A big issue I have is the selection of fossil fuel industry shills at the panel for maybe slightly divergent reasons than most. I do think climate change and energy affordability are extremely difficult problems with complicated solutions and where energy and climate experts can disagree (less so in the US considering our wealth and advanced economy), so discussions and debates around this are still valid. But you have to allow those experts to actually speak at panels like this.
I don't want to assign anything truly nefarious to Sharpton here, but I don't understand how we are still at this point where if we want a discussion on energy affordability for example, you have fossil fuel people talk about their views and then the EPA director as a sense of "both sides putting their views out". No, you can still have actual non fossil fuel shill energy experts who might disagree with the "orthodox climate activist", or whoever, and has good data to back up their view. They exist and I wish they would get more notice at panels like these, because like I said these are hard problems and checks on ourselves in climate movement is healthy and will make any collective climate action better.
But speaking anecdotally, my perception is that what the fossil fuel industry is doing around gas "affordability" is extremely effective and is a huge concern I have. And like I said last week, I don't think we can address this fossil fuel propaganda tactic the way the climate movement largely seems to be, by dodging around the imo inherent pro-market view a lot of people have. I think it is a more effective counter to say fossil fuels really can't compete fairly in the marketplace, especially without the tax breaks and subsidies, instead of the stronger "the market can't solve climate change" message that seems to be common.
Wonderful poem though, thank you so much for reposting it, and thank you for all your reporting
we need much more open discussion on the whole energy roadmap and it must balance the science with economics,,, I saw this old presentation as a good start to start the informed debate.
iSEE Congress 2016 — Keynote Address by Steve Koonin (youtube.com)
Positioning fossil gas as "clean" or a good "transition" fuel is just wrong on the science. Because of ubiquitous methane gas leaks in gas drilling, piping, transporting and storage, the complete climate impacts of gas are as bad or worse than coal.
I took a look at the links and see no science there, just a bunch of bold statements by members of the climate emergency industrial complex….
Let’s face reality..
Of course leaks and such are going to release methane into the air, but its going to take a considerable amount to make a difference, although a campaign to reduce leaks is a good idea ..
The reason Coal is bad is not CO2 release put the other localized dirty pollutants in its emissions not present in Natural gas. Coal cleaned up as much as practical will be a source of energy for many decades to come in emerging economies so get used to it.
The real discussion should be…. Is NetZero is needed at all…CO2 and methane are trace gases compared with the main greenhouse gas which is water vapour.
Many scientists are now questioning the logic of CO2 mitigation and declaring no climate emergency that needs any more than some focused adaption.
We must open this discussion for scientific review as the costs to undertake NetZero will be destructive to future prosperity.
The details in the scientific sections of the IPCC report supports this position and so far, the climate models are unable to predict such an emergency situation when faced with the reality of real data.
So far, we are not recording any adverse effects of a warming planet on the climate environment that effects humans. To the contrary when coupled with increased CO2 its improving the food supply.
Its clear we have a growing concern in the western populations that we have far more important things to spend our wealth and resources on than climate change.
Doesn't seem like much of a "response" to me. And he seems to have steered his guests away from a discussion of getting off gas heat and power to general discussions of fossil fuels and health impacts from air pollution. And really most of those impacts in most populated places are from motor vehicles, diesels in particular.
But some of this gets back to what you mentioned in another post about the Green New Deal never being enacted. IMHO, the New Deal part was there to promote that "thriving" so a bill for heating (whether green, grey or rainbow) of $200/month for five months in freezing Chicago wouldn't be un-"affordable."
This country is weird with some very low commodity prices (inc. most gas and electric, most places), but high prices for services like health care, education, communication, security and now even housing. So if folks are really worried about "affordability" those other areas seem like more appropriate priorities.
More and more, we see money behind the scenes of every public event. The fossil fuel industry can afford to fund panels like Al Sharpton's. The more money you throw down, the more you get to control the narrative. This is a classic case. Until enough people can stand up and fight for change, the fossil fuel industry will continue doing as all corporate entities do, control the information and make as much money as possible over the dead bodies around their plants. They don't care about human life as they can distance themselves from all of that up in their ivory towers and boardrooms. But I bet if we could rub their noses in it a few times, things would change.
Methane (CH4) is the second most important greenhouse gas. CH4 is more potent than CO2 because the radiative forcing produced per molecule is greater. In addition, the infrared window is less saturated in the range of wavelengths of radiation absorbed by CH4, so more molecules may fill in the region. However, CH4 exists in far lower concentrations than CO2 in the atmosphere, and its concentrations by volume in the atmosphere are generally measured in parts per billion (ppb) rather than ppm. CH4 also has a considerably shorter residence time in the atmosphere than CO2 (the residence time for CH4 is roughly 10 years, compared with hundreds of years for CO2).
Bottom line ....even if we agree that these trace gases are a probl3em and effecting the climate ....and many doubt this... Its on balance a small part of the problem.
I would say that earth day should focus on activities that improve the “balance” of the environment for all…. Plants, animals, and humans etc..
Putting race into the mix makes no sense, and just makes it too woke.
Pollution does effect most of us .. depending on our living conditions, and moving from wood to coal, and from coal to natural gas, and then where possible to nuclear is the best road map to reduce pollution.
Climate change is a far more general issue that may eventually require some focused adaption, but we have plenty of time to react ,and its very manageable using the power of fossil fuels.
The planet is naturally warming, and in general a warmer planet is far less of a threat than a colder planet ….. so bring it on!.
CO2 is not directly harmful to all forms of life, and is in fact a benefit as it increases the food supply.
There is no significant causation between increasing CO2 and the warming of the planet, and the impact on all forms of environmental change (Sea rise/fires/tornadoes etc) is not significant if at all measurable in the data trends.
For some of us that grew up in western cities in the 1950s we have come a long way with air and water quality vastly improved with emerging nations now going through the same industrial transition to a cleaner state with the power of fossil fuels and nuclear. We have seen less improvements on the land and sea with globalization being the largest change that has caused more of the lack of progress.
We need to stay focused on pollution control and reduction not climate mitigation, and we need to save our wealth for focused adaption where necessary.
A big issue I have is the selection of fossil fuel industry shills at the panel for maybe slightly divergent reasons than most. I do think climate change and energy affordability are extremely difficult problems with complicated solutions and where energy and climate experts can disagree (less so in the US considering our wealth and advanced economy), so discussions and debates around this are still valid. But you have to allow those experts to actually speak at panels like this.
I don't want to assign anything truly nefarious to Sharpton here, but I don't understand how we are still at this point where if we want a discussion on energy affordability for example, you have fossil fuel people talk about their views and then the EPA director as a sense of "both sides putting their views out". No, you can still have actual non fossil fuel shill energy experts who might disagree with the "orthodox climate activist", or whoever, and has good data to back up their view. They exist and I wish they would get more notice at panels like these, because like I said these are hard problems and checks on ourselves in climate movement is healthy and will make any collective climate action better.
But speaking anecdotally, my perception is that what the fossil fuel industry is doing around gas "affordability" is extremely effective and is a huge concern I have. And like I said last week, I don't think we can address this fossil fuel propaganda tactic the way the climate movement largely seems to be, by dodging around the imo inherent pro-market view a lot of people have. I think it is a more effective counter to say fossil fuels really can't compete fairly in the marketplace, especially without the tax breaks and subsidies, instead of the stronger "the market can't solve climate change" message that seems to be common.
Wonderful poem though, thank you so much for reposting it, and thank you for all your reporting
we need much more open discussion on the whole energy roadmap and it must balance the science with economics,,, I saw this old presentation as a good start to start the informed debate.
iSEE Congress 2016 — Keynote Address by Steve Koonin (youtube.com)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAiFolppIqM
It would be good to have this data updated and re-presented for a balanced discussion.
I’m curious why no one he interviewed called him out on his choice of panelists?
Me too! Would take quite a bit of gumption
I guess you're right. Btw, very much enjoyed the panel you moderated at Climate Reality Training last weekend.
Thank you! Was thinking of writing about it actually
Positioning fossil gas as "clean" or a good "transition" fuel is just wrong on the science. Because of ubiquitous methane gas leaks in gas drilling, piping, transporting and storage, the complete climate impacts of gas are as bad or worse than coal.
Do you have any data on that position?
https://newrepublic.com/article/176605/natural-gas-way-worse-coal#:~:text=That's%20thanks%20to%20extensive%20methane,the%20environment%20than%20coal%20is.
I took a look at the links and see no science there, just a bunch of bold statements by members of the climate emergency industrial complex….
Let’s face reality..
Of course leaks and such are going to release methane into the air, but its going to take a considerable amount to make a difference, although a campaign to reduce leaks is a good idea ..
The reason Coal is bad is not CO2 release put the other localized dirty pollutants in its emissions not present in Natural gas. Coal cleaned up as much as practical will be a source of energy for many decades to come in emerging economies so get used to it.
The real discussion should be…. Is NetZero is needed at all…CO2 and methane are trace gases compared with the main greenhouse gas which is water vapour.
Many scientists are now questioning the logic of CO2 mitigation and declaring no climate emergency that needs any more than some focused adaption.
We must open this discussion for scientific review as the costs to undertake NetZero will be destructive to future prosperity.
The details in the scientific sections of the IPCC report supports this position and so far, the climate models are unable to predict such an emergency situation when faced with the reality of real data.
So far, we are not recording any adverse effects of a warming planet on the climate environment that effects humans. To the contrary when coupled with increased CO2 its improving the food supply.
Its clear we have a growing concern in the western populations that we have far more important things to spend our wealth and resources on than climate change.
Here is some science.. https://co2coalition.org/2022/11/17/a-little-learning-on-methane-and-climate-change/
It's everywhere - here's one example: https://rmi.org/reality-check-natural-gas-true-climate-risk/
Doesn't seem like much of a "response" to me. And he seems to have steered his guests away from a discussion of getting off gas heat and power to general discussions of fossil fuels and health impacts from air pollution. And really most of those impacts in most populated places are from motor vehicles, diesels in particular.
But some of this gets back to what you mentioned in another post about the Green New Deal never being enacted. IMHO, the New Deal part was there to promote that "thriving" so a bill for heating (whether green, grey or rainbow) of $200/month for five months in freezing Chicago wouldn't be un-"affordable."
This country is weird with some very low commodity prices (inc. most gas and electric, most places), but high prices for services like health care, education, communication, security and now even housing. So if folks are really worried about "affordability" those other areas seem like more appropriate priorities.
The title of this article should be... response TO Al Sharpton
More and more, we see money behind the scenes of every public event. The fossil fuel industry can afford to fund panels like Al Sharpton's. The more money you throw down, the more you get to control the narrative. This is a classic case. Until enough people can stand up and fight for change, the fossil fuel industry will continue doing as all corporate entities do, control the information and make as much money as possible over the dead bodies around their plants. They don't care about human life as they can distance themselves from all of that up in their ivory towers and boardrooms. But I bet if we could rub their noses in it a few times, things would change.
https://rmi.org/reality-check-natural-gas-true-climate-risk/
Lets look at the science...
Methane (CH4) is the second most important greenhouse gas. CH4 is more potent than CO2 because the radiative forcing produced per molecule is greater. In addition, the infrared window is less saturated in the range of wavelengths of radiation absorbed by CH4, so more molecules may fill in the region. However, CH4 exists in far lower concentrations than CO2 in the atmosphere, and its concentrations by volume in the atmosphere are generally measured in parts per billion (ppb) rather than ppm. CH4 also has a considerably shorter residence time in the atmosphere than CO2 (the residence time for CH4 is roughly 10 years, compared with hundreds of years for CO2).
Bottom line ....even if we agree that these trace gases are a probl3em and effecting the climate ....and many doubt this... Its on balance a small part of the problem.
I would say that earth day should focus on activities that improve the “balance” of the environment for all…. Plants, animals, and humans etc..
Putting race into the mix makes no sense, and just makes it too woke.
Pollution does effect most of us .. depending on our living conditions, and moving from wood to coal, and from coal to natural gas, and then where possible to nuclear is the best road map to reduce pollution.
Climate change is a far more general issue that may eventually require some focused adaption, but we have plenty of time to react ,and its very manageable using the power of fossil fuels.
The planet is naturally warming, and in general a warmer planet is far less of a threat than a colder planet ….. so bring it on!.
CO2 is not directly harmful to all forms of life, and is in fact a benefit as it increases the food supply.
There is no significant causation between increasing CO2 and the warming of the planet, and the impact on all forms of environmental change (Sea rise/fires/tornadoes etc) is not significant if at all measurable in the data trends.
For some of us that grew up in western cities in the 1950s we have come a long way with air and water quality vastly improved with emerging nations now going through the same industrial transition to a cleaner state with the power of fossil fuels and nuclear. We have seen less improvements on the land and sea with globalization being the largest change that has caused more of the lack of progress.
We need to stay focused on pollution control and reduction not climate mitigation, and we need to save our wealth for focused adaption where necessary.