Our survival depends on fighting climate change

[XemaSab]

I am 88 and have seen a lot of change over the decades, but I do not think anyone living now has ever faced a more serious threat to life than the threat of global climate change. As President Obama said recently, “More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They’re a threat to our children’s future.”

I come from a far different time. Born in a coal-mining town, I was raised on a ranch five miles out of Lander, Wyo., just two miles from where my mother was born, in 1901. I went to one-room schools and graduated from Lander High School at 18, just in time to become gun fodder for World War II.

My crew of 10 young men flew a B-24 bomber from New York City to South America, then across the Atlantic to Africa’s Sahara Desert and a temporary training camp in Tunisia. At last we crossed the Mediterranean to our tent camp among olive trees near Foggia, Italy. Five of those young men with me never returned home alive. Just two of us are still living.

My 32nd mission finally ended my Air Force career. Five miles above Vienna, Austria, on May 10, 1944, a German’s flak burst pulverized the right side of my face and destroyed my right eye. There was a long recovery, and for my actions that day, I was awarded the Silver Star, the nation's third highest combat military decoration. Yet when I left the military at 20, I was still not old enough to vote or even buy a drink. I went on to college, got involved in wildlife and environmental work, and never wavered in my love of Wyoming, the West and the very planet itself.

http://www.hcn.org/wotr/our-survival-depends-on-fighting-climate-change

[tk2kewl]

1. k&r

[NNadir]

2. Well, it would seem we're fresh out of luck then.

Nothing will be done, at all, except for maybe posting lots of posts from Greenpeace about how everything will be great in 2090.

I do recognize that none of the people making this "by 2090" claim plan to be here in 2090, which is why such blithering platitudes are so damn popular, but more and more I wonder if there will be a 2090.

I began writing here almost 10 years ago and every year it gets, as they say, "worser and worserer."

Last year, the world's largest, by far, source of climate change gas free energy became the second largest form of climate change gas free energy, after hydroelectric. That's not because of new hydroelectric capacity to be sure, as the increase was miniscule in hydroelectricity. What happened was that infrastructure was left unused, not because it actually hurt anyone, but because dumb guys kept fantasizing loudly that it could, at least in their fervid imaginations.

The difference was made up by oil, gas, and coal, notably in Japan. This oil, gas, and coal did kill people, not imaginary people but real people. You cannot turn on an oil, gas or coal plant without killing people.

Heckuva job anti-nukes.

We actually have self declared but intellectually and morally bereft types cheering for that outcome. This is the set that sits around hoping that someone, anyone will die from Fukushima's radiation leaks so that they can continue to ignore the 3.3 million people who die each year from air pollution, half under the age of 5, and that's not even counting climate.

We will see 400 ppm at Mauna Loa in the very, very, very near future. April 2011 to April 2012 was the second largest April to April increase ever recorded in human history. Our anti-nukes must be cheering loudly. Heckuva job.

It rains on (or bakes under parched skies) the just and unjust alike. Humanity will get what it deserves, even if some humans were more or less innocent of the fear, ignorance and superstition that made it happen.

[RobertEarl]

3. It is awful

Last edited Tue Oct 2, 2012, 11:54 PM - Edit history (1)

If we had just gone solar and wind, when we had a chance.

Still, the human population is the driver of all things. And the drivers here in the US, where we use 25% of the world's power producing capabilities, are gonna (have) leave a mark.

Yes, it could have been different. But the consumptive drive coupled with the lack of consequential realizations has put us where we are.

And, No. Nukes wouldn't have saved us.

[NNadir]

4. Actually, nuclear energy was the largest and most successful form of life saving energy

for more than 3 decades.

The nuclear capacity in this country was built during the Government service of one of the greatest American scientists who ever lived, Glenn T. Seaborg and that form of energy was robust enough to survive all kinds of rather murderous (given the air pollution deaths mentioned in the previous post) insipid attacks by badly educated conspiracy theorists, and scientifically illiterate types.

In some ways this is to be expected; it's disappointing, but it's a fair explanation of why humanity never really had a chance in hell.

I saw this sort of rhetoric here and elsewhere for more than a decade, coupled with all kinds of blathering wishful thinking about the still failed solar and wind industry, which functions as a fig leaf for the gas, oil and coal industries.

Any statement that "Nukes wouldn't have saved us" is rather like saying if General Grant had been killed at Shiloh, the South would have won the Civil War. Maybe. Maybe not.

Nuclear energy was prevented from doing what it might have done by fear, superstition and ignorance. Today we still have prattling about the big giant super duper grandilicous Fukushima reactors affair and not a whit of protest about the 3.3 million air pollution deaths.

Is this remotely reasonable?

If I chop off a young person's legs because just because I can, am I really justified in claiming he would have not qualified for the Olympics anyway?

More people drowned from collapsed dams (8) in the Fukushima earthquake than died from the radiation leaks. More people were killed by the "stress tests" on the nuclear plants throughout Japan (because of their displacement by fossil fuels) than have died from radiation.

Now absent this sort of selective attention, what might have happened, not only in Japan, but everywhere else?

At least one nation phased out entirely its coal use for energy (albeit not for steel) within 15 years, France.

To say that other nations could not do what one obviously did is simply to claim that the past is impossible.

Coal produced 14,231 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2010. This is just shy of half of all anthropogenic carbon dioxide dumping, dumping which as of 2011 (as reported in Nature) established an all time record

Nuclear energy is the only form of electrical energy generation that has a higher capacity utilization than coal plants.

Your position is that "nuclear" wouldn't have made a difference doesn't stand up to the raw numbers and the observation that it is possible for a large industrial nation to completely phase out coal burning.

But it won't happen. The poor educations, the selective attention, the scare mongering, the appeals to fear and fantasy of the denizens of barely literate anti-nukes have prevented it.

There will be no will to build nuclear plants now, particularly when the problems associated with having not built nuclear plants when there was time, is now intractable.

The seas are saturated with respect to carbon dioxide, or nearly so, and methane is pouring out of the cracking seams of the earth.

So the question is academic, purely. No one who is worried, literally, about having bread to eat is going to engage in the large scale production of nuclear power plants or anything else. And let's be clear. Major crops have failed on every single continent in this past decade. It's only a matter of time when that fact catches up with us, more likely sooner than later.

In any case, the anti-nukes have what they wanted. I congratulate them on their successful use of rhetoric, insipid rhetoric, but successful rhetoric nonetheless. Heckuva job. I'm sure they're all very, very, very, very, very, very, very proud of their accomplishment, however dubious, pyrrhic, and deadly proved to be.

[RobertEarl]

6. Coal is bad

But not worse. Cars and transportation have contributed more deadly pollution and caused more deaths.

The reason nukes are not being built is not because some people raised hell about the long term, beyond our lifetime consequences. It has stopped because the bankers saw it was not a financial risk worth undertaking.

Chernobyl and Fukushima have proven the bankers reasoning very clear. Had bankers been burdened with the responsibility for just those two, their complete fortunes would have gone up in smoke.

The real problem lies with the consumptive nature of an ever expanding and unsustainable human population. We could have done more with less.

[AverageJoe90]

5. Thanks for posting this.

We are indeed in a fight. Humanity itself will not perish completely, and civilization probably won't entirely collapse. We are, however, in a grave and desperate struggle to save global civilization as we have come to know it, and it is indeed possible that the global structure will collapse, at least in some way, before it is renewed. I'm only 22, and this possibility does worry me. It worries me greatly. However, though, there is some hope. And it is because of people such as Tom Bell, Rachel Carson, and many others, that we have been able to make any progress, period; perhaps the biggest achievement so far has been the worldwide banning of CFCs in the 1990s. And it was thanks to the enormous amounts of dedication from people who wished to do the right thing, whether from famous folks like Dr. Carson, or ordinary people like Tom Bell, that this important step was taken.

And now, more than ever, a new generation must step up, and try to fill their shoes.

We will still be around in 2100, but how it will end, will depend on us, and what we can do. Even if you've given up all hope for whatever reason, if you are doing your best to make positive change, then you, too, are part of the solution.

[CRH]

7. My hat is off, and three thumbs up for this gentle man. ...

K&R if it isn't too late.