Climate crisis

Assessment of Exxon's old climate projections and what were they internally forecasting while externally denying man-made climate change
https://twitter.com/GeoffreySupran/statu­s/1613611667254046721

https://extinctionrebellion.uk/the-big-o­ne/

The big one!

First passing of Queens birthday as was, will upset a few royalists I'm sure

Read this recently and found it interesting and maybe helpful. Been struggling with direction re climate activism lately. Wondered if others had read it (and/or
The Uninhabitable Earth) and what they thought. (NYT didn't let me read it for long but can use an alt site to get at it.)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022­/10/26/magazine/climate-change-warming-w­orld.html

I know (am related to :/) a climate change sceptic, who seems to have concluded that if it is real, there is no point even trying to do anything about it now, and we are all stuffed. I am trying to argue against the idea that almost any/all energy usage, whatever the source, must contribute to global warming.

As far as I can tell the argument is - if we turn wind power into heat for our homes, that will increase global warming (cos heat), same if we turn sun (light) into heat.

I have never understood “humans using electricity” to be a large cause of global temperature increases, but rather, humans creating CO2 etc through the process of creating electricity to be the problem.

I suppose the point is that renewable energy is also bad?

A) am I wrong
B) assuming I am not, I don’t even know what to search for to show it is [clearly absolutely bollocks and] wrong.

Renewable energy is the conversion of energy that has arrived recently on the planet from the sun and converting it to electricity/heat. Essentially neutral when considering Global Warming as it is all energy that would end up as heat (molecular vibration) anyway.

Fossil fuel burning not only produces heat from solar energy that arrived on the planet millions of years ago but with a much more significant effect produces greenhouse gases that reduce the heat radiation away from Earth so the ratio of heat gain (from the sun) and heat loss (to space) becomes imbalanced.

I'd hazard a guess that the direct heat / energy produced by burning stuff is utterly negligible, compared to the heat / energy from the sun.

Random googling:

However, the 888 500 TW that really impinges on this surface corresponds to 2 790 100 EJ. The total human consumption of energy in 2015 was 550.66 EJ, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2016. This way, solar energy at soil level was more than 5000 times greater than this consumption

Thank you both!

a climate change sceptic, who seems to have concluded that if it is real, there is no point even trying to do anything about it now, and we are all stuffed.

This is generally referred to as a doomer rather than a sceptic, sceptics dispute man-made warming, doomers believe in the science but think we have either left it to late or the consequences are going to be so severe that it is past the point of being able to do anything, views range from it will be a extinction type event to societal collapse, so they can range from being preppers preparing for post collapse to resigned to the inevitable so do nothing

A new tactic, mainly seen on social media seems to be that the emissions from the transition are far worse than forecast and will be the problem not the solution
Nice new paper looking at the impact of the new materials needed:
https://twitter.com/wang_seaver/status/1­619043659927937024

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar­ticle/pii/S2542435123000016?dgcid=author­

This is obviously only looking at climate impacts and expansion of extractive industries can have many other negative impacts on local environments and populations

Did we not pass tipping point a while ago?
Final warning issued to reverse climate change

https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/­2023/mar/20/from-climate-change-certaint­y-to-rapid-decline-a-timeline-of-ipcc-re­ports

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