Anton Coaker: Broken record

JP1

Member
Livestock Farmer
I don’t want to sound like a record that’s stuck, but there’s a lot of wind about climate change again this week, with delegates flying all over the world to talk about…yup, the evils of flying around burning fossil fuels. Meanwhile, back here, the electioneering tree planting promises have gone through the roof like some kind of madcap auction, and we’re now up to 2 billion if one outfit gets in. This doesn’t mean I’m a climate change denier …..the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is undeniable, and I have little doubt that rising temperatures are here, and are going to accelerate the ice melting at the poles. And what’s happening on Greenland is going make webbed feet and gills a desirable mutation for an awful lot of people.

So, this week, let’s look at some numbers. I’ve been reading up on how much fossil fuel we’re burning –or trying to, as the internet is stuffed with disinformation as ever. And a good place to start is the Athabasca tar sands. This sticky gloop in the vast Canadian wilderness is the residue from degraded oil deposits from hundreds of millions of years ago, and the Canadians are now starting to process it for the crude oil still to be found therein. Sadly, the processing is about as environmentally destructive as it’s possible to get, using in itself vast resources, whilst leaving a hideous mess. They heat it with natural gas to get the 10% of usable oil out from the other 90%. It takes about 20% of the energy yield to go through this process.
Currently, they’re extracting about 2.8 million unrefined barrels of the gloop per day, from estimated reserves of 165-170 billion barrels. That is something over 38,000 tonnes of refined oil per day. Or 13 million tonnes per year. And critically, it is being extracted, refined, and shipped out…to be burnt.

Now I’m not sure how you measure it, but apparently- globally- we are emitting something of the order of 37 billion tonnes of CO2 annually. That’s just CO2, not methane or anything else, and it’s from burning fuel, including in cement kilns.
Think about that number.

When politicians here say they’re going to plant some trees to mitigate this, so we can carry on as we are, what would that be like?

Well, if a healthy young stand of trees is grabbing something like 10 tonnes of carbon per year, and turning it into wood, you’d be needing a young growing woodland of 3700 000 000 hectares. That’s 37 million square km, or more than the total surface area of the biggest 3 countries by area…Russia, Canada and the US. Of new forests……you can’t count what forests are already in place. This doesn’t seem very practical, as there’s 148 million km sq of dirt on the planet in total…..including deserts, mountain sides, barren tundra, as well as cities, farmland, and Antarctica. Antarctica alone is approaching 10% of the worlds land mass, although I suppose if the ice keeps melting….. And remember, these new forests would be temporarily capture carbon derived from very very ancient ones.

In other words, we can’t realistically grow enough trees to capture the carbon we’re releasing.

It’s even worse in the UK. We are only little, and we only release about 1% of the worlds CO2. So we’d only need to be planting about 370,000 sq km of new forests to capture our carbon – assuming we’re smart enough to then place it somewhere safe for a few hundred million years again after we’ve grown these trees. This figure is a bit unfortunate as we only have 242, 000 km² last time I looked out of the window, and we were using most of it already.

Get this straight, we are burning accumulated ancient forests at such a colossal pace. Pretending we can even dent the carbon release by planting a few million trees is the most facile lot of tosh you’ve ever heard. When Emma Thompson –or anyone else- says she can fly to a climate protest because she’s planted some trees it is puerile nonsense.

Personally, I suspect as a species we’re not going to stop burning oil and coal and gas anything like fast enough. Looking at the biggest players, the Yanks somehow elected a denialist, the Russians are effectively lumbered with a dictator, and China is rushing headlong into more emissions. We’re going to struggle to recapture the carbon we’ve already released, and the consequences would appear to be about as ugly as anything you can imagine.

Frankly, as a country, we’d be better placed to invest in armed forces, and securing our own borders and food production.

-------------------------

Anton's articles are syndicated exclusively by TFF by kind permission of the author and WMN.

Anton also writes regularly for the Dartmoor Magazine
 

GeorgeK

Member
Location
Leicestershire
Planting trees won't even offset an increasing global population and rising living standards in third world countries, let alone reduce C02! Basically we need unlimited, free, clean energy from fusion and replicators like they have in Star Trek which you put your waste in and they reassemble the molecules into any item you desire. Or we're screwed
 
I don’t want to sound like a record that’s stuck, but there’s a lot of wind about climate change again this week, with delegates flying all over the world to talk about…yup, the evils of flying around

Personally, I suspect as a species we’re not going to stop burning oil and coal and gas anything like fast enough. Looking at the biggest players, the Yanks somehow elected a denialist, the Russians are effectively lumbered with a dictator, and China is rushing headlong into more emissions. We’re going to struggle to recapture the carbon we’ve already released, and the consequences would appear to be about as ugly as anything you can imagine.

Frankly, as a country, we’d be better placed to invest in armed forces, and securing our own borders and food production.

Well it was all going swimmingly until the old chestnut of Russia and China was dragged out.

The Western definition of ‘dictator’ would seem to be any elected leader we disapprove of.

If Putin is a real dictator, he would be able to enforce strict obedience to his authority at the expense of Russians’ personal freedom.

He would be able to do things like:

Declare war. Frequently.
Issue thousands of national security letters (administrative subpoenas with gag orders that enjoin recipients from ever divulging they’ve been served);
Control information at all times under his National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions.
Kidnap, torture and kill anyone, anywhere, at will.
Secretly ban 50,000 citizens from flying without explanation.
Imprison citizens and others without trial.

Since Putin does none of those things and American Presidents do all of them, who is a dictator?

When looking at CO2 emissions per person, China's levels are less than half those of the United States (the next largest source of CO2 emissions) and about one sixth of Qatar (the biggest CO2 emitter per person). It was Trump who announced a pull out from Paris Climate Accord and Russia and China's response to that has been quite measured so far.

As for the armed forces they are of course one of the biggest polluters on the planet, the US military’s carbon bootprint is enormous
 

egbert

Member
Livestock Farmer
Well it was all going swimmingly until the old chestnut of Russia and China was dragged out.

The Western definition of ‘dictator’ would seem to be any elected leader we disapprove of.

If Putin is a real dictator, he would be able to enforce strict obedience to his authority at the expense of Russians’ personal freedom.

He would be able to do things like:

Declare war. Frequently.
Issue thousands of national security letters (administrative subpoenas with gag orders that enjoin recipients from ever divulging they’ve been served);
Control information at all times under his National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions.
Kidnap, torture and kill anyone, anywhere, at will.
Secretly ban 50,000 citizens from flying without explanation.
Imprison citizens and others without trial.

Since Putin does none of those things and American Presidents do all of them, who is a dictator?

When looking at CO2 emissions per person, China's levels are less than half those of the United States (the next largest source of CO2 emissions) and about one sixth of Qatar (the biggest CO2 emitter per person). It was Trump who announced a pull out from Paris Climate Accord and Russia and China's response to that has been quite measured so far.

As for the armed forces they are of course one of the biggest polluters on the planet, the US military’s carbon bootprint is enormous

Putin not effectively a dictator?

Has opponents bumped off wherever he fancies, including in the jolly old UK
Engages in semi-covert ground wars with neighbours he doesn't fancy, or wishes to keep within his control
Openly restricts the travel (not just flying, but any travel) of the whole populations of huge areas he considers sensitive -and some of which happen to contain natural resources he's plundering.
Has changed the constitution so he can remain in power continually.
Widespread use of cyber security, and information control and manipulation to keep citizens in fear of outside, and keep outside on the back foot.


I don't think the above piece denies armed forces have huge carbon footprint. More to the point, it casts doubt on effective measures being within our collective will.
And hence, maybe it's just better to prepare for the inevitable.
 

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