Category Archives: Global Warming

So Far So Good

29 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by in Climate Change, Global Warming

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The debate over climate change by people who disbelieve the overwhelming amount of evidence by saying we need more reminds me of an old construction joke.

A worker fell off a high rise and was heard to say as he passed each floor, “So far so good.” It’s the same as continuing to accumulate repetitive evidence on the heat records for each year. Just as the worker went by each floor, with each passing year’s heat records, the deniers say it’s not so bad.

Environmental scientists are worried it may already be too late to avoid many of the disastrous changes predicted years ago. If we acted now, we may have broken bones but no splat!

Coal Miners Days Are Numbered

10 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by in Coal Mining, Global Warming, Uncategorized

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Trump did not invent the idea that the EPA is responsible for the loss of coal mining jobs but he played to their beliefs. People who are out of work and don’t have any other marketable skills want to blame somebody or something. Since I come from a family involved in coal and oil production, I understand the mentality of the miners. The owners tell their employees they are going to lose their jobs because the government is over-regulating mining and burning of coal.

Today my home area has one of the few mines left in southern Illinois. Most of the other mines operate like the Science and Industry Museum’s exhibit. The horizontal shafts are six to eight feet high and fifteen to twenty feed wide extending out more than a thousand feet with side shafts. It requires over 600 miners. This type of mining usually means the surface isn’t affected because the shaft ceiling is supported.

The mine in my home area uses a super long wall technique and operates with a third as many miners while producing more. The mine uses a machine that grinds off a 1,400 foot wide seam of coal while allowing the shaft behind the machine to collapse. The coal is transported from the front of the grinders back to where it is sent to the surface by conveyors. The grinding machine can go 3.5 miles before needing to start another shaft.

The sulfur content of the coal is almost as low as the Western Powder River Coal but it has trouble competing against gas. How are the Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia mines going to compete?

The Eve Of Distruction?

20 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by in Climate Change, Disaster, Global Warming

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I am a 69 year old highly educated science and news junkie. I studied geology, weather and climate, glaciers, natural resources, and populations. My studies were 45 years ago and the projections for population growth, immigration, and the potential for climate change related damage were prophetic. Climate change wasn’t yet an issue but we studied the greenhouse effect that made our planet livable. We projected what happened in past when the atmosphere had less CO2.

Our studies said we should be concerned about deforestation because that is how CO2 is pulled out of the air. Now we know the major factor is the oceans. Today’s conditions are that about half the trees then are gone and the ocean’s acidity levels are the highest in tens of thousands of years.

When people say climate change happened before and this time is no different is dead wrong. This disaster has started in the last few decades. Forty-five years ago we called global warming runaway greenhouse effect. We knew then if it started the result might be human extinction. However we never put together how it would happen.

At the time, Earth had about three billion people, lots of fish in the oceans, fifty percent more trees, and deserts and jungles where they had been for centuries. It was cold in winter and hot in summer. Occasional floods and droughts seldom lasted for more than a season. Today, we are eating fancy name fish we used to use as fertilizer or bait because the former food fish are too scarce. Fertile areas are becoming deserts. Each year world temperatures are hotter than the previous year. Long term droughts in many areas are common. Occasional droughts are now multi-season followed by short wet ones before the next drought.

The then three billion population is now 7.3 billion rising to 9 billion before 2040 and 12 billion by 2100. That’s over 85 million more each year. We are already building on prime farmland reducing land for food production. The U.S. Western drought has caused the farmers in the Imperial Valley to drill wells deeper and deeper. Some are already at the aquifer’s bottom. The Ogallala Aquifer, under the Plains states, is rapidly being emptied. It takes thousands of years to refill them. Aquifers around the world are being drained.

The Blue Marble is being stressed and that stress will become worse. The planet will continue to heat up. The oceans will continue to rise flooding the cities of billions, millions of acres of farmland, and many fresh water lakes. Types of food will have to change. Meat is not an efficient use of land and water. Everything will need to be grain based or chemical. Wars will be fought for what is left.

Just as millions are already fleeing wars in the Mid-East and Libya or famine and economic conditions, billions will need to move to survive. This pressure will mean wars to get or to protect what countries want or have. Social fabric around the world will unravel. Many of the most reliable programs say we have already reached the point of no return. This may truly be the eve of destruction.
coj 1-20-2016

It’s So Simple To Understand

27 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by in Climate Change, Global Warming, Uncategorized

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For those who don’t understand what an El Nino is, it’s when Pacific Rim countries are subjected to radical changes in weather. The criteria’s basis is for the surface water in equatorial central Pacific water to be 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than normal during the winter three months. This winter is projected to be higher.

The normal cycle is for the surface water to cool off after a couple of years because of the upwelling of cooler deep water. The problem with this El Nino is the deeper water isn’t cool; it’s warmer than ever recorded, too. The normal cycle would mean cooler surface water creating a La Nina and moderating the weather for a couple of years. Many computer programs that have been predicting this El Nino are predicting a smaller less moderating La Nina. If they are correct, we may be reaching the feared tipping point sooner than expected.

The reason is the concept I studied in 1969. Carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere allows the short sun’s rays to reach the surface where they warm the surface. That heat produces long rays that are reradiated back into space. However, CO2 blocks long rays so the radiated heat is kept inside. The more CO2 the less heat escapes. It’s called the Greenhouse Effect. On a cool sunny day we wear jackets to glass covered greenhouses and then have to take them off because of the sun produced heat. CO2 acts like the glass.

It’s simple; the more CO2 we produce the worse it will get. Methane from the thawing tundra is many times worse than CO2 and that’s the feared tipping point of no return.

Climate Change and Petroleum

01 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by in Climate Change, Global Warming

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I bet few people have connected the dots on climate change and petroleum. Climate change is real and will devastate most of the world’s civilizations and cultures. Except for a few vocal Americans financed by fossil fuel associations, the rest of humanity knows we are causing or exacerbating the change.

The other dot is humanity has used almost a trillion barrels of oil. That is a thousand billion. Add up all the proven oil reserves, all the potential reserves, and all the maybe there numbers and an optimistic assessment is less than 850 Billion barrels of recoverable oil. Projecting when we will use the last drop is a crystal ball date. Reducing consumption by laws, cost and moral reasons make any projection worthless. But sometime in the early part of the next century is the most common date.

The line connecting the dots is that we can stretch out the world’s reserves by combating climate change. Cutting back on burning gasoline, diesel, and similar by-products reduces CO2.

The basis for today’s civilization is petroleum. We burn it to get somewhere. The car, boat and plane are made of it. Our homes and offices are filled with it. We wear it. Until a better substance comes along humanity needs every drop of petroleum for as long as we can stretch it. If humanity is still here in a century, I bet they will wonder why we wasted so much of it.

7/31/2015