What Do We Do Now That We Know Climate Change is Inevitable?

Photo by Peter Burdon on Unsplash

Climate change experts say global emissions of CO2 must be reduced to 45% from 2010 levels by 2030. It must reach a “net” zero” level by 2050 in order to limit warming to 2.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees centigrade). The goal was originally set at 2 degrees centigrade (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), but the Paris negotiations changed it to 1.5 degrees C. to appeal to a broader base of nations. This half degree means 10 million fewer people are displaced by the ocean’s rising, a 50% reduction of people experiencing water shortages around the globe, 50% reduction in species losing half their habitat, and a 80–90% destruction of coral reefs instead of 100%. The level of atmospheric CO2, however, has risen from 387 ppm in 2010 to 413 ppm in 2019, a 6.7% increase.

For the first time, Saudi Aramco revealed its finances publicly. Although it was April 1, this was no April Fool’s prank. The company made $111 billion last year, twice as much as Apple, the most profitable public company in the world. ExxonMobil made $20.8 billion. Royal Dutch Shell made $23.4 billion. The financial inertia of the fossil fuel industry is making a mockery of world climate goals. It is not just the fossil fuel industry but the industries it fuels as well. Trucking, shipping, airlines, auto, steel and concrete industries must all switch to electric or hydrogen by 2050 for “net zero” to happen. That’s 31 years away. Can you see all of these industries making the staggering commitments necessary to switch over without laws in place to make them? Can you see all 195 countries on Earth passing laws to force them to do this? It is not going to happen.

If CO2 levels rose 6.7% from 2010 to early 2019, it’s safe to say that by sometime in 2020 it will be an even 7% for the decade and the CO2 level in Jan. 2020 will be 420 ppm, 449.4 ppm in 2030, 480.9 in 2040 and 514.6 ppm by 2050. This does not take into consideration the positive feedback loops evaporating mass quantities of natural gas (methane) into the atmosphere from melting permafrost. Methane is 21 times better at warming the atmosphere than CO2. The hotter it gets, the more methane injected into the atmosphere and so on.

So what would more than 2 degrees centigrade do in terms of damage to the world? It could kill 50–80% of the fish in the oceans. Ice melting could raise sea levels by more than three feet by the end of the century. If Greenland and Antarctic ice eventually melts, it could raise oceans 230 feet. While it is doubtful this could happen on Earth, positive feedback loops and runaway greenhouse gasses created the hellish conditions seen on Venus.

That is not going to happen on Earth. As soon as the general population realizes fossil fuel companies have been gas lighting (no pun intended) them for decades, it will become possible to overcome their propaganda efforts and the legalized bribery our congressmen and senators disingenuously call lobbying. By 2050, strict environmental laws will force the fossil fuel industry to change or die. Don’t feel sorry for them. They will build a lot of renewable energy plants and CO2 sequestration plants and still be making money. Taxes will have to go up to pay for research on how to do this. The U.S. saw marginal rates of around 70% to 92% from 1950 to 1981. When you hear rich people complaining nowadays about taxes, take it with a grain of salt. They will be bitching until it’s zero.

The political process will be too slow to mediate the effects of climate change. We must develop a slew of technologies and social standards to counter this lack of social progress.

1. Carbon dioxide sequestration and other technologies actively removing CO2 must be developed and implemented. Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies are already being developed, but more work must be done to make it economically viable.

2. Reforestation must take place on a grand scale. This will assist in carbon capture and restore habitats to insects and animals.

3. Cheap water technology will need to be implemented to offset the increasing scarcity of potable water.

4. We must find a way to capture energy from low temperature heat from industrial processes and server farms. This is a huge inefficiency in our global society.

5. Grants and prizes must be increased for the development of new technologies to mediate and reverse greenhouse gas levels.

6. Products will have to be designed to be recycled with the least amount of energy possible.

Our social evolution must strive to keep up with technology. Stringent laws concerning carbon output must be enacted on industry and society. One half of the population acting as if nothing is wrong and living a huge carbon footprint is not going to work.

It is a sad commentary on humanity that the captains of the industries that have taken us so far so fast would play chicken with a world threatening event. It is our responsibility as citizens of this world to reign them in and redirect their efforts to the common good. The only way to do this is to change our leadership by any means, preferably democratic, to people that are clear-headed, logical, moral, and responsible enough to lead us successfully through this age of salvation and into a brave new society of technological marvels in balance with the natural world.

For more articles by Glen Hendrix, browse them on Medium.

 

Quit Obsessing About Climate Change. What You Do or Don’t Do No Longer Matters.

by Glen Hendrix

Photo by Matt Palmer on Unsplash

Quit worrying about going vegan, or recycling, or riding a bicycle to work, or buying a Tesla instead of that Ford F-650 pickup you’ve always wanted in order to save the planet. You’re off the hook. It’s out of your hands. You can do these things if it makes you feel better, but they are not going to change the big picture. Whatever you do does not matter. Unless you are a head of state, king, president, prime minister, or other grand poobah, it is above your pay grade. If you are able to vote for people of power, that is what is left for you to do. Other than that …. nothing.

According to scientists, the only way to keep the planet’s temperature from increasing 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit is to immediately phase out all fossil fuel infrastructure and devices. As soon as existing coal, oil, or gas plants reach their engineered lifespans, instead of refurbishing we must shut them down. If we don’t, the estimates for increasing temperatures start going up. At 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, positive feedback loops of evaporating Arctic methane could kick in. Methane is 21 times better at warming the atmosphere than CO2. The warmer temps evaporate the methane. The methane makes the atmosphere warmer. It evaporates more methane …. you get the picture.

I don’t want to be a Donny Downer or a Cassandra but how likely do you think shutting down the fossil fuel industry is? The industry has just invested billions upon billions on natural gas liquefaction plants to easily transport this fuel around the world. They are not giving that up without a tooth and nail, knock down drag out; and they have the money to do it. There are 25 countries whose oil percentage of exports range from Malaysia’s 22.3% to Iraq’s 99.8%. The trucking, railways, shipping, and airline industries would have to be completely transformed to electric or hydrogen propulsion. They will be as reluctant as oil and gas to give it up. All 195 countries would require state-ordained laws banning the use of fossil fuels entirely. There are still vast numbers of people in Africa that gather around campfires and stoves burning wood or coal just like they did thousands of years ago. What are they going to use?

This is the most pivotal point in the history of man. We only get one shot at this. If we blow it, we won’t get a comparable situation for millions of years, if ever. If mankind does have a world-wide civilization by then, we will have forgotten all of this — this choice we had. Save the planet or just get along and ignore it until it is too late. Scientists are saying our planet is doomed and all I hear on the news is everything but that. We are a society in denial, trying to collectively whistle past the graveyard. Our weather men won’t even talk about it on the local news. It might be construed as political. It might upset people. We are so polite and civilized in our denouement.

Since it is off our individual shoulders now, maybe we should give more thought about how we tell our children what’s happening and what to expect in the future. Hopefully, they won’t kick you in the shins when they finally understand what you are talking about. How do we look someone like Greta Thunberg in the face and tell her we screwed up in the worst possible way. This Swedish teen will probably spit in your eye and tell you to fuck off and keep riding that bike to work. She is up for a Nobel Prize for her admonitions to do something about climate change. In reality, she should be voted Queen of the World, because that is exactly what is needed right now; some central, charismatic figure with smarts and determination to do what is right, what is required.

It is not really our fault. Besides being stupid and greedy, we are genetically handicapped to deal with this situation. We simply don’t live long enough to plan ahead. By “planning ahead” I don’t mean decades. I mean centuries. The reason is that people with money and power, the people with the means to do something, just don’t care. They would have to give up some of that money and power to change things. They figure they won’t be around to suffer the consequences of climate change anyway, so they just don’t give a damn. It would require Biblically long lifetimes to plan ahead for the human race. For now and the near future we can, at most, hope to live to a hundred, not the 969 years of Methuselah. If you were going to be around for the consequence of your actions or inaction for as long as he was, you would care.

Our one ray of hope is artificial intelligence. Pundits say a generalized AI, the singularity, will be here within 20 years. It will have the lifetime and the smarts to rationally plan ahead for a viable future for the Earth. Maybe, by the grace of God, it will take over and guide the human race rationally into the future instead of selling us as cheap, world-wrecking slaves to the first aliens that drop by.

So tell your children you are sorry for what is going on with the climate, but it’s not their fault or yours. Tell them some bad people made it too hard to do anything until it was too late. Tell them you will vote for people that might help with the problem. Maybe if we elect the right leaders, and they do the right things there is still time. Tell them to study science and engineering so that someday they might help with a solution or figure out adaptations to deal with it. Or you can put that whole talk off for later. I won’t blame you. You are only human.

Read more great articles on this blog and on Medium.

Your Next Car May Run On Popsicles

Mound of Methane Hydrate
 Some rights reserved by neptunecanada 

A vaporized, methane-flavored popsicle from beneath the sea to be exact, similar to the one above. The white stuff is bare methane hydrate. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, methane hydrate is "...a crystalline solid consistingof gas molecules...each surrounded by a cage of  water molecules." It is methane gas in little cages of ice that forms at certain pressures and temperatures in the ocean between 300 and 500 meters deep.

Are you a paper kind of person in a plastic kind of world? You better read this.

Yes, methane is that main ingredient in natural gas. Except natural gas has impurities like pentane, butane, propane and ethane. These, along with other contaminants like carbon dioxide, helium, hydrogen sulfide, and nitrogen have to be removed as well; but about 90 to 99 percent of the gas that gets to your stove or central heater is methane.

Good video of where it's found and how it burns.

How much is down there? It is possible there is up to 23,000 times more cubic feet of pure methane stored as methane hydrate in the ocean than there are in the estimated remaining reserves of natural gas on the planet. Let me demonstrate just how large a quantity that is. That is worth approximately 10 million trillion dollars at today's wellhead price of about $3.35 per thousand cubic feet. I'm not making that up. That is 200,000 times the 2006 fifty trillion dollar estimate of the world's economy in US dollars. The U.S. debt is 17 trillion dollars. Take a trillion dollars; multiply it by 10 so that it's 10 trillion (more than half the national debt); now multiply it by a million. Ten million trillion dollars!

Methane hydrate on fire.
Image courtesy USGS

So what's the catch? Why aren't energy companies all over it? Remember the depths that this stuff forms at is 300 to 500 meters. The average depth of the ocean is 4,300 meters. That means it is not neatly and quietly sitting on the ocean bottom waiting to be dredged up. A lot of it forms a structure shoring up sediments along the edge of continental shelves. One of the largest underwater land slides (the Storegga Slide) took place off the coast of Norway some 8000 years ago. It is thought by some the failure of the methane hydrate substrate caused it. No big deal. It was underwater. I think the 80 foot tsunami it created above the water is what everybody is concerned about.

Another catch is you have to be careful about releasing methane into the atmosphere. According to who you listen to, it is 10 to 20 times better than carbon dioxide at being a greenhouse gas. Some would argue it's only because of the relative quantities, there being so much less methane dissipating more quickly than CO2. A more complete discussion of that is here.

And who says energy companies aren't all over it? Would you want to be the dimwit that yelled "Gold!" at Sutter's Mill? Just last year the U.S. and Japan along with ConocoPhillips completed a production field test on Alaska's North Slope. It got very low-key news coverage. It was successful in that the methane was switched with carbon dioxide, keeping the structural integrity of the hydrate. That large amount of money I mentioned above? Make it bigger because the government is going to pay energy companies to sequester the carbon dioxide on top of what they sell the methane for. They modified the tax code last year to make it easier.

Plastic bags are made from ethane, a part of natural gas burned off as waste before they started making plastic bags. 

Am I going to bitch about that? Not just "no" but "hell, no." It's like, out of the blue (actually, the "deep blue"), we get a do-over. We're not running out of fossil fuel, if this can correctly be labeled "fossil." We have enough for at least several centuries. And it's the cleanest burning available except for hydrogen. It's like the largest suckout at the biggest Texas holdem tournament in the galaxy.

Methane-powered rocket - image courtesy NASA

Our energy demands have to be satiated or the economy suffers. This could reverse the trend of energy becoming more and more expensive to produce. It took a barrel of oil to get a 100 barrels of oil in the early 1900's. Today it takes 1 barrel to get 3. Not good. We want to go back to those old times.

Where is all this stuff? Here are two maps of world locations of hydrates; Map 1 and Map 2. And what about the methane in the permafrost melting and causing runaway global warming? It turns out that is less than 1% of total hydrates and evaporating it is a process that will take hundreds of years. I'm all for laying down tarps on the tundra and collecting some of that. After all, 1% of 10 million trillion dollars is...um... a lot.

The answer to the plastic bag problem is reuse. This new device makes it easy. 

What does it mean to the average joe? Don't invest in that coal-fired power plant you had your heart set on. What about those big rigs running the highways. Right now they save the equivalent of $2 per gallon using compressed or liquid natural gas rather than diesel. Imagine if there were, literally, oceans of the stuff? Your electrical rates could be halved or quartered while your air gets cleaner. It won't be long before ships join the fray, cutting freight costs even further. GE will, of course, adapt it to trains and planes. The airline industry, a real stumper for going green, could start using LNG. You could fly to Vegas and back for $10. Fees not included. Cars! Baby boomers zooming all over the country in their LNG-powered RVs. Cheap rocket fuel - see photo above. Personal, LNG-powered thermal zeppelins. Okay, I'm getting exuberant.

It's nice to see something good on the horizon. Let's hope they get it right on extracting methane hydrate. We could use a lucky break. Let's take full advantage of it. Let's hope it's not so good, we forget about developing more efficient, cheaper solar cells; abandon the quest for fusion; and give up on the conquest of space because we're so comfy down here. Because it may not seem like there's any end to the methane when we're flying NY to LA for $50, but there is; and we are known to procrastinate.


Thank you,

Glen Hendrix, author Transmat World

Comments always welcome.