RE: bbc story re rdsb needing oil to pay for greening up10 Nov 2021 21:10
Tantalum: I agree with your summary but would have to qualify the CO2 reference::
We need an ordered global transition to a better way. The real crisis is deforestation, habitat loss and chemical pollution. CO2 is not a pollutant….. unless it is present in excess.
I do realise that CO2 is naturally occurring and has been a climate influencer since the beginning of time, however the evidence is very strong that we are adding to the natural pool of CO2. The 100,000 year glacial/interglacial cycles are well known and due mainly to a slight variation in earth’s orbit about our only source of heat - the sun- which, incidentally, is apparently cooling very slowly. However, these variations in heat from the sun aren’t enough on their own to bring about the interglacial periods. These are apparently amplified by things like:
Atmospheric water vapour (which is a natural and powerful greenhouse gas);
Permafrost thawing, which releases more methane and carbon dioxide; and
The ocean warming thus releasing dissolved carbon dioxide, which traps even more heat.
So Co2 is a critical natural and necessary component. But - you can have too much of a good thing and we’d ideally like to use it to even out the glacial cycles.
On a different point, irrelevant to climate but pertaining to science misinformation, you mentioned Sweden & Covid. I’d just mention that Sweden is nearly 70% vaccinated - so they didn’t rely on herd immunity. Their population is around 10m - about the same as Scotland (20% that of England) but many times bigger, so much less densely populated, with less exposure to overseas travellers and, imv, their culture is arguably more compliant from a social responsibility pov. So a few very different factors to the UK and not directly comparable.
I think it was Neil deGrasse Thyssen who observed that, as a species, we have trouble processing ‘probability’. I think it’s why we tend to have polarised views and interpret events as either ‘very normal and expected’ or ‘abnormal and an act of god’ Perhaps that’s why religion and belief can still be substituted for logic and why we say ‘god only knows’ when we actually haven’t got a clue. We can be sure that the more CO2 we generate the more we risk abnormal events, but god only knows how great that risk really is - and, imv, it ain’t worth taking.
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