Greenhouse Effect Quotes

Isn't it sad that you can tell people that the ozone layer is being depleted, the forests are being cut down, the deserts are advancing steadily, that the greenhouse effect will raise the sea level 200 feet, that overpopulation is choking us, that pollution is killing us, that nuclear war may destroy us - and they yawn and settle back for a comfortable nap. But tell them that the Martians are landing, and they scream and run.

That night I kept thinking about Pandora's box. I wondered why someone would put a good thing as Hope in a box with sickness and kidnapping and murder. It was fortunate that it was there, though. If not, people would have the birds of sadness nesting in their hair all the time, because of nuclear war and the greenhouse effect and bombs and stabbings and lunatics. There must have been another box with all the good things in it, like sunshine and love and trees and all that. Who had the good fortune to open that one, and was there one bad thing down there in the bottom of the good box? Maybe it was Worry. Even when everything seems fine and good, I worry that something will go wrong and change everything.

All these beefy Caucasians with guns. Get enough of them together,looking for the America they always believed they'd grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain't what it used to be. The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers. But as long as you have that four-wheel-drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream. In twenty years, ten million white people will converge on the north pole and park their bagos there. The low-grade waste heat of their thermodynamically intense lifestyle will turn the crystalline icescape pliable and treacherous. It will melt a hole through the polar icecap, and all that metal will sink to the bottom, sucking the biomass down with it.

An image suddenly loomed in his mind: the greenhouse effect. Yes. The Earth is a gigantic greenhouse. With us planted here millions of years ago by aliens. Soon they’ll be back for the harvest.

The greenhouse effect I am knowing; To protest right now I am going, But oh my gee whiz, I'm going that is, If only it ever stops snowing.

One thing about the greenhouse effect that makes it so difficult for some of us to take seriously is that it’s invisible.

The greenhouse effect, he thinks. The hole in the ozone. When the ice in Antarctica goes, we’ll all be drowned.

The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers.

According to Project Drawdown, four of the most effective strategies for mitigating global warming are reducing food waste, educating girls, providing family planning and reproductive healthcare, and collectively shifting to a plant-rich diet. The benefits of these advancements extend far beyond the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, and their primary cost is our collective effort.

It has taken about four billion years for living systems, mostly in the sea, to transform the lifeless ingredients of early Earth into the Eden that makes our lives possible, and less than a century for us to destabilize those rhythms.

Well, it's been obvious for centuries that capitalism is going to self-destruct: that's just inherent in the logic of system―because to the extent that a system is capitalist, that means maximizing short-term profit and not being concerned with long-term effects. In fact, the motto of capitalism was, "private vices, public benefits"―somehow it's gonna work out. Well, it doesn't work out, and it's never going to work out: if you're maximizing short-term profits without concern for the long-term effects, you are going to destroy the environment, for one thing. I mean, you can pretend up to a certain point that the world has infinite resources and that it's an infinite wastebasket―but at some point you're going to run into the reality, which is that that isn't true. Well, we're running into that reality now―and it's very profound. Take something like combustion: anything you burn, no matter what it is, is increasing the greenhouse effect―and this was known to scientists decades ago, they knew exactly what was happening. But in a capitalist system, you don't care about long-term effects like that, what you have to care about is tomorrow's profits. So the greenhouse effect has been building for years, and there's no known technological fix on the horizon―there may not be any answer to this, it could be so serious that there's no remedy. That's possible, and then human beings will turn out to have been a lethal mutation, which maybe destroys a lot of life with us. Or it could be that there's some way of fixing it, or some ameliorating way―nobody knows.

And when the ocean starts rising to the level of whatever building they're in and whatever floor they're on as they write their editorials, yeah, then they'll agree that there's a greenhouse effect and we'd better do something about it. Sure, no matter how lunatic people are, at some point or other they're going to realize that these problems exist, and they are approaching fast. It's just that the next thing they'll ask is, "So how can we make some money off it?" In fact, anybody in business who didn't ask that question would find themselves out of business—just because that's the way that capitalist institutions work. I mean, if some executive came along and said," I'm not going to look at it that way, I'm going to do things differently," well, they'd get replaced by someone who would try to make more money off it―because these are simply institutional facts, these are facts about the structure of the institutions. And if you don't like them, and I don't, then you're going to have to change the institutions. There really is no other way.

Imagine the problem is not physical. Imagine the problem has never been physical, that it is not biodiversity, it is not the ozone layer, it is not the greenhouse effect, the whales, the old-growth forest, the loss of jobs, the crack in the ghetto, the abortions, the tongue in the mouth, the diseases stalking everywhere as love goes on unconcerned. Imagine the problem is not some syndrome of our society that can be solved by commissions or laws or a redistribution of what we call wealth. Imagine that it goes deeper, right to the core of what we call our civilization and that no one outside of ourselves can effect real change, that our civilization, our governments are sick and that we are mentally ill and spiritually dead and that all our issues and crises are symptoms of this deeper sickness. Imagine the problem is not physical and no amount of driving, no amount of road will deal with the problem. Imagine that the problem is not that we are powerless or that we are victims but that we have lost the fire and belief and courage to act. We hear whispers of the future but we slap our hands against our ears, we catch glimpses but turn our faces swiftly aside.

The size of the greenhouse forcing is estimated, at this point, to be 2.5 w/m2. A miniature Christmas light gives off about four tenths of a watt of energy, mostly in the form of heat, so that, in effect (as Sophie supposedly explained to Connor), we have covered the earth with tiny bulbs, six for every square meter. These bulbs are burning twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, year in and year out.

When you look carefully at the infrared spectrum of the Earth, you discover the minor constituents of the air. In addition to water vapor, there’s carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and other gases that absorb the heat that the Earth tries to radiate away to space at night. These gases warm the planet. Without them, the Earth would everywhere be below the freezing point of water. You’ve discovered this world’s greenhouse effect.

My reading of the evidence is that there is a mild greenhouse effect in the direction human beings have always wanted—warmer—and a significant fertilizer effect in the direction human beings have always wanted—more plant life. I believe that the public discussion is prejudiced by an assumption that human impacts are bad, which causes us to fear and disapprove of the idea of affecting climate, even though climate is an inherently changing phenomenon that has no naturally perfect state.

I would like to draw three main conclusions. Number one, the earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements. Number two, the global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect. And number three, our computer climate simulations indicate that the greenhouse effect is already large enough to begin to effect the probability of extreme events such as summer heat waves.

When the Earth was only about a third of its eventual size, it was probably already beginning to form an atmosphere, mostly of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, methane and sulphur. Hardly the sort of stuff that we would associate with life, and yet from this noxious stew life formed. Carbon dioxide is a powerful greenhouse gas. This was a good thing, because the Sun was significantly dimmer back then. Had we not had the benefit of a greenhouse effect, the Earth might well have frozen over permanently25, and life might never have got a toehold. But somehow life did. For the next 500 million years the young Earth continued to be pelted relentlessly by comets, meteorites and other galactic debris, which brought water to fill the oceans and the components necessary for the successful formation of life. It was a singularly hostile environment, and yet somehow life got going. Some tiny bag of chemicals twitched and became animate. We were on our way. Four billion years later, people began to wonder how it had all happened.

Another common recommendation is to turn lights off when you leave a room, but lighting accounts for only 3% of household energy use, so even if you used no lighting at all in your house you would save only a fraction of a metric ton of carbon emissions. Plastic bags have also been a major focus of concern, but even on very generous estimates, if you stopped using plastic bags entirely you'd cut out 10kg CO2eq per year, which is only 0.4% of your total emissions. Similarly, the focus on buying locally produced goods is overhyped: only 10% of the carbon footprint of food comes from transportation whereas 80% comes from production, so what type of food you buy is much more important than whether that food is produced locally or internationally. Cutting out red meat and dairy for one day a week achieves a greater reduction in your carbon footprint than buying entirely locally produced food. In fact, exactly the same food can sometimes have higher carbon footprint if it's locally grown than if it's imported: one study found that the carbon footprint from locally grown tomatoes in northern Europe was five times as great as the carbon footprint from tomatoes grown in Spain because the emissions generated by heating and lighting greenhouses dwarfed the emissions generated by transportation.

And some of us can experience the green-house effect when our feelings and desires are being suppressed—they only grow stronger. In the process our wants tend to change into needs...and when our needs are suppressed, they may bring forth desperation, and desperation always breeds chaos!

Crutzen wrote up his idea in a short essay, “Geology of Mankind,” that ran in Nature. “It seems appropriate to assign the term ‘Anthropocene’ to the present, in many ways human-dominated, geological epoch,” he observed. Among the many geologic-scale changes people have effected, Crutzen cited the following: • Human activity has transformed between a third and a half of the land surface of the planet. • Most of the world’s major rivers have been dammed or diverted. • Fertilizer plants produce more nitrogen than is fixed naturally by all terrestrial ecosystems. • Fisheries remove more than a third of the primary production of the oceans’ coastal waters. • Humans use more than half of the world’s readily accessible fresh water runoff. Most significantly, Crutzen said, people have altered the composition of the atmosphere. Owing to a combination of fossil fuel combustion and deforestation, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air has risen by forty percent over the last two centuries, while the concentration of methane, an even more potent greenhouse gas, has more than doubled. “Because of these anthropogenic emissions,” Crutzen wrote, the global climate is likely to “depart significantly from natural behavior for many millennia to come.

All these beefy Caucasians with guns! Get enough of them together, looking for the America they always believed they’d grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain’t what it used to be. The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers.

...trying to predict whether global warming will moderate the next ice age is not only impossible but irrelevant. It doesn't help us get through the next few centuries. And one can only imagine our future, shivering, ice age descendants cursing us for leaving them no fossil fuel to create a global warming "greenhouse" effect when one is really needed.

About 4.6 billion years ago, a great swirl of gas and dust some 15 billion miles across accumulated in space where we are now and began to aggregate. Virtually all of it—99.9 percent of the mass of the solar system—went to make the Sun. Out of the floating material that was left over, two microscopic grains floated close enough together to be joined by electrostatic forces. This was the moment of conception for our planet. All over the inchoate solar system, the same was happening. Colliding dust grains formed larger and larger clumps. Eventually the clumps grew large enough to be called planetesimals. As these endlessly bumped and collided, they fractured or split or recombined in endless random permutations, but in every encounter there was a winner, and some of the winners grew big enough to dominate the orbit around which they traveled. It all happened remarkably quickly. To grow from a tiny cluster of grains to a baby planet some hundreds of miles across is thought to have taken only a few tens of thousands of years. In just 200 million years, possibly less, the Earth was essentially formed, though still molten and subject to constant bombardment from all the debris that remained floating about. At this point, about 4.5 billion years ago, an object the size of Mars crashed into Earth, blowing out enough material to form a companion sphere, the Moon. Within weeks, it is thought, the flung material had reassembled itself into a single clump, and within a year it had formed into the spherical rock that companions us yet. Most of the lunar material, it is thought, came from the Earth’s crust, not its core, which is why the Moon has so little iron while we have a lot. The theory, incidentally, is almost always presented as a recent one, but in fact it was first proposed in the 1940s by Reginald Daly of Harvard. The only recent thing about it is people paying any attention to it. When Earth was only about a third of its eventual size, it was probably already beginning to form an atmosphere, mostly of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, methane, and sulfur. Hardly the sort of stuff that we would associate with life, and yet from this noxious stew life formed. Carbon dioxide is a powerful greenhouse gas. This was a good thing because the Sun was significantly dimmer back then. Had we not had the benefit of a greenhouse effect, the Earth might well have frozen over permanently, and life might never have gotten a toehold. But somehow life did. For the next 500 million years the young Earth continued to be pelted relentlessly by comets, meteorites, and other galactic debris, which brought water to fill the oceans and the components necessary for the successful formation of life. It was a singularly hostile environment and yet somehow life got going. Some tiny bag of chemicals twitched and became animate. We were on our way. Four billion years later people began to wonder how it had all happened. And it is there that our story next takes us.

Hence there are many things that governments, corporations and individuals can do to avoid climate change. But to be effective, they must be done on a global level. When it comes to climate, countries are just not sovereign. They are at the mercy of actions taken by people on the other side of the planet. The Republic of Kiribati – an islands nation in the Pacific Ocean – could reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to zero and nevertheless be submerged under the rising waves if other countries don’t follow suit. Chad could put a solar panel on every roof in the country and yet become a barren desert due to the irresponsible environmental policies of distant foreigners. Even powerful nations such as China and Japan are not ecologically sovereign. To protect Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo from destructive floods and typhoons, the Chinese and Japanese will have to convince the Russian and American governments to abandon their ‘business as usual’ approach.

The principal energy sources of our present industrial civilization are the so-called fossil fuels. We burn wood and oil, coal and natural gas, and, in the process, release waste gases, principally CO2, into the air. Consequently, the carbon dioxide content of the Earth’s atmosphere is increasing dramatically. The possibility of a runaway greenhouse effect suggests that we have to be careful: Even a one- or two-degree rise in the global temperature can have catastrophic consequences. In the burning of coal and oil and gasoline, we are also putting sulfuric acid into the atmosphere. Like Venus, our stratosphere even now has a substantial mist of tiny sulfuric acid droplets. Our major cities are polluted with noxious molecules. We do not understand the long-term effects of our course of action. But we have also been perturbing the climate in the opposite sense. For hundreds of thousands of years human beings have been burning and cutting down forests and encouraging domestic animals to graze on and destroy grasslands. Slash-and-burn agriculture, industrial tropical deforestation and overgrazing are rampant today. But forests are darker than grasslands, and grasslands are darker than deserts. As a consequence, the amount of sunlight that is absorbed by the ground has been declining, and by changes in the land use we are lowering the surface temperature of our planet. Might this cooling increase the size of the polar ice cap, which, because it is bright, will reflect still more sunlight from the Earth, further cooling the planet, driving a runaway albedo* effect? Our lovely blue planet, the Earth, is the only home we know. Venus is too hot. Mars is too cold. But the Earth is just right, a heaven for humans. After all, we evolved here. But our congenial climate may be unstable. We are perturbing our poor planet in serious and contradictory ways. Is there any danger of driving the environment of the Earth toward the planetary Hell of Venus or the global ice age of Mars? The simple answer is that nobody knows. The study of the global climate, the comparison of the Earth with other worlds, are subjects in their earliest stages of development. They are fields that are poorly and grudgingly funded. In our ignorance, we continue to push and pull, to pollute the atmosphere and brighten the land, oblivious of the fact that the long-term consequences are largely unknown.

In the eighteenth century, there was said to be a man who had read every book written. But nowadays, if you read one book a day, it would take you many tens of thousands of years to read through the books in a national library. By which time, many more books would have been written. This has meant that no one person can be the master of more than a small corner of human knowledge. People have to specialise, in narrower and narrower fields. This is likely to be a major limitation in the future. We certainly cannot continue, for long, with the exponential rate of growth of knowledge that we have had in the last 300 years. An even greater limitation and danger for future generations is that we still have the instincts, and in particular the aggressive impulses, that we had in caveman days. Aggression, in the form of subjugating or killing other men and taking their women and food, has had definite survival advantage up to the present time. But now it could destroy the entire human race and much of the rest of life on Earth. A nuclear war is still the most immediate danger, but there are others, such as the release of a genetically engineered virus. Or the greenhouse effect becoming unstable.

Adding carbon dioxide, or any other greenhouse gas, to the atmosphere by, say, burning fossil fuels or leveling forests is, in the language of climate science, an anthropogenic forcing. Since preindustrial times, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen by roughly a third, from 280 to 378 parts per million. During the same period, the concentration of methane has more than doubled, from .78 to 1.76 parts per million. Scientists measure forcings in terms of watts per square meter, or w/m2, by which they mean that a certain number of watts have been added (or, in the case of a negative forcing, like aerosols, subtracted) for every single square meter of the earth’s surface. The size of the greenhouse forcing is estimated, at this point, to be 2.5 w/m2. A miniature Christmas light gives off about four tenths of a watt of energy, mostly in the form of heat, so that, in effect (as Sophie supposedly explained to Connor), we have covered the earth with tiny bulbs, six for every square meter. These bulbs are burning twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, year in and year out. If greenhouse gases were held constant at today’s levels, it is estimated that it would take several decades for the full impact of the forcing that is already in place to be felt. This is because raising the earth’s temperature involves not only warming the air and the surface of the land but also melting sea ice, liquefying glaciers, and, most significant, heating the oceans, all processes that require tremendous amounts of energy. (Imagine trying to thaw a gallon of ice cream or warm a pot of water using an Easy-Bake oven.) The delay that is built into the system is, in a certain sense, fortunate. It enables us, with the help of climate models, to foresee what is coming and therefore to prepare for it. But in another sense it is clearly disastrous, because it allows us to keep adding CO2 to the atmosphere while fobbing the impacts off on our children and grandchildren.

The lumbering bagos and topheavy four-wheelers form a moving slalom course for Hiro on his black motorcycle. All these beefy Caucasians with guns! Get enough of them together, looking for the America they always believed they'd grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain't what it used to be. The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers. But as long as you have that fourwheel- drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream. In twenty years, ten million white people will converge on the north pole and park their bagos there. The low-grade waste heat of their thermodynamically intense lifestyle will turn the crystalline icescape pliable and treacherous. It will melt a hole through the polar icecap, and all that metal will sink to the bottom, sucking the biomass down with it.

About 4.6 billion years ago, a great swirl of gas and dust some 24 billion kilometres across accumulated in space where we are now and began to aggregate. Virtually all of it – 99.9 per cent of the mass of the solar system21 – went to make the Sun. Out of the floating material that was left over, two microscopic grains floated close enough together to be joined by electrostatic forces. This was the moment of conception for our planet. All over the inchoate solar system, the same was happening. Colliding dust grains formed larger and larger clumps. Eventually the clumps grew large enough to be called planetesimals. As these endlessly bumped and collided, they fractured or split or recombined in endless random permutations, but in every encounter there was a winner, and some of the winners grew big enough to dominate the orbit around which they travelled. It all happened remarkably quickly. To grow from a tiny cluster of grains to a baby planet some hundreds of kilometres across is thought to have taken only a few tens of thousands of years. In just 200 million years, possibly less22, the Earth was essentially formed, though still molten and subject to constant bombardment from all the debris that remained floating about. At this point, about 4.4 billion years ago, an object the size of Mars crashed into the Earth, blowing out enough material to form a companion sphere, the Moon. Within weeks, it is thought, the flung material had reassembled itself into a single clump, and within a year it had formed into the spherical rock that companions us yet. Most of the lunar material, it is thought, came from the Earth’s crust, not its core23, which is why the Moon has so little iron while we have a lot. The theory, incidentally, is almost always presented as a recent one, but in fact it was first proposed in the 1940s by Reginald Daly of Harvard24. The only recent thing about it is people paying any attention to it. When the Earth was only about a third of its eventual size, it was probably already beginning to form an atmosphere, mostly of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, methane and sulphur. Hardly the sort of stuff that we would associate with life, and yet from this noxious stew life formed. Carbon dioxide is a powerful greenhouse gas. This was a good thing, because the Sun was significantly dimmer back then. Had we not had the benefit of a greenhouse effect, the Earth might well have frozen over permanently25, and life might never have got a toehold. But somehow life did. For the next 500 million years the young Earth continued to be pelted relentlessly by comets, meteorites and other galactic debris, which brought water to fill the oceans and the components necessary for the successful formation of life. It was a singularly hostile environment, and yet somehow life got going. Some tiny bag of chemicals twitched and became animate. We were on our way. Four billion years later, people began to wonder how it had all happened. And it is there that our story next takes us.

Even the most recent IPCC report, dire as it is, spells out solutions of a sort. There are ways to mitigate things, there are ways to fix them. Ban fossil fuels. Stop eating meat and dairy; according to an IPCC report from 2014, animal agriculture contributes at least as much to global greenhouse gas emissions as the combined exhaust of all the world’s vehicles. What’s that you say? Too difficult? Can’t switch to an oil-free economy overnight? Okay, here’s something that’s effective, simple, and as convenient as a visit to the nearest outpatient clinic: stop breeding. Every child you squeeze out is a Godzilla-sized carbon bootprint stretching into the future—and after all, isn’t 7.6 billion of us enough? Are your genes really that special? If even half the men on the planet got vasectomies, I bet we could buy ourselves a century—and as an added bonus, child-free people not only tend to have higher disposable income than the sprogged, they’re also statistically happier.

The IPCC explicitly addressed—and rejected—the Marshall Institute argument for blaming the Sun. The upper limits on solar variability, they explained, are “small compared with greenhouse forcing and even if such a change occurred over the next few decades, it would be swamped by the enhanced greenhouse effect.”75

the coalition of Latin American and African governments making the case for climate debt actually stresses difference, zeroing in on the cruel contrast between those who caused the climate crisis (the developed world) and those who are suffering its worst effects (the developing world). Justin Lin, chief economist at the World Bank, puts the equation bluntly: “About seventy-five to eighty percent” of the damages caused by global warming “will be suffered by developing countries, although they only contribute about one-third of green-house gases.

Some of the world’s biggest banks and investor groups have swung behind a pledge to raise $200bn by the end of next year to combat climate change. In a move the UN said was unprecedented, leading insurers, pension funds and banks have joined forces to help channel the money to projects that will help poorer countries deal with the effect of global warming and cut reliance on fossil fuels. The announcement came at the start of a UN climate summit in New York aimed at bolstering momentum for a global agreement to lower planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions due to be signed in Paris at the end of 2015. “Change is in the air,” said UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon. “Today’s climate summit has shown an entirely new, co-operative global approach to climate change.” The summit opened with business and government pledges to make cities greener, create a renewable energy “corridor” in Africa and rein in the clearing of forests for palm oil plantations. The private sector’s contributions marked a “major departure” from past climate summits, the UN said, adding in a statement that financial groups “had never previously acted together on climate change at such a large scale”. One obstacle to the Paris agreement is developing countries’ insistence that richer nations must fulfil pledges made nearly five years ago to raise $100bn a year by 2020 for climate action.

you’ve done a bit of chemistry, you might recall that sodium carbonate reacts with CO2 to create sodium bicarbonate (baking soda). Well, in Klaus’s machines there is a hanging gallery of strands of a ‘sorbent’ resin – impregnated sodium carbonate – which react with the CO2 in the air flowing over them, the captured CO2 helping to create baking soda. Capturing CO2, though, is only one half of the job. Somehow you’ve got to get the CO2 off the sorbent if you want the apparatus to be reusable and therefore cost-effective. Restocking the whole shebang with a new supply of sorbent resin makes things prohibitively expensive and energy hungry. This is where Lackner’s resin comes into its own, by doing something that even Klaus admits is counterintuitive. In the presence of water the resin changes its affinity for CO2, shedding its recently collected bounty. The ‘collection’ reaction takes a reverse step. Sodium bicarbonate becomes sodium carbonate. What this means is that if Klaus pumps water vapour into his machines, CO2 from the sorbent will ‘fall off’ the resin, allowing the whole apparatus to be reused. Condensing that vapour allows the captured CO2 to bubble out the top, in the same way CO2 bubbles rise to the top of champagne. There’s a kind of sweet poetry to one greenhouse gas (water vapour) collecting another (CO2). After all, one of the problems with CO2 in the atmosphere is that it encourages more water vapour into the air, thereby amplifying the warming effect. Here, thanks to the chemistry of Lackner’s sorbent, the opposite is happening. Water vapour is being used as part of a process to take CO2 out of the air.

Regardless of where they strike, large asteroids would boil seas, fill the air with dust and acidic compounds, and perhaps induce carbon dioxide to cook off out of the rocks and into the air, triggering a strong greenhouse effect, all of which in turn would change the world’s climate faster than living things could adjust to. Giant impactors could create enormous waves in the ocean and in the atmosphere that could upset weather patterns around the world for extended periods. Perhaps asteroids have also helped unleash Earth’s internal heat and caused subsequent volcanism.

Venus is kept that way by a thick, dense atmosphere that’s full of carbon dioxide. It’s the greenhouse effect gone wild—runaway, as it is oft described. In fact, the models of climate change here on Earth were developed in part by scientists, James Hansen especially, who were studying the atmosphere of Venus. They observed that visible light passes the atmosphere, hits the surface, and then is reradiated as heat that is then trapped by carbon dioxide. This process has a big influence on whether or not a planet is habitable.

Complexity is a delicate business. Chemical and molecular bonds require a particular range of temperature in which to operate. Liquid water exists over a mere one hundred degree range on the centigrade scale. Even Earth-based life is concentrated towards particular climatic zones. The temperature at the Earth's surface keeps it tantalizingly balanced between recurrent ice ages and the roasting that results from a runaway greenhouse effect. Very slight differences in the size of our planet or its distance from the Sun would have tipped the scales irretrievably towards one or other of these fates. That such a delicate balance, which is essentially the outcome of those random symmetry-breakings that we discussed in Chapter 6, should be so crucial suggests that natural complexity may be a rather rare thing in the Universe.

Oxygen comprises 21% of the Earth’s atmosphere. If oxygen were 25%, fires would erupt spontaneously. If it were 15%, human beings would suffocate.17 •​If the carbon dioxide level in our atmosphere were higher than it is now, a runaway greenhouse effect would develop. We would all burn up. If the level were lower, plants would not be able to maintain efficient photosynthesis. We would all suffocate.18 •​If the centrifugal force of planetary movements did not precisely match the gravitational forces, nothing could be held in orbit around the sun.19 •​If Jupiter were not in its current orbit, the Earth would be bombarded with space material. Jupiter’s gravitational field acts like a cosmic vacuum cleaner attracting asteroids and comets that might otherwise strike the Earth.20 •​If the rotation of the Earth took longer than 24 hours, temperature differences would be too great between night and day. If the period were shorter, atmospheric wind velocities would be too great.21 •​If the twenty-three-degree axis tilt of the Earth were altered slightly, surface temperatures would be too extreme.22 •​If the moon’s gravitational pull on the Earth were much greater, tidal effects on the oceans, atmosphere, and the Earth’s rotational period would be too severe for life. If it were less, orbital changes would cause climatic instabilities which would prohibit life.23

Even if the world were to reduce greenhouse gas emissions quickly, elevated levels of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere – up from 270 parts per million before the industrial revolution to 420 parts per million today – will keep global temperatures high for centuries. Slow processes like melting ice masses, thawing tundra and rising sea levels are in effect irreversible once they begin. There are signs that some tipping points may have been breached already. What humans have done and will do over the century 1950 to 2050 will change the way the Earth functions for many thousands of years.

Suraj solar and allied industries, Wework galaxy, 43, Residency Road, Bangalore-560025. Mobile number : +91 808 850 7979 Introduction to Solar Rooftop Systems Understanding Solar Energy Importance of Solar Rooftop Systems Harnessing the power of the sun to generate clean and renewable energy has become increasingly essential in today's world. Solar rooftop systems offer a sustainable solution for both residential and commercial properties to reduce reliance on traditional grid electricity and lower carbon emissions. By understanding the fundamentals of solar energy and recognizing the significance of solar rooftop installations, individuals and businesses in Bangalore can pave the way towards a more environmentally conscious and cost-effective energy future. # Solar Rooftop in Bangalore - Sunease Solar ## Introduction to Solar Rooftop Systems ### Understanding Solar Energy Solar energy is like the coolest kid on the block when it comes to renewable energy sources. It's basically sunlight transformed into electricity, which is pretty neat if you ask me. ### Importance of Solar Rooftop Systems Solar rooftop systems are like the superheroes of the energy world - they harness the power of the sun right from your rooftop. They not only help you save money but also reduce your carbon footprint. Win-win! ## Benefits of Solar Rooftop Installations ### Financial Savings Imagine cutting down on those hefty electricity bills - that's what solar rooftop installations do. They help you save money in the long run while also increasing the value of your property . It resembles having your cake and eating it as well! ### Environmental Impact By switching to solar energy, you're basically giving Mother Earth a virtual high-five. Solar rooftop installations reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help combat climate change. So, you're not just saving money, you're saving the planet. NBD. ### Energy Independence Who doesn't want to be a little more independent, am I right? Solar Rooftop in Bangaloreprovide you with a sense of self-sufficiency when it comes to energy. You're not at the mercy of fluctuating electricity prices anymore. It's like taking control of your energy destiny. ## Solar Rooftop Initiatives in Bangalore ### Government Policies and Incentives Bangalore is all about that solar love. The government has rolled out various policies and incentives to promote solar rooftop installations. It resembles they're saying, "Here's something special to do your change to sun oriented considerably better." ### Community Programs and Awareness Communities in Bangalore are coming together to spread the good word about solar energy. From awareness campaigns to collective installations, they're making sure everyone knows that solar is the way to go. It's like a solar revolution, but with a cool community twist. ## Sunease Solar: A Leader in Solar Rooftop Solutions ### Company Overview Sunease Solar is basically the Gandalf of solar rooftop solutions - wise, reliable, and always there when you need them. They're experts in the field, making the switch to solar as easy as pie (solar-powered pie, of course). ### Product Offerings From sleek solar panels to cutting-edge inverters, Sunease Solar has it all. They offer top-notch products that are not only efficient but also look pretty darn good on your rooftop. It's like having the Ferraris of solar installations. ### Customer Success Stories Customers love Sunease Solar, and for good reason. Their success stories speak volumes about the quality of service and satisfaction they provide. It's like a feel-good movie, but with solar panels instead of actors. 5. Key Features of Solar Rooftop Systems Panel Efficiency and Durability When it comes to Solar Rooftop in Bangalore, panel efficiency and durability are key factors to consider.

Suraj solar and allied industries, Wework galaxy, 43, Residency Road, Bangalore-560025. Mobile number : +91 808 850 7979 Introduction to Solar Rooftop in Bangalore Solar rooftop systems have emerged as a game-changing innovation in Bangalore's energy consumption, providing a green and sustainable alternative to conventional sources of power. Solar rooftops are gaining a lot of traction among residential, commercial, and industrial users in the city as it deals with rising energy demands and environmental concerns. This article examines the advantages, drawbacks, government initiatives, case studies, and prospects for the future of solar rooftops, which have had a profound effect on Bangalore's energy landscape. 1. Introduction to Bangalore's Solar Rooftops An Overview of Bangalore's Solar Rooftop Systems Ah, Bangalore! Home to tech whiz kids, filter coffee connoisseurs, and now the progressive pioneers who are embracing solar rooftops! The eco-friendly Batman of the energy industry, solar rooftop systems are perched atop buildings and convert sunlight into clean, renewable power. Installed on rooftops, these systems use solar panels to generate electricity, assisting in the reduction of reliance on conventional grid power. 2. Economic Benefits of Solar Rooftops for Energy Consumption Who doesn't love saving money while protecting the environment? The economic benefits of solar rooftops in Bangalore are significant. By producing your own power, you can slice those heavy energy bills and even bring in an additional money by selling overabundance influence back to the matrix. It's like having a solar side business on your roof! Impact on the Environment Let's be honest: Bangalore's air quality could use a break. When it comes to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollution, solar rooftops emerge as the cloaked crusaders. You are reducing your carbon footprint and contributing to a cleaner and greener Bangalore by using solar power. When the sun shines on your rooftop panels, it's like giving Mother Nature a high five. 3. Impact of Solar Rooftop in Bangalore Energy Landscape Reduction of Carbon Footprint Bangalore, with its vibrant culture and bustling IT hubs, can also be a hotbed for emissions. Sun powered roofs go about as the eco-heroes, checking carbon impressions and advancing manageability. The city has the potential to make a significant leap toward a more healthy environment and a brighter future for future generations by utilizing solar energy. Integration with Existing Energy Infrastructure The beauty of solar rooftops in Bangalore is that they seamlessly combine solar power with traditional grid energy. These frameworks can undoubtedly incorporate with the current energy foundation, making a more strong and dependable energy organization. It's like combining the best of both worlds to guarantee the city's bustling energy supply's stability and sustainability. 4. Adopting Solar Rooftops: Obstacles and Solutions Initial Cost and Return on Investment We understand that the initial cost of installing solar rooftops may appear to be the bad guy in this sustainability tale. However, rest assured! The return on investment for solar rooftops in Bangalore is brighter than a sunny day thanks to government subsidies, tax incentives, and lower panel prices. Consider it a long-term investment in the environment and your savings. Technical Considerations and Maintenance Although the process of maintaining solar rooftops may appear intimidating, it is not rocket science—rather, it is solar science! To keep your solar panels in top condition, all you need to do is clean them on a regular basis, keep an eye on how well the system is working, and do occasional maintenance checks. Navigating the technical aspects of solar rooftops has never been easier thanks to technological advancements and the assistance of local experts.

Suraj solar and allied industries, Wework galaxy, 43, Residency Road, Bangalore-560025. Mobile number : +91 808 850 7979 Solar Rooftop in Bangalore – Sunease Solar Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley, is known for more than just its booming tech sector. It is also becoming more and more aware of sustainable energy options. The move toward renewable energy, particularly solar power, has gained tremendous momentum as demand for energy rises and prices rise. Sunease Solar, which focuses on Solar Rooftop in Bangalore, has emerged as a leading name among the many businesses in the city. Why Bangalore's Solar Rooftop? Due to its location, Bangalore is an ideal location for harnessing solar energy. The city has a lot of sunshine all year, so it has a lot of potential for making solar power. Solar roofs give homeowners, businesses, and industries access to this renewable resource, lowering their reliance on conventional sources of electricity and contributing to a more environmentally friendly future. Under net metering policies, putting in a solar rooftop system not only helps cut down on electricity costs, but it also gives you a chance to make more money by selling excess power back to the grid. Furthermore, now is the ideal time to switch to solar energy in Bangalore due to the state government of Karnataka's push for its adoption through subsidies and incentives. Sunease Solar is a leading player in the solar energy industry, providing individualized solar rooftop installations for Bangalore's residential, commercial, and industrial properties. Sunease Solar has established a reputation for dependability, expertise, and outstanding customer service thanks to its dedication to providing solar solutions that are both effective and of high quality. Why should I pick Sunease Solar? Individualized Solar Solutions: Sunease Solar offers individualized solutions to meet each client's unique energy needs. Their team assesses your energy requirements and designs a solar rooftop system that maximizes efficiency and savings for a home, office, or industrial unit. High-Quality Materials: The quality of a solar rooftop system's components determines its efficiency and longevity. Sunease Solar only makes use of the best solar panels, inverters, and mounting structures available. This makes sure that the systems will last, work well, and be able to handle the weather in Bangalore. Complete Service: Sunease Solar offers a complete service, from consultation and site evaluation to system design, installation, and upkeep. Their group of specialists handles every one of the specialized and calculated parts of the establishment cycle, making it consistent and bother free for the client. Government incentives and subsidies: Sunease Solar ensures that customers can take full advantage of the financial support for Solar Rooftop in Bangalore by guiding them through the complicated application process for government subsidies and incentives. Cost-effective and friendly to the environment: You will not only save money on your electricity bills but also reduce your carbon footprint when you choose Sunease Solar. Solar energy is a renewable, clean resource that contributes to a more sustainable environment by lowering emissions of greenhouse gases. Benefits of rooftop solar: Lower utility bills: By generating power directly from the sun, a solar rooftop system can significantly reduce electricity costs. In a city like Bangalore, where energy costs are rising, this is especially beneficial. Independence on Energy: You become less reliant on conventional energy sources and their fluctuating costs with solar power. In the long run, a solar roof installation gives you energy independence and security. Gain in Property Value: Solar rooftop systems make buildings and homes more appealing to prospective buyers and renters. Solar installations are regarded as an important addition that frequently raise property values.

Carlton Church Warning - Nuclear Fraud Scheme North Korea has been producing different nuclear weapons since last year. They have sent warning on the neighboring countries about their plan for a nuclear test. Not just South Korea, but other countries like China, U.S., and Japan have stated their complaints. Even the United Nations has been alarmed by North Korea’s move. During the last period of World War, a bomb has been used to attack Japan. Happened on 6th of August 1945, Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb just 10 kilometers away from Tokyo. This is why people and organizations like Carlton Church who’s against the use of nuclear power for production of armory in war. Many protested that it is a threat to mankind and environment. Groups who are in favor of the nuclear use explained its advantage. They say it can be helpful in generating electricity that can be used for residential and commercial purposes. They also expound how it is better to use than coal mining as it is “less harmful to the environment.” Nuclear Use: Good or Bad? Groups who are against the use of nuclear reactor and weapons try to persuade people about its catastrophic result to the environment and humankind. If such facility will be used to create weapons, there is a possibility for another world war. But the pro-nuclear groups discuss the good effects that can be gained from it. They give details on how greenhouse gas effect of coal-burning can emit huge amounts of greenhouse gases and other pollutants such as sulfur dioxide nitrogen oxide, and toxic compounds of mercury to the atmosphere every year. Burning coal can produce a kilowatt-hour of electricity but it also amounts to over two pounds of carbon dioxide emissions. They also added that the amount of carbon dioxide it produces contributes to climate change. Sulfur dioxide may cause the formation of acid rain and nitrogen oxide, if combined with VOCs, will form smog. Nuclear power plants do not emit harmful pollutants or other toxic gases. Generating energy from nuclear involves intricate process, but as a result, it produces heat. These plants have cooling towers that release water vapor. If the facility has been properly managed it may not contribute disturbance in the atmosphere. It may sound better to use compared to coal. But studies have shown that the vapor that came from nuclear plants have an effect to some coastal plants. The heated water that was released goes back to lakes and seas, and then the heat will eventually diffuse into surface warming. As a result of the increased water temperature on the ocean bodies, it changes the way carbon dioxide is transferred within the air. In effect, major shifts in weather patterns such as hurricanes may occur. It does not stop there. The nuclear power plant produces radioactive waste, which amounts to 20 metric tons yearly. Exposure to high-level radiation is extremely harmful and fatal to human and animals. The waste material must be stored carefully in remote locations for many years. Carlton Church and other anti-nuclear groups persuade the public to initiate banning of the manufacturing of nuclear products and give warnings about its health hazards and environmental effects.

Over your lifetime, your individual greenhouse gas contribution will only increase the temperature of the planet by about a half a billionth of a degree Celsius. That, you might think, is such a small difference as to be negligible, so you shouldn't bother trying to reduce your personal emissions. This reasoning, however, doesn't consider expected value. It's true that increasing the planet's temperature by half a billionth of a degree probably won't make a difference to anyone, but sometimes it will make a difference, and when it does, the difference will be very large. Occasionally , that increase of half a billionth of a degree will cause a flood or a heatwave that wouldn't have happened otherwise. In which case the expected harm of raising global temperatures by half a billionth of a degree would be fairly great. We know that something like this has to be the case because we know that, if millions of people emit greenhouse gases, the bad effects are very large, and millions of people emitting greenhouse gases is just the sum of millions of individual actions.

Climate change alarmism is a belief system, and needs to be evaluated as such. There is, indeed, an accepted scientific theory which I do not dispute and which, the alarmists claim, justifies their belief and their alarm. This is the so-called greenhouse effect: the fact that the earth’s atmosphere contains so-called greenhouse gases (of which water vapour is overwhelmingly the most important, but CO2 is another) which, in effect, trap some of the heat we receive from the sun and prevent it from bouncing back into space. Without the greenhouse effect, the planet would be so cold as to be uninhabitable. But, by burning fossil fuels—coal, oil and gas—we are increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and thus, other things being equal, increasing the earth’s temperature. But four questions immediately arise, all of which need to be addressed, coolly and rationally. First, other things being equal, how much can increased atmospheric CO2 be expected to warm the earth? (This is known to scientists as climate sensitivity, or sometimes the climate sensitivity of carbon.) This is highly uncertain, not least because clouds have an important role to play, and the science of clouds is little understood. Until recently, the majority opinion among climate scientists had been that clouds greatly amplify the basic greenhouse effect. But there is a significant minority, including some of the most eminent climate scientists, who strongly dispute this. Second, are other things equal, anyway? We know that over millennia, the temperature of the earth has varied a great deal, long before the arrival of fossil fuels. To take only the past thousand years, a thousand years ago we were benefiting from the so-called medieval warm period, when temperatures are thought to have been at least as warm, if not warmer, than they are today. And during the Baroque era we were grimly suffering the cold of the so-called Little Ice Age, when the Thames frequently froze in winter and substantial ice fairs were held on it, which have been immortalised in contemporary prints. Third, even if the earth were to warm, so far from this necessarily being a cause for alarm, does it matter? It would, after all, be surprising if the planet were on a happy but precarious temperature knife-edge, from which any change in either direction would be a major disaster. In fact, we know that, if there were to be any future warming (and for the reasons already given, ‘if’ is correct) there would be both benefits and what the economists call disbenefits. I shall discuss later where the balance might lie. And fourth, to the extent that there is a problem, what should we, calmly and rationally, do about it?

George H. W. Bush, like most political leaders of both parties at the time, accepted the science without dispute. He vowed to protect the environment, promising to fight “the Greenhouse Effect with the White House Effect” and sending his secretary of state, James Baker, to the first international summit of climate scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Although Bush was a Republican, he was not an outlier in his party. For decades, the environmental movement had enjoyed bipartisan support.

The more greenhouse gas we create, the more warming we will get today, and the more warming we will continue to get in the coming decades and centuries. To make the situation even more serious and the need for action even more apparent and urgent, bear in mind that there is no stopping a large fraction of future warming, because billions and billions of tons of the gases that are going to bring it on are already in the air. Even the most fragile of them do not break down for decades. Their effects will be felt for millennia to come.

Titan, by our standards, is really cold, at -290 degrees Fahrenheit. Without any methane greenhouse, it would be much colder still, by about 22 degrees. Yet, if we put all that methane into a basic climate model, we find that there should be about twice the level of greenhouse warming that is actually observed. What’s missing from the model? This question led to the discovery of the “anti-greenhouse effect.”5 It has to do with all that orange organic haze suspended in Titan’s upper atmosphere. It turns out that the passage of radiation through this haze is having an effect exactly opposite from that of a greenhouse gas: it blocks visible light but allows infrared light to pass through. Such a haze will prevent sunlight from warming a planet yet will allow the planet to cool efficiently into space. The effect on Titan’s climate is to negate about half the value of the greenhouse warming caused by methane. The Titan anti-greenhouse effect turns out also to be a pretty good match for what happens to Earth’s climate in the immediate aftermath of a huge asteroid impact or giant volcanic eruption and what would happen to it in the aftermath of a nuclear

One common strategy on which we should all be able to agree is to take steps to reduce the risk of human extinction when those steps are also highly effective in benefiting existing sentient beings. For example, eliminating or decreasing the consumption of animal products will benefit animals, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and lessen the chances of a pandemic resulting from a virus evolving among the animals crowded into today’s factory farms, which are an ideal breeding ground for viruses. That therefore looks like a high-priority strategy. Other

Ben West, one of the effective altruists mentioned in chapter 4, has shown that even if your goal were solely to slow down climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, you could do that more effectively by donating to organizations that are encouraging people to go vegetarian or vegan than by donating to leading carbon-offsetting organizations.

People employ what economists call “rational ignorance.” That is, we all spend our time learning about things we can actually do something about, not political issues that we can’t really affect. That’s why most of us can’t name our representative in Congress. And why most of us have no clue about how much of the federal budget goes to Medicare, foreign aid, or any other program. As an Alabama businessman told a Washington Post pollster, “Politics doesn’t interest me. I don’t follow it. … Always had to make a living.” Ellen Goodman, a sensitive, good-government liberal columnist, complained about a friend who had spent months researching new cars, and of her own efforts study the sugar, fiber, fat, and price of various cereals. “Would my car-buying friend use the hours he spent comparing fuel-injection systems to compare national health plans?” Goodman asked. “Maybe not. Will the moments I spend studying cereals be devoted to studying the greenhouse effect on grain? Maybe not.” Certainly not —and why should they? Goodman and her friend will get the cars and the cereal they want, but what good would it do to study national health plans? After a great deal of research on medicine, economics, and bureaucracy, her friend may decide which health-care plan he prefers. He then turns to studying the presidential candidates, only to discover that they offer only vague indications of which health-care plan they would implement. But after diligent investigation, our well-informed voter chooses a candidate. Unfortunately, the voter doesn’t like that candidate’s stand on anything else — the package-deal problem — but he decides to vote on the issue of health care. He has a one-in-a-hundred-million chance of influencing the outcome of the presidential election, after which, if his candidate is successful, he faces a Congress with different ideas, and in any case, it turns out the candidate was dissembling in the first place. Instinctively realizing all this, most voters don’t spend much time studying public policy. Give that same man three health insurance plans that he can choose from, though, and chances are that he will spend time studying them. Finally, as noted above, the candidates are likely to be kidding themselves or the voters anyway. One could argue that in most of the presidential elections since 1968, the American people have tried to vote for smaller government, but in that time the federal budget has risen from $178 billion to $4 trillion. George Bush made one promise that every voter noticed in the 1988 campaign: “Read my lips, no new taxes.” Then he raised them. If we are the government, why do we get so many policies we don’t want?

People employ what economists call “rational ignorance.” That is, we all spend our time learning about things we can actually do something about, not political issues that we can’t really affect. That’s why most of us can’t name our representative in Congress. And why most of us have no clue about how much of the federal budget goes to Medicare, foreign aid, or any other program. As an Alabama businessman told a Washington Post pollster, “Politics doesn’t interest me. I don’t follow it. … Always had to make a living.” Ellen Goodman, a sensitive, good-government liberal columnist, complained about a friend who had spent months researching new cars, and of her own efforts study the sugar, fiber, fat, and price of various cereals. “Would my car-buying friend use the hours he spent comparing fuel-injection systems to compare national health plans?” Goodman asked. “Maybe not. Will the moments I spend studying cereals be devoted to studying the greenhouse effect on grain? Maybe not.” Certainly not —and why should they? Goodman and her friend will get the cars and the cereal they want, but what good would it do to study national health plans? After a great deal of research on medicine, economics, and bureaucracy, her friend may decide which health-care plan he prefers. He then turns to studying the presidential candidates, only to discover that they offer only vague indications of which health-care plan they would implement. But after diligent investigation, our well-informed voter chooses a candidate. Unfortunately, the voter doesn’t like that candidate’s stand on anything else — the package-deal problem — but he decides to vote on the issue of health care. He has a one-in-a-hundred-million chance of influencing the outcome of the presidential election, after which, if his candidate is successful, he faces a Congress with different ideas, and in any case, it turns out the candidate was dissembling in the first place. Instinctively realizing all this, most voters don’t spend much time studying public policy. Give that same man three health insurance plans that he can choose from, though, and chances are that he will spend time studying them. Finally, as noted above, the candidates are likely to be kidding themselves or the voters anyway. One could argue that in most of the presidential elections since 1968, the American people have tried to vote for smaller government, but in that time the federal budget has risen from $178 billion to $4 trillion.

The entire modern enterprise of catastrophic climate change predictions, the enterprise that threatens our energy supply, is based on equating a demonstrated scientific truth, the greenhouse effect, with extremely speculative projections made by invalidated models.

One internationally renowned scholar I spoke to recently was telling me about how disastrous the greenhouse effect was, and I asked her what kind of function it was. She didn’t know. What I told her didn’t give her pause, but I think it should have. As the following illustration shows, the greenhouse effect of CO2 is an extreme diminishing effect—a logarithmically decreasing effect.23 This is how the function looks when measured in a laboratory. Notice that we are just before 400 ppm (which means CO2 is .04 percent of the atmosphere), where the effect really starts tapering off; the warming effect of each new molecule is not much. This means that the initial parts per million of CO2 do the vast majority of the warming of our atmosphere. The image below shows how, all things being equal, the heating effect of each additional increment of CO2 is smaller and smaller. Figure 4.1: The Decelerating, Logarithmic Greenhouse Effect Source: Myhre et al. (1998)

The press would indeed take the “conservative” position. A New York Times reporter put it this way: “The Academy found that since there is no politically or economically realistic way of heading off the greenhouse effect, strategies must be prepared to adapt to a ‘high temperature world.’”50 But the Academy hadn’t found that; the committee had asserted it. And it wasn’t the Academy; it was Bill Nierenberg and a handful of economists.

When Diana was unable to visit, she telephoned the apartment to check on her friend’s condition. On her 30th birthday she wore a gold bracelet which Adrian had given to her as a sign of their affection and solidarity. Nevertheless, Diana’s quiet and longstanding commitment to be with Adrian when he died almost foundered. In August his condition worsened and doctors advised that he should be transferred to a private room at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington where he could be treated more effectively. However Diana had to go on a holiday cruise in the Mediterranean with her family on board a yacht owned by the Greek millionaire John Latsis. Provisional plans were made to fly her from the boat by helicopter to a private plane so that she could be with her friend at the end. Before she left, Diana visited Adrian in his home. “I’ll hang on for you,” he told her. With those words emblazoned on her heart, she flew to Italy, ticking off the hours until she could return. As soon as she disembarked from the royal flight jet she drove straight to St Mary’s Hospital. Angela recalls: “Suddenly there was a knock on the door. It was Diana. I flung my arms around her and took her into the room to see Adrian. She was still dressed in a T-shirt and sporting a sun tan. It was wonderful for Adrian to see her like that.” She eventually went home to Kensington Palace but returned the following day with all kinds of goodies. Her chef Mervyn Wycherley had packed a large picnic hamper for Angela while Prince William walked into the room almost dwarfed by his present of a large jasmine plant from the Highgrove greenhouses. Diana’s decision to bring William was carefully calculated. By then Adrian was off all medication and very much at peace with himself. “Diana would not have brought her son if Adrian’s appearance had been upsetting,” says Angela. On his way home, William asked his mother: “If Adrian starts to die when I’m at school will you tell me so that I can be there.

Most believe the Flood of Noah triggered the Ice Age. The rising magmas, lavas, and hot waters associated with continental plate movements would have caused ocean temperatures to rise. Also, fine ash from volcanic eruptions probably lingered in the upper atmosphere in post-Flood years, which, unlike a greenhouse effect, would reduce the sunlight for cooler summers. So the mechanism for such a rare event was in place due to Genesis 6–8. But what happens in an ice age? A lot of water is taken out of the ocean and deposited on land, so the ocean level drops.7 This exposes land bridges. One well-known land bridge was the one that crossed what we call today “the Bering Strait” from Alaska to Russia, so it is easily feasible for animals to have walked from Asia to North and South America.

them out if they make dumb choices. Let them struggle; let them learn; let them take responsibility. They need to figure out the importance of working hard, saving money, being smart. For God’s sake, don’t be a damned fool and then go begging the government to save you.” This is not a stupid argument. I come at the issues differently, of course, as someone who supports a strong social safety net. But this more conservative view represents a considered and consistent position, worthy of respect. Lower-income conservatives are making the same kind of argument that rich liberals are making. They are willing to make monetary sacrifices to answer the call of their fundamental values. For liberals, those values are more about the common good and enlightened self-interest. For conservatives, those values are more about the importance of independence and personal responsibility. But both sides rightfully see their voting behavior as needing to reflect more than just a vulgar calculation about their immediate pocketbook needs. If one side deserves respect, then so does the other.*1 Of course, respecting our opponent’s argument doesn’t mean we have to just accept it and give in. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t argue passionately about the best approach to taxes or spending—especially in a society as complex as ours, with the stakes as high as they are. In fact, we should disagree and debate. Debate is the lifeblood of democracy, after all. Disagreement is a good thing—even heated disagreement. Only in a dictatorship does everybody have to agree. In a democracy, nobody has to agree. That’s called freedom. It’s the whole point of America. But at the base of too many of our public discussions sits the same destructive assumption: I’m right. And you’re wrong. We proceed on both sides as if our side is grounded in “the Truth” and the other side is always insane and delusional. And some version of this flawed concept has become the default setting throughout American political discourse. It is one thing to say, “I disagree with you because we have different values and priorities.” It’s quite another to say, “I disagree with you because you are an uneducated idiot—a pawn—and a dupe.” The prevalence of the latter set of arguments is why the Democratic Party stinks of elitism. Here’s another liberal favorite: “How can we argue with conservatives? They don’t believe in facts anymore—only ‘alternative facts.’ At least, liberals believe in science. Right-wingers don’t!” I understand the source of liberal exasperation here. Even though any high school student can reproduce the greenhouse-gas effect in a laboratory beaker,

* To be sure, today Tyndall would probably be called a physicist, and he is best remembered for his pioneering investigations of the absorptive properties of atmospheric gases. He seems, in fact, to have been the first person to predict the greenhouse effect, which he did in 1861: On a fair November day the aqueous vapour in the atmosphere produced fifteen times the absorption of the true air of the atmosphere. It is on rays

Water vapor and clouds account for about 90 percent of the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect, CO2 amounts to about 3.5 percent, and methane contributes even less.

Since global warming was defined as the warming of the planet’s climate through the emission of heat-insulating “greenhouse gases,” and the therma-organisms existed during the beginning of global warming, the other three races theorized and overall concluded that the therma-organisms, with the hot temperature of their abode, were exclusively the cause of global warming. However, as one can see, the coexistence of the 2 variables (the therma-organisms’ residence in the planet and global warming) is not indicative of those variables actually being cohesively connected in a cause-and-effect relationship!

Some personal consumption decisions have a much greater impact than reusing plastic bags. One that is close to my heart is vegetarianism. The first major autonomous model decision I made was to become vegetarian, which I did at age 18 the day I left my parents’ home. This was an important and meaningful decision to me, and I remain vegetarian to this day. But how impactful was it, compared to other things I could do. I did it in large part because of animal welfare, but lets just focus on its effect on climate change. By going vegetarian, you avert around 0.8 tons of Carbon Dioxide equivalent every year. A metric that combines the effect of different greenhouse gases. This is a big deal, it is about 1/10th of my total carbon footprint. Over the course of 80 years, I would avert around 64 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. But it turns out that other things you can do are radically more impactful. Suppose that an American earning the median US income were to donate 10% of that income which would be about $3,000 to the clean air task force an extremely cost effective organization that promotes innovation in neglected clean energy technologies. According to the best estimate I know of, this donation would reduce the world carbon dioxide emissions by an expected 3,000 tons per year. This is far bigger than effect of going vegetarian for your entire life. Note that the funding situation in climate change is changing fast, so when you hear this, the clean air task force may already be fully funded. The organization giving what we can keeps up an up to date list of the best charities in climate and other areas.

To contain the problem, it’s essential for water levels to be closely monitored and managed. Shallow flooding, together with nitrogen and organic matter management, can limit this seesaw effect and reduce greenhouse gas emissions up to 90 percent.

We have three choices if we wish to keep on increasing global energy consumption while minimizing the risks of anthropogenic climate change due to rising combustion of fossil fuels and keeping atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases from rising to as much as three times their pre-industrial level: we can continue burning fossil fuels but deploy effective methods of sequestering the generated CO2, we can revive the nuclear option, or we can turn increasingly to renewable energy. None of these options is yet ready to take over from fossil fuels on requisite scales, none could be the sole near-term solution, and all have their share of economic, social, and environmental problems

The world, its leaders and its citizens, effectively knew nothing of the threat until the hot June day in 1988 when a mid-career NASA scientist named James Hansen testified before a Senate committee that “the greenhouse effect has been detected and it is changing our climate now.

The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers. But as long as you have that four-wheel-drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream. In twenty years, ten million white people will converge on the north pole and park their bagos there. The low-grade waste heat of their thermodynamically intense lifestyle will turn the crystalline icescape pliable and treacherous. It will melt a hole through the polar icecap, and all that metal will sink to the bottom, sucking the biomass down with it.

walking in the Cambrian Desert, it sometimes seems impossible to imagine trees returning there, the emptiness stands as an incontestable fact, as if it were a matter of geology, not ecology

Evidence for climate change has been available for some time, so why has this 'urgent global response' (in Stern's words) not occurred? The IPCC (2015) have argued that we could limit the effects of climate change by changing our individual and collective behaviour. We could fly less, eat less meat, use public transport, cycle or walk, recycle, choose more low carbon products, have shorter showers, waste less food or reduce home energy use. There has been some significant change but nothing like the 'global response' required to ameliorate the further deleterious effects of climate change. We are reminded here of a somewhat depressing statistic reported by a leading multinational, Unilever, in their 'sustainable Living Plan.' In 2013, they outlined how they were going to halve the greenhouse gas impact of their products across the life cycle by 2020. To achieve this goal, they reduced greenhouse gas emissions from their manufacturing chain. They opted for more environmentally friendly sourcing of raw materials, doubled their use of renewable energy and produced concentrated liquids and powders. They reduced greenhouse gas emissions from transport and greenhouse gas emissions from refrigeration. They also restricted employee travel. The result of all these initiatives was that their 'greenhouse gas footprint impact per consumer... increased by around 5% since 2010.' They concluded, 'We have made good progress in those areas under our control but ... the big challenges are those areas not under direct control like... consumer behaviour ' (2013:16; emphasis added). It seems that consumers are not 'getting the message.' They are not opting for the low carbon alternatives in the way envisaged; they are not changing the length of their showers (to reduce energy and water consumption); they are not breaking their high-carbon habits. The question is why?

The greenhouse effect never did achieve the worst-case scenarios that the more evangelical environmentalists claimed it would.

Another side effect of fertilization that is receiving more attention is the generation of nitrous oxide by bacterial decomposition of nitrates. Not only is N2O a greenhouse gas but, on a hundred-year time scale, it has a nearly three hundred times higher global warming potential than carbon dioxide, the dominant greenhouse gas. But because of its relatively small emissions, N2O is responsible for only about 6 percent of recent anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

Can these systems produce enough total calories, enough carbohydrates, proteins and oils to feed the human race? Over and over again this issue is brought up and, in my opinion, is somewhat of a red herring. “This all sounds good, but we’ve got to feed the world.” I agree with this sentiment and hereby turn the question back onto the asker and state that the current agricultural system is not feeding the world! Not only is annual agriculture not feeding the rapidly increasing population, it is destroying ecosystems worldwide while doing so. The current agricultural system is dependent on extraordinary labor or cheap fossil fuels or increasingly scarce mined inputs in order to not feed the world. It contributes to the greenhouse effect and the inequitable distribution of wealth worldwide while still not feeding the world.

What if I told you that we know exactly who shot JFK from the grassy knoll, that the foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor was proven in court, that the CO2 greenhouse effect is scientifically absurd, that our money is created through loans by banks who don’t even have the funds, or that science proves with a 100% certainty that 911 was an inside job?

In fact, it is not.” Balder’s tone was crisp, authoritative. “Global warming is the theory—” “—hardly a theory, anymore—” “No, it is a theory,” Balder said. “Believe me, I wish it were otherwise. But in fact, global warming is the theory that increased levels of carbon dioxide and certain other gases are causing an increase in the average temperature of the earth’s atmosphere because of the so-called ‘greenhouse effect.

Greenhouse Effect: The analogous claim the earth’s atmosphere functions like a greenhouse. It allows shortwave sunlight in, which heats surfaces producing long wave energy blocked from escaping by the glass. It is an incorrect analogy.

global warming: (n.) result of excessive hot-air emissions by climate scientists.

Over a 20-year period, methane is estimated to have a warming effect on Earth’s atmosphere 84 times that of carbon dioxide. By that metric, the Aliso Canyon leak produced the same amount of global warming as 1,735,404 cars in a full year. During the four months the leak lasted—25 days longer than the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico—the leak contributed roughly the same amount of warming as the greenhouse-gas emissions produced by the entire country of Lebanon.

For those of us who live in what are called the temperate zones, with their often bitterly cold winters, there are times every January when a little global warming seems pretty attractive. It doesn’t work that way. Warming the Earth will not turn Long Island into Tahiti. One of the most damaging effects of the greenhouse warming is likely to be a significant increase in violent weather, followed by drastic and rapid changes in the climate conditions many living things depend on for their survival.

The fervour accompanying these events may be deceptive. If it expresses nothing more than the zeal with which the countries of the East are casting aside the bonds of ideology, or if it is a mimetic fervour - a tribute, as it were, to those liberal countries where all liberty has already been traded in for a technically easy life - then we shall have found out definitively what freedom is worth, and that it is probably never to be discovered a second time. History offers no second helpings. On the other hand, it could be that the present thaw in the East may be as disastrous in the long term as the excess of carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere, that it may bring about a political greenhouse effect, and so overheat human relations on the planet that the melting of the Communist ice-sheet will cause Western seaboards to be submerged. Odd that we should be in such absolute fear of the melting of the polar ice, and look upon it as a climatic catastrophe, while we aspire with every democratic bone in our bodies to the occurrence of just such an event on the political plane. If in the old days the USSR had released its gold reserves onto the world market, that market would have been completely destabilized. Today, by putting back into circulation their vast accumulated store of freedom, the Eastern countries could quite easily destabilize that very fragile balance of Western values which strives to ensure that freedom no longer emerges as action but only as a virtual and consensual form of interaction; no longer as a drama but merely as the universal psychodrama of liberalism. A sudden infusion of freedom as a real currency, as violent and active transcendence, as Idea, would be in every way catastrophic for our present air-conditioned redistribution of values. Yet this is precisely what we are asking of the East: freedom, the image of freedom, in exchange for the material signs of freedom. This is an absolutely diabolical contract, by virtue of which one signatory is in danger of losing their soul, and the other of losing their creature comforts. But perhaps - who knows? - this may, after all, be the best thing for both sides. Those societies that were formerly masked - Communist societies - have been unmasked. What is their face like? As for us, we dropped the mask long ago and have for a long time been without either mask or face. We are also without memory. We have reached the point of searching the water for signs of a memory that has left no traces, hoping against hope that something might remain when even the water's molecular memory has faded away. So it goes for our freedom: we would be hard put to it to produce a single sign of it, and we have been reduced to postulating its infinitesimal, intangible, undetectable existence in a (programmatic, operational) environment so highly dilute that in truth only a spectre of freedom floats there still, in a memory every bit as evanescent as water's.

Because every bit of carbon we put into the atmosphere adds to the greenhouse effect. There's no getting around physics.

The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers. But as long as you have that four-wheel-drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream.

It seems appropriate to assign the term ‘Anthropocene’ to the present, in many ways human-dominated, geological epoch,” he observed. Among the many geologic-scale changes people have effected, Crutzen cited the following: • Human activity has transformed between a third and a half of the land surface of the planet. • Most of the world’s major rivers have been dammed or diverted. • Fertilizer plants produce more nitrogen than is fixed naturally by all terrestrial ecosystems. • Fisheries remove more than a third of the primary production of the oceans’ coastal waters. • Humans use more than half of the world’s readily accessible fresh water runoff. Most significantly, Crutzen said, people have altered the composition of the atmosphere. Owing to a combination of fossil fuel combustion and deforestation, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air has risen by forty percent over the last two centuries, while the concentration of methane, an even more potent greenhouse gas, has more than doubled. “Because of these anthropogenic emissions,” Crutzen wrote, the global climate is likely to “depart significantly from natural behavior for many millennia to come.

Global warming is not 'yes' or 'no', nor is it 'today's weather forever' or 'doomsday tomorrow'. It is a function that gets worse over time as long as we continue to produce greenhouse gas. And so the experience of life in a climate transformed by human activity is not just a matter of stepping from one stable ecosystem into another, somewhat worse one, no matter how degraded or destructive the transformed climate is. The effects will grow and build as the planet continues to warm: from 1 degree to 1/5 to almost certainly 2 degrees and beyond. The last few years of climate disasters may look like about as much as the planet can take. In fact, we are only just entering our brave, new world, one that collapses below us as soon as we set foot on it.

Technology is lethal to words as much as the greenhouse effect is to plants

Technology is lethal to words as much as the greenhouse effect is to plants

It’s often said that greenhouse gases “trap” heat, which gives the impression that the heat never escapes. But all of the heat must eventually be radiated to space to keep the planet in energy balance, as discussed earlier. The radiated heat must balance the absorbed solar energy very precisely, to within less than one-half a percent. If it didn’t, we’d see the earth warming or cooling much more rapidly than we do. So when discussing the effect of greenhouse gases on the heat flowing from the earth’s surface, a more appropriate metaphor is “catch and release.” For this reason, I’ll use the terms “intercept” and “impede” rather than “trap.

While we’ve talked about how the overall amount of that radiation has to balance the warming sunlight, the radiation is actually spread over a spectrum of different wavelengths. Think of those like “colors,” although not visible to our eyes. Water vapor, the most significant greenhouse gas, intercepts only some colors, but because it blocks almost 100 percent of those it does, adding more water vapor to the atmosphere won’t make the insulation much thicker—it would be like putting another layer of black paint on an already black window. But that’s not true for carbon dioxide. That molecule intercepts some colors that water vapor misses, meaning a few molecules of CO2 can have a much bigger effect (like the first layer of black paint on a clear window). So the greater potency of a CO2 molecule depends upon relatively obscure aspects of how it, and water vapor, intercept heat radiation—another example of why the details are important when attempting to understand human influences on the climate.

Though the question of global warming had not yet emerged to public perception, natural gas—methane—is about thirty times more effective than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. No one has calculated how much the vast waste of natural gas across the decades of the twentieth century—in the United States and throughout the world—contributed to global warming. The percentage was certainly more than zero.

15 million years ago ice sheets began forming over Greenland, and by the beginning of the Quaternary the cooling had passed the threshold for the North Pole’s ice cap to begin expanding. We entered the current phase of pulsing ice ages.23 It seems the Earth has been committed to a concerted effort towards cooling down. What grand-scale planetary processes have been conspiring to drive this global chilling? Gases like carbon dioxide and methane, as well as water vapour, in the atmosphere act like the panes of glass in a greenhouse: they allow the short-wavelength visible sunlight to shine right through and heat the Earth, but block the longer-wavelength infrared light given off by the warm planet surface. The effect of these greenhouse gases is to trap heat energy from escaping back into space, and so insulate the planet, leading to higher temperatures. Any mechanism that reduces the amount of these greenhouse gases in the air will therefore drive a global cooling.

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The cultural greenhouse effect: the toxic cloud caused by emissions from millions of museums, galleries, festivals, conferences and symposiums is much more catastrophic than the disappearance of the ozone layer. The asphyxia caused by the activity of thousands of creative brains damages the quality of life more certainly than all the world's industrial pollution. And if no Tokyo Congress has yet managed to control technological pollution, what body could put a brake on cultural nuisance?

The buildup of greenhouse gases we experience today occurred in the absence of human understanding; our ancestors were innocent of the damage they were doing. That can tempt us to believe that global warming is something that is happening to us—that we are victims of a fate that was determined by actions that precede us. If we change the preposition, and consider that global warming is happening for us—an atmospheric transformation that inspires us to change and reimagine everything we make and do—we begin to live in a different world. We take 100 percent responsibility and stop blaming others. We see global warming not as an inevitability but as an invitation to build, innovate, and effect change, a pathway that awakens creativity, compassion, and genius. This is not a liberal agenda, nor is it a conservative one. This is the human agenda. —Paul Hawken