How Nice!

Found on Mostly Cajun blog

They also reduce CO2 and carbon emissions from everything except raging forest fires. Is this what is meant by the Green New Deal?

Carbon

Soot is not carbon dioxide (it’s invisible) and carbon dioxide is not soot. Those that conflate the two by saying, “we are polluting our atmosphere with carbon” are either crafty charlatans or babbling buffoons ... or a bit of both. — Anon.

Boiling the Ocean

There is little doubt that Elon Musk of Tesla Motors, SpaceX and now possibly SolarCity is a technical genius, a brilliant manager and a true visionary.  He has just released his newest Master Plan that outlines what he wants his companies to become ... the leaders in sustainable energy production and Earth/space transportation innovation. He has a very clear and, in many ways, appealing notion of what the world should be like ... see: CNBC Story. Read this hyperlink ... it is fascinating.

However there might be some downsides to this vision. Please don't call me a Luddite, but I have the following reservations regarding Musk's manifesto:

1) Musk has a very full plate now for his ideological ambitions. I worry that he is trying to boil the ocean and this will eventually overwhelm him. Building the next major car, truck and bus company, an important space exploration company, and a major sustainable energy provider ... all at the same time, although admirable objectives, seem a little overly ambitious.

2) I have, in the past, shown some skepticism about the probable pace of self-driving car technology. Tesla, Google and the other pioneers in this arena, IMHO, are ignoring a basic fact of human nature ... and that is to be in control of things. Yes, some will wish to turn their driving over to a computer, but I doubt that we will ever see the Indianapolis 500 comprised of any autonomous race cars.

3) His devotion to sustainable energy has been rewarded so far by the current administration's green agenda. Recently Spain, Great Britain and Germany all have backed away from their commitments to killing carbon. If Trump wins in November, it is likely that the U.S. government's subsidy largess may begin to dry up. This largess has been a key ingredient in Musk's marketing success.

I do hope I am wrong ... but I am not a buyer of Tesla's stock.

Semantics

There has been a subtle shift in the semantics being used by Obummer and John Kerry when crowing about the squishy results of the Paris Climate Accord. Instead of talking about reductions of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, they are now taking about targeted reductions in "carbon." Now this seems like a trivial difference but it truly isn't. Smoke is comprised mainly of unoxidized carbon and its reduction is a good thing ... with which most civilized people can agree. Whereas CO2 is the source of all life on Earth ... and its reduction is not necessarily a good thing. During the Carboniferous Period (360-300 million years ago) CO2 was 10 times higher than it is today, yet the Earth survived well ... thank you very much.

In fact this 60 million year period in our planet's formation is when most of the oil, coal and natural gas was laid down underground. Ponder on this for a moment. All the lush vegetation that was growing in this CO2-rich environment is the source of most all of the fossil fuels that we use today. 60 million years is 20 times longer than when the earliest man appeared on Earth and 30,000 times longer than the period of time since the birth of Christ. That's a good long time with a whole lot of vegetative growth ... and thus a whole lot of fossil fuels ... much more than I suspect we currently estimate. Yes, some day we will run out... but this is many lifetimes away ... and I believe that our sources of energy then will not be wind ... maybe sunshine ... but more likely safe fission and fusion.

So our administration's purposeful obfuscation of the term "carbon" to imply both smoke and CO2 is disingenuous and purposefully confusing. ... an attempt to lead the uninformed to its way of thinking. How very semantically Orwellian!

See also: Power Line Blog.

Air Pollution

I have long read that the major source of new carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere is not humans but natural sources such as volcanoes, the out-gassing of oceans, etc. In fact here is a reference that estimates man’s total current contribution to new CO2 emissions at around 4% … see: Climate Depot Study/.

And scare photos, which are often used to shame us humans about our profligate pollution practices, are the spewing smokestacks of coal-fueled power plants. I invite you dear readers to compare the worst of these photos … in fact the sum total of all that you can summon up on Google Images … with the one satellite image above of a spewing volcano (found on reddit). And this is but one of 50-70 volcanoes that are currently active (this year) and spewing goodly amounts of carbon and sulfur into our atmosphere … see: Volcano Discovery Estimates.

As in many other things in life, reliable data goes a long way toward keeping a level head about the current hysterical arm-waving about global warming (aka, climate change).