For a month now, I have seen on television the record high temperatures being realized in southwestern America and now it is moving towards the plain’s states. But this is not just an American phenomenon. Across the globe, countries are being ravaged by heat waves. The Saharah Desert is moving more southward. The polar ice of both poles is melting at an alarming rate. And today, I heard on NBC news that the water temperature in the Florida Keys is 101!
In the north polar regions, many animals rely upon a polar cap just to survive. The polar bear is the one being hurt the most buy our climate change. What happens in the north pole ice disappears completely? What happens in the Greenland glacier melts away? What happens in the ice shelves of the south pole disappear? What happens is there becomes an ecological disaster!
Since the dawn of industrialization in the 19th century, the world has been moving towards this moment in time. People seem to be either blissfully unaware or just refuse the looming disaster. Our planet survives because of a synergy between all the animals on earth, from the microscopic to the largest of whales. There are whales that eat only plankton. What happens to them when the plankton disappears? What happens when water temperatures rise to high for certain fish and mammals that cannot adjust? And what happens to people when their water supply and food supply dwindles?
People may not believe that survival of the human race as it is, is at stake. We must cut carbon emissions to zero and fast. A scientific project for the year 2030 was 7 years off! That project has been met this year.
Scientist has warned that a rise in the average temperature of the earth but just 2 degrees Fahrenheit will kill off many species of animal that are part of the food chain and thereby cause a food chain calamity. We are a part of that food chain and yet we do very little.
The United States, China, and India are among the biggest contributors to global warning. China is still building coal fired power plants. Coal is a huge polluter!
We need only look at the planet Venus to find out what happens when a planet’s upper atmosphere is so thick with gases that hold in the sun’s heat to see a possible future for our planet.
The answer is really simple. All the peoples of the earth must switch to a power grid of electricity powered by the sun and stop the usage of fossil fuels and nuclear fuels as well. Nuclear power plants are heat polluters because of the great amount of heat they give off. We have a number of carbon zero methods of electrical generation: the sun itself, wind, water of rivers and the water of the oceans. In some places the use of volcanic steam is possible.
Our technology is evolving but it can evolve faster if the demand for is grows faster. The wind farms of today will look nothing like those of the future. The use of solar panels should become a mainstream part of every country’s power grid.
We have two choice and only two choices. We can continue as we are and guarantee a future of desperation world-wide or we can use the technology that is at our hands to change the course of our human existence.
First, I must give credit to the Boston Globe, November 12, 2022, p. A4, for that heading, it being, excepting the setoff word, climate, a direct copy of its subtitle to “War may have put climate goals out of reach.”
I found this article absolutely stunning until I read its contents and then did a bit of research. It amazes me the amount climate change deniers still in the world today. Even more, those in political power who take no, or little action towards changing their nation’s responsibility towards reducing our greenhouse gas epidemic. It must be noted that most scientists, probably an overwhelming number, are agreement over our impended doom from these emissions.
The chart below lists the greenhouses emission by each country’s total in descending order. Notice the United States, which claims to be doing so much, is in the number 2 position! This is entirely unacceptable. Number 3 India is an interesting case that along with its status on this chart, it also has the ignominious reputation of have amount the 10 most polluted cities in the world, mixed in are Pakistan and other 3rd world countries.
Conservative Americans are amount the first to deny global warning and liberals are shouting about it. But in truth, it is the liberals who are failing the most simply because most compromise on issues where holding your ground is called for.
For the United States, there needs to be a much more concerted effort to reduce CO2 emissions by about 80% and well before 2031, the deadline. The United States cannot be a world leader in this fight when it comes in 2nd in total emissions worldwide. But the above chart is only referencing CO2 pollution. The chart below is referencing Methane pollution for the purpose of this discussion. I have not been able, thus far, to find a country-by-country accounting for this sort of pollution. In the United States, however, two of the most prolific forms of this comes for natural gas leakage at drilling sites and their pipelines, and also from fracking where the search for oil always finds a collection of natural gas which is supposed to be burned off but that only adds to the CO2 pollution.
For at least 30 years now, Europeans have been taking the problem with pollution seriously. Many cities, excepting England, have taken the tack of making their inner cities less friendly to automobiles, and in some cases, banning them altogether. In place of automobiles, they have doubled down of rail transportation and well set out bicycle ways.
Such tactics in the United States would be met with heavy opposition and politicians bent on saving their political butts would bend to that opposition rather than doing the right thing.
Consider, there is no city in the United States that can properly handle 4 lanes of traffic entering its limits with any ease at all, leading to a 40-mile commute taking as much as 1.5 hours or more. All cities on the East Coast plus Chicago, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, and a host of other cities cannot continue to maintain these roads and the problems that go with them for much longer.
Consider that the average length of a railroad coach is 67′ and that of an automobile almost 15′. Simple math tells us that even the 4 automobiles, were each carrying 3 individuals totaling 12 total is a far cry for the 60 to 100 passengers a single railroad car can carry. A rapid transit car can carry at least 50 people, light rail cars and buses the same. Highway maintenance on average, costs $14,500 per year. By shutting down one lane of a 4-lane highway in both directions for 25 miles saves $750k per year. Now, take the New Jersey turnpike which extends 41 miles from the Garden State parkway to Exit 7, Bordentown and is 8 lanes wide. Remove the 4 inner lanes in each direction, a total of 328 miles, and you have a total savings of $4.7 million a year. New Jersey has an exemplary commuter rail system as well-as an extensive bus system.
In probably every city their existing commuter rail, rapid transit, light rail and buses systems would have to be both modernized and expanded first. But this would give the public several years to plan on the eventual shut down of highway traffic lanes.
Such a bold step forward would cost in the 10s of trillions of dollars to properly implement. Couple that with all cities denying entry to their city center by private automobiles, another public screaming point, and inner-city pollution declines dramatically.
Right now, when it comes to public transportation, the United States is little more than a third-world country. Countries like Italy, Germany, Holland, France and a host of others, put the U.S. to shame in their approach to public transportation. Even China, the world’s greatest polluter, has a rail transportation superior to ours.
Why is this true. First, it America’s continuing love affair with the automobile, next, politicians of all stripes failing to inform the public of what should, by now, be painfully obvious, global warming is happening, and at an ever-increasing rate, just ask Floridians.
There is, however, one form of public transportation, which is one of the largest polluters in the U.S., the nation’s airlines! How do we reduce that? Simple, convince Americans to take AMTRAK on medium length journeys over air travel. This, of course, will require a heavy investment in AMTRAK but the rewards far outweigh the costs. Already, the Northeast Corridor of AMTRAK, from Boston to Washington DC, is heavily traveled by businessmen as well as private travelers. But routes such as Cleveland to Chicago, Atlanta to Miami, Dallas to Houston, Chicago to St. Louis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Detroit.
Americans, living near to large cities, must learn a new way of getting around or be culpable for getting the globe to “point of no return,” that point where warming accelerates at a rate no one can stop. Is that nine years hence? I do not know but it seems many scientists are thinking that way. Who are you going to believe, your next-door neighbor, you politicians, or the scientists?
I am only showing the pollution type below, that of “particulate matter” and in this case, that of plastics.
On final note on this. When I was taking a course in Astrophysics at Harvard University, my professor made a point of saying that anything which produces heat adds to global warming. That polluter is nuclear power and everything else which has the side effect of producing heat.
There are three generations whose ability to impact positive change in the United States has either gone to zero or is on that track. I’m a baby boomer, born in 1949, which means the majority of my generation is either retired of contemplating it. The generation ahead of us has, for the most part, embraced their retirement and only gives thought about our country during national elections. Then there is the generation right behind me. Their age range is about 30 to 55. The youngest end still has a chance to make strong positive changes while the older end, if they are not actively engage in public policy, are not likely to join in.
The future of our country lies in the hand of those who are now in high school and country. We need them to be as well-educated and actively involved in government as possible. History teaches us that a large portion of discoveries, inventions, and activism happens to this age group as soon as they finish their education. But my generation, and those generations around mine, are leaving a legacy which is in desperate need of a large influx of new ideas. The ideas of those presently in power are simply not working to a large degree.
What will our work look like 50 years from now? First of all, recent history has shown our planets oceans have risen enough that ocean-front cities are experiencing flooding at ever increasing levels. My own city, Boston, Massachusetts, has just this last winter seen flooding of city streets with water from the ocean that has entirely overwhelmed the ability of the city’s storm drains to remove these waters. That the level of our oceans in continuing to rise in indisputable. What will our children have to do?
First of all, they are going to need to occupy and become a majority of every country’s leadership and embrace the fact of global warming an man’s contribution to it. Their’s will be the challenge to improve and expand upon renewable energy sources which do not contribute to global warming: wind farms, solar panels, geo-thermal, and water both from the planets rivers but also from the ocean, a well-know but entirely undeveloped source of energy.
efully, the internal combustion engine will be mostly, if not entirely, obsolete worldwide. It will have been supplanted by electric automobile. But to do that effectively three things have to happen: first, batteries capable of operating automobiles at highway speeds must be good for 450 miles. At present 200-250 it about the best. Secondly, the price of these automobiles must be brought into line with what the average consumer can afford. With an average price tag of around $40,000 at the low end, such cars are simply out of the range of the average consumer. But with such cars available, cities, towns, and villages are going to have to accommodate charging stations in their public parking lots, at a reasonable fee of course. And lastly, as the price of oil rises at first, such demand should fall with the advent of the wide-spread electric automobile. This in turn should mean lower diesel fuel prices which will keep our trucking and railroad industries viable. But even their, the Hybrid diesel engine must come into wide use and still have the ability to haul heavy loads.
I believe that in 50 years the most notable global crises will be a food shortage. But at the root of this will be two things: expanding deserts and extreme water shortages worldwide, even in the United States. One solute to the water problem is the desalinization process of turning ocean water into fresh water. Right now such costs are prohibitive but that does not mean with our young people and their new idea, the cost of such a process cannot be reduced to where the economics of desalinated ocean allows the flow of huge quantities of water to feed the world’s farmland. Man can develop friendly ecosystems but he has to be willing to pay for the initial costs. My generation is not so inclined but hopefully the next two generations will see this differently.
These three things, energy, food and water, are guaranteed to be at the root of future wars if we do not start acting in a positive manner now and in the immediate future.
If you happen to read this and are between the ages of 15 and 30, I do not envy the challenge ahead of you but I believe that when you see the enormity of our failures you will take on the challenge and succeed like we never have.
This morning I told my wife our next car will be a hybrid. Knowing me, you would have thought I would have gone that route much earlier. The trouble is my gender. I’m a guy and you know how we like our cars to have a big engine. Well, two years ago, when I went to buy a new Ford Fusion, I asked for their V-6, previously the most powerful engine they offered for such cars. The salesman informed me that Ford no longer had a V-6 version and sold me on a turbo charged 4-cylinder engine. It got only slightly better gas mileage than my previous car and allow me to believe that I had the best engine available. I have altered my thinking. I am an excellent recycler but have not taken other issues to heart as I need.
I am a baby boomer which means I was raised in the era of muscle cars and cars we derisively, even then, called tanks. Most often we were referring to the big Buicks and Cadillacs. You need only go back to the 1960s and 70s to see the truth of such a statement. Then in 1974 OPEC came in to being, the U.S. immediately had a gasoline crisis and suddenly car manufacturers were shedding those tanks for smaller cars. But if you look more closely at such cars they were only marginally more fuel efficient than their predecessors. The requirement for better fuel efficiency was years away although new strict emission standards were put into effect.
But as the years passed, people forgot their history, and the era of the SUV entered. I named the Japanese versions of the crossover SUVs, the Acura MDX, the Infiniti QX70, and the Lexus RX as “a penis on wheels.” SUVs have exploded in the U.S. and both Japanese and U.S. manufacturers have done well with such vehicles. The problem is simple. Most SUVs are in the truck category which makes them exempt for two federal regulations, emission standards for automobiles and fuel standards. Detroit and Tokyo found the loophole and exploited it. Nothing has been done to close this loophole. And the most baffling product to come out of Detroit was General Motors version of the military HUM-V which the dubbed the Hummer.
This brings me the latest issue to rear its ugly head. The United States has the largest coal reserves on the planet and Pres. Donald Trump wants coal to be king again. In the short term, probably very short term, this would breath economic life back into the coal regions of the United States. But the trade-off is painfully obvious. Coal fired plants push extremely large amounts of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. The former creates a warming blanket in the earth upper atmosphere while the latter creates acid rain.
A very recent University of New Hampshire study of sea levels expects there to be a 1 to 1.5-foot rise in sea levels by 2050 (Boston Globe, March 31, 2018, p. 4). Another study of the polar ice caps, and in particular the North Pole:
“The Arctic climate is changing rapidly, breaking at least a dozen major records in the past three years. Sea ice is disappearing, air temperatures are soaring, permafrost is thawing and glaciers are melting. The swift warming is altering the jet stream and polar vortex, prolonging heat waves, droughts, deep freezes and heavy rains worldwide.” (Francis, Jennifer A.; Scientific American, April 2018, p. 50)
I find it alarming the American conservatives are so caught up in their political ideology that they cannot listen to the well-reasoned and heavily researched conclusions of the highly respected scientist who have sounded the alarm. Many have labeled these findings as pseudo-science and that their findings are questionable. Such a statement is difficult, if not impossible, to defend given the overwhelming majority of scientists around the world agree with these findings.
The hard fact is that we are bequeathing our children and grandchildren a planet in its death throws. We could easily be looking at widespread famine, large new deserts, and a world in which people go to war over food and water.
In 1960 a woman named Rachel Carson published a book named Silent Spring in which she predicted everything that is happening today. Now, scientists everywhere are sounding the alarm. The question is an easy one: Why is the Congress of the United States deaf to these warnings?
You Didn't Ask But..... 