The problem with global warming is that it is now too big to fix.

The UK is boasting that it will phase out fossil fuels over the next 30 years. But as one environmental economist countered, in 30 years there will be four more Chinas, four more Indias and another 1.6 billion people.

Human civilisation is dying so the best thing people can really start doing is learning how to cope with all the bad things that are coming their way.

Come on Taswegian, the stone age did not end because we ran out of stones, nor the bronze age because we ran out of copper.

Nor will the hydrocarbon age end because we ran out of hydrocarbon. As in the past, we discovered improved materials to replace the old. This will happen with hydrocarbons, but it sure has not happened yet.

The fool windmills, & solar panels are in no way a replacement for coal & oil. They have a very minor but useful place in our future, but only if we realise they are merely bit players, & most definitely not the future.

When our new energy source is discovered it will not need government subsidies & mandates or the totally immoral UN to push it. No it's superiority will sweep previous energy sources from the picture, like the spear & arrow did stones.

Trying to power a modern society with 17Th century windmills & solar collecting panels is impossible, & simply a waste of money, better spent elsewhere.

We have over 200 years of hydrocarbons & coal power in which to find the best solution. This stupidity of current alternates will look like the tulip fiasco when it happens.

Hi Mr Opinionated,

"We'll all be doomed, " said Hanrahan, "Before the year is out."

Joe

If we do nothing except business as usual and burning coal, in clean coal power stations, we can it's claimed, geosequester the CO2 output and generate electrical power with around or less than a 6% energy coefficient that then is subject to an 11% averaged, transmission line losses and a further 64% distribution losses.

I say and confirm these facts, as a former science related employee of a state-owned power authority.

So, the 6% of actual usable energy that leaves a clean coal-fired power station is reduced to around 2% by the time it arrives at your premises, but you the consumer will be charged for 100% of the burn and power reticulation and whatever profit margin is deemed essential or available!

And usually discarded by the lending/financial sector as being totally unprofitable and the financial input totally unrecoverable during the operational life of the same! Whereas, A traditional ROM coal-fired variant can get it down as low as 3 cents PKWH.

And makes one wonder, why most bankers and lenders and various miners, have completely closed their doors on any fossil fuel investments/tenements? MSR thorium delivers everything fusion promised but has never ever been able to deliver!

Moreover, thorium is the most energy dense material, on the planet!

Further, if this technology is deployed as nuclear waste burners, it will reduce the world's current stockpile of hazardous nuclear waste and in complete, CARBON-FREE Safety! And for a fraction of one cent PKWH as other folks pay us annual billions to provide the disposal and storage service!

Furthermore, should we so choose, weapons-grade plutonium?

Forget about carbon pollution or CO levels, and just make the indisputable and massive economic argument! AS HERE!

As for future liquid fuels, all of them? With almost endless ultra cheap safest of all, nuclear power at our disposal, they can all be got from endless transformed seawater, forever, with proven technology!

And as we do the latter, draw down the CO2 levels in both the seawater and the atmosphere! There is now, no other viable way!
Alan B.

Thanks Don and I'll try to avoid temptation and stick to the spirit of your piece. I think your question is, why if there are several other possible explanations do climate scientists in general put the blame on carbon dioxide emissions? And a corollary: Why do geologists in general not? Here is my view.

I'm a physical chemist. Svante Arrhenius was one of the founders of the science of physical chemistry. He won a Nobel Prize in 1903. Around 1896 Arrhenius was the first to use basic principles of physical chemistry to calculate estimates of the extent to which increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide from burning coal could increase the Earth's surface temperature. My understanding (it's not worth my while going back to the papers) is that he decided that the effect was too small to be significant. Of course the amounts of carbon dioxide he considered were many time smaller than emitted today.

So chemical science predisposes to greenhouse effect explanations. Simple as that. Does this mean other explanations must be excluded? I don't think so, and that's why so much effort is put into identifying unique markers of rising CO2 levels. I don't believe that work is conclusive yet but I'm not a climate scientist. Conceding to other possible explanations is a political decision. That's the way to look at it.

Regarding my earlier post, I should add that the influence of the Earth's atmosphere on raising its surface temperature, what was later called the greenhouse effect, had clearly been established over the period 1825 to 1900. Without its atmosphere Earth would be, if I remember correctly, some 30 degrees colder. This is not disputed. Carbon dioxide, even at its small concentration of around 300 ppm, was known to be one atmospheric component contributing to this effect, which was why Arrhenius was interested in it. What's more, his interest in the effect of a possible rising concentration was unexceptional. In the 1933 edition of Partington's then standard textbook of inorganic chemistry, it says: "On the whole, the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere appears to be slowly increasing, and slight changes of climate may be due partly to this cause". The 1949 edition I had at high school omits this! I can only try to imagine why.

So I think it should be clear that scientists need a good reason to reject rather than accept rising CO2 levels as potentially influencing climate.

Tom Biegler