THE ONLY TRULY outstanding insights the Nazis ever shared with the world were those pertaining to propaganda. The most memorable of these was Adolf Hitler’s explanation of “The Big Lie”.
“[I]n the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily, and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters, but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously … the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down.”
“It would never come into their heads”. The ordinary citizen labours under the huge disadvantage of an inadequate imagination. Against those who are able to envisage the most appalling behaviour; conceive the most heinous crimes; the ordinary person stands defenceless. Small lies, told in little matters, are no match for the gross impudence of those who possess the Devil’s imagination.
Consider the behaviour of the tobacco industry. It discovers that medical science has identified a causal link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Their product, if used as demonstrated in countless movies and television advertisements, has the capacity to kill the people who purchase it. What to do? The ordinary citizen would, naturally, expect the industry to either shut itself down voluntarily, or, be shut down by the regulatory authorities. After all, retailing a poison to unsuspecting customers is self-evidently immoral.
What the ordinary citizen failed to account for, however, was the Devil’s imagination. With billions of dollars at stake, the tobacco industry devised an extraordinarily effective defensive strategy. The evidence linking cigarette-smoking with lung cancer was, they insisted, contested. The science wasn’t settled. More research was necessary. To outlaw smoking – a perfectly legal personal habit – would be a gross over-reaction.
Decades later, the smoking of cigarettes is still perfectly legal. Government’s have found the courage to warn smokers of the dangers, but nowhere has there been a government brave enough to ban tobacco-smoking outright.
So successful was the tobacco industry’s self-preservation strategy that the fossil fuel industries copied it. As the scientific community’s warnings about anthropogenic global warming grew in volume, the global suppliers of coal, oil and natural gas argued strenuously that the evidence was contested. The science wasn’t settled. More research was required.
The crisis confronting Big Coal, Big Oil and Big Natural Gas was, however, much more serious than the one which confronted Big Tobacco. Historically-speaking, capitalism and the burning of fossil fuels were joined at the hip. Curtail one and you curtail the other. Any effective strategy for dealing with global warming could not help but reduce the power and reach of the capitalist system. But, as Vice-President Dick Cheney so succinctly put it: “The American way of life [by which he meant the global capitalist system] is not negotiable.” It was, once again, time to summon up the Devil’s imagination.
Hence the Fossil Fuel Industry-inspired “Big Lies” that anthropogenic global warming is either a scientific “hoax” or a “left-wing plot” to bring down the capitalist system. Earth’s climate is always changing, they argue. Long before human-beings made their appearance, the planet was, by turns, boiling hot and freezing cold. If, and the word “if” is emphasised, the planet is going through another warming period, then 1) it’s not our fault; and 2) there’s nothing we can do about it except adapt the best way we can. After all, with just a tiny fraction of the technology they now possess, human-beings made it through the Ice Age!
Which is all very well, as far as it goes, but not even Big Coal, Big Oil and Big Natural Gas are stupid enough to believe their own propaganda. Indeed, their own scientists were among the first to realise the danger which industrialisation’s vastly increased emissions of carbon-dioxide posed to the planet. Their Big Lies have bought them some time – but that’s all.
Besides, the rest of the capitalist system’s major players aren’t as easily gulled as the broad masses who voted for Donald Trump. The Devil’s imagination will have to come up with something much more effective than simply “muddling through”.
And it would need to be a little more sophisticated than simply buying up land in New Zealand. The consequences of runaway climate change promise to go well beyond the capacity of the “One Percent” to manipulate and manage. From the multiple crises unleashed by global warming there is simply no way that the safety and survival of the global ruling-class can be assured – not on a planet overburdened with nine billion increasingly desperate human-beings. It might take them a while, but eventually enough of the living dead will make to the front gate of Peter Thiel’s bunker.
Unless, of course, 90 percent of those human-beings could be made to disappear. What would it take? Just one billionaire and one brilliant bio-chemist who believes with all his heart that the planet’s survival depends upon a sudden and decisive crash in the human population. The attraction, from the billionaire’s perspective, being that he gets to decide who will perish in the world-wide viral pandemic his mad scientist has cooked-up – and who will be given the vaccine.
If such a terrible final solution to the climate question has never come into your head, then it is only because, to your credit, you lack the Devil’s imagination.
[…] his must read blog today, Trotter highlights the manner in which big oil and big industry push the climate denial message to […]
To Mr Hitler’s observation that most people are motivated more by their emotions than their conscious thought, yes I’m sure they do. Big decisions in life are made emotionally , and the conscious mind is set to work to justify and explain them after the fact. This isn’t as silly as it seems because it’s our emotions that make life worthwhile, and putting the brain to work to organise our world for the comfort of our emotional selves makes sense.
The difficulty with a government banning tobacco or alcohol , or oil and gas, is that if we are going to live in a democracy then government in the long term cannot do things that will turn the majority of voters against them. It has not stopped smoking that everyone knows it kills you. It didn’t stop my sister who died of pancreatic cancer 3 months ago, that doesn’t stop her son or mine from carrying on smoking, and if a party went into an election vowing to outlaw smoking they would not vote for them. Neither will an electorate ever vote for a party that announces that it will take the drastic actions necessary to arrest climate change even though we all know we are killing life on the planet.
We aren’t up to the responsibility that democracy places on us even if it worked.
Cheers D J S
Indeed @DJS, elected democracy is really only suitable for dealing with relatively benign conditions. During wartime it gets suspended in various ways or grand coalitions are formed.
For serious threats, dictatorship is required – or democracy by ballot rather than election so that the representatives can make the necessary decisions unencumbered by the need to get re-elected. Big Fossil Fuels, by scaring the populace that the agenda is a powerplay for One World Government, effectively nixed the possibility of an alternate system that might undermine their control.
Capitalism has given us plenty of trial runs for Armageddon.
Colonial famine and genocide in India.
WW1 and WW2 from poison gas to nuclear bombs.
The Congo
The Gulf Wars
Palestine and Syria
and so on…
Now we have climate collapse and nuclear meltdown.
These have all been the result of bourgeois democracy which is no more than the pretense the majority rules so long as it does not threaten rising profits.
That is working people vote for parties that keep capitalism going despite the rapidly raising level of global destruction.
Don’t be surprised as the masses refuse to take any more and are attacked by fascist goons and satellite guided missiles.
History has only one example of a mass democratic movement that removed the causes of capitalist chaos – the Russian Revolution.
From the women textile workers who started the revolution in February 1917 to the soldiers and peasants who joined the workers to get rid of French and British imperialism, it was a new type of democracy, popular, egalitarian, and humane, that left us two big lessons.
First, that despite everything that world imperialism threw at the revolution it survived long enough to prove that another society beyond capitalism is possible – socialism.
Second, that because it was isolated and ultimately destroyed by a ganging up of all the imperialist powers, it proves that its example is so profoundly threatening to capitalism that all memory of its success has to be eliminated, along with everything else that puts people before profits.
Except today, the power of socialism to unlock human survival is now so potent, that it is only a matter of time before the masses stand up and take control of their future.
The only question in my mind is if this can happen in time to stop nature’s vengeance on our species.
But no point whinging and wondering.
Time to fight for survival socialism now!
Russia isn’t a good example.
And, unfortunately, within 35 to 50 days a new set of capitalists arose and began oppressing the people of Russia.
I came back to the page to add just that. Thanks.
D J S
For serious threats, dictatorship is required
Yep. China is really stepping up to address climate change and cut down on pollution. Oh wait.
https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/who-are-the-worlds-biggest-polluters-idUSRTXRKSI
That New Zealand even discusses climate change at all, given we contribute less than 2/1000th of the total global emissions, is laughable given that the entire planet breathes the same air. If reporting by TDB is anything go by, if we just “do our bit” we’ll be fine because we’re all somehow only affected by what NZers do when it comes to climate change. Or is it that you all really think China/USA (or anyone at all, really) will listen to the “moral high ground” from a country that represents 0.15% of total global emissions?
http://archive.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/environment/environmental-reporting-series/environmental-indicators/Home/Atmosphere-and-climate/global-greenhouse-gases.aspx
Yeah, but how the hell would you enforce New Zealand law outside Mew Zealand boarders? We can’t fine any one, we can’t send our helicopters or ships after any one, we could frown really hard. I think when it comes to Climate Change, the only things we can change is ourselves.
Are you trying to twist my meaning?
Perhaps you might like to acknowledge the advances. Sure they’re top polluter but they’re working on it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/12/upshot/china-pollution-environment-longer-lives.html
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/02/15/chinese-companies-lead-global-solar-developer-rankings/
Other countries may not listen as we do our bit – they certainly WON’T listen if we don’t.
The recent versions of the lies include that a little warming is of benefit to the planet and increased CO2 is triggering a green revolution.
The engineered pandemic is possible, especially if the virus can be engineered towards it being targeted at susceptible races. Eugenics is a bedfellow of the elite.
More probably a leader/cabal with access to nukes will pop a few megatons down the throat of an active volcano to trigger a nuclear/volcanic winter as respite from the heat while they figure out the next geo-engineering move that allows the furnaces to keep burning.
Note to the elite: Ensure bunkers are radiation proof.
And desperate-rabble proof.
Chris Trotters ‘Mad Scientist’ is only mad in that the level of sacrifice is obviously to great to be acceptable by, well, the 90%.
But suppose the sacrifice were 50% and those who are to be sacrificed are defined: the old (I’m 78), the sick , the crims etc. It is quite plausible that those on the right side of the divide might be able to swallow their squeamishness.
Reducing world population by 50% would cut carbon emissions by 50%, all else being equal, and as far as I have read that is enough (assuming its not too late already) to save humanity. I have seen no other ‘solution’ that promises so much.
Education is needed. Teachers have to be taught what critical thinking is and how to practice it. Many haven’t a clue.
Or younger generation have grown up surrounded by a fabric of lies promulgated by MSM often from US sources.
If critical thinking was more widely supported in our culture many parasites would fine great difficulty as they should when living and profiting on lies.
Realisation that lack of any evidence for a supernatural being may also become a landslide force in freeing the masses from a long standing shackle and create a wider platform for peace and harmony.
Well said, Chris.
The manufacture of doubt (when there was no doubt) and the deliberate covering up of reports generated within the fossil fuel sector that indicated the dire consequences of continued burning of fossil fuels amount to one of the biggest crimes in history.
However, the fossil fuel sector has not been alone in committing great crimes. The mainstream media, universities, and governments have all been party to the promotion of false narratives.
With atmospheric CO2 now about 125 ppm above the pre-industrial level, with the oceans never having been warmer in recorded history, with glaciers and ice sheets melting, and with climate chaos increasing, what is the response of government? Does the government tell the truth, that we are living the most unsustainable lifestyle imaginable and destroying the futures of our children/grandchildren? Does the government prepare for the sea level rise that is to come. Does the government secure the food production systems? Not at all. More than two decades after the existential threat of planetary overheating was highlighted the government continues to promote dependence on fossil fuels! Indeed, it promotes INCREASED dependence on fossil fuels.
I don’t think your ‘Unless, of course, 90 percent of those human-beings could be made to disappear’ scenario is likely or necessary. Nature is in the process of doing the job. It is just a matter of time before large areas currently inhabited by humans become largely uninhabitable -maybe a couple of decades, maybe just a few more years.
Whilst we are on this topic, it worth noting that benchmark Brent crude has risen substantially and is currently around $85 a barrel, well up from a year ago. The economic and social implications are obvious. However, higher energy prices will not significantly impact on planetary meltdown.
You are quite right AFKTT, there is likely to be a human die-back of around 70 percent during the “transition” from fossil fuels to something else (maybe feudalism, maybe Utopia).
The problem for the 1 Percent, however, is how to ensure that they are not included in the die-back. Most of them are smart enough to realise that when things really begin to fall apart, the chances of them being blamed are pretty high.
The Devil’s imagination therefore encourages them to get us before we get them.
It’s worthwhile noting that living organisms have affected (and in one instance completely altered) the planetary atmosphere.
Firtly, around 3 billion years ago, cyanobacteria slowly converted Earth’s primordial atmosphere from methane to oxygen. Off course, this destroyed most (not all) cyanobacteria, paving the way for other lifeforms. This is referred to as the Great Oxygenation Event. (https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=4oJ_vi27s18C&pg=PA17&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false)
The second was the latter 20th century where humans nearly destroyed the planet’s Ozone Layer through production and release of chloroflourocarbon pollution. The effects of reduced Ozone is with us today. (Nice one, Humans!)
So not only is it “possible” for life to alter the planet’s atmosphere – past instances have demonstrated occurrences of this happening.
‘The Big Lie.’
That’s also known as a logical fallacy.
And our government, and its agencies puff them out daily.
As for banning generally?
Smoking? Let ’em smoke. Smoke on, I say. You know the perils, now, light up and puff on.
And when you get sick? You’ll be well cared for. Because you’re only HUMAN after all.
HUMAN’s are entirely fallible. We’re a raucous lot, pissed, stoned and driving maniacally into oblivion… that’s what we’re meant to do.
There’s no cure for humanity. We must just expire after making a fuss.
But what a fuss!
You been to Rolleston, Town of the Future? You been to any one of the infestations of modern housing lately? You watched TV? With it’s bleached arseholes and waxed perineum’s? They make West World or The Stepford Wives look like a shroom eating, pot smoking hippy fuck fest at sunset. You ever felt like running a fellow down BECAUSE he/she’s wearing a fluro vest while standing in an empty paddock? Give me fuss, I say. Let me burn down the dance hall? Let me write a poem or cry like a child over a dead mouse. Let me LIVE before I die instead of being born into the fucking waiting room!
No matter what we do now anyway. The sun’s going to swell up and eat Earth like a barbecued sausage, in about 5 billion years from now though, I admit.
You ever driven a big ol’ V8, with a fag hanging out your soon-to-be cancerous mouth hole? You’re cutie squeezing your thigh asking how long till we get there? It’s a hot sunny day and the only air con is all the windows down.
The Earth, like our bodies, is succumbing to the rigours of lives lived outrageously. I’ll go with that thanks, while you lot wait on your proctologist to call back with an appointment to try to prise your arseholes open with his ‘special’ pliers as you pace about your beige plasti-house with a role of recycled, imprinted shit paper in one hand and a glass of juiced organic, free range, grass clippings in the other?
Apparently the Sun fries everything in about 1 billion years, but who’s really counting? It won’t matter to you, or to me, that’s for sure. Maybe it matters to TDB writers because they are obsessed with future events we have absolutely no control over? Yes I’m being facetious.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131216142310.htm
That said, the climate change issue has never been about the ultimate futility of life on Earth generally (which imo is irrefutable), but the needless suffering of life in the present. That’s fair enough I ‘spose – we care about the comfort of the current generation, blissfully ignoring that all life (including humans) ends regardless over the long-term.
Geoff Duffy is a “denier scientist” apparently.
LOL
As was Dr Chris de Freitas.
It’s possible.
Yes, what a sick joke it all was (is). Chris de Freitas was so-called Director of Environmental Studies at the University of Auckland when he was promoting his unscientific narratives.
Is he still at U of A? Does he still promote the burning of coal? Is CO2 still a ‘harmless gas’?
de Frietas is dead, so not still at U of A
I thought Dr Duffy’s article in the Herald was pretty good. Methane is 0.0005% of the atmosphere and its radiative spectrum is completely masked by water vapour
Any suggestion that we need to do something about ruminant emissions is misguided at best
Fossil fuels are a different beast
I’m not against finding alternatives to oil. For one thing, we wouldn’t have to fight all those pointless wars in the Middle East
You’ve left out that methane is nearly thirty times more absorbant of heat (infra red) than CO2, Andy. And megatonnes of it are trapped in the Arctic, Siberian, and alpine permafrost. This gas is being released as the temperature warms. (Just as glaciers are melting as the temperature rises.) So while methane may be relatively low in concentration – at present – it’s destructive power as a greenhouse gas will become more apparent. (ref: http://www.ces.fau.edu/nasa/module-2/how-greenhouse-effect-works.php)
Methane is also increasing in industrialised/agrarian times. From “722 parts per billion (ppb) in pre-industrial times to 1800 ppb by 2011, an increase by a factor of 2.5 and the highest value in at least 800,000 years” – ref: http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf
Methane does break down. To water vapour and… carbon dioxide. So one greenhouse gas is substituted for another.
This narrative isn’t being driven by science. Yet again we have vested interests cherry-picking information and spinning methane as a “relatively harmless gas”.
All driven by a sector group motivated by pure self-interest.
Absolutely, roughly half of NZ’s GHGs are from agriculture including methane and nitrous oxide. Downplaying their importance is an obvious tactic.
So we have a fart tax,… and yet megatonnes of it are trapped in the arctic permafrost,…. and will be released as the arctic thaws….
… ‘ Methane does break down. To water vapour and… carbon dioxide. So one greenhouse gas is substituted for another …’…
Isn’t life on earth carbon based?
And I wonder,… from just where was the measurement of methane and carbon dioxide established?… what timeframe?… the 1700’s?… the 1800’s?
Clutching at the Al Gore straws?
Seems he had a good reason to push the gloom and doom… stood to earn billions out of it.
Earth changes.
Try Karatoa. When the sunsets were blood red for more than five years as recorded in the UK.
Read up on it.
Did more harm than any English industrial revolution ever did.
“Isn’t life on earth carbon based?”
Thats a bizarre thing to say, WK. Humans are primarily made up of water, but still one of us in the ocean or lake, or a few centimetres of puddle water for a toddler, and we will drown.
Its not the carbon, its what we’ve done with it. And which fossil fuel Big Corps are fighting climate change accords to preserve their billion dollar profits. Is that who you’re siding up with? BP? Texaco? Exxon Mobil? Royal Dutch Shell? Good luck with that.
And what about Al Gore? What possible loony conspiracy is there to invoke his name?
Methane does break down (after about 10 years) to water and CO2. However, what people fail to mention is that the methane from ruminants was produced from those same CO2 and H20 molecules in the first place, so the process is a closed loop (unlike the burning of fossil fuels)
If the government wants to punish farmers for doing something that has been happening for millions of years, then it really needs to start taxing people for breathing. An average human expels 1 kg of C02 everyday. Obviously nonsense, because it is a closed loop. Go to start of comment. Repeat
This isn’t a crackpot theory. Climate scientists agree with me
Andy, that is nonsense. You might as well say burning rubber tyres next door to your house is fine because it simply returns all the base chemical components “back into nature through a closed loop”. Your argument would be a justification for pollution because all chemical activity on Earth is a “closed loop”.
It’s what we put into the “loop” that counts.
What “Climate scientists agree with” you?
What “Climate scientists agree with” you?
Much of what I have said is stated in this Herald article
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12064270
I don’t think it’s nonsense Frank.
There have been enormous grazing herds roaming the earth throughout pre history. How much methane do you think a mammoth farts. Humans fart methane too. Especially vegetarians . Did the herds of bison in America pre european produce less methane than their feedlot cattle do now? I have been told there are more ruminants now than there were in historic times but I am not sure I believe it . But either way , up a bit or down a bit , herbivorous animals produce methane. They always have and they always will. If we eat only vegetables we will too. It is a contemporary piece of the carbon cycle and an unavoidable aspect of life.
Fossil fuels on the other hand involve releasing carbon over a period of one or two hundred years or so that has been stored over millions or billions of years. Not a part of the contemporary carbon cycle at all.
To be objective about dairy emissions, and sheep and cattle grazing emissions, it would be necessary to work out what the alternative food sources are, and if it involves a change of human diet to eliminate them whether the human digestion of this vegetable diet produces any less methane.
I think there is a very good case to argue that food product should not be categorised in the same way as burning fossil fuel.
It should be added though that there are huge ancient methane traps that are likely to be released by warming too.
D J S
The methane is an addition to the increasing CO2 emissions caused by human activity, most of it deliberate.
Human activity also has reduced the global CO2 sink of wilderness and expansive tracts of tropical forest, often removed to grow the cattle herds.
Methane alone is not the main worry but the whole global mess humans have created in a short term orgy of harvesting Non Renewable Naturally occurring Resources surely is.
Possibilities are finite.
This is soon to end as approximately 75% of these resources have been consumed since 1800.
Climate discussions generally are a sideline to what the bigger picture is.
No, Andy. Climate scientists do not “agree with you”. Neither does the data. You can fool yourself as much as you like, but guess what, the world is a globe, plate techtonics is a real thing, and yes, humans did go to the Moon in the 1960s.
“No, Andy. Climate scientists do not “agree with you”
I posted an article which suggests otherwise, with respect to short lived GHGs such as methane
This doesn’t mean that I believe the Earth is flat.
I suppose you believe the earth is shaped like a dice then.
Here we go , Chris,… this is what your looking for right here !
#13 – Georgia Guide Stones – Episode 13 – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e-Y6it3Ctc
“The crisis confronting Big Coal, Big Oil and Big Natural Gas was, however, much more serious than the one which confronted Big Tobacco. Historically-speaking, capitalism and the burning of fossil fuels were joined at the hip. Curtail one and you curtail the other. Any effective strategy for dealing with global warming could not help but reduce the power and reach of the capitalist system.”
So the problem is mainly the ‘capitalist system’, is it, Chris?
Do you suggest the former USSR, and China, especially now, as a state managed system (allowing some state condoned, limited ‘capitalism’), were and are so much better in protecting the environment?
Have you not heard that much energy in former East Germany was generated through burning lignite (the inferior type of coal), which was very polluting?
http://www.airclim.org/acidnews/east-german-lignite-crossroads
I fear the challenge to phase out fossil fuels is not one limited to the ‘capitalist’ run nations, it is a global one, that all forms of government and systems have to manage.
And we are doing very poorly, it seems, people have got used to cars, to using plastics in massive proportions, to burn gas for bargeques and so much more, replacing it is going to take time and will come costly for many.
And even then we will need coal and some oil to produce steel and other materials and manufactured goods, as there is no alternative in sight for some uses of fossil fuel.
The biggest problem is overpopulation of the planet (New Zealand follows the same flawed model by ‘growing’ through population growth), and billions of people wanting to live, to use energy, and to have a reasonably comfortable life. Telling them to change will lead to riots, revolutions, coups and so much more, it is too easy to simply blame the oil and coal industries for this.
Perhaps go and tell Venezuelans to stop using oil and stop selling oil, few there will want to listen to you, as their economy depends massively on petroleum exports, but they have a run down system now, they are stuffed, people are starving.
I predict hundreds of millions will suffer and die world wide, once the shit hits the fan, and once climate change hits us more severely.
By the way, some of the oil giants hare actually investing a lot in alternative energies, they know that dirty oil and coal will not have a future. The investors are simply trying to delay the transition a bit, so they can get as much in returns for the old tech investment as they can. Capitalist and populist Trump is catering for the naysayers, and a real serious impairment to needed progress.
So it is politics that can be the problem same as the common people themselves, not wanting to chance, not wanting to sacrifice anything much.
One aspect that is rarely discussed is the per capita consumption of energy (and therefore the per capita emission of pollutants). The US, with about 4% of the world population, uses over 20% of the world’s energy. And it intends to try to hang on to that disparity.
Another aspect that is rarely discussed is that China uses energy to manufacture goods for the world. That has the effect of raising China’s energy use (and emissions) whilst lowering the energy use and emissions of other nations.
Another aspect rarely discussed is that energy return on energy invested is falling globally, so more energy is being used to acquire energy, and emissions are commensurately increasing.
Yes, we are on the cusp of the biggest population crash in history, one that will make the Black Death Plague look like a walk in the park.
Remember how British Petroleum decided to rebrand themselves as ‘Beyond Petroleum’ and started investing in solar. And then quit solar and reverted to the old business model.
.
In the middle of that thread Frank wrote: ‘You’ve left out that methane is nearly thirty times more absorbant of heat (infra red) than CO2’
Unfortunately, that is not correct. The relative potential for methane is ‘officially’ 34 times that of CO2 over 100 years.
And according to the UNIPCC the relative potential factor for methane is 86 times that of CO2 over 20 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential
Since we are talking about planetary meltdown occurring over a matter of decades rather than centuries, a high value for methane is entirely appropriate. Indeed, in the scenario of a huge methane burp resulting from the destablisation of methane clathrates on sea beds even the 86 figure would probably be far too low, and the instantaneous figure of over 300 times that of CO2 might be appropriate.
At approximately 2000 ppb, the CH4 in the atmosphere is about 2 ppm, which sounds insignificant. But applying the [low] 34 figure implies that the CO2 equivalence of methane already in the atmosphere is 68 ppm; that, should be added to the current 406 ppm CO2, taking us to over 470 ppm CO2-equivalence. In a runaway scenarios the 86 times CO2 figure could be appropriate (though probably not high enough), taking us to well over 600 ppm CO2-equivalence.
Then there are the other contributors, like N2O to be added, as listed in the link.
We already know that the concentration of CH4 in the atmosphere has been increasing, so it clearly is NOT being oxidised to CO2 and H2O at a sufficient rate to prevent its contribution to overall warming from increasing. The mechanism for oxidation by OH radicals in the upper atmosphere is well established but we do not know what the effect of overloading that mechanism is.
It is abundantly clear that any methane that does get oxidised in the atmosphere (including that deliberately burned in the form of natural gas, of course) increases the atmospheric CO2 concentration (and the acidity of the oceans).
Another inconvenient fact is that the higher the temperature of the lower atmosphere, the higher the concentration of water vapour.
Whilst water vapour can never be a primary driver of warming because it undergoes phase change in the atmosphere, it does increase the overall warming when the CO2 level in the atmosphere increases the temperature. The increasing secondary effect of water vapour is just one of many positive feedbacks (positive in the sense that they self-reinforce and mutually reinforce, as opposed to negative feedbacks that tend to negate the effect of a factor). There appear to be no negative feedbacks, other that that the higher the Earth’s temperature, the greater the tendency to radiate heat into space (the very factor that is being overwhelmed by increases in greenhouse gas concentrations).
Most of this is science that has been well established for many decades (and some of it for well over a century!).
I know this is all very boring for non-scientists, even though it will determine their future or their progeny’s future; that is why I gave up writing books that included this very topic.
Anyway, the theme of Chris Trotter’s article is that there has been deliberate distortion or misrepresentation or covering up of science by vested interest groups. And the evidence for that is absolutely beyond question.
The USA has reduced CO2 emissions more than most OECD countries
#funfact
So the US recognises the critical problem facing humanity: anthropogenic climate change caused by CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide.
Excellent.
Actually, the main reason is that the USA is displacing coal with Natural Gas, via fracking, something we want to ban
USA also left the Paris Accord
Are you seriously suggesting that the supposed CO2 reduction was due to trump pulling out of the Paris Accords a few months ago?! Jeez, Andy, even anthropogenic climate change dodesn’t work quite that fast!
No, I meant that the reduction is primarily due to natural gas. The Paris climate accord is irrelevant
The impact’s running a bit late, but if you want to speed it up we could double down on dairy intensification. That’ll do it.
THE MEEK WILL INHERIT THE EARTH
It appears humans will shortly become self regulating .
More urban growth ,more population growth and more consumptive growth , will almost certainly achieve this in decades not centuries .
We call this leadership .
With the worlds greatest nation being lead by a climate denying angry orange warthog we are all in good hands .
We don’t have to do anything ,because the big man and the government has told me everything is ok .
I like MSM because it shows the world is a nice place and nothing is wrong .
Ecocide is a bad word made up by impoverished hippys who can’t afford a hummer .
Loony greenies say 1000 km of the great barrier reef is now dead bleached white coral but I still see pretty colored tropical fish on my TV.
Who needs ice in the arctic , with the ice cap gone the ships can get there quicker and our transportation costs will be lower .
Its called progress and progress means a better way of life .
We have absolutely nothing to fear .
Have a nice day .
Thanks Chris for putting this picture to our minds.
Though Lprent over at The Standard is much better than you and Martyn ‘computerarily’.
How’s the memory caches going, any unscheduled shutdowns happening at the Standard lately?
My sister tells me that all these rich people is survival of the fittest.
Well, these rich people are bringing about the collapse of the present environmental system. After that collapse the fittest will go on.
Those ‘fittest’ will not include us or our descendants.
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