R.O.Cornwall wrote:
1) The internet is not about to fall over.
It fell over in Atlanta for some ISPs for about a week. It was annoying but
hardly catastrophic.
2) Global warming is bogus consensus science - plant more trees! Plankton
etc, would mop up the excess anyway.
That is incorrect. In the U.S., annual fossil fuel energy production
exceeds all of the solar energy converted by photosynthesis in the U.S., by
a factor of two. Even if the U.S. could destroy all cities and highways
plant trees in every square kilometer of open space, it would not "soak up"
current CO2 production, and it would do nothing to reduce the burden of CO2
added to the atmosphere over the last 200 years.
See: Pimentel & Pimentel, p. 21, Fig. 3.1.
As I pointed out in my book, after the world converts to cold fusion, we
might then gradually sequester CO2 in new forests grown in former desert
areas. If these trees were continually cut down and replaced with new trees
before forests matured, so that they continued to sequester CO2 at maximum
levels, each hectare would capture about 5 tons of carbon per year.
Worldwide, it would take 7 years to sequester 1 year of CO2 production (at
peak, late 20th century rates). Production was much lower before 1950, and
ocean plants would also sequester large amounts. Overall, I think it would
take about 300 to 500 year to totally reverse human CO2 production. Note
that human activity has increased the CO2 concentration from 280 ppm before
1750 to 375 ppm today.
>Geez! It's an industry all this doom gloom cr.p. Just tell it like it is.
No one knows exactly how it is. No one can say for sure that we do -- or do
not -- face doom. We cannot dismiss that possibility any more than people
could in 1938 when faced with the Nazis. One thing is as certain now as it
was then: if we do nothing, we WILL be destroyed. Our great grandchildren
will drown in filth, disease and misery, the way they did in New Orleans
last week and the way 2 billion people do every day around the world. What
you saw on television was preview of your children's children's future,
everywhere on earth, if we do not come to our senses and reverse the trends
of civilization.
Countless civilizations have destroyed themselves by neglecting the
environment. Iraq and the surrounding countries used to be known as the
"fertile crescent" having the richest and most abundant agriculture on
earth. Human activity in recorded history has converted most of this area
to toxic desert wasteland. Since 1900, U.S. agriculture has destroyed about
half the topsoil in Iowa, leaving old churches and other old buildings on
islands 20 feet in the air, surrounded by sunken fields. In another century
or two Iowa will look like Iraq. In the last 40 years people have destroyed
30 percent of the world's arable land. (Pimentel, p. 175) Obviously this
cannot go on. A solution must and will be found, but that does not mean it
will be a happy solution. Either we will develop new technology to deal
with these problems in a sane way, or the problems will deal with us -- and
all cities and towns in the U.S. will permanently look like New Orleans did
last week, and the way most of India and Africa look everywhere, every day.
Rotting corpses, starvation, filth and open sewers will become an
inescapable backdrop of daily life for all but a tiny wealthy elite.
- Jed
