Strident claims and harsh efforts are being made to end the use of fossil fuels. But let’s step back and take an objective look at whether that is a practical way to proceed or if it is even possible in today’s circumstances.
Technology is permitting our civilization to exist and prosper. Every year each source of CO2 output provides more efficient use of those despised energy sources, fossil fuels. Yet we still have people telling us that combustion engine vehicles will destroy the earth—because of CO2.
Let’s take another look at statistics. (Don’t groan. You’ll learn something.) Keep in mind that all emphases are mine.
Cloud the Carbonivore
Did you know scientific research has a huge carbon footprint? Steven Gonzalez Monserrate, who is a researcher himself at MIT, wrote an article dated February 14, 2022, based on a study he did on the data centers that make possible everything we see and do on our computers. You’ve undoubtedly heard of and used “The Cloud.” Monserrate calls it “Cloud the Carbonivore.” He is certain that “The Cloud now has a greater carbon footprint than the
airline industry. A single data center can consume the equivalent electricity of 50,000 homes.” The data centers that we all use “devour more energy than some nation-states.” There are 2,751 data centers in the United States alone, with more anticipated. Those data centers, if you include all those neat devices (computers, cell phones, etc.) we use, contribute 2 percent or more of global carbon emissions. They will contribute to a scarcity of water (used for cooling the equipment) by 2040.
Do you hear an outcry to eliminate all computer usage, including ending scientific research?
Space Observatories and Planetary Probes
Nature Astronomy had an article in the April 2022 issue titled “Estimate of the carbon footprint of astronomical research infrastructures.” Here is a brief excerpt:
Much recent attention has focused on the reduction of
academic flying and, to a lesser extent, on the use of supercomputers. Quantifying the GHG emissions due to the construction and operation of space observatories, planetary probes and ground-based observatories has so far attracted less attention. With the decades-long lifetime of research infrastructures, decisions that are made now will lock in GHG emissions of the astrophysics community for the next decades, potentially compromising the goal to reach net-zero emissions by the middle of this century.
You can click on the link and see for yourself the effect space observatories, planetary probes and ground-based observatories have on producing CO2. (It’s very detailed and “academic” but you’ll get the idea.) The Institute for Research in Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP) in Toulouse, France, discovered that the average greenhouse gas emissions per person working in their own facility were 28 metric tons of CO2e . The average Franch citizen produced only 4.24 metric tons.
Do you hear an outcry to eliminate all astronomical research and outer space programs?
Mega Conferences
And then there are conferences. Let’s just look at one research conference. The American Geophysical Union (AGU) has a conference every year, usually in San Francisco. In the fall meeting of 2019, 28,000 people attended from all over. It was calculated that the attendees traveled over 177 million miles, there and back home again, thus being responsible for about 80,000 tonnes of CO2.
Granted, transportation is a high-level participant, 27 percent, in what the EPA identifies as greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). But of that 27 percent, 43 percent is attributable to trucks (26 percent), airplanes (8 percent), railroads (2 percent), ships (2 percent), etc.
Do you want to fly to Europe on a plane powered by lithium-ion batteries? If you think there are supply chain problems now, what would happen if cargo ships couldn’t use fossil fuels?
Carbon Dioxide is Nontoxic
The EPA even has a problem with its own regulations. Here is a little of this ongoing battle. It’s is from the Cornwall Alliance website.
There are lots of happy reports on the Supreme Court’s
ruling throwing out EPA’s so-called Clean Power Plan. Some go so far as to suggest that EPA is barred from regulating power plant CO2 emissions.
It is not quite that simple and the result is rather amusing. EPA is still required to regulate CO2 under the terms of the Clean Air Act, but that Act provides no way to do that regulation. The Clean Power Plan attempted to expand an obscure minor clause in the Act to do the job but SCOTUS correctly ruled that the clause does not confer that kind of massive authority.
[. . .] buried in the 1990 Amendments was a clause adding causing climate change to the definition of “pollutant”. The Court accepted the government’s claim that the CO2 increase could cause climate change.
[. . .] The deep problem is that the Clean Air Act specifies very specific regulatory actions, none of which work for CO2. This is because CO2 is nothing like the true pollutants that the Act was developed to regulate.
Another major mechanism is to control the emissions of what are called “hazardous air pollutants” or HAPS. EPA explains it this way:
“Hazardous air pollutants are those known to cause cancer and other serious health impacts. The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to regulate toxic air pollutants, also known as air toxics, from categories of industrial facilities.”
But CO2 is nontoxic, so not a HAP. In fact our exhaled breath contains over one hundred times the ambient level of CO2, that is over 40,000 ppm. Clearly if ambient 400 ppm CO2 were toxic we would all be dead. It would be absurd for EPA to try to classify CO2 as a HAP. No Court would stand for it.
Leave Our Lakes Alone
Eos.org had an article by S. Palus dated 8 April 2015 that looked at how much carbon dioxide is released from lakes by the sun. They studied more than 1,000 lakes in Sweden. The first paragraph of the article reads:
Humans are not the only ones who release carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere. Inland waters, full of carbon-rich plant and soil material, are among the natural sources of the greenhouse gas. In recent years, scientists have found that the amount of carbon dioxide emanating from inland waters is substantial enough to warrant inclusion in the global carbon cycle—it is about a quarter of the amount pumped out yearly by fossil fuel burning.
Shall we then drain all our lakes and have no more than photographs and paintings to remind us of the water lilies blossoming and ducks swimming?
I’m certain you are beginning to deduce that this is not about the earth’s demise being caused by CO2 from your family’s car. You can draw your own conclusions regarding motives.
To learn more about our climate, I suggest you read “Will Greenland Ever Be Green Again?”. I would also like to remind you to re-read chapter 3 of my book Who’s Got Dibs on Your Kids? and discuss it with your kids for ammunition against what they may be being taught in school.