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Apocalypse How? Climate Change or Peak Oil, Pick Your Poison!
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I don’t know about you, but this wretched summer has burned the climate change denier right out of me, and just in the nick of time, too. Apparently, skeptics who question whether anthropogenic global warming causes more intense hurricanes and heat waves are killing us and should be locked up. They are also — according to Stevie Wonder, the Pope and numerous other celebrities and authorities — stupid.
In the past, I might have rushed to defend climate change deniers from such attacks, if only because I strive to consider all sides of any debate. But not after this scorching summer.
I’m not just talking about the wildfires that are still burning across western North America, or the millions of people recovering from hurricanes Harvey and Irma in the southern United States, or the millions of other people recovering from typhoons and monsoons in China, Nepal, Bangladesh and India.
Mainly, I’m talking about the annual raging inferno known as summertime in Shasta County.
What the hell was that we just lived through? (It is over, isn’t it?) I’ve resided in the warm part of northern California all of my adult life, including the past three years in Shasta County, and I can’t recall a hotter summer than the one that’s just passed. Am I just getting old? Or is it really getting hotter? Sure, I know, we live in a Cadillac desert, it’s supposed to be hot like this, but this summer seemed super extra crispy to me, even though we apparently didn’t break the record for consecutive days of triple-digit heat.
Even where I live, 2500 feet up in the eastern foothills, where it’s usually considerably cooler than Redding, the heat was infernally relentless from June to early September. Half the garden fried without bearing any fruit or vegetable. Even the weeds, including the star thistles, burned to a crisp. The hummingbirds stopped flying in midday. A two-point buck camped out underneath the shade of our deck, occasionally emerging from the shadows to slake his thirst from our small fish pond. Eventually a spike and a fawn joined him. They’ve become quite territorial and have gotten more use out of the deck this summer than me.
This guy think’s it’s his deck. Note dead flowers to right. Photo by R.V. Scheide.
I followed the hummingbirds’ lead, doing my outside work in the mornings and early evenings, confining myself to the air-conditioned home office during the ferocious sunlit hours, when it was too hot to work, play or do anything meaningful outside. That’s how I spent much of the summer, holed up like those astronauts on the International Space Station, who last week had to move to a special compartment in order to shield themselves from a particularly violent solar flare. The few times I dared venture outside without a shirt on, I came back inside with sunspots on my skin.
Hats off to the firefighters, farmers, fruit pickers, ranchers and other outdoor workers who have to endure this heat on a daily basis, for I have given up. This summer has broken me. I can recall the precise day it happened.
It was mid-July, the valley was filled with smoke from wildfires in Oregon and the temperature was 110 degrees in the shade. I was making a rare run into Redding for supplies when the alternator on the Toyota started crapping out. I had to bump-start it several times in the dizzying heat, the sheet metal was so hot it sizzled to the touch. Finally, the truck died completely on Whitmore Road just outside of Millville.
I was exhausted from pushing the truck and dehydrated from not drinking enough fluids. Foolishly, I hadn’t brought any water. I don’t have a cell phone, so I was going to have to walk to the nearest house, a good distance away. I looked out across the hazy California Serengeti toward Redding, which was vaguely discernible in the ashen distance. The landscape seemed to shimmer in and out of existence. “You’re going to die out here,” I heard a voice say. I chuckled, realizing the voice was my own.
It was a rueful laugh, because there’s just really nothing funny at all about this heat, is there? How many people do you figure would live in Shasta County if air conditioning didn’t exist? How about Sacramento? Fresno? Bakersfield? Las Vegas? Phoenix? Without electricity, much of the inland western U.S. is a mirage. Climate change exists alright, we’re changing the climate all the time, on purpose and inadvertently, expending enormous sums of energy to cool ourselves down and warm ourselves up, sums of energy that at the same time have been unequivocally proven to exacerbate … climate change.
There’s no point in denying it. The apocalypse is already upon us, we just haven’t noticed because it’s been air-conditioned, up to this point. Even worse, according to author and Post Carbon Institute co-founder Richard Heinberg, a nationally recognized expert on renewable energy, climate change is just one symptom of the apocalypse, which is a systemic crisis brought on by what he calls an overshooting of the earth’s long-term capacity to carry the human species.
Richard Heinberg, co-founder of the Post Carbon Institute. Photo courtesy PCI.
“Our core ecological problem is not climate change,” Heinberg writes in a recent essay. “It is overshoot, of which global warming is a symptom. Overshoot is a systemic issue. Over the past century-and-a-half, enormous amounts of cheap energy from fossil fuels enabled the rapid growth of resource extraction, manufacturing, and consumption; and these in turn led to population increase, pollution, and loss of natural habitat and hence biodiversity. The human system expanded dramatically, overshooting Earth’s long-term carrying capacity for humans while upsetting the ecological systems we depend on for our survival.”
I met and interviewed Heinberg several times during the Aughts, when “peak oil” – the theory that global petroleum reserves are finite and will ultimately peak then decline at a much faster rate than they were accumulated – was heavily in vogue. Although the peak oil theory has fallen out of fashion, thanks to hydraulic fracking in the United States and elsewhere extending the production peak past the earliest predicted date, Heinberg maintains most of the “easy oil” is gone and the “tight oil,” fracked from existing fields that quickly dry up, has only delayed the inevitable decline by years, not decades.
In Heinberg’s view the focus on climate change has distracted us from a more pressing issue: Modern civilization is addicted to petroleum at nearly every level and the supply, within a matter of decades, is about to be severely curtailed. Transitioning to a worldwide renewable energy economy is an enormous undertaking that requires wise use of our existing fossil fuel supplies. We must limit the impact on the environment, but we must also move quickly, or there will not be enough petroleum to fuel the transition.
Complicating matters further, no one knows exactly what the renewable energy future looks like. One current hot topic of academic debate is whether intermittent sources such as wind and solar can reliably power the electrical grid we depend upon for, among other things, our air conditioning. Some scientists say intermittent sources can do the job—if we make an enormous investment in energy storage technology. Others say it can’t be done without nuclear power. Scientists at MIT have proposed the construction of 300 reactors to power a worldwide electrical grid as the only real solution to significantly reducing the level of carbon we’re pumping into the atmosphere.
I recently rediscovered Heinberg after learning the city of Redding was entertaining a bid from a company that wants to build a small scale hydrogen production plant at Stillwater Business Park. I wrote about a similar facility in Sacramento more than a decade ago, when peak oil and the hydrogen economy were all the rage. Quoting Heinberg’s work, I noted that manufacturing hydrogen is an inherently inefficient process that uses more energy than it produces, thus making hydrogen an unlikely replacement for fossil fuels.
That’s still somewhat true today, but hydrogen fuel cell technology has increased dramatically in the past decade. There’s also interest in using hydrogen as an energy storage device, by using excess intermittent electricity generated by wind and solar to manufacture hydrogen from water via electrolysis. The hydrogen can then be used to power fuel cells; it also has other industrial uses. Hydrogen energy storage projects would have to be massive in scale to make a difference, but they are one possible piece of the puzzle. In that light, the small hydrogen production facility proposed for Stillwater, should it be approved, can be seen as a bridge to a renewable energy future that includes hydrogen as a vital component.
It will make a nice addition to our wind farm and Shasta Dam, both of which are renewable energy sources, not to mention the ever-increasing solar panels that keep popping up in Shasta County. Living in California, which has long led the nation in renewable energy and more importantly energy conservation, it’s easy to get the impression we’re well on our way to the renewable energy future. However, as a state, we still depend heavily on fossil fuels, particularly natural gas, to generate much of our electricity, and the internal combustion engine remains a dominant feature of our culture. The hard part of the transition hasn’t even begun, and according to Heinberg, we can’t depend on technology alone to save us. We’re going to have to learn how to do more with less—or maybe just do with less, period.
The fear of this reality—that individually and collectively we’re going to have to sacrifice our accustomed standard of living—is at the root of climate change denial in our public discourse. It’s a legitimate fear, particularly for the bottom 80 percent of the U.S. population, who according to various metrics have already seen their standards of living decline significantly during the past four decades. That’s one reason why many voters didn’t think twice about putting an admitted climate change denier in charge of the country.
President Donald Trump and some of his crew may be deniers, but from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on down, Trump has also surrounded himself with oil men and Goldman Sachs bankers, and they are certainly aware of the gravity of the situation, particularly concerning the global petroleum supply. Virtually every conflict we’re currently involved in, from the Ukraine to the Middle East to Africa, concerns the control of oil and/or natural gas fields and pipelines.
With the U.S., Russia and China now squaring off to determine who controls the world’s remaining fossil fuel stores, the apocalypse could get a lot worse. War is just a shot away.
The good news is, summertime appears to be over in Shasta County. The temperature broke two days ago and the 10-day forecast is signaling fall’s arrival. I realize I’m probably jinxing all of us with this pronouncement, but I needed a happier ending to this otherwise bleak report.
69 Comments on "Apocalypse How? Climate Change or Peak Oil, Pick Your Poison!"
Apneaman on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 1:48 pm
“The September heat wave that’s settled in West Michigan has already broken a more than century-old record.”
http://woodtv.com/2017/09/22/sweltering-september-heat-wave-how-long-will-it-last/
Apneaman on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 1:51 pm
“It’s a legitimate fear, particularly for the bottom 80 percent of the U.S. population, who according to various metrics have already seen their standards of living decline significantly during the past four decades. That’s one reason why many voters didn’t think twice about putting an admitted climate change denier in charge of the country.”
It’s time to bust the myth: Most Trump voters were not working class.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/06/05/its-time-to-bust-the-myth-most-trump-voters-were-not-working-class/
Many of the “lower classes” voted for cheeto for one reason only – he’s not Hillary.
bobinget on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 2:32 pm
Damn, That’s tough one.
I’ll pick peak oil. If we had PO twenty years ago
AGW might not even be on our nobody around to read, tombstones.
bobinget on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 2:58 pm
Apneaman:”Lower Class” is kinda pejorative.
Instead, try ‘working class’.
Signed, CP political officer
Davy on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 3:17 pm
Coming from a wealthy elite west coaster who jet sets down to Nicaragua for the winter and calls himself green because he owns and EV might that be a pejorative.
jedrider on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 3:30 pm
The only class that didn’t overwhelmingly vote for Trump was the ‘intellectual class’ IMO. It time to stop blaming the lower classes because there are intellectuals at all income levels, maybe except, perhaps, for extreme wealth and extreme poverty. Yeah, I got the feeling, too, that this has been a break-out year for climate change and that’s not the type of break-out we want.
J. H. Wyoming on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 3:34 pm
Our family too was caught in outrageously, consistently hot days and particularly hot nights. If we hadn’t had our new quad mini split system and the $ to pay the utility bills this past Summer it would have broken us too. But the house can only be shut tight in the day – at night I need fresh air and it use to be cool at nights here in Northern CA at 1150 feet. But not this last Summer, on no, it was so warm at night, we would run the system to get to sleep then in the middle of the night shut it off and just let the luke warm night air blow in by fan. But good night’s sleep suffered for all.
Everybody we’ve talked to in this area has made the same comments. What was with this last Summer?! It was like a bad sci fi movie that wouldn’t end. Finally now we are breathing and enjoying cooler air. I’d really like to think that was a random event but no better since world temps keep rising.
onlooker on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 3:52 pm
Two parts of the impossible predicament we are in. Give up FF for the sake of climate change is bad. Not give up ultimately will be worse down the road
rockman on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 4:52 pm
And one more time a warning about using anecdotal evidence:
The hottest temperature ever in Texas was 120 degrees in August 1936. And in:
Alabama – 1925
Alaska – 1915
Arkansas – 1935
California – 1914
Delaware – 1930
Florida – 1930
Idaho – 1934
Indiana – 1936
Iowa – 1934
Maine – 1911
Minnesota – 1911
New Hampshire – 1911
Oregon – 1898
Vermont – 1911
Does that prove AGW doesn’t exist? Of course not. But it is interesting to see two very distinct clusters of record high temps: early 1900’s (particularly in northeastern states) and late 1900’s. Both typically well above 100°F.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_temperature_extremes
makati1 on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 5:00 pm
rockman, there have been SINGLE incidences of high temps over millenia. it is the TOTAL AVERAGE that is increasing across the world. Who gives a fuck about some day in America? I remember a night in PA when it go to 20F below zero. (~15F below normal for PA) Does that point to an ice age?
rockman on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 5:00 pm
Wyoming – “Everybody we’ve talked to in this area has made the same comments.” And were any of those folks you talked to paying electric bills 34 years ago when you hit the all time record high of 115°F in Basin on 8 Aug 1983? Maybe that’s reason: that heat wave killed off most of your older folks so there’s no one left alive to remember. LOL.
Cloggie on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 5:14 pm
And one more time a warning about using anecdotal evidence:
The hottest temperature ever in Texas was 120 degrees in August 1936. And in:
Alabama – 1925
Alaska – 1915
Arkansas – 1935
California – 1914
Delaware – 1930
Florida – 1930
Idaho – 1934
Indiana – 1936
Iowa – 1934
Maine – 1911
Minnesota – 1911
New Hampshire – 1911
Oregon – 1898
Vermont – 1911
Does that prove AGW doesn’t exist? Of course not. But it is interesting to see two very distinct clusters of record high temps: early 1900’s (particularly in northeastern states) and late 1900’s. Both typically well above 100°F.
Global lukewarming.
Should we react? Yes.
Is everything lost? No.
Ignore the climate hysteric from Vancouver.
onlooker on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 5:27 pm
See that AP, you provide an innumerable number of posts about AGW and its already dire effects, and all we can get from some here is we are being hysterical. I guess some of them are hopeless. Oh and folks, I thought we had gotten beyond the difference between climate and weather.
makati1 on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 5:31 pm
+rockman, you are beginning to sound like Davy. Those “old folks” made possible what you have today. You should be so lucky as to live to be an ‘old folk’. LOL
Davy on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 6:00 pm
Mkat, you are a waste of good air. People like you serve no purpose. You are just wasting resources being a couch potato there in your Makati Condo with your Filipino hubby. If you were real and not a fraud you would be out at the fantasy farm getting your hands dirty at least trying to feed yourself. Instead my tax dollars are supporting your lying lazy ass.
makati1 on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 6:10 pm
Enjoying your insanity Davy? LMAO
Sissyfuss on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 6:22 pm
I’ll take 6th Mass Extinction for $500 Alex.
makati1 on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 6:25 pm
And Sissyfuss is a winner! LOL
twocats on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 8:08 pm
We’re getting both simultaneously – as Climate Breakdown hammers harder and harder – fewer and fewer people will have the resources to relocate and/or rebuild. Then after a time it will be fewer and fewer PLACES will have the resources to rebuild. Then fewer and fewer COUNTRIES…
We could take bets about how many countries will cease to exist in any meaningful level within 5 years.
Apneaman on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 10:37 pm
Up your ass rockman – what a piece of work you are.
U.S. Daily Record Highs Outnumber Lows 5 to 1 since 2010
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/us-daily-record-highs-outnumber-lows-5-1-2010
Apneaman on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 10:38 pm
Warning – Category 5 Global Warming Denial to Make Landfall
https://boingboing.net/2017/09/12/warning-category-5-global-wa.html
Apneaman on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 10:49 pm
Hey clog, take a look at some more “luke warm” AGW consequences.
Drone video shows the horrific flooding in Puerto Rico
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-1541663/Drone-video-shows-horrific-flooding-Puerto-Rico.html
When Will Puerto Rico Have Power Again? Why It’s Hard to Know
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/when-will-puerto-rico-will-have-power-again-why-it-n803861
Dam bursts in Puerto Rico sparking evacuations of towns at risk of flooding
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/22/dam-bursts-puerto-rico-sparking-evacuations-towns-risk-flooding/
clog, if this is luke warm, what do you need to see to judge it hot? Dragons jumping out of the ocean and biting peoples heads off?
What do they do at your dementia ward when the power goes out clog?
Apneaman on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 10:51 pm
90 degree temp breaks 81 year record
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2017/09/23/90-degree-temp-breaks-81-year-record/696637001/
Apneaman on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 10:53 pm
“For the second time in three days, St. Louis saw record temperatures Friday.
The city tied its record high of 95 degrees at 1:57 p.m., according to the weather service. The record dates to 1956.
The heat wave comes on the first day of fall, which officially began with the autumnal equinox at 3:02 p.m.
On Wednesday, the temperature in the city broke a record high at 97 degrees, one degree over the 96 degrees that had been the high for the date since 1940.”
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/it-s-the-first-day-of-fall-but-st-louis/article_f6dff0ab-5eb8-5ba0-ad82-4a41b4e5a05b.html
Apneaman on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 10:55 pm
Canberra records its hottest ever September day
“”It’s also bringing really dry conditions, which is bad fire weather as well.”
The hot and windy conditions saw 94 bushfires across NSW on Saturday, including an out-of-control blaze north of Marulan which forced the closure of the Hume Highway in both directions just after midday.”
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/canberra-records-its-hottest-ever-september-day-20170923-gynfq5.html
rockman on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 11:12 pm
Mac – “it is the TOTAL AVERAGE that is increasing across the world.” I agree with you. So please share with us the DOCUMENTED numerical data showing that dynamic.
And A: Your links points out a recent high temp trend. You should wipe the sh*t from your eyes: so did I. But I also pointed out a high temp trend in the early 1900’s. It a shame that with all the data the author had he didn’t point out other high temp periods prior to 2010. Which itself seems odd since it clearly implies we haven’t seen abnormally high temps prior to 2010 since the world was pumping out a lot of GHG many decades before 2010.
But you’re still missing the big picture: while we may be experiencing a warming trend it is still ANECDOTAL and doesn’t prove the cause. And while it seems reasonable to ASSUME that AGW is a factor the data itself does not delineate the cause.
Which brings us full circle: what caused the abnormally warm period in the early 1900’s. Or Wyoming in 1983.
Same broken logic: correlation does not necessarily mean causation.
Apneaman on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 11:24 pm
rockman, no matter how many games you attempt to play, the blood is on you and it ain’t coming off.
Apneaman on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 11:37 pm
New Climate Change Report Just List Of Years Each Country Becomes Uninhabitable
“GENEVA—Stating that the data published within its pages represented the scientific consensus of top researchers around the world, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its annual report this week, which consists solely of an alphabetized list of every country on earth and the years each of them will become uninhabitable. “Albania, 2035; Algeria, 2027; American Samoa, 2024,” read the two-page report, divided into two columns containing no text other than the names of the more than 200 countries and sovereign territories on the planet alongside the date by which that location’s inhabitants will no longer be able to survive the conditions brought on by global warming. “Cameroon, 2029; Canada, 2049… Japan, 2041… United States of America, 2033.” When reached for comment, the committee expressed its hope that the report would be used by governments around the globe to help them make forward-thinking, evidence-based decisions about how and when to euthanize their populations.”
http://www.theonion.com/article/new-climate-change-report-just-list-years-each-cou-57007
makati1 on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 11:39 pm
rockman, please share with us the proven FACTS that oil has NOT destroyed the ecosystem. That its chemicals do NOT poison us at every turn. That it is a safe and clean source of energy.
Waiting…
makati1 on Sat, 23rd Sep 2017 11:53 pm
Ap, interesting article. I noted that they give the US only until 2033 to remain habitable*. China gets another 10 years until 2043. maybe I am in a good spot? I would be 99 then. LOL
*”…the date by which that location’s inhabitants will no longer be able to survive the conditions brought on by global warming.”
Ghung on Sun, 24th Sep 2017 12:06 am
Mak, it’s The Onion…..
Boat on Sun, 24th Sep 2017 12:10 am
twocats,
Short has the world at mad max in 15 months. Very few if any doomers have disagreed and even though ETP supporters comments are getting harder to find they still pop up.
Hey, if were around in 5 years, well make bets.
Apneaman on Sun, 24th Sep 2017 12:22 am
Boat, let’s take your idea and play – Dooming for Dollar$.
Everyone gets a guess at the dollar damage for each or the recent AGW Jacked Hurricanes.
Apneaman, COME ON DOWN! You’re the next contestant on Dooming for Dollar$
Harvey $260 Billion
Irma $120 Billion
Maria $175 Billion
Since it takes some time to tally, we will make the final count on April 1st 2018.
Let the wife & kids have a guess too.
Dooming for Dollar$ – it’s fun fer da hole family.
Boat on Sun, 24th Sep 2017 12:39 am
ape,
Your missing a lot of deaths.
Nepal[edit]
As of 24 August 143 people have been killed in Nepal; 1.7 million have been affected by them, and around 461,000 have been forced out of their residences.
Flooding in India has been primarily confined to the northern portion of the country, including Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh.[15] In the latter two, over 500 and over a hundred have died (respectively).[16][17] By mid-August, flooding had affected over 31 million people, and damaged or destroyed over 800,000 houses.
The 2017 Northwest Iran floods are flash floods caused by heavy rains in northwester Iran on April 15, 2017.[1] Flood observed in East Azerbaijan, West Azerbaijan, Kordestan, and Zanjan Provinces. The flood claimed life of more than 40 people and it was most deadly in East Azerbaijan province where it left 37 dead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:2017_natural_disasters
makati1 on Sun, 24th Sep 2017 1:01 am
Ghung, Oops! LOL They (UN) do put out a report but you have to pay for it so I could not check its validity. Although, I think it may not be far off. You only have to look around. Nature is taking us down faster and faster. 16 years for the US may actually be stretching it.
Cloggie on Sun, 24th Sep 2017 2:58 am
Drone video shows the horrific flooding in Puerto Rico
Yeah TalmudTurk, I feel sorry for those guys.
2017, the year when the planet began to witness an entirely new phenomena: floodings.
And A: Your links points out a recent high temp trend. You should wipe the sh*t from your eyes: so did I. But I also pointed out a high temp trend in the early 1900’s. It a shame that with all the data the author had he didn’t point out other high temp periods prior to 2010. Which itself seems odd since it clearly implies we haven’t seen abnormally high temps prior to 2010 since the world was pumping out a lot of GHG many decades before 2010.
Glad I could inject some fine Dutch culture in North-America.lol
Don’t start about numbers with the TalmudTurk. His shtick is to wipe up emotions. He intends to use CC for his upcoming social revolution in North-America against the achieving part of the population (“cancer monkeys”).
peakyeast on Sun, 24th Sep 2017 4:12 am
@boat: I have supported Shorts idea – but not its timeline. The basis for the idea is valid and thing will go that way sooner or later – i BELIEVE later and have all the time. But we all know that precise calculations of the exact time is moot and bound to be unprecise – actually exact timing of non-linear changes in a world system is only for fools.
Mick on Sun, 24th Sep 2017 6:07 am
I agree yeast if shorts etp model was to run its course we would run into major problems in a couple of years . However those who pull the strings will throw everything including the kitchen sink in to keep BAU going as long as it can , so who knows it might drag out a few more years tops.
Sissyfuss on Sun, 24th Sep 2017 8:51 am
Seems that some here are ignoring the science of CC. The Keeling Curve is a most helpful instrument in explaining the anthro originated conditions we are experiencing. We have the ability to go back hundreds of thousands of years to measure the PPM of CO2 in the atmosphere and for the 800,000 of those years it balanced out at 280 PPM. It is currently at 410 and rising and the polar ice, the glaciers, and the permafrost are heralding the results of this increase. As well as the spreading increasing acidity of the oceans. The deniers will keep working the insecurity of the masses as the Curve trends ever upward.
The trajedy is that most cannot connect a healthy environment with a healthy existence.
onlooker on Sun, 24th Sep 2017 10:20 am
We wish we could pick our poison. We will have PO, climate change, general diverse environmental degradation, social chaos, economic dysfunction etc. Not necessarily in that order. On and in fact we are already experiencing to different degrees all these negative outcomes and they will get worse before and if they get better
Apneaman on Sun, 24th Sep 2017 10:24 am
2014 hottest year on record, beaten by 20015 hottest year on record, beaten by 2016 hottest year on record. Better odds of winning the lottery.
Denial is criminal neglience and treason to ones country.
Deniers should be put on trial and
whenafter found guilty, lined up against a wall and shot in the fucking head. I volunteer for firing squad duty.Apneaman on Sun, 24th Sep 2017 10:24 am
2014 hottest year on record, beaten by 20015 hottest year on record, beaten by 2016 hottest year on record. Better odds of winning the lottery.
Denial is criminal negligence and treason to ones country.
Deniers should be put on trial and
whenafter found guilty, lined up against a wall and shot in the fucking head. I volunteer for firing squad duty.Apneaman on Sun, 24th Sep 2017 10:55 am
Deminta-clog, no revolution. 6th mass extinction and humans will go in less than 1 human life span. The recent spat of AGW Jacked hurricanes are nothing compared to what is coming – baby hurricanes. Wait til the big boys show up. They have plenty of energy since the oceans are so hot because 93% of the GW has ended up there. Anyone with a basic understanding of physics/thermodynamics knows that energy is not just going to sit there.
How Increasing Carbon Dioxide Heats The Ocean
https://skepticalscience.com/How-Increasing-Carbon-Dioxide-Heats-The-Ocean.html
The Thermal Inertia of the Oceans
“The reason the planet takes several decades to respond to increased CO2 is the thermal inertia of the oceans. Consider a saucepan of water placed on a gas stove. Although the flame has a temperature measured in hundreds of degrees C, the water takes a few minutes to reach boiling point. This simple analogy explains climate lag. The mass of the oceans is around 500 times that of the atmosphere. The time that it takes to warm up is measured in decades. Because of the difficulty in quantifying the rate at which the warm upper layers of the ocean mix with the cooler deeper waters, there is significant variation in estimates of climate lag. A paper by James Hansen and others [iii] estimates the time required for 60% of global warming to take place in response to increased emissions to be in the range of 25 to 50 years. The mid-point of this is 37.5 which I have rounded to 40 years.”
https://www.skepticalscience.com/Climate-Change-The-40-Year-Delay-Between-Cause-and-Effect.html
New study shows oceans absorb 93% of the earth’s extra heat
https://www.1millionwomen.com.au/blog/new-study-shows-oceans-absorb-93-earths-extra-heat/
No worries clog, you won’t be around to witness the end of the species (barring nuke war), but you do get to see techno industrial civilization continue to have the shit kicked out of it – a little more everyday. I’ll be here to remind you and laugh at your infantile denial. Ba hahahahahahaha
MASTERMIND on Sun, 24th Sep 2017 3:09 pm
I remember a night in PA when it go to 20F below zero. (~15F below normal for PA) Does that point to an ice age?
Great point Mak1. Rockman is just here on PO to sew doubt about peak oil and in some cases climate change. What does that tell you about him? He is a troll by the oil industry. I have been reading this site for about six months now. And all Rockman does is give long winded arguments and no facts or links ever. Don’t you think that is very unusual. Almost everyone this site usually sites sources. Except for the Rockhead. And he claims he is some super expert in the business. LOL He is an enemy of REASON!
Mick on Sun, 24th Sep 2017 5:57 pm
I knew rockman was a shill for oil industry way back in the oil drum days no one could possibly have that much spare time to do as many posts as he does and by the way I never read any of it I just scroll past it as soon as that name comes up
Davy on Sun, 24th Sep 2017 6:10 pm
Rock is real. He contributes actual industry intelligence the kind of stuff you don’t get elsewhere. I could care less if people like oil or not but having accurate information is important either way.
makati1 on Sun, 24th Sep 2017 6:17 pm
Davy come to the rescue! His little gang is shrinking and soon he will stand alone in the schoolyard hurling putdowns and name calling, and no one will be listening.
Davy on Sun, 24th Sep 2017 6:29 pm
What gang dumbass? You are the one that gang bangs with your boyfriend grehg and others. Remember a few years ago mkat when there were 5 of you hammering on me at once but I just spit in your faces. It was an honor to have so many pathetic anti-Americans after me at once. Double lol. Lately it is just you and your boyfriend widdle grehg.
makati1 on Sun, 24th Sep 2017 6:33 pm
You really need to change your meds Davy.
Davy on Sun, 24th Sep 2017 6:36 pm
OH, mkat, now you are being like widdle grehg and giving out psychological advice. What a worm head. mkat, if you show people basic respect and don’t act like you are special and others a stupid then you might not be beaten up on. Go whine on another board.