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View PDF (English) A sense of climatological proportion June,
2017 I The
Myth of Scientific Consensus - Politicization of Science II The Fallacy of Climate Permanence III Carbon Realism IV Fictional Woes and Real Perils ▼ Notes on sources and references ▼ Quiz The Myth of Scientific Consensus - Politicization of
Science The U.S. president repealed the Paris climate accords, which is
embarrassing, although not so much because the planet is now somehow more at
risk of immediate incineration, but rather because slamming the door in the
world community’s face suggests a lack of good manners. While the accords
should not have been signed hastily by his predecessor and other managers of
world affairs in the first place, they are so innocuous that virtually all
countries on the planet signed them. Ironically, the Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said
soon after the announcement of the repeal that the president "believes the climate is changing"
and the United States "has to be
responsible" for the environment. She alleged in an interview on
CNN's "State of the Union": "President Trump believes the climate is changing and he believes
pollutants are part of the equation". Beside the fact that the
customary culprit, carbon dioxide, is anything but a pollutant, it is hard to
comprehend how the president could have one educated opinion or another about
the subject, he who is admittedly learning his trade as he goes along, a
modus operandi that should probably be applied with benefit to the airline
industry, with septuagenarian novice pilots learning how to fly while
carrying 300 passengers in the cabin. The president has 300 million
passengers, and no active co-pilot. Notwithstanding the presidential erring, it seems a large part of
otherwise perfectly respectable newspapers spend quite some time claiming
that the end of the world is near, since temperatures are said to increase
one or two degrees, when in fact their priority should be set on denouncing
the easily proven immorality of the current government, not on siding with
one opinion or the other about a scientific matter they seem not to
understand, incurring in the process the very tangible risk of losing all
credibility if perchance facts proved different. They will argue of course
that 97% of climate scientists are on their side, a number that has long been
debunked and is anyhow so high it should have triggered their suspicion.
Apart from the rigged election of ruthless dictatorships, such an outstanding
majority is never reached in any election or opinion poll, be it about
religion (would 97% of scientists agree on the existence of God, or on his
non-existence, or on which religion is the true religion), or about biology
and the theory of evolution, or about the quantity of carbon dioxide held
underground, or in sea water, or the prediction of storms and hurricanes, or
the spread of epidemics, or the choice of a president, etc. The sheer
magnitude of the 97% majority should have set off the alarm bells, and should
have been an indication that something was probably wrong with an opinion
that is certainly sensational but not unequivocally correct from a scientific
standpoint, as we will endeavor to show in this paper. At any rate, the historian of science will confirm that in the matter
of scientific truth the majority opinion is quite irrelevant. The Paris accords are voluntary, which means signatories are not
obligated to act, this being the reason why China and India, among others,
signed the accords so readily, although it is more than probable that they
will not do much to reduce their emissions, not because of any dislike for
renewable energies, but because those are considerably more expensive than
burning coal or natural gas. To give one example, if the U.S. decided to go
all renewable in its generation of electricity, the capital expenditure would
be of the order of $6 trillion, $20,000 per person, child and adult alike
(and the esthetic visual damage would be quite massive: imagine the coasts of
New England, the Gulf of Mexico, and California, lined up with hundreds of
thousands of wind farms, and the plains of the United States covered with
highly reflective material). Even if the U.S. accepted such a huge financial
sacrifice, the likelihood that poor countries (per capita) would follow suit
is abysmally low. Among such countries are China, India, and most of Asia,
Africa, or South America. Paradoxically, while there should be indeed a consensus that there is
nothing political in the current climate issue, since it is supposed to be
based on science only, it appears that the issue is in fact mostly political,
and even a moral dispute, with progressives and conservatives giving
credence, quite vehemently, to opinions that are diametrical opposites, for
reasons equally unfounded and unscientific. When dealing about an issue they
do not fully comprehend, the public seem to rely mostly on what they call
their common sense, which is no better than their gut feeling, or a wild
guess. Furthermore, it seems they tend to adopt the opinions of commentators
they pre-approved or pre-vetted for reasons foreign to the very issue in
consideration, which they will not try to understand personally from facts
and logic only, preferring instead to leave the matter entirely to the pool
of subjectively pre-selected interpreters of their own choice, as if no one
could argue over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin but doctors
of theology. It appears the public are also reluctant to have such issues
debated publicly between the advocates of each theory, although they would
surely object strongly if the crowning of champion athletes was decided only
on statistical merits and on the vehemence employed in disparaging their
opponents, instead of in a direct confrontation in a public arena. The Fallacy of Climate Permanence There is no reason for climate to go unchanged, in view of the past geological
and climatological vagaries. I see through my windows mountains that were
once plains at the bottom of the ocean, and the valley where I sit was once buried under 1,500 meters of ice. That was 17,000
years ago, a very thin slice of the history of Earth, not exceeding three
parts in one million. At the time, the Alpine
glaciers (see link) could
have spread over an area of between 150,000 and 200,000 square kilometers.
Since then glaciers have not been expanding (otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting
here), they have been retreating, at a rate of about one tenth of a meter of
thickness per year, 10 meters in length lost each year, on average. Since
written history started mentioning the glaciers, 2,000 years ago, these have
been fluctuating, but, for the time being, have retreated overall. It would
have been surprising if after 17,000 years of continuous retreat the
withdrawal had been reversed just when the glaciers had been pushed all the
way to the highest summits. What is left is probably less than 2% of 1% of
the original surface area and about one millionth of the original ice volume. In North America the retreat
of the glaciers (see link)
was as spectacular. To put the event in perspective and provide some sort of
a timeline, it seems Earth might have formed about 5 billion years ago, and
some say even earlier, the Primary or Paleozoic Era started 540 million years
ago, the Secondary or Mesozoic Era 250 million years ago, the Tertiary or
Cenozoic Era 65 million years ago, and the Quaternary Period, a substrate of
the Tertiary, or Pleistocene/Holocene Epochs, 2.5 million years ago. Near the
end of Earth’s history, a mere 18,000 years ago (a time as short as one second
in three days), North American glaciers covered 17.3 million square
kilometers. Around 12,500 years ago, just when the first humans are thought
to have started their migration from Asia to the Americas, ice had probably
retreated to 14.3 million square kilometers. By 10,000 years ago ice covered
9.4 million square kilometers, by 5,000 years ago probably 2.2 million square
kilometers, 1,000 years ago 2.1 million square kilometers, and 50 years ago
2.0 million square kilometers, including Greenland. Either the glaciers remain at their current position, or they continue
retreating, or they start expanding. From geological history we can infer
that the glaciers and icecaps will not stay put, nothing ever remaining
static. They will therefore retreat or expand. A serious expansion would be
concomitant with a dramatic drop in temperature and the invasion of ice upon
heavily populated valleys and plains. If the ongoing trend continues,
however, the glaciers will finally disappear. At the current rate that would
be consummated within a few to several millennia. Deglaciation of North America appears to have started 15,000 years ago (see link), when the passage of
Earth at perihelion last coincided with the northern summer solstice, and
there is little reason for deglaciation not to slowly continue. Incidentally, for the sake of trying to keep a sense of proportion,
the laws of thermodynamics show that in the absence of any other source of
heat, if all of the terrestrial atmosphere were dedicated uniquely to the
melting of the Greenland glaciers, their total removal would require
theoretically the prior heating of the whole atmosphere around the globe from
its current average temperature of -25 C (-13 F) to +145 C (+293 F). Upon
completion of the melting, the average air temperature would be 0 C (32 F).
Likewise, the removal of all of the Antarctic icecap would require the prior
heating of the entire atmosphere to +2,100 C (+3,800 F). The figures are
provided for the sake of proportion only, and assume the absence of liquid
water on earth before the melting, since the oceans would limit in effect any
theoretical rise of temperature to 100 C (212 F). In reality, any melting
would occur because of direct heating from the sun, with global temperatures
being a consequence of the melting process, not the cause. However, as the
ice melts temperatures are kept stable, but after all the icecaps have melted
the temperatures would increase to the levels mentioned above if there were
no liquid water to limit the rise, which the observation of our sister
planet, Venus, tends to contradict: with her atmosphere 50 times denser than
ours and twice as thick, composed almost entirely of carbon dioxide, as
opposed to our meagre 0.04%, and devoid of any liquid water, Venus’s average
ground temperature is thought to be 462 C (864 F) only. Despite Venus being
closer to the sun, Earth and Venus receive amounts of heat on their surface
that are quite similar, because of the higher reflectivity, or albedo, of
Venus' atmosphere. It took 9,000 years for ice to retreat from perhaps 50 million square
kilometers worldwide to around 12, and 6,000 years to retreat from 12 million
square kilometers to the current 10, or so. If no reversal of deglaciation occurred,
at the latter rate it would take 30,000 years to complete the melting of all
the remaining ice, and, if the former accelerated rate were somehow
reinstated, 2,400. By this earlier occurrence, if population growth rates
remained hypothetically the same as current, the population of Earth would
have reached 200 billion, and by the later date, 2,600 billion. To put things
in perspective, the former population would ingest and discharge through
eating and breathing twice the carbon released from fossil fuels today, and the latter 30 times as much. The figure is 0.08
currently. Clearly, and whatever happens in between to limit or not the
population explosion, by then the world will be quite different from anything
we are able to imagine today, and at any rate even the most imaginative
science fiction writers were never capable of foreseeing what was coming our
way in a much more stable world. On Earth, atmospheric carbon dioxide is extremely tenuous, and
represents only 0.04% of the content of the atmosphere. Making reference to
Venus again, since some commentators refer to her to support the theory of
severe carbon dioxide induced heating, Earth’s
atmosphere is 50 times less dense than Venus’, and half as thick. Carbon
dioxide represents 96.5% of Venus’ atmosphere, and there is 165,000 times
more carbon dioxide in Venus’ atmosphere than in Earth’s. In Earth’s
atmosphere, carbon represents only 6% of 1% of 1% of what it is on Venus, or
6 parts per million. What is thought to be true for Venus can hardly be
extrapolated for Earth. Carbon is present in our atmosphere, the oceans, on the surface of
earth, and underground. In the atmosphere, carbon is at a concentration, expressed as mass, of
0.016% (1.6% of one percent). That’s 1.59 kg of carbon per square meter of
Earth surface. The rest of the atmosphere consists of nitrogen (7,532 kg per
square meter), oxygen (2,310 kg), argon (128 kg), water vapor (25 kg), and
traces of other gases. The concentration of carbon in the atmosphere is so
tenuous that its measurement poses serious challenges. For comparison, at sea
level there is less than 0.2 grams of carbon per cubic meter of air, while
air has a mass of 1,225 grams per cubic meter at 15 C (59 F); on a hot humid
summer day there would be more than 30 grams of water vapor per cubic meter,
150 times as much as carbon. It is certainly worthwhile noting that a backwards estimate of the
mass of carbon per square meter on Earth shows that although it was slightly less
than today about 20 million years ago, it has been otherwise consistently
higher since the Neoproterozoic Era 650 million years ago, reaching at times
40 kg per sq. m, its average value being 21 kg per sq. m, or 13 times as much
as today. Beside Venus, carbon is also present in the atmospheres of other
planets, except Mercury, which has virtually no atmosphere. For the sake of
proportion, Venus' atmosphere contains about 200,000 times as much carbon as
Earth's per unit of planet mass, Mars 75 times as much (despite Mars' tenuous
atmosphere density being only 0.6% of that of Earth), Jupiter 10,000 times,
Saturn 20,000 times, Uranus 100,000 times, and Neptune 50,000 times as much
as Earth's per unit of planet mass, despite the latter four planets containing
only traces of carbon in their atmospheres. On Earth, carbon is also present on the ground, in the biomass.
Although it is not easy to figure out the exact mass of biomass on earth, the
compilation of all available material returns a value between around 1,500
and 2,000 billion metric tons of carbon. Per unit of earth surface area,
that’s about 3,600 grams per square meter, about 2,700 grams of it vegetal,
the rest mostly bacterial. There is also carbon dissolved as carbon dioxide in the oceans, and carbon
contained in oceanic carbonates. Reduced to the unit of earth surface it is
thought to be of the order of 87 kg per square meter. The soil also holds a significant quantity of carbon, which is thought
to be possibly as much as 4,600 grams per square meter. It is not easy, or even possible, to calculate how much carbon the
planet holds underground, but it is probable that the total content is
between one half of a thousandth and one thousandth of earth’s mass. Per unit
of earth surface area, that would be of the order of between 5,000 and 10,000
metric tons per square meter, a large part of it in the form of carbonates. There is also carbon trapped underground in fossil fuels, to the tune
of possibly 3.25 kg per square meter, including oil, natural gas, coal, and
methane hydrates. Some estimates reach even 45 kg per square meter. To summarize, the quantities of carbon present above ground, on the
ground, in the water, and underground are as follows: ·
Atmosphere:
1.59 kg per square meter in the form of carbon dioxide ·
Ground
surface: 3.6 kg per square meter in the form of biomass, animal and vegetal ·
Soil:
4.6 kg per square meter, according to some authors ·
Oceans:
87 kg per square meter, as carbon dioxide and carbonates ·
Fossil
fuels: 3.25 kg per square meter, and up to 45 kg according to some sources,
in the form of hydrocarbons ·
Underground:
up to 10,000,000 kg per square meter, a large part of it in the form of
carbonates It does not seem carbon was present in earth’s material originally,
and all of Earth’s carbon must have migrated from the atmosphere down. For
reference, the dense atmosphere of Venus, the planet closest to Earth,
consists mostly of carbon dioxide, to the tune of 275,000 kg of carbon per
square meter. One scenario would be that carbon arrived repeatedly to Earth
from the impact of external planetary objects. About 30 to 40 Venus events
would explain the current quantity of terrestrial carbon. All the sources of carbon listed above must interact with each other: atmospheric
carbon gets fixed in vegetal biomass, the largest part of which in turn is
either consumed by animal life or decays, a process that returns carbon to
the atmosphere, but another part gets in the ground, first in the soil and
later as hydrocarbons, mostly natural gas at first, while part of it is
burned either naturally or artificially with the subsequent release of carbon
back to the atmosphere; carbon dioxide is released from the oceans when
temperature increases and gets dissolved in the oceans when temperature
decreases; and carbon dioxide is also transferred from the atmosphere to the
oceans and vice-versa at constant temperature, depending on atmospheric
partial pressure; hydrocarbons are either released naturally to the
atmosphere through oil and gas seeps, or are extracted and burned
artificially, and some are either trapped in gas hydrates laying at the
bottom of the oceans or in the permafrost, or on the contrary are naturally
released, depending on conditions of temperature and pressure; underground
carbonates are recirculated through tectonic and volcanic activity, with the
release of carbon compounds; and surface carbonates are weathered with the
release of carbon to either the atmosphere or surface water. Of all these interactions, only one of some significance can be
quantified reliably: the quantity of carbon extracted as hydrocarbons and
burned in the atmosphere with the release of carbon dioxide (minor
quantifiable interactions exist, such as the calcination and carbonation of
cement, but they probably account for less than 1.5% of the carbon dioxide
released from hydrocarbon burning). Some of the other interactions can be
estimated, but most of the quantitative interactions between 10,000,000 kg of
carbon sources per square meter are absolute unknowns. However, authors seem
to contend that all the interactions, except for carbon released through the
burning of hydrocarbons and other industrial activities, are strictly
balanced, which would be quite surprising. The current annual release of carbon from hydrocarbon burning is 18
grams per square meter overall, or 0.018 kg. That’s 1.8 parts per billion of
terrestrial carbon. Literature abounds about the carbon cycle, but most authors seem to
state that the cycle would be in perfect equilibrium if it weren’t for man’s
intervention, and carbon released through the burning of hydrocarbons has
nowhere to go but to accumulate in the atmosphere, with half of it going into
the oceans, which is surprising since there is no reason why it should. In
fact, if it were, there would have been no fossil fuel available anywhere on
the planet, and no accumulation of organic carbonates. The concentration of carbon in the oceans is estimated to be about 30
ppmm (parts per million as mass), mostly in the form of carbonates, and the
extra dissolution of half the carbon released through the burning of
hydrocarbons would mean an annual concentration increase of 4 ppbm (parts per
billion, mass), which is unmeasurable. At the current 380 ppmv concentration
of atmospheric carbon dioxide, ocean water has the capacity, even at a
temperature as low as 10 C, to dissolve carbon dioxide only at a
concentration of 0.25 ppmm carbon. As it is exceedingly difficult to measure how much hydrocarbons seep naturally
every year, how much carbon is fixed or released by methane hydrates, how
much is dissolved in or released from the oceans, and how much carbonates are
recycled through volcanic activity and weathering, we will leave those
interactions unaddressed, although they could be quite significant. Vegetal biomass consumes and releases carbon. Its average mass is
probably around 2.7 kg per square meter (expressed as carbon) and it is
thought to grow annually by 335 grams, or 0.335 kg, which represents an overall
growth ratio of 12%. Energy-wise, the overall efficiency of this average
growth would be only 0.2% of the solar energy hitting earth’s surface. The
growth comes from the fixing of atmospheric carbon by the biomass in the
photosynthesis process. Part of the growth is consumed by animal life, part
will decay under the action of bacteria, both with the release of carbon to
the atmosphere, and part will be stored in the soil and eventually
underground. We will attempt in the next paragraph to estimate how much is
stored. Various authors state that carbon dioxide concentration in the
pre-industrialized atmosphere was 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv),
whereas the contemporary concentration is 380 ppmv. The rate at which the
atmospheric concentration increases has been well documented since 1960, or
at least its moving average, since year to year measurements can vary by as
much as 70% on each side of the average value. That rate, per unit of surface
area, corresponds currently to 9 grams of carbon per square meter per year,
which is almost exactly one half the known release
from the burning of hydrocarbons. A legitimate question would be: if 18 grams
were released and 9 were left in the atmosphere, where did the balance 9
grams go? Commonly available literature states that the balance goes, quite
conveniently, into the oceans, although there is no way to measure or confirm
the claim. As mentioned above such a minute increase in average concentration
of 4 ppb would be quite invisible. One would have to wait 25 years at current
release levels to notice an increase of 0.1 ppm. This rate of absorption in
ocean water is only calculated, not measured, and is based on the solubility
of carbon dioxide in surface water at 10 degrees C. It does not take into
consideration any further transfer of carbon to living organisms or other
carbon forms in ocean water, which represent 30 ppm, as opposed to 0.25 ppm
of carbon in the form of carbon dioxide. Per square meter of earth surface,
carbon contained in the oceans as carbon dioxide represents possibly about
0.75 kg, as opposed to 86 kg in the form of carbonates and 1.59 kg in the
atmosphere. The rate of transfer of carbon from the atmosphere to the oceans
could be less, but also much more, depending on the rate of transfer from
dissolved carbon dioxide to living and then dead organisms, which is unknown. Through backward extrapolation, we can estimate the total quantity of
fossil fuels extracted and burned by mankind in the last 150 to 200 years to
be of the order of slightly above 1,000 grams of carbon per square meter. We
can also estimate, from historical records, that the destruction of natural
forests both temperate and tropical, removed as much as 1,950 grams of carbon
per square meter, most of which has, by now, been burned or oxidized or
reduced by animal life forms, and at one point returned to the atmosphere. It
is worth noting that, apparently, twice as much carbon was released along the
ages to the atmosphere through deforestation than through hydrocarbon extraction.
A total of 2,950 grams was transferred from the biomass and fossil fuel
deposits to the environment, most of it during the last 150 to 200 years. The
2,950 grams have not accumulated in the atmosphere and the oceans only, since
atmospheric carbon concentration increased during the same period only by 100
ppmv, from 280 to 380 ppmv, or by 418 grams per square meter, to the current
1,590, while through the increase of carbon dioxide pressure the
concentration in the oceans can be calculated to have increased from 0.185 to
0.250 ppm, which would correspond to an increase from 0.56 to 0.76 kg per
square meter, or 200 grams. In other words, 2,332 grams were stored in
another form, either in the oceans or underground. The compounded annual rate
of transfer underground would be on average 0.32% of the mass of vegetal
biomass, or 2.58% of the natural growth rate of 12%. This would mean that the existing biomass has the capacity to remove
and store 2,700 x 0.32% = 8.5 grams of carbon per square meter annually, while
currently the oceans have the capacity to absorb also 8.5 grams as a
consequence of the increase of the atmospheric carbon partial pressure. Since
the actual increase of atmospheric carbon is 9 grams per year per square
meter, the total release is then 26 grams per year, 18 grams of which comes
from hydrocarbons, which means that 8 grams come from elsewhere. It so
happens that the current tropical forest deforestation rate of more than
125,000 square kilometers annually would result in the release of 8 grams per
square meter of carbon, as ultimately all timber felled is burned or consumed
by termites and other life forms. However, this convenient enough figure
could be different, which would imply the existence of other sources of
carbon dioxide release. If deforestation stopped now, the annual increase of atmospheric
carbon would drop from 9 to 5 grams per square meters annually, after
accounting for the release from the oceans due to the drop of partial
pressure in the atmosphere. More importantly, if deforestation had never
occurred, the carbon storage potential from biomass activity would be 15
grams per square meter per year and the increase of atmospheric carbon would
drop to 1 or 2 grams per square meter after consumption of fossil fuels. If
all hydrocarbon production stopped and deforestation had never occurred, it
is probable that about 8 grams of carbon would disappear from the atmosphere
every year, until a situation of carbon starvation
would exist that would severely limit biomass growth. Incidentally, it has been proven, and is proven every day, that in the
places most subject to tropical forest deforestation the rate of
deforestation would be significantly higher without the recourse to fossil
fuels, as people in the poorest parts of the world cut down wood for energy,
a phenomenon that is spreading again in richer countries whenever the price
of energy increases due to market pressure or taxation. As noted above, it appears, quite ironically, that deforestation is
possibly a more prominent cause of the increase of atmospheric carbon
concentration than is hydrocarbon extraction. If carbon released from the combustion of hydrocarbons was exclusively
released into the atmosphere and dissolved into the oceans, stabilizing
carbon concentration in the atmosphere at the current level of about 380 ppmv
would mean halting the consumption of all fossil fuels, since the solubility
in water is a function of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, not of
the amount being released in it. However, this scenario does not consider
other unknown sources of carbon release. Also, whether coincidentally or significantly, if it is assumed that
the accumulation of sedimentary organic carbonates started in earnest with
the so-called Cambrian Explosion at the beginning of the Paleozoic Era about
550 million years ago, and said accumulation amounts to 10,000 tons of carbon
per sq. m., then the average rate of sedimentary deposition is also 18 grams
per year, or very conservatively at least 5 grams per year if the total
amount of sedimentary carbon is 5,000 tons per sq.m. and the period of
sedimentation is extended to 1 billion years since the beginning of the
Neoproterozoic Era. Since the rate of sedimentary deposition must be
compensated by a more or less equivalent amount entering the system through
the atmosphere, then in both cases that amount is of the same order of
magnitude as the rates of human induced carbon release, or increase in
atmospheric concentration, or rate of accumulation in the soil. The real issue is probably not that the concentration of atmospheric
carbon should increase every year by 9 grams per square meter, but that if
all deforestation and burning of fossil fuel stopped today the natural rate
of decrease of atmospheric carbon would be about 4 or 5 grams per square
meter per year, and, assuming an exponentially diminishing rate due to the
increasing starvation of the biomass, within 80 years the concentration of
atmospheric carbon dioxide would be lower than eighteenth century levels, and
within two centuries half of the atmospheric carbon would have disappeared,
with serious negative consequences for biomass growth. If before
deforestation and hydrocarbon extraction the concentration of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere was indeed 280 ppmv, its mass would have been 1,170 grams
per square meter. At the time, the natural rate of annual depletion through
biomass would have been probably 15 grams per square meter. If no other
source of permanent carbon release existed, and considering the release from the
oceans concomitant with the reduction in carbon dioxide partial pressure, the
drop in atmospheric carbon would have been 8 grams per year per square meter
at first. An exponentially diminishing decrease would have exhausted 50% of
atmospheric carbon dioxide within a century. By now less than 20% or so would
subsist, with dire effects on natural biomass growth, a quite ironical
paradox. Fictional Woes and Real Perils If the theory holds that an increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide
concentration leads to an overall increase of atmospheric temperature, the
melting of subsisting glaciers, and the subsequent rise of ocean levels
(although it seems the variations of carbon dioxide concentration follow
temperature variations, not the other way around; it is heat that melts ice,
not temperature, and temperature usually drops when ice melts if no
additional heat is applied), then a decrease of atmospheric carbon dioxide
concentration should logically lead to overall cooling, the expansion of
glaciers, and the lowering of ocean levels, which would be quite detrimental
to the comfort for mankind of places such as northern Europe, Russia, North
America, northern Asia, southern Australia, New Zealand, and southern Africa
and South America. The current Quaternary Period is one of the coldest, if not the
coldest, in the 4 or 5 billion years of Earth’s history. The coldest was
reached 18,000 years ago, when the world population might have been a couple
of millions only. The abrupt expansion of mankind coincided with the
deglaciation that started 15,000 years ago, and about 6,000 years ago world
population had reached perhaps 7 million. Deglaciation continues to this day,
but it was precisely at the time most of the glaciers had retreated, 6,000
years ago, that mankind started really blooming, quadrupling to 25 million
4,000 years ago. Two thousand years ago the population might have been
already 200 million, and by 2016 it had reached 7,500 million. It seems
mankind developed thanks to the global warming that started at the peak of
the last glaciation. Literature contends that carbon dioxide released through the burning
of fossil fuels accumulates in the atmosphere and the oceans, without any
other outlet. If true, this would mean that the rate of fossil fuel
consumption would not influence the eventual concentrations in the atmosphere
and the oceans, and whether the resources are used swiftly or slowly, the
final concentration would be the same. Current fossil fuel energy usage is about 31 million metric tons of
oil equivalent per day, or 4.2 kg per inhabitant of the planet, per day. For
comparison, Americans consume 16.5, Australians 14, and the Dutch 12.5, while
the figure is less than 1 for Filipinos and Pakistani. In the future, the
poor will endeavor to use more cheap energy, not less, and the poor largely
outnumber the rich. It is unlikely that the starved will heed the advice and
warnings of the well fed. Short of increasing, not decreasing, global energy
consumption, disparity between the starving and the overfed will increase
dramatically. At the current rate of population growth, 2,000 years from now world
population would reach 180 billion, theoretically and hypothetically, which
would probably prove most unsustainable (although some current estimates
predict just the opposite, that population is soon to decrease, with the
corresponding woes of an abruptly aging population, a trend which would also
probably prove to be most unsustainable). Even a short 100 years in the
future the population is likely to be 16 billion, with the increase happening
primarily in countries both poor and yearning for energy, and overall fuel
consumption will be at least twice, or thrice, that of today, although by
that time the resources might be severely depleted. No matter what, it is
quite likely that whatever fossil fuel is available will be eventually
extracted and burned, and the larger the population and the more atomized
independent nationalities become, the less likely overall consumption could
be controlled (on the eve of World War I, a dozen polities controlled a world
population of less than two billions, either directly or through expatriate
proxies; a century later, two hundred different independent governments rule
over a population exceeding seven billions. If the trend persists, how many
independent nationalities will there be in the future, and how many will be
at odds?). Trying to restrict the poorest, who will represent a large majority
of the global population, from accessing cheap fossil fuels would widen the
gap between the richest nations of the world, some of them boasting currently
$175,000 of gross domestic product per capita per year, and the poorest, with
only $150, a level of destitution not known in any rich country. We’re not
addressing here the disparity between the richer and the poorer sections of
individual rich countries, where even the poorest are affluent compared to
the poor of the Third World. Any worldwide taxation of fossil fuels in the form of carbon taxes
would just exacerbate the process. Without fossil fuels mankind would chop wood to cook, as it does
currently in Third World countries. Within fifty years all the forests on
earth would be gone. Of course, part of the populations of rich countries
would use solar, wind, and nuclear power, but the not so rich in those
countries would do what they do today, heat their houses by burning firewood,
until it is banned by law and they become outlaws, although freezing outlaws.
Anyway, by then the rich countries would represent quite a small fraction of
the world population. By that time atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration
could be 2 to 5 times current levels. For as long as fossil fuels will be available, fossil fuels will be
used, particularly in poor countries, and more so when legal barriers are
erected against them in the rich countries to serve the needs of the
proponents of alternative, but expensive, technologies, with, as a
consequence, downward pressure on fossil fuel prices. Fifty years from now,
the population of the world will be 12 billion, most of it poor and energy
hungry. The rich countries will erect forests of windmills and cover the
ground with solar panels, while the poor will endeavor to close the energy
gap as fast as they can, using whatever fossil fuel there is, which is
preferable to burning forests anyhow. Fossil fuel prices will benefit from
restrictions in rich countries, until prices rise again when resources
dwindle, if they do. Trying to scare the poor with imminent incineration in
order to prevent them from using cheap energy will prove rather difficult. Furthermore, it is also probable that the Great Carbonaceous Scare
will fuel revolt and discontent throughout the Third World because of the
legal restrictions it aims to impose on cheap energy universally, and will
provide a platform to a new form of populism in places where the attempted
carbon policies will be resented as a new form of intellectual colonialism.
Meanwhile, the rich countries will have entangled themselves in rules of
their own making and will lose their economic advantage, with energy costs
inflated at least fivefold compared to the rest of the world. And what happens in 2517 if and when world population reaches 50
billion? Mankind was apparently not well versed in the art of living at peace
when it numbered 1, 2, 3, or 7 billion. Is the planet likely to be more
peaceful when mankind numbers 50 billion? Are higher numbers likely to result
in fewer conflicts, or rather more? Will mankind be easier to control when
its numbers explode? How safe will the world be, considering the probable
proliferation of nuclear and other severely destructive weapons soon to be,
quite unavoidably, in the hands of rogue political entities? Shouldn’t the hypothetical woes associated with a slight increase of
one minute gas in the atmosphere, the process of which is quite unclear, be
the least of all our possible worries? Aren’t they a deadly distraction from
considerably more pressing issues? Is a temperature increase of one or two
degrees, even if confirmed in the future, likely to destroy the planet, or is
it to be beneficial to all places at higher latitudes, rather than
detrimental? Will the increase not happen anyhow, irrespective of whether we
burn fossil fuels or not, returning in the process minute amounts of carbon
to the atmosphere, whence it came in the first place? The ubiquity of fantasy fiction and horror movies suggests that a
large part of the public, if not the largest, relish those genres and somehow
feels thrilled when imaginary danger and catastrophe loom. If, in addition, a
sense of anthropocentric importance, or Wichtigkeit, can be instilled in the
audience, together with a feeling of righteousness at the spectacle of the heroic
combat of virtue versus evil, then the show will achieve record popularity.
It would seem the danger posed by a tenuous gas, which happens to be the gas
of life for vegetal growth and the main dry constituent of animal life
(chemistry involving carbon is called ‘organic’), serves well the purpose of
nourishing a general but harmless popular scare, to the benefit of
opportunistic commercial and political interests. It also provides a
convenient rationale for extra taxation. Climatological disasters have been
guaranteed since the late 1980s, as a punishment
for human induced carbon release, but did not happen: there has been no
hurricane to hit the U.S. shores of the Gulf of Mexico for a good solid 8
years since Ike in 2008 (although some will return, perhaps even this year),
the drought which was promised to scorch California and other western states
finally came to an end, with record snowfalls on the Sierras and the Rockies
(see Grand Targhee,
Wyoming, on 14 June 2017), the bleaching of some coral reefs on
the Great Barrier, which was thought to be due to an immeasurable
acidification of sea water, seems to be explained by slightly dropping sea
levels, a consequence of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation climate pattern. It
is not only likely, but probably to be hoped, that the deglaciation of the
planet will continue, with the continuing slight rise of the oceans, although
the phenomenon will take a few to several millennia to complete, until at one
point the process will be naturally reversed, and glaciers will start
expanding while the oceans start receding, stranding all the great ports of
the world and freezing large expanses of Earth. As for the status quo in the
current state of affairs, or even nostalgically going back in time a couple
of centuries, we know we shouldn’t be overly wishful. If the waters rise, our distant descendants will move inland and build
dykes rather than arks. If the waters recede, they’ll move seaward. And while adapting to changing conditions, they will make sure to keep
their environment clean, which is rather a totally distinct issue. At any rate, finding fault in the climatological wickedness of the
heathens of Sodom and Gomorrah is not likely to result in their annihilation
by fire and brimstone. It has been seen above that the annual atmospheric discharge of carbon
from fossil fuels is 18 grams per square meter of Earth surface, and it can
be easily calculated that the annual consumption of fossil fuels plus all
non-fossil energy is of the order of 24 grams per square meter, expressed as
crude oil equivalent. Ultimately, most, if not all, of that energy is released in the form
of heat, which is absorbed by the environment. The amount of heat released in
such fashion is about 1,000,000 Joules per year per square meter. If all such heat were absorbed by all of the atmosphere the resulting
annual temperature increase would be 0.1 degree C. If only half the atmosphere
were concerned the temperature increase would be 0.2 degree C, and so forth. However, various inter-governmental organizations have consistently
declared that the annual atmospheric temperature increase is currently only
0.016 degree C. One way to reconcile the large discrepancy is naturally to consider
that the heat released from burning fossil fuels is absorbed not only by the
atmosphere, but also by the superficial terrestrial rocks and ocean water. If
both land and oceans absorb equal heat per unit of surface, and considering
the respective densities and specific heat capacities of each, then about 10
meters of the oceanic water column and 30 meters of terrestrial rock are
affected by such heat absorption, the atmosphere absorbing about 20 % and
oceans and terrestrial surface about 40% each. Whatever heat is not absorbed by air, rocks, and oceans, would be used
for water evaporation (although corresponding heat would be restituted in
rain), or for melting icecaps and glaciers, although without any atmospheric
temperature increase. If no heat was absorbed by air, rocks, and oceans,
0.005% of all existing ice could melt this way every year. Additionally, assuming, as has been shown above, that the total
quantity of carbon released from fossil fuels throughout the ages is of the
order of 1,000 grams per square meter, the overall temperature increase would
have been 0.016 x 1,000 / 18, or about 1 degree C, excluding the burning of
biomass over the ages, not far from the carbon related estimates provided by
various inter-governmental organizations. This being said, and to keep things in perspective, the heat released
by the combustion of fossil fuels in any given year is equivalent, solar
irradiance-wise, to adding less than 2 seconds to the duration of each day of
the year. In other words, it pales in comparison to solar irradiance.
Notes on sources and references This document does not cite third party sources, on
purpose. Pre-internet papers pointed from necessity to specific preselected
references, since at the time most technical and scientific information was
restrictively circulated and was therefore unavailable but from a limited
number of libraries spread out across the planet. As a consequence, locating
relevant information was tantamount to finding the proverbial needle in a
million haystacks, so pointing to pre-existing references was quite
indispensable, although necessarily subjective. In contrast, the age of the
internet has not only rendered brick-and-mortar libraries mostly redundant,
but it has also caused the selective pointing to pre-sorted information to
become intellectually questionable, if not frequently biased. The author of this study refers throughout this
document to encyclopedic knowledge which is widely available across the aptly
named World Wide Web. Rather than perhaps misguiding the reader by
pre-selecting supporting sources, he invites him or her to critically
research and check facts personally. Likewise, the author of this study does not provide
past academic credentials, which he believes would unavoidably skew the
reader's objectivity one way or the other. He suggests that this study be
read without prejudice, and be appraised only according to the present
merits, or lack thereof, of its facts and logic, as opposed to the usual
academic custom of prejudging the strength of a study according to the past
reputation of its author and the merits of earlier papers, even when those
are largely unrelated, if not altogether irrelevant. The reader might be interested in filling this self-evaluation questionnaire
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