “backup” is much slower, much less-precise and your exercise tolerance is essentially zero if your body is using that mechanism.
The Earth has thousands of such buffering reactions. The oceans, specifically and just as one of these reactions, have an utterly enormous amount of carbonate dissolved in them. You might recognize that word, and you should, because it’s the same molecule — CO2 — that is dissolved in the blood.
The oceans (indeed, all bodies of water) constantly exchange CO2 with the atmosphere. This is known. But what’s not known well at all is exactly what sort of boundaries are on this reaction, where equilibrium points are, what shifts said equilibrium points, or what the shape of the curve looks like in the actual world rather than in a laboratory.
It’s a hell of a lot more-complex than it first appears and there’s a damn good argument to be made that this singular buffering reaction is largely responsible for the possibility of life on this rock.
Throughout the history of the planet some extremely large disruptive events have happened. Very large volcanic eruptions that make anything experienced in the history books look like firecrackers and asteroid strikes to name two. We know these happened because they leave behind direct evidence, and we know roughly when they happened.
In the absence of buffering reactions within the larger context of the planet’s chemistry life on this rock would have been extinguished millions of years ago and this would be a lifeless rock. It wasn’t and isn’t.
Now it is absolutely true that the Earth cannot support unlimited and permanent exponential population growth of any species.
There is no such thing as permanent exponential growth of anything, ever, period. You must stop such growth voluntarily at some point or you will be forced to stop by a foldback event where you cannot support what you grew. This is true for populations and it is true for economies.
Governments refuse to accept this and make promises based on the belief they can violate this law of mathematics. They’re not just “wrong” by accident either — they know they’re lying.
As I pointed out in Leverage behind every unit of GDP is a unit of energy. Energy can neither be created or destroyed; it can be exchanged through nuclear reactions with matter (E = MC^2 and all) but if stored by some process and then released it is inherently dissipated back into the environment.
Sequestering the product somewhere (again) also requires energy from some other place; CO2 is sequestered into plant material by solar energy as just one example. All chemical reactions have (although often omitted when not being quoted by a chemist or other scientist) an energy term in joules/mol — either liberated or required. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
While it would be nice to postulate that we will come up with some sort of Star Trek technology improvement before we hit the natural limits and foldback points of exponential expansion, especially of people, that’s not exactly comforting.
Maybe we will and maybe we won’t, but history suggests it will be won’t and we’ll get the nasty. Nature has a way of doing that, and the “nasty” is frequently something like the plague that kills off a material percentage of the population!
In point of fact warming and higher CO2 levels are, on a planetary scale, beneficial. Higher atmospheric CO2 levels make plants grow faster, which is good if you need them to either feed people directly or feed animals that then feed people. In addition while warmer temperatures will shift crop production they too are beneficial in that longer growing seasons also improve crop yields.
While it is absolutely true that severe warming would inundate certain areas that’s a local issue, not a global one. On a global — not local — basis if you are interested in trying to sustain an exponential population growth pattern for a longer period of time you want more CO2 in the atmosphere and you want a warmer climate — period.
This is a function of math, not politics.
If you could stop warming and CO2 emission then you need to also not only stop population growth you must kill off a material percentage of the people already here. Those screamers who are hollering “emergency!” are in fact intending to do exactly that as it is the only way to get where they want to go. What they won’t discuss is exactly who and how they intend to murder. May I remind you that at least Hitler was quite clear in who he intended to (and did) target?
But for the globull-warming screamers as I noted recently in this column the more-likely scenario — by far — is that we’re setting up for a Maunder Minimum sort of event and there is nothing we can do about it since the source is that nuclear-fusion-based flaming ball in the sky commonly called “the Sun.”
If if in fact we are at the entry to a prolonged period of much less solar sunspot activity then the decrease in radiation absorbed by the planet will produce not warming but cooling which will utterly decimate global crop production and kill a couple of billion people.
Most of those who die won’t be in the “developed” world; the United States and Europe are capable of producing sufficient food, even with crop yields well below current levels, to avoid a famine-style problem. Other parts of the world have managed to survive exponential population growth by importing food from places like the United States and if a Maunder Minimum style event comes to pass that source will be cut off because we will need that food here.
Thinking though the implications of that sort of thing ought to sober you up fast. See, starving people do desperate things, and in a world where advanced, mass-destructive weaponry is not only fairly common it can be stolen and “proliferated” if you think such an event is going to take place without at least some of the starving trying to take what they need by force you also need to become a better student of history.
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Joseph A Olson
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Humans inhale 400 PPM CO2 and exhale 40,000 PPM. Human blood must remain in a narrow range around 500 PPM of CO2 or you get hypo/hypercapnia.
Earth has two variable heat sources, the Sun and internal volcanic fission. Every other mass on our planet is a buffering system….CO2 is a benign, trailing artifact. Every molecule in the atmosphere COOLS by day, and delays cooling at night, but DELAYED COOLING IS NOT WARMING.
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jerry krause
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Hi Joe,
“delays cooling at night, but DELAYED COOLING IS NOT WARMING”
If cooling of the earth’s surface and the surface atmosphere whose temperature is being measured during the nighttime, the temperatures at sunrise will be greater than if their cooling were not delayed by say nighttime clouds. Now if the clouds dissipate before sunrise so the next daytime is cloudless, the temperatures during the daytime will for much of the daytime be greater t than they would have been if the cooling which occurred during the previous night had not occurred. But because of the greater temperature during the daytime causes more radiation to be emitted by the warmer surface so that by sunset, all the temperatures which existed at the previous sunset again exist. Hence, no solar energy has been trapped. But during the 24 hours between sunsets, the measured temperatures have been greater than they would have been if not for the delayed cooling during the nighttime. So, there has been observed warming (greater measured temperatures) for this 24 hour period between sunsets because of the delayed cooling.
Have a good day, Jerry
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geran
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Jerry, in all that rambling you forgot to mention that any “delayed cooling” is offset by “delayed warming”.
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jerry krause
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Hi Geran,
No I did not forget. I leave it to you to explain how “delayed cooling” is offset by “delayed warming”.
Have a good day, Jerry
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geran
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Not a problem, Jerry.
As CO2 absorbs, it also absorbs. So, if you claim one action is “delaying the cooling”, someone else can claim the other is “delaying the warming”.
It’s a constructive use of physics and logic.
You should try it.
geran
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Oops!
“As CO2 absorbs, it also emits”.
That makes much more sense….
jerry krause
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Hi Geran,
When have I ever written that carbon dioxide has any influence upon a diurnal temperature oscillation?
I have reported observed evidences that it has to be the obviously variable cloud which has the ‘power’ to dramatically delay cooling during the nighttime.
Have good day, Jerry
geran
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Jerry, Joseph correctly refuted the CO2/”delayed cooling” nonsense.
You went off-subject by mentioning clouds.
I just brought you back to the subject.
jerry krause
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Hi Geran,
Yes, I focused on the observed fact that DELAYED COOLING IS NOT WARMING. His uppercase and not mine. And that is what I was responding to and not to the cause of the delayed cooling. It is true I substituted cloud for “Every molecule in the atmosphere” because even before the nighttime clouds formed the water vapor (molecule) (a variable greenhouse gas) concentration (density) was near saturation and when a cloud forms water molecules are removed from atmosphere as they condense. So it would seem wrong to conclude that atmospheric water molecules are delaying the atmosphere’s cooling. instead, I do consider it more likely that is the clouds, formed when atmospheric water molecules condense, which delay the cooling of the atmosphere during the nighttime.
Have a good day, Jerry
geran
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Thanks for admitting it, Jerry.
Try to avoid doing it again.
Have a nice day.
Al Shelton
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If they will not listen then voters must vote out the government that funds the frauds.
Australia needs a Government that stop the scam.
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Alan Reid
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I know who’ll get the shitty end of the stick – us octogenarians.
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Steve Dembo
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Millennials have been brain washed by the MSM, the education system, politicians, etc. The Millennials, being the coddled generation, have no capacity to “suffer the slings and arrows of misfortune”. Lacking analytic thought, Millenials react with “feelings” as indicated by the quote. God save us from the Millennials.
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turnright
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Interpreting the world according to feelings, and not practical experience or ‘common sense’, will get too many of us hurt or killed.
It is necessary to fight back with simple, easily understood laboratory demonstrations. Isn’t it possible that one may put together a good demonstration using two large glass containers, each containing a cluster of high wattage resistors driven by a laboratory precision power supply, so that ambient air in both jars attains the same temperature and thin-walled baffles near the resistors come into thermal equilibrium with that air? Micro circulation fans can be used within the containers if wanted, though their heat production must be accounted.
Thermistors attached to the baffles and also free-standing at other places within the jars can constantly monitor temperature. When metered amounts of CO2 are injected to one of the jars, and a corresponding re-pressuring of the other jar by adding an equivalent volume of ambient air is performed, with temperatures read by both thermistor and infra-red gun aimed at the baffles, shouldn’t this be sufficient demonstration that CO2 will not cause additional heating?
I read the wonderful CO2 / light bulb demonstration a couple weeks ago and wanted to do something similar, but at lower temperature.
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turnright
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As addendum: If both the added CO2 and the air used to re-pressure are of room temperature (as would normally be the case), there can be no argument that the CO2 at room temperature was injected to a warm jar and caused it to cool by instantly dropping the overall temperature mix, since the ambient air injected to the other jar would be of identical temperature and temperature mix effect.
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Frankie
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said:
“May I remind you that at least Hitler was quite clear in who he intended to (and did) target?”
except:
““we’ve often fantasized about drawing up an indictment against Adolf Hitler himself. And to put into that indictment the major charge: the Final Solution of the Jewish question in Europe, the physical annihilation of Jewry. And then it dawned upon us, what would we do? We didn’t have the evidence.”
– so called “holocaust historian”, Raul Hilberg,
The ‘6M Jews, 5M others, & gas chambers’ are scientifically impossible frauds.
See the ‘holocaust’ scam debunked here: http://codoh.com
No name calling, level playing field debate here: http://forum.codoh.com
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James McGinn
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https://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=17188
In the past the main obstacle to scientific progress was that many found the narrative associated with religion/bible to be convincing. Now the “church ladies” use science itself as the narrative that justifies their deliberate refusal to apply the scientific method.
Anybody can pretend to understand. It takes no skill, no intelligence, and it involves no work.
One of the myths of human evolution is that the process produced a rational end product. This is not true. Humans are not rational but can best be described as hyper-pseudo-rational. This means that humans believe they are rational but are oriented to intellectually create their own pseudo-reality. (And the prevailing pseodo-reality can often become incorporated into a culture’s social contract.) This is the reason intelligent people unavoidably find ourselves at odds with science-based fantasy. Human hyper-pseudo-rationalism is the result of millions of years of communal selection. It’s here to stay.
Church ladies wrap themselves in their self-righteous belief that they know the truth and, therefore, they don’t have to consider contradictory evidence. They perceive their own cognitive dissonance as evidence that their opponents argument is wrong and then desperately start looking for anything that will re-establish their delicate sense of certainty.
There is an inexhaustible supply of brain-dead church ladies, eager to pretend to understand all things conventional.
Meteorology’s storm theory is a hold-over from the nineteenth century when people were generally ignorant and believed plainly stupid things, like the notion that a pot on a stove was a good analogy for storms. And/or they believed the plainly dumb notion that H2O magically turned gaseous (in the atmosphere) making moist air lighter than dry air. And/or they believed that dry air above had magical structural abilities that produced a downward force that trapped convection (this involves meteorology’s dishonest argument to explain why convection doesn’t always happen). And/or they believed H2O’s latent heat magically caused the gusty winds of storms. Church ladies are so gullible and so eager to believe that it was not even necessary for meteorologists to conceal the blatant dishonesty of these suppositions.
Much of science has been dumbed down to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Unscrupulous, pretend scientists employ the techniques of consensus (politics, propaganda) to dominate scientific discourse. It’s easy to pretend like you have a deep scientific understanding of a scientific subject if you just go along with what everybody else believes. It takes no talent to agree. It takes no intelligence to pretend to understand. And it takes no effort to lie and obfuscate in order to appeal to what people already want to believe.
With science it is really easy to be seduced into believing you understand when actually you just believe. For example, you believe that cold steam is in earth’s atmosphere. You believe this despite the fact that nobody has ever detected it. And so, you have no empirical reason to believe it exists. You believe it, therefore, because a lot of other people believe it. This is the twisted logic of group think. And the multitude of brain-dead believers is the reason it works.
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