I think there is probably no way to attribute severe weather events and a lot of the breathless reporting on that is bullshit, but just from a sheer physics standpoint = more carbon -> mor…
I think there is probably no way to attribute severe weather events and a lot of the breathless reporting on that is bullshit, but just from a sheer physics standpoint = more carbon -> more heat trapped. Yeah sure, plants benefit from that but it will result in significant changes in the distribution of resources, caused by changing coastlines, rainfall patterns, etc.
As someone who works in the energy sector, I'm actually pretty optimistic. I think that technology will eventually get control of the carbon cycle, and we'll look back at the era of when we dumped carbon into the sky as stupid. There's no physical reason why we can't combine carbon capture/removal with processes to convert it to back to fuel as a useful hydrocarbon (natural gas). I think it's just about finding the right combination of technologies to do this in an efficient manner. Vaclav Smil (Bill Gates' favorite writer) has a great book on this.
The claim is that natural gas is a very useful energy storage mechanism. It's portable as gas or a liquid, spills are dramatically less dangerous than oil, and if contaminants are kept out, burning it emits mostly only CO2 (compared to like gasoline or diesel), and the energy density is high. And compared to hydrogen, it's much easier to store and transport (H2 absolutely wrecks metal pipes and storage tanks).
I think part of the future energy equation is CO2 capture and processing back into natural gas for distribution. It's probably going to involve some weird genetically engineered algae or something but I can also imagine wind turbines that both capture and process back to natural gas. There's a lot of people in startup land working on this problem.
I don't know, man. Just from a sheer physics point of view, increasing carbon from 320ppm to 450ppm is going to have an impact.
https://gml.noaa.gov/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.png
I think there is probably no way to attribute severe weather events and a lot of the breathless reporting on that is bullshit, but just from a sheer physics standpoint = more carbon -> more heat trapped. Yeah sure, plants benefit from that but it will result in significant changes in the distribution of resources, caused by changing coastlines, rainfall patterns, etc.
As someone who works in the energy sector, I'm actually pretty optimistic. I think that technology will eventually get control of the carbon cycle, and we'll look back at the era of when we dumped carbon into the sky as stupid. There's no physical reason why we can't combine carbon capture/removal with processes to convert it to back to fuel as a useful hydrocarbon (natural gas). I think it's just about finding the right combination of technologies to do this in an efficient manner. Vaclav Smil (Bill Gates' favorite writer) has a great book on this.
I see that Smil has written a bunch of books. Are you referring to "Harvesting the Biosphere?"
Nope but that's also good. I'm talking about this one:
https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Gas-Fuel-21st-Century/dp/1119012864
The claim is that natural gas is a very useful energy storage mechanism. It's portable as gas or a liquid, spills are dramatically less dangerous than oil, and if contaminants are kept out, burning it emits mostly only CO2 (compared to like gasoline or diesel), and the energy density is high. And compared to hydrogen, it's much easier to store and transport (H2 absolutely wrecks metal pipes and storage tanks).
I think part of the future energy equation is CO2 capture and processing back into natural gas for distribution. It's probably going to involve some weird genetically engineered algae or something but I can also imagine wind turbines that both capture and process back to natural gas. There's a lot of people in startup land working on this problem.