{"id":319341,"date":"2024-04-21T21:03:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-21T19:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=319341"},"modified":"2024-04-21T21:03:03","modified_gmt":"2024-04-21T19:03:03","slug":"why-so-obsessed-with-decarbonizing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=319341","title":{"rendered":"Why So Obsessed with\u00a0Decarbonizing?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Science Matters <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Ron Clutz<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How did the current obsession with decarbonization arise?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of a lecture given by Prof. R, Lindzen to MIT Students for Free Inquiry on March 6, 2024 is posted by John Ray at his blog Greenie Watch.  <\/strong><\/a>Excerpts in italics with my bold and added images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently, there is great emphasis on\u00a0the march through the educational institutions<\/strong>: first the schools of education and then higher education in the humanities and the social sciences and now STEM.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What is usually ignored is that the first institutions to be captured were professional societies.<\/strong> My wife attended a meeting of the Modern Language Association in the late 60\u2019s , and it was already fully \u2018woke.\u2019 While there is currently a focus on the capture of education, DEI was not the only goal<\/strong> of the march through the institutions. I think it would be a mistake to ignore the traditional focus of revolutionary movements on the means of production.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vehicle for this was the capture of the environmental movement.<\/mark><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to 1970, the focus<\/strong> of this movement was on things like whales, endangered species, landscape, clean air and water, and population<\/strong>. However, with the first Earth Day<\/strong> in April of 1970<\/strong> , the focus<\/strong> turned to the energy sector<\/strong> which, after all, is fundamental to all production, and relatedly, involves trillions of dollars. This was accompanied by the creation of new environmental organizations<\/strong> like Environmental Defense and the Natural Resources Defense Council. It was also accompanied by new governmental organizations<\/strong> like the EPA and the Department of Transportation.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once again, professional societies were easy pickings:<\/strong> the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and even the honorary societies like the National Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, etc. There was a bit of floundering to begin with<\/strong>. The movement initially<\/strong> attempted to focus on global cooling<\/strong> due to the reflection of sunlight by sulfate aerosols<\/strong> emitted by coal fired generators . After all, there seemed to have been global cooling between the 1930\u2019s and the 1970\u2019s. However, the cooling ended in the 1970\u2019s.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was an additional effort to tie the sulfates to acid rain<\/strong> which was allegedly killing forests. This also turned out to be a dud.<\/strong> In the 70\u2019s, attention turned to CO2 and its contribution to warming<\/strong> via the greenhouse effect. The attraction<\/strong> of controlling CO2 to political control freaks was obvious<\/strong>. It was the inevitable product of all burning of carbon \u2013 based fuels<\/strong>. It was also the product of breathing.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, there was a\u00a0problem: CO2 was a minor greenhouse gas<\/strong>\u00a0compared to the naturally produced water vapor. Doubling CO2 would only lead to warming of less than 1\u00b0C. A paper in the early 70\u2019s by\u00a0Manabe and Wetherald came to the rescue.<\/strong>\u00a0Using a highly unrealistic one \u2013 dimensional model of the atmosphere, they found that\u00a0assuming (without any basis) that relative humidity remained constant<\/strong>\u00a0as the atmosphere warmed would provide a positive feedback that would\u00a0amplify the impact of CO2 by a factor of 2.<\/strong>\u00a0This\u00a0violated Le Chatelier\u2019s Principle<\/strong>\u00a0that held that natural systems tended to oppose change, but to be fair, the principle was not something that had been rigorously proven.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Positive feedbacks now became the stock in trade of all climate models
which now were producing responses to doubling CO2 of 3\u00b0C
and even 4\u00b0C rather than a paltry 1\u00b0C or less.<\/mark><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The enthusiasm of politicians<\/strong> became boundless<\/strong>. Virtue signaling elites promised to achieve net zero emissions<\/strong> within a decade or 2 or 3 with no idea<\/strong> of how to achieve this<\/strong> without destroying their society. Ordinary people<\/strong>, confronted with impossible demands on their own well \u2013 being, have not found warming of a few degrees to be very impressive<\/strong>. Few of them contemplate retiring to the arctic rather than Florida.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Excited politicians, confronted by this resistance, have frantically changed their story.<\/strong> Rather than emphasizing miniscule changes in their temperature metric, they now point to weather extremes which occur almost daily some place on earth<\/strong>, as proof not only of climate change but of climate change due to increasing CO2<\/strong> (and now also to the even more negligible contributors to the greenhouse effect like methane and nitrous oxide) even though such extremes show no significant correlation with the emissions.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the political point of view, extremes provide convenient visuals
that have more emotional impact than small temperature changes.<\/mark><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The desperation of political figures<\/strong> often goes beyond this to claiming<\/strong> that climate change is an existential threat (associated with alleged \u2018tipping points\u2019)<\/strong> even though the official documents produced to support climate concerns never come close to claiming this, and where there is no theoretical or observational basis for tipping points .<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I should note that there was\u00a0one exception to the focus on warming<\/strong>, and that was the\u00a0ozone depletion<\/strong>\u00a0issue. However, even this issue served a purpose. When\u00a0Richard Benedick<\/strong>, the\u00a0American negotiator<\/strong>\u00a0of the Montreal Convention which\u00a0banned Freon<\/strong>\u00a0passed through MIT on his way back from Montreal, he gloated over his success, but\u00a0assured us<\/strong>\u00a0that we hadn\u2019t seen anything yet; we should\u00a0wait to see what they would do with CO2<\/strong>\u00a0. In brief the\u00a0ozone issue<\/strong>\u00a0constituted\u00a0a dry run for global warming.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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Yes, they are projecting more than 100 Trillion US$.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

To be sure, the EPA \u2019 s activities still include conventional pollution control, but energy dominates<\/strong>. Of course, the attraction of power is not the only thing motivating politicians. The ability to award trillions of dollars to reorient our energy sector<\/strong> means that there are recipients of these trillions of dollars, and these recipients must only share a few percent<\/strong> of these trillions of dollars to support the campaigns<\/strong> of these politicians for many election cycles and guarantee the support of these politicians for the policies associated with the reorientation.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Background History from Richard Lindzen<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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Climate Science Was Broken<\/a><\/blockquote>