Monday, September 30, 2019

Thunberg is right. Americans are more focused on "money and fairytales of eternal economic growth" despite the efforts of some to bring about change.

Simply it is unconscionable that the majority of voters in over half the states support state governments that have abandoned the children. Consider this map:


The U.S. Climate Alliance was founded in 2017 jointly by Washington Governor Jay Inslee, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, and California Governor Jerry Brown. At the time Brown noted: "If the President is going to be AWOL in this profoundly important human endeavor, then California and other states will step up,"

As of July, twenty-four (24) of our states plus Puerto Rico and American Somoa have become members.

On the other hand the voters of 26 states - which in 2016 produced 58% of the U.S. carbon dioxide emissions with only 45% of the population of the states - have chosen to adhere to the Trump point-of-view that corrupt corporate capitalists are of more value than their own children and grandchildren.

On behalf of his voters, California Governor Gavin Newsom, the leader of the World's 5th Largest Economy, is actively challenging the leader of the World's Largest Economy, Donald Trump. With his millions of supporters Trump has simply abandoned all responsibility for addressing Climate Change thus failing to protect the next generations of Americans.

Attending the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York last week, Governor Newsom gave Californians a chance to again take pride in our state's record of combating Climate Change.

At the opening ceremony for Climate Week Newsom made California's position clear with regard to the Trump Administration's actions rolling back federal environmental policy: “I don’t know what the hell happened to this country that we have a President that we do today on this issue, because it’s a damn shame. It really is. I’m not a little embarrassed about it — I’m absolutely humiliated by what’s going on.”

The Los Angeles Times reported:

    The new governor took advantage of the international stage to reinforce California‘s position as a climate leader, giving credit to Republicans and Democrats who held the office before him. During each news conference, panel and speech, Newsom reiterated a sober warning that California’s road ahead won’t be easy.
    “Most of the what and why has been accomplished,” he told The Times before walking onto the floor of the U.N. General Assembly. “This is all about application. This is all about implementation.”
    Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, laid the foundation for the state’s cap-and-trade program, which requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
    Under [Former Gov. Jerry] Brown, the state set bold goals to slash emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 and generate 100% of the state’s retail electricity from renewable sources by 2045. Recent polls from the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California show that more than two-thirds of adults in California support the policies.

Brown, of course, famously declared last year that California would launch its “own damn satellite” as the federal government receded from global climate commitments. And while in New York Newsom was following up per Newsweek California Governor Newsom and Michael Bloomberg Announce Plan To Use Satellite To Track Climate Change:

    Governor Gavin Newsom of California and philanthropist and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg have announced a new initiative that will use satellite data to monitor climate change in California.
    The duo, along with Planet, an Earth-imaging company based in San Francisco, made the announcement Wednesday at the third annual Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York. The event was held on the heels of the United Nations Climate Action Summit in the same city earlier this week.
    Officially called Satellites for Climate Action, according to a press release from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the project "will bring together governments, philanthropists, environmental groups, and technology companies to use satellite technologies to monitor greenhouse gas emissions and turn satellite data into actionable information."

Newsom was among six governors from the U.S. Climate Alliance conferring with presidents, prime ministers and foreign government officials responsible for climate issues. The Alliance was formed in 2017 after President Trump announced his plans to withdraw from the Paris climate change accord. It has grown to include the leaders of 24 states and Puerto Rico.

But California has taken on Trump's policies with vigor. After all California, among the 50 states, ranks as:
  • The Nation's Largest by Economy;
  • The Nation's Largest by Population;
  • The Nations 3rd Largest by Area.
Were it a sovereign nation among 207 nations, California would rank as:
  • The World's 5th Largest by Economy;
  • The World's 36th Largest by Population;
  • The World's 59th Largest by Area.
Californian's simply cannot accept the conservative view that the private sector will take care of the Climate Change problem, someday, somehow, to the benefit of some but not others. Trump's policies are not exactly coherent but they do support the conservative view. The table below compares that view to the view that has evolved beginning with Schwarzenegger which has created the California Green and Gold Deal.

CALIFORNIA GREEN AND GOLD DEAL CORE CONSERVATIVE POLICY
  1. Yes, the climate is changing.
     
  2. Yes, a changing climate likely will have  significant disruptive, and sometimes catastrophic, impacts.
     
  3. Yes, we  have reasonably accurate predictions of what those impacts will be in the years 2025, 2050, and  2100.
     
  4. Individuals and businesses should recognize that over the next decades a need to adapt to changing climate conditions which may arise, even requiring geographical relocation.
     
  5. States should recognize that over the next decades there will be a need to adapt to changing climate conditions  requiring  responsive  socioeconomic and geographic planning.
     
  6. Individuals and businesses, facilitated by state and federal government policies and funding,  must  create technological advances which will allow for adaptation to and reductions in impacts from Climate Change.
     
  7. California and other states have created, and must  continue to create, complex Climate Change related policies and the bureaucracies to implement them in concert with the nations of the world, to avoid or reduce impacts from Climate Change.
     
  8. Individuals and their businesses should  be able to rely upon federal and state agencies to aid with  Climate Change  related life threatening incidents and  adaptation as the need arises.
  1. Yes, the climate is changing.
     
  2. Yes, a changing climate likely will have impacts, perhaps significant ones which will harm some people.
     
  3. No, we do not have an accurate prediction of what those impacts will be in the years 2025, 2050, 2100 or 2200.
     
  4. Individuals and businesses should recognize that over the next decades a need to adapt to changing climate conditions which may arise, even requiring geographical relocation.
     
  5. Individuals and groups should recognize that over the next decades a need to adapt to changing climate conditions may arise requiring a responsive, evolutionary reorganization of society.
     
  6. Individuals, through businesses, will create technological advances which will allow for adaptation to and reductions in impacts from Climate Change.
     
  7. The United States and state governments should not create complex economic and social policies, and the bureaucracies to implement them,  in response to Climate Change.
     
  8. Americans should rely upon the private sector economics to adapt to Climate Change life threatening incidents, unavoidable geographic relocation, and economic disruption as they arise.

The California Green & Gold Deal includes a myriad of State programs and policies which can be viewed by clicking on the various links below.



Californians do understand that this is an imperfect effort that keeps evolving, beginning in 2006 with California’s Global Warming Solutions Act signed by Schwarzenegger and extended in 2017 (see Brown, Schwarzenegger Celebrate Extension of Cap and Trade). (It's worth noting that this week it was reported that Schwarzenegger offered to lend is electric car to 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg.)

Californians have given The best poll (so far) for Gov. Gavin Newsom of his first year in office. A significant part of his 60% job approval rating (69% for voters under age 30) is his Climate Change activism.

Still, it is troubling that Washington Governor Jay Inslee, a Climate Change activist and one of the founders of the U.S. Climate Alliance, could not gain traction as a Democratic Presidential candidate. Then again, I guess it shouldn't be surprising. Of the first four 2020 Primary or Caucus states, three are not Alliance members - Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.  You will, of course, continue to read who is ahead in those states. And the National Democratic Party will continue to support the old candidates who are leading by discussing such things as health care costs and income inequality, along with AOC's really bad Green New Deal.

And because of those states we will fail to meet Greta Thunberg's standards: "People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you! For more than 30 years the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away, and come here saying that you are doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight."
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Wednesday, September 25, 2019

The American "greed is good" cabal begin its assault on Greta Thunberg and Mahatma Gandhi



And so it begins. If you haven't heard 16-year-old Climate Activist Greta Thunberg at Monday's United Nations climate summit, you should listen now:

You may have heard that Fox News had to apologize for a moron on one of its shows. Cut CNBC yesterday offered How 16-year-old Greta Thunberg’s rise could backfire on environmentalists as a legitimate piece which falls back on explaining how others may see her as "an indoctrinated child" and how she risks the Climate Change fight noting "how much more divisive and ineffective that change is likely to be." It then explains that "the free market" will fix it all.

Yeah right.

Today, of course, the 1170 page the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released a new report The Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. In that report they have at least acknowledged what the U.S. and China officially and quietly concluded last year regarding the projected global mean surface temperature change relative to 1850–1900 for two time periods (see table right). As noted here previously:

    Unfortunately in 2018 in both the U.S. and China formal findings have been made that we have "locked in warming" of 4°± Celsius most likely within 60 years.
   Under the direction of the Trump Administration the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) with the cooperation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) issued a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule for Model Year 2021–2026 Passenger Cars and Light Trucks proposing reduced average fuel economy standards for those vehicles.
   The DEIS has determined that the draft official policy of the United States government will be acceptance of a near worst case scenario, a 4.387°C (7.876°F) global temperature rise since 1880 by 2100. That is because any lesser scenario would require deep cuts in carbon emissions to avoid this drastic warming. A lesser scenario “would require substantial increases in technology innovation and adoption compared to today’s levels...which is not currently technologically feasible or economically feasible.”
   In China, home to the world's second largest (and sooner or later, largest) economy, the same conclusion was reached.
   In May a collaborative research team from China published a new analysis that shows the Earth's climate would increase by 4 °C, compared to pre-industrial levels, most likely by 2084. They found that most of the models projected an increase of 4°C as early as 2064 and as late as 2095, with 2084 appearing as the median year.
   "Our ultimate goal is to provide a comprehensive picture of the mean and extreme climate changes associated with higher levels of global warming based on state-of-the art climate models, which is of high interest to the decision-makers and the public," said Dabang Jiang, a senior researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
   Perhaps some would want to dismiss both governments as being too pessimistic. But the reality is much worse, so much worse.
   For Climate Change will not stop "as early as 2064 and as late as 2095." 

Suffering and death of the unwashed masses has always been an "acceptable" outcome for those who believe in unrestricted capitalism.


The 21st Century Climate Change Black Death is happening now.
                                                                                                          If you're new to this blog here's the link to the listing of the 30+ previous posts in the Blog regarding Climate Change and the Environment.

This post is a part of a series:  climate change black death surrounds us 
                                                                                                         

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Thursday, September 19, 2019

"Climate Change Black Death Surrounds Us" means impacts of Climate Change are killing people now! Will we even try to reduce 21st Century impacts?


Yesterday an opinion piece headlined Climate Change Is Not World War appeared in The New York Times written by Roy Scranton, author of “Learning to Die in the Anthropocene” and “Total Mobilization: World War II and American Literature”.
It was enlightening, perhaps shocking, to this writer that Scranton it was necessary to explain to the advocates of the Green New Deal in Congress what "total mobilization" really meant in WWII all of which leads to his conclusion:

    Nevertheless, total mobilization may be our only hope. Ecological collapse is happening all around us. We may be nearing or have already crossed the line where it becomes unstoppable. Piecemeal, consensus-driven, incrementalist solutions are tantamount to global suicide. According to a summary paper last year from leading scientists on global climate trajectories, the changes needed to stabilize the earth’s climate “require a fundamental reorientation and restructuring of national and international institutions.”
    Such a program would be another order of magnitude larger and more complex than America’s military mobilization during World War II. The problem of climate change is bigger than the New Deal. It’s bigger than the Great Depression. It’s bigger than war. The problem of climate change is the problem of how and whether human beings can live together sustainably on this planet.
    What would total mobilization really mean? Judging from what happened in World War II, it would mean social upheaval, violence, censorship, curtailed freedoms, dubious compromises and radical changes in American culture and politics. Yet it also just might mean the survival of human civilization.

I read this just after completing the previous post here On behalf of the kids - climate scientests quit being conservative as the adults aren't fearful enough in which I noted from a BBC report that Petteri Taalas, the secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and advocate for toning down anything scary about Climate Change, said: "When I was young we were afraid of nuclear war. We seriously thought it’s better not to have children."

The fact is it would take a direct action by a few specific human beings in a moment of time to cause such a nuclear war. In contrast, Climate Change is the result of the behavior of all the humans in Western Civilization of the past century, behavior that is continuing.

Frankly, I failed to recognize that people really think Climate Change can be addressed in some sort of "mobilization" akin to what was done in WWII when the country was faced with foreign human enemies. As Scranton noted "what’s required today is a global mobilization against an international economic system: carbon-fueled capitalism." It would require us "to unify and mobilize the entire industrialized world  against itself."

When Al Gore (co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in 1976 held the first congressional hearings on the climate change, and co-sponsored hearings on toxic waste and global warming, there was an opportunity to begin a process that by 2020 would have significantly limited the impacts of Climate Change in the 21st Century.

Today we have absolutely no chance to do that as explained here in The coming Climate Change Black Death. If only humanity knew in advance what was coming and that something could be done about it! Oh, wait.....

The economic disruption alone will be catastrophic. It's "the little things" one might notice at first. For instance, here in California we've had a decade of gradually expanding disastrous wildfire losses. For those directly affected the losses were tragic.

But broader economic effects are being felt this year. What seems to individuals like "suddenly" the insurance companies are cutting their risk by not renewing homeowners' insurance policies. Over the next decade this will start the disruption of the economic viability of many communities which have not experienced losses similar to that of Paradise, California.


Click to Download Report
The same economic disruption process will occur along the U.S. coastlines - the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Pacific - due to a combination of the sea level rise and more severe storms. The report to the left already lays out problematic real estate areas. Yet most Americans don't even know the report exists.

Obviously, those whose homes have already been washed away are aware there is a problem. The other folks, however, are in denial. And yet, resources are available to begin the process of extracting your family from the most disruption. Click on the map below to access one source of information.


This is only the beginning. I hate repeating myself, but I will. Make no mistake about the Climate Change disruption. It's happening in this century, it has started to cause economic dislocation around the world and will increase disease, warfare, crime, popular revolt, waves of religious bigotry, and persecution. At a minimum it will result in the deaths of 20%± of the world's population (800,000,000± people).

Climate Change will be the 21st Century equivalent of the Black Death.

The progressive thing about it is that in the coming decades it will disrupt the lives of, and kill, without regard to nationality, ethnicity, race, sex, age, sexual preference, or even wealth - you know, the issues that American liberals have used to create headlines.

Right now we are roughly at a similar point in time for limiting 22nd Century impacts that we were in 1976 when Al Gore began his advocacy with regard to the 21st Century.

In terms of reducing the impact in the 22nd Century, as Scranton noted:

    While many supporters voice the need for revolutionary change to face the existential challenge climate change poses, the fact is that climate change is just one of several progressive concerns. Democrats show a profound lack of unity on whether climate change should come before economic justice, racial justice, revitalizing American democracy, labor rights, immigration reform, health care and gun control.
    Campaign promises that we can fix everything at once are sheer pabulum; real legislation requires real priorities, compromises, and sacrifices. In seeking support from Southern Democrats for his efforts to mobilize for war, for example, Roosevelt left Jim Crow segregation untouched, even while his administration was drafting black men into the military. What similar compromises would modern-day Democrats be willing to make?

Meanwhile, Republicans are basically Climate Change deniers.

The real issue is still the same. Greed. And while sure, corporations are the PR face of the problem, consider this. The first handheld cellular mobile phone was demonstrated by John F. Mitchell and Martin Cooper of Motorola in 1973, using a handset weighing 4.4 pounds. Up to that point in time, we all lived comfortably with land-line phones, most of which were years (decades?) old.

Today, way too many people can't seem to live two years without buying a new "smart" phone. The problem is, those smart phones in the quantities manufactured and sold around the world are significant sources of pollutants related to Climate Change.

This raises a question - is the problem corporations or is the problem us.

If it is the latter, forget limiting Climate Change. But we should remind ourselves about this each time we pick up our smart phones.


The 21st Century Climate Change Black Death is happening now.
                                                                                                          If you're new to this blog here's the link to the listing of the 30+ previous posts in the Blog regarding Climate Change and the Environment.

This post is a part of a series:  climate change black death surrounds us 
                                                                                                         

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Monday, September 16, 2019

On behalf of the kids - climate scientests quit being conservative as the adults aren't fearful enough

In the last post Climate Change: When we collectively don't know what we are doing, we should fear for our future! the disastrous use of SF6 in wind turbines which were supposed to replace coal-fueled power plants to reduce the greenhouse gas effects was discussed.

This morning The Washington Post published an article Most American teens are frightened by climate change, poll finds, and about 1 in 4 are taking action which tells us:

    In a coastal town in Washington, climate change has a high school junior worried about the floods that keep deluging his school. A 17-year-old from Texas says global warming scares him so much he can’t even think about it.
    But across the country, teens are channeling their anxieties into activism. “Fear,” says Maryland 16-year-old Madeline Graham, an organizer of a student protest planned for this week, “is a commodity we don’t have time for if we’re going to win the fight.”
    A solid majority of American teenagers are convinced that humans are changing the Earth’s climate and believe that it will cause harm to them personally and to other members of their generation, according to a new Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll. Roughly 1 in 4 have participated in a walkout, attended a rally or written to a public official to express their views on global warming — remarkable levels of activism for a group that has not yet reached voting age.
    The poll by The Post and Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) is the first major survey of teenagers’ views since the explosion of the youth climate movement last year. Inspired by 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, whose year-long “strike” in front of the Swedish Parliament and carbon-neutral sailboat voyage across the Atlantic have made her an activist icon, growing numbers of teens have been skipping school on Fridays to protest on behalf of something they say is more important.

I'm glad some Americans are aware of what is going to happen during the next decades and want to do what can be done about it.

And I'll be darned if a BBC news article Faster pace of climate change is 'scary', former chief scientist says also published this morning tells us about the continuing debate among climate scientists:

    Prof Sir David King says he's been scared by the number of extreme events, and he called for the UK to advance its climate targets by 10 years.
    But the UN's weather chief said using words like “scared” could make young people depressed and anxious.
    Speaking to the BBC, Prof King, a former chief scientific adviser to the government, said: “It’s appropriate to be scared. We predicted temperatures would rise, but we didn’t foresee these sorts of extreme events we’re getting so soon.”
    He said the world had changed faster than generally predicted in the fifth assessment report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2014.
    The physicist Prof Jo Haigh from Imperial College London said: “David King is right to be scared – I’m scared too."
    Petteri Taalas, the secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a specialised UN agency, said he fully supported United Nations climate goals, but he criticised radical green campaigners for forecasting the end of the world.
    Dr Taalas agrees polar ice is melting faster than expected, but he’s concerned that public fear could lead to paralysis – and also to mental health problems amongst the young.
    “When I was young we were afraid of nuclear war. We seriously thought it’s better not to have children.
    “I’m feeling the same sentiment among young people at the moment. So we have to be a bit careful with our communication style.”
    It seems though, that some scientists believe their communications in the past have been failing to provoke an emotional response that would convince the public to act.
    Prof King said the world could not wait for scientific certainty on events like Hurricane Dorian. “Scientists like to be certain,” he said.
    Some of the IPCC scientists we contacted didn’t share his urge to engage with the public on an emotional level.

The sad fact is that climate scientists are not debating whether it will be bad but rather when and how bad.  And as noted here previously, official conclusions have been reached.

Unfortunately in 2018 in both the U.S. and China formal findings have been made that we have "locked in warming" of 4°± Celsius most likely within 60 years.

Under the direction of the Trump Administration the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) with the cooperation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) issued a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule for Model Year 2021–2026 Passenger Cars and Light Trucks proposing reduced average fuel economy standards for those vehicles.

The DEIS has determined that the draft official policy of the United States government will be acceptance of a near worst case scenario, a 4.387°C (7.876°F) global temperature rise since 1880 by 2100. That is because any lesser scenario would require deep cuts in carbon emissions to avoid this drastic warming. A lesser scenario “would require substantial increases in technology innovation and adoption compared to today’s levels...which is not currently technologically feasible or economically feasible.”

In China, home to the world's second largest (and sooner or later, largest) economy, the same conclusion was reached.

In May a collaborative research team from China published a new analysis that shows the Earth's climate would increase by 4 °C, compared to pre-industrial levels, most likely by 2084. They found that most of the models projected an increase of 4°C as early as 2064 and as late as 2095, with 2084 appearing as the median year.

"Our ultimate goal is to provide a comprehensive picture of the mean and extreme climate changes associated with higher levels of global warming based on state-of-the art climate models, which is of high interest to the decision-makers and the public," said Dabang Jiang, a senior researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Perhaps some would want to dismiss both governments as being too pessimistic. But the reality is much worse, so much worse.

For Climate Change will not stop "as early as 2064 and as late as 2095."

I would say to Dr. Taalas who was born in 1961, the year preceding the Cuban Missile Crisis, that as a kid in Finland he didn't know what fear of nuclear war was. As a kid in the 1950's who lived near a Strategic Air Command Base full of B-52's carrying nuclear warheads and who was ducking under desks in school, nuclear war was a serious concern to me. But even then, I realized that it would take a direct action by a few specific human beings in a moment of time to cause such a war.

Climate Change is the result of the continuing behavior of all the humans in Western Civilization of the past century, behavior that is continuing. Taalas is the same age as my kids. We'll both be dead before 2064. But we have to be in a near panic on behalf of future generations, not politely discussing probabilities. Those predictions by the U.S. and China are accurate enough to justify such fear.

Stop pretending this is routine science.


The 21st Century Climate Change Black Death is happening now.
                                                                                                          If you're new to this blog here's the link to the listing of the 30+ previous posts in the Blog regarding Climate Change and the Environment.

This post is a part of a series:  climate change black death surrounds us 
                                                                                                         

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Sunday, September 15, 2019

Climate Change: When we collectively don't know what we are doing, we should fear for our future!



In 2014 in TreeHugger (which claims to be "the leading media outlet dedicated to driving sustainability mainstream") an article appeared with a bragging headline The UK has more offshore wind power than all other countries... combined. The article began: "I don't think the UK gets enough credit for its pioneering work in offshore wind power."

On Friday BBC News reported:

    Sulphur hexafluoride, or SF6, is widely used in the electrical industry to prevent short circuits and accidents.
    But leaks of the little-known gas in the UK and the rest of the EU in 2017 were the equivalent of putting an extra 1.3 million cars on the road.
    Levels are rising as an unintended consequence of the green energy boom.
    Cheap and non-flammable, SF6 is a colourless, odourless, synthetic gas. It makes a hugely effective insulating material for medium and high-voltage electrical installations.

Gas-insulated, high-voltage switchgear almost always uses SF6

    However, the significant downside to using the gas is that it has the highest global warming potential of any known substance. It is 23,500 times more warming than carbon dioxide (CO2).
    It also persists in the atmosphere for a long time, warming the Earth for at least 1,000 years.
    So why are we using more of this powerful warming gas?
    The way we make electricity around the world is changing rapidly.
    This has resulted in many more connections to the electricity grid, and a rise in the number of electrical switches and circuit breakers that are needed to prevent serious accidents.
    "As renewable projects are getting bigger and bigger, we have had to use it within wind turbines specifically," said Costa Pirgousis, an engineer with Scottish Power Renewables.... 

 

In other words, the alternative energy sources that we pride ourselves on using might be worse for the Earth's future than the coal-fired power plants we shut down. The SF6 problem should be a critical lesson on the "successful failure" of society in addressing Climate Change. Wikipedia tells us: "More than 10,000 tons of SF6 are produced per year...."

When should we have learned about SF6? We can be certain that in 2007 a publication by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Chapter 2 Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and in Radiative Forcing Section 2.10 Global Warming Potentials and Other Metrics for Comparing Different Emissions (on page 210) begins: "Multi-component abatement strategies to limit anthropogenic climate change need a framework and numerical values for the trade-off between emissions of different forcing agents." That Section offers Table 2.14 excerpted below...


...which begins by listing chemicals in the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (a protocol to the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer). The list gives the global warming potential of those substances and many, many more including SF6,with Carbon Dioxide serving as the baseline for comparison.

Again, that was in a 2007 publication. In 2009 Nature reported the news US environment agency declares greenhouse gases a threat: Decision paves the way for climate regulation by the Obama administration. In 2010 we read California Limits SF6, World's Most Potent Greenhouse Gas. In 2013 The New York Times told us that Department of Energy’s Crusade Against Leaks of a Potent Greenhouse Gas Yields Results. Regarding Europe, in 2012 we may have read NGO coalition demands ban on super greenhouse gas.

Wow! In theory science would tell us we should be proud of our efforts to limit SF6. But, in fact, the environmental community screwed up.

Let's ignore everything that was discovered prior to 1970. We know that in the late 1970's a Congressman from Tennessee, Al Gore, started hearings on the subject of global warming. In 1993 the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres published a study Atmospheric sulfur hexafluoride: Sources, sinks and greenhouse warming which told folks:

    Model calculations using estimated reaction rates of sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) with OH and O(1D) indicate that the atmospheric lifetime due to these processes may be very long (25,000 years). An upper limit for the UV cross section would suggest a photolysis lifetime much longer than 1000 years. The possibility of other removal mechanisms are discussed. The estimated lifetimes are consistent with other estimated values based on recent laboratory measurements. There appears to be no known natural source of SF6. An estimate of the current production rate of SF6 is about 5 kt/yr.

So in 1993 we were told "an estimate of the current production rate of SF6 is about 5 kt/yr." Uh...but Wikipedia tells us (fully footnoted) that in 2012 the number was 10 kt/yr. All indications are there has been a significant production growth since then, partly if not mostly because of the green energy shift.

The fact is collectively we folks living in the "first-world" countries who are responsible for Climate Change have attempted to embrace solutions through technology changes. But we don't know what we're doing. Based on history, when given 100 years Western Civilization figures out new complex things pretty well. The problem is we have less than a decade to avoid major climate impacts.

That is why this writer embraced the much maligned piece in The New Yorker by Jonathan Franzen What if We Stopped Pretending the Climate Apocalypse Can Be Stopped? Franzen's pessimism has been attacked by the environmental community such as How to live with the climate crisis without becoming a nihilist in the LA Times written by climate scientist Peter Kalmus.

Kamus writes:

    Faced with this reality, it may be tempting to say, “We’re doomed,” as Jonathan Franzen recently suggested. ...No matter how bad it gets, we must keep doing everything we can to keep it from getting worse. ...Today, despite all the grim climate news, I actually feel more optimistic than ever. People are waking up! Maybe there’s a bit of panic, but that’s a sensible response and a good place to start. I’m hopeful we’ll see broad climate mobilization and systems transformation at a pace and scale I wouldn’t have dared dream of even a year ago. Together, we’re on our way to becoming those billion climate activists.

But Kamus misrepresents Franzen who wrote:

    If you care about the planet, and about the people and animals who live on it, there are two ways to think about this. You can keep on hoping that catastrophe is preventable, and feel ever more frustrated or enraged by the world’s inaction. Or you can accept that disaster is coming, and begin to rethink what it means to have hope.

In Kamus' world you erect thousands of wind turbines full of SF6 which, as they age, will leak more and more of a substance that is 23,500 times more damaging than CO2 and which won't break down for at least a millennium. Then you can be shocked and frustrated.

In Franzen's world you know we don't know what we're doing when we attempt to alter entire industries  to limit Climate Change. But you'll support continuing to make efforts based on current information within the limits of our economy, culture, and knowledge.

At the same time, you are putting more effort into planning on adaptation as Franzen explained: "There may come a time, sooner than any of us likes to think, when the systems of industrial agriculture and global trade break down and homeless people outnumber people with homes. At that point, traditional local farming and strong communities will no longer just be liberal buzzwords. Kindness to neighbors and respect for the land—nurturing healthy soil, wisely managing water, caring for pollinators—will be essential in a crisis and in whatever society survives it. A project like the Homeless Garden offers me the hope that the future, while undoubtedly worse than the present, might also, in some ways, be better. Most of all, though, it gives me hope for today."

It is those people planning for "whatever society survives" and teaching their kids the same may be the only hope.

About Climate Change, including the SF6 BBC story, the news has been...depressing? Consider this list from Harper's Magazine: "New studies confirmed that the current warming period is without precedent in the past two thousand years. Permafrost in the Canadian Arctic is thawing seventy years ahead of schedule, nitrous-oxide emissions from Arctic permafrost are twelve times higher than expected, and it was feared that existing models may underestimate underwater glacial melt by two orders of magnitude. Wildfires ravaged the Arctic, a meltwater lake appeared at the North Pole, and a European heat wave caused the loss of 12.5 billion tons of Greenlandic ice in a single day, as well as record- high temperatures for several countries, including Britain, where the warming climate has enabled the arrival of the black bee fly (Anthrax anthrax), the Jersey tiger moth (Euplagia quadripunctaria), and the purple heron (Ardea purpurea). Only 38 percent of remaining tropical forests have a sufficiently wide latitudinal range to allow animals to move to cooler regions as the earth warms. A U.S.–Russian team found that even a mild warming scenario will increase the habitable area of Siberia several times over. The “early warming” period, from 1915 to 1945, was caused by external factors and not, as previously thought, by natural changes in ocean temperatures. Climate change was expected to make staple crops less nutritious and to lower the global availability of protein by a fifth, and may alter the mating calls of male weakfish. The Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt is now a recurring feature of the ocean."

The chart above from the BBC asks "Why should we worry about SF6?" Actually, it is futile to worry about any one factor in the inevitable. Let's stop pretending we know what we are doing, do what we can, and plan for our kids to adapt.




The 21st Century Climate Change Black Death is happening now.
                                                                                                          If you're new to this blog here's the link to the listing of the 30+ previous posts in the Blog regarding Climate Change and the Environment.

This post is a part of a series:  climate change black death surrounds us 
                                                                                                         

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