Get up to speed!
The Emissions Gap Report or ‘Bridging the emission gap’.
By definition, there is a ‘gap’ to overcome on paper to enable a forecast of emission reduction by 2020.
But with the forecast of coal based power generation increasing 42 % by 2020 and that does not include de-forest diesel or bio-fuels or natural gas, it is pie in the sky and any ‘fuel shifting’ calculations are immaterial as a consequence.
To me, the’ Emission Gap Report’ is akin to that paper Mr Chamberlin waved at the public after returning from Munich having amicable talks with Herr Hitler and proclaiming; peace in our time!
The international climate change conference in due in Paris 2015 should be reading the IPCC 2013-14 report on climate change and hold a summit titled; ‘How to survive a heat-wave like Melbourne; a cold snap like New York; an arctic vortex gone wild, a shower and a tidal surge like England’ because those are the climatic variables and seasons coming our way!
After reading the 2013 IPCC report on climate change ‘the physical science basis it is pretty damned obvious that there are only two factors to be implemented.
Radically increase nuclear power and radically reduce the birth rate!
Why is a lack of understanding regarding the basics of climate science a universal constant even though people’s knowledge has increased? Because people like to think it is too far off to worry about in our lifetime (especially politicians) promising the Earth but know they will not be in office for that long,
Why are some people confused between weather and climate? If we have a cold spell they think global warming is bunkum. I call this denial or safe, cosy, reassuring thinking.
And why is concern about climate change inversely correlated with the wealth of a nation or a person? They are more informed people, but have less concern or sense of responsibility towards climate change because they realise that real sacrifices have to be made!
Well, all these questions have the same answer;
Whether or weather?
Whether your bothered about the weather or not,
Whether your bothered about the future or not,
Whether you care about your offspring or not.
Whether you think the word ‘sustainability’ is the first weapon of choice used by geo-engineers (the second being adaption) before the proverbial hits the fan.
Whether you think every ‘green’ logo, carbon credit and carbon tax bond represents any semblance to reality while C02 emissions go up and up!
The problem is the math in your head. You think 2 degrees is insignificant.
The Ocean doesn’t.
Neither does the troposphere.
Neither do those eager beavers in waiting; the millions of tons of methane hydrates patiently biding their time to raise their ugly heads and use 2 degrees as the catalyse for 3, 4, 5 degrees!
Then the first two weapons of the geo-engineers (Adaption and sustainability) will be as outdated as the dinosaur and perhaps… so will we!
When any government focuses on economic growth they are confronted with policies on emissions reduction. But it is inevitable that economic growth that will win out every time.
It has to for any industrial or economic growth plan to work.
We get about 50 times as much energy from all other sources -- coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear and hydropower -- as we do from wind, solar, geothermal and biomass.
That can be seen by looking at coal, the world’s fastest-growing source of energy. Yes, coal use in the U.S. is declining. But it’s soaring in the developing world. It’s also booming in Europe. Germany -- which has more solar capacity than any other country is building 11,000 megawatts of new coal-fired power plants.
Last year, global coal use surged by 2 million barrels of oil equivalent per day; that increase in coal use, more than any other factor, is what is driving the rise in carbon dioxide emissions.
In any reality bio-fuels, wind-farms, solar-panels are dubious ‘sustainable’ alternative pipedreams. They are breadcrumbs thrown down by governments to placate the ‘greenie’ element.
Climate scientists warn about carbon dioxide emissions and their effect on the atmosphere and global temperatures, but politicians cannot ignore the basic physics and math of the world’s appetite for energy.
If policy makers are committed to reducing global carbon dioxide emissions, then they will have to get serious about promoting sources of electricity production that can compete with coal on price. Those sources must be scalable, meaning they can be deployed all over the world fairly rapidly, produce fewer carbon emissions than coal, and not take up too much land.
Fortunately, we already have those energy sources. They are natural gas and nuclear.
In sum, the most important assumptions on which international negotiations and national policies are founded—that we can stabilise the climate at some level, that overshooting and returning to a lower target is feasible, and that we can accommodate 2 or more degrees of warming by adapting to it—have no foundation in the way the Earth’s climate system actually behaves.
When one understands these facts, the state of political debate around the world takes on an air of unreality, as do those Climate summits as they go on year after year, in strange paradox, deciding only to be undecided, resolved only to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.
