It seems to me recent environmental conditions confirm what scientists have been telling us about the results of a warming planet for at least a couple of decades.
Most of the world is preparing for the undeniable results of this warming. Many countries are moving forward with plans to mitigate the damage we have caused. Are we past the point of no return or is it possible if we take steps now we can slow or stop our catastrophic future?
AGW is very real, if we add greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere, it will cause some additional average warming, this is not really in question.
Ice Core records from past interglacial periods, say there is no "point of no return", it got several degrees warmer in the past, and the natural processes
brought us back into another ice age.
Do we potentially have a catastrophic future? The answer depends on how sensitive the climate is to added greenhouse gasses.
There are two schools of thought, one is to observe how the climate has responded to past warming, and project that forward,
the second is to assume how the climate will respond, and project that assumption forward.
I tend to go with the observed approach, because observations include all the variables, including the ones we do not know about.
I am not saying we should do nothing, and indeed we are doing plenty, but we need to address our actual problems.
Humans do not emit CO2 because we get pleasure from the emission, we emit CO2 because we demand the energy to maintain our standard of living.
The answer is not to attempt to directly limit how much CO2 we emit, but to find a way to get the energy we demand, without the CO2 emissions.
Solar, Wind, Nuclear, Hydro, all produce carbon free energy, but it is in the form of electricity.
Electricity is great, but must be used within seconds of generation, and is difficult to store in the quantities and for the time needed to be useful.
Also the irregular duty cycle of wind and solar, leads to periods of surplus, and periods of insufficient power.
Energy storage would allow us to move Fall and Spring Surplus, to Winter and Summer demand.
I advocate hydrocarbon energy storage, as it solves several of the problems arising from attempting to make society carbon free.
If we use the surplus energy to create carbon neutral transport fuels, we have a dump for the surplus energy, and usable fuel for
application that cannot be filled with electricity.
Because the fuel was made with atmospheric CO2, when it is burned, it produces net ZERO CO2.
This mans that Jets and ships could be carbon neutral. (The technology is called Power to Liquid)
The first power to liquid plant is being built in Norway now, to make jet fuel.
www.pnas.org
www.epa.gov
