Plastics and more from CO2

George Rebane

The latest chapter in the global climate change hysteria was published last week.  The ‘4^th National Climate Assessment, Vol2’ (NCA4V2) purported to summarize for light readers the dreadful fate that will surely befall all of us were we not to immediately put in place policies that would pauper ALL developed countries.   This is the only reason the others are not willing to commit economic suicide, and instead relegating their earth preserving wrath into versions of public outrage against the US for not willing to fly solo into that mountain of politicized climate science.

NCA4V1 was published last year, and contained the then ignored ‘science’ behind the current version of the hysteria.  Now that NCA4V2, the political summary of the 1,500+ page NCA4, has issued, scores of scientists and analysts, not on the climate change payroll, have again reviewed the purported science, and again concluded that both volumes represent a big nothing-burger at best and fake news at worst.  Specifically, the rebuttals echo the years of identical arguments presented on RR, and can be stated compactly as –

1. The NCA4V1 results are calculated from over two dozen general circulation models (GCMs), none of which agree, and some of them clearly implausible;
2. None of the GCMs “used to compute the effects of human influence on climate have successfully predicted the weather, weather cycles (such as El Niño or La Niña events), or climate.”

We are alerted by Russ Steele (here) to one of the more comprehensive analyses of NCA4 by Andy May (here).  In there May points out that even in the NCA4’s summary, the economic effects of the predicted climate change are minuscule, and most certainly contain no verifiable demonstration that human activity is the controlling cause of the GCMs’ predicted temperature change(s), not that reducing such activities would have any significant effect on the perpetual dynamics of earth’s climate.

OK, so what’s the latest that real technology and science have to say about that dastardly GHG, yes, CO2.  Well, as reported by New Atlas (here) it turns out that a team of scientists at Rutgers University have achieved an artificial photosynthesis breakthrough that promises to allow the manufacture of plastics, resins, and pharmaceuticals “on the cheap”.  The overview of the process is shown in the figure, and the complete story is published in Energy & Environmental Science (Issue 9, 2018 here).

The point to be made here is that the realworld is rapidly giving lie to the climate change hysteria mongers rushing to put us on a one-way road to global governance and its inevitable autocracy cum tyranny.  The real climate change is not what’s being sold to the world’s masses, and accelerating technology continues to produce environment sustaining solutions without government diktats, driven by (gasp), yes, capitalism.  “With patents in hand, the (Rutgers) team will now work toward commercializing the technology.”

Comments

[Todd Juvinall]

You should contact Don Rogers and Brian Hamilton at the local paper and ask them to review this. They are "TB's".

[George Rebane]

ToddJ. 311pm - neither gentleman has a technical background, so all they do is echo the ‘consensus science’ argument.

[Todd Juvinall]

Agreed. But your article could tweak their bias.

[George Rebane]

ToddJ 344pm - Maybe. But from emails I've gotten in the past re my commentaries, I think they are at least occasional readers of RR.

[Scott O]

re Don Rogers - in reading his 11/29 op ed I would say he wouldn't know science if it bit him in the ass. He uses the last 150 years as a basis for the last millennia.

[Bill Tozer]

It’s human nature to think when things are going good it will always be this way, forever and ever, Amen. It is also human nature to think when things are going bad, things are worse than they actually are.—-author unknown.

Which brings us to the Hockey Stick. If one truly believes in the Al Gore’s Global Warming hockey stick, then if things are left the way they are, the planet will only get hotter and hotter and hotter until we all are fried like a Frito and die. The planet will be knocked off it’s axis and hurl us toward the Sun and we are all going to die. Or thrown out into outer space and we are all going to freeze to death. Either way, it’s man made.

Th Climate Mass Hysteria Mob sees only the hockey stick. The skeptics see waves with peaks and valleys. The ‘true believers’ of man made Climate Doom see only the hockey stick with a one way steep trajectory... even to the point of discarding scientic evidence that does not fit their belief system narrative. The ‘deniers’ see a hockey stick alright, which is used as the arm of the pendulum swinging back and forth, back and forth.

https://www.facebook.com/BuckSexton/photos/a.568156706588519/2242374262500080/?type=3&theater

[scenes]

"The Climate Mass Hysteria Mob sees only the hockey stick."

It seems to me that the Climate Mass Hysteria Mob sees an entire set of deep changes to be made to society and this is as good as any reason to implement them.

If the point of the exercise was simply to reduce human-sourced greenhouse gases, some engineering rigor would lead you to different actions.

That's why I can't take them seriously.

That would be a good GeorgeR article. Let's say that CO2 et al represented an existential threat (as opposed to all the other environmental pollutants), what exactly should be done? Wear the oppositions hat for a moment and see where that leads you.

[Bill Tozer]

Scenes @ 7:52 am

Excellent reply, my good man, excellent. You went straight to the bigger picture. You aren’t suggesting that the ends justify the means, are you? Say it ain’t so.

As an off topic (or is it?) follow up question, why have the dangerous Leftinista Socialists never explained that socialism is impossible with open borders?

[George Rebane]

BillT 904pm - probably a Sandbox or Scattershots question since there is no recent topic on governance and/or border security, but welcoming illegal entrants (aka migrants) might be an appropriate thread. But my short answer is that 1) socialists have never even explained (the full course of) socialism, and 2) socialism is a very possible interregnum with open borders (that sacrifice the sovereign nation-state) since that will lead to economic then civil chaos, which promotes the transition to ever larger regional jurisdictions on the way to global governance. What's not to like about socialism with open borders?

[Scott O]

For those out there complaining about the 'fossil fuel' industry money controlling the AGW debate:
"Emerging cities could attract $29 trillion in climate cash"
http://news.trust.org/item/20181129095615-it3l9/
As always - follow the money.