Tag Archives: climate change

Testing Oceanic Carbon Capture I’ve mentioned previously the hypothesis that iron fertilization of the ocean and consequent phytoplankton blooms is one feasible method to achieve global carbon capture. Small-scale experiments have been done already. The results have been mixed insofar as documenting the scale of phytoplankton blooms, but there has been no reported harm.Another strategy relies on chemical sequestration of atmospheric CO2 through...

Analogies are risky things, but I think there’s a useful analogy between (1) the belief that global conservation is a sufficient antidote to rising atmospheric CO2 and (2) the belief that herd immunity is a sufficient antidote to pandemics.Herd immunity is the model in which, as a deadly pathogen moves through the population, enough survivors with immunity will remain to attenuate further transmission, protecting uninfected individuals. The track...

Yesterday, I posted about geoengineering the oceans as a promising form of carbon capture. But why do we need carbon capture at all? Can’t we just conserve our way out of global warming?No.Here are a couple of reasons why the *only* way to avert climate disaster is to start removing carbon from the atmosphere:1. The half-life of CO2 in the atmosphere is ca. 120 years. What that means is that if all sources of CO2—man-made, forest fires, vulcanism,...

Global heating continues unabated. While decarbonizing our energy sources is certainly important, it is too late to prevent global disaster. Coastal flooding, desertification, wildfires will continue to increase, driving vulnerable populations to migrate and igniting resource wars for fresh water and arable land. It’s already driving migration and violence in the Middle East and Central America.We must find a way to decarbonize the atmosphere on a...

by Lloyd Alter Carbon Upfront! The size an style of these vehicles will not make you embrace them as an alternative form of transportation. The concept is solid though. The savings to be achieved is realistic. The impact on our environment would be enormous. It is about time America abandons the too big, too fast, and too often phase we have in our heads. Doug Ford, the Premier of the Province of Ontario where I live, is trying to...

by Dean Baker Center for Economic and Policy Research That’s what readers must conclude after reading this Washington Post’s piece on President Biden’s plans to increase corporate taxes and taxes on the rich. At one point, the piece reports the response to these plans from Rep. Steven Scalise (R-La), the second-ranking Republican in the House: “He tries to act like it’s not going to affect certain people, but when you raise taxes, it hits...

Angry Bear has been posting articles on PFAS for a while now. Since I lived in Livingston County, Michigan, this was a problem. You could no longer eat the fish out of Strawberry Lake and some of the shallow wells were contaminated. Other commentaries . . . County shows higher levels of PFAS in blood than the U.S. population – Angry Bear. This goes beyond Livingston County. A Pittance Offered Up for National PFAS Cleanup. PFAS Contamination, the New...

Parking where you should not park with your oversized toy. This picture was also on Reddit. I believe the original pic(s) are from here: “Driver shares photo high-lighting a parking problem with oversized vehicles: ‘These cars are pointless,'” The Cooldown. According to one Planning Commission member in Arizona, sixty percent of the vehicles being purchased are pickup trucks. Most of these vehicles are used for non-work travel. Maybe some...

by David Zetland The one-handed economist Humans are not doing enough mitigation to slow — let alone reverse — climate change chaos. Average global temperatures are now +1.xxC, far above the 2015 Paris Agreement’s target of “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.” In this 2011...

One of the climate change denialist memes is that, since plants inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen during the day, then increased CO2 will be *good* for trees. Setting aside the facts that increased desertification and increased coastal flooding are decidedly *not* good for trees, a recent study suggests that it more CO2 doesn’t necessarily result in more/faster tree growth:“Why not? Our new research, published today in Nature, shows it comes...