Sweat the small things: Viruses, bacteria, parasites, and, oh! The 15-micron wavelength—this last one is going to make you sweat. Sure the first three can cause fevers in individuals, but that last one, according to no less authority than the IPCC, Al Gore, and sundry others like Greta Thunberg, can make everyone everywhere sweat. Yes, sweat the small stuff.
To survive on a risky planet, all life-forms need to recognize threats. Thus, evolution suffused biology with a sense of danger supported by fight or flight responses both to seen and to unseen, but still perceived, threats. Some threats are obvious, the snarl of a wolf through bared fangs or the open hood of a cobra are examples. Other threats, like viruses and bacteria remain largely undetected until they begin to wreak havoc on a species, often causing the flight response as seen in the 2020 pandemic when many ran to their respective hideaways to flee from the unseen spikes of a virus.
An individual coronavirus, such as SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19, can’t be seen unless one has a scanning electron microscope, so we become aware of it by its effects. Yersinia pestis, the zoonotic bacterium that killed an estimated 50 million people in the 14th century’s sweeping Black Death, is bigger than a virus, but is still only about three microns long. And another perceived threat, still small by our daily standards of measured waistlines and basketball player heights, is the 15-micron frequency of infrared radiation. That length is about equal to some Plasmodium pathogens that cause malaria—a malady that kills about half a million people every year. That which is little, it seems, can have big consequences. We do, it seems, have to sweat the small things.
Fifteen microns—I’ll repeat it because it has become so important in the minds of so many—is the measurement of a threat perceived to be as great as that ten-kilometer-diameter asteroid that killed 75% of life, including the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. Fifteen microns measures that ostensible threat not just to humans, but rather, like that bolide of long ago, to all life-forms. Fifteen microns is in the minds of many the measurement of death, the length of a threat so enormous it has been called “existential” by two presidents and a number of world leaders.
So now we know. Carbon dioxide absorbs energy in the wavelength of fifteen microns. That’s about the width of two average bacteria wiggling side-by-side, maybe a little less. The fifteen micron wavelength lies in the thermal infrared band, so carbon dioxide absorbs—and reradiates—heat energy. Those people who worry about “climate change” or global warming believe that the anthropogenic carbon pumped into the atmosphere will absorb so much energy at the fifteen-micron wavelength that Earth will warm catastrophically, thus the term existential threat repeatedly broadcast into our heads by unquestioning media, Hollywood’s elite climate experts, and politicians. And darn if it isn’t one of those invisible threats we know only after we see its effects like melting ice caps, warming and rising seas, dying coral reefs, droughts, floods, Cat V hurricanes, and tornadoes too numerous to mention in this brief essay. Did I mention the spread of tropical diseases? No? Tropical diseases will spread like uncontrollable wildfire—which, by the way, is another effect predicted by global warming alarmists. You are doomed, and you will sweat as you die. Or, so they say.
The current rate of warming, that is, the current demonstrable rate of warming based on data accumulated over several decades, is about 1.5 degrees Celsius per century, a rate that has occurred before--naturally. The measured warming is less than model-projected warming suggests—that is, models of climate unscientifically tell us what warming “should be” occurring, not what IS occurring. Nevertheless, the models have instilled fear of a dire threat in the minds of millions who have succumbed to economic hardships unnecessary in a world of cheap and abundant energy derived from fossil fuels—now seen as sources of that 15-micron wavelength absorption that “forces” the atmosphere to warm. But, as I have previously written, don’t get me wrong. Carbon dioxide, methane, and Earth’s chief greenhouse gas water vapor do, in fact “force” warming of an atmosphere. That’s been a good thing because it prevents Earth from having Martian climates and from returning to a condition called Snowball Earth.
Panicked by the assumed threat of that 15-micron forcing effect, the UN’s IPCC and some world leaders have declared fossil fuels anathema, and proclaimed the value of green energy sources like wind, solar, tidal, wave, geothermal, and nuclear energy as workable replacements for some of the energy needs of eight billion people. Unfortunately, those suggested alternatives to carbon for a planet with such a large population fail to meet all the current and projected energy needs. Yet, in the rush to convert, those in control have started humanity down a path to energy impoverishment.
You and definitely your descendants will undergo an energy impoverishment by replacing the cheap abundant stuff with the expensive and often unreliable stuff. Nowhere is this more evident than in California, where the legislature and governor have set a date for banning internal combustion engines. Have they replaced oil with snake oil?
California has no alternative energy plan in place that will supply energy to meet all the electrical needs of a state running on electric vehicles while still using electric lights, washers, dryers, refrigerators, freezers, furnaces, stoves, ovens, coffee makers, escalators, drills, saws, other tools, conveyor belts, cell phones, computers, and entertainment centers. In short, that obsession with the short measurement of fifteen microns will shrink California’s ability to operate at a level it now enjoys—note the recent request by the governor that EV owners restrain from charging their car batteries. Energy—and all that depends on it—will become an economic burden, an unnecessarily harsh one. And for what?
In two centuries the planet will as a whole be a guesstimated three degrees Celsius warmer if the current and actual trend continues. But that 1.5 -degrees-C-per-century is a general, and not a specific geographic trend, and it requires a “doubling” that isn’t guaranteed because temperature and carbon have a logarithmic relationship, not a geometric or exponential one.
The oceans and atmosphere move heat energy around the planet. The atmosphere also radiates it to space. That’s why we don’t have the extreme differences in temperature that the moon or a spacewalker has between areas lighted by the sun and areas in shadow. But that’s the planet as a whole. Every location has climate controls: Latitude, elevation, ocean currents, land-water distribution, continentality, prevailing wind systems, semi-permanent High and Low pressure systems, the position with respect to Hadley cells, days of cloud cover or sunshine, and even transpiring vegetation and soils. California ranges from deserts to redwood forests, from fertile valleys to barren mountains. A general trend over the planet might or might not affect each of these landscapes.
The politicians in California have committed the state to some imagined panacea of electric vehicles powered by wind and solar—probably not so much by nuclear because of bureaucratic processes and threats to such power plants by potential seismic activity. The current level of civilized luxury will become harder for the commoner to achieve as the state robs itself of abundant and cheap energy—while across the Pacific the massive carbon-emitter China continues to burn coal under the same atmosphere that blankets California.
Let’s analogize here. The Romans invented cement, using it, for example, in the famous dome of the Pantheon. With the fall of the empire came the loss of cement making. Its rediscovery had to wait centuries. In the forgetfulness of populations, ensuing generations don’t even realize what they do not know. Probably very few, if any, people in the Dark Ages said, “Gosh, I wish we knew how to make cement.” Those who will grow up in a California bereft of cheap and abundant energy will not know that life could be different, could be easier—as their ancestors, the current Californians, experienced it. They won’t know about the good ol’ times that with a more measured approach might have extended today’s prosperity far into the future. Two centuries from now, with temperatures in California very little changed from temperatures today, with periodic droughts and floods as have occurred for millennia, there will be unnecessary impoverishment. The cement of cheap abundant energy that currently holds together a prosperous society will be a thing of the long forgotten past. A new medievalism will prevail, all because of a fear of what the fifteen-micron wavelength will do.
And if the absence of cheap and abundant energy sources two centuries hence plays out as its absence now plays in undeveloped nations, then lifespans will shorten. One need only look at those countries where energy shortages can’t meet the needs of the population to see a future of shortened lifespans. And remember, nothing happens without the expenditure of energy. Don’t believe that? Try depriving your body of energy. So, decreased energy means decreased production of tools, machines, and even medicines. Tired of plastics, also? Then eliminating the fossil fuels from which they are made is right for you. Tired of driving on asphalt? Even tired of steel? Not to worry, without carbon, there will be no steel.
With mandated abandonment of fossil fuels, the promise of a bright future will fade; the lights will dim because no affluent country can cover itself in solar panels and windmills just to meet about half to three-quarters of the energy it now has from fossil fuels. We humans, after centuries of growing urbanization and technology, will become “villagized,” medieval-like. The landscape not covered by solar panels will support windmill towers, both systems revealing their limitations in their own short lifespans, inadequate energy production, and pollutant composition. Graveyards of giant fiberglass propellers and toxic batteries will dot the once arable soils. Ah! The paradise on Earth envisioned by Californians!
Now here’s where any argument against switching from fossil to green energy gets tricky. Should we use electric cars? The easiest answer is “Why not?” They do reduce the carbon dioxide emissions over the projected lifetime of the vehicles, starting about the EV’s 60,000-mile mark. But the argument for the vehicles is offset by an argument against them, that is, the amount of mining, shipping, and manufacturing that such vehicles require can’t be measured simply against the weight of fuel burned by internal combustion engines. The thousand pounds of batteries in an electric vehicle contain toxic materials that require, like gold, mining much—maybe more than 50 tons of rock—to acquire as little as a kilogram of metals. So, the “environmental argument” about EVs being better for the humanity depends on a dismissal of some ugly truths. For one, there’s a rather limited reserve of un-mined lithium, meaning that making an EV with lithium batteries will become more expensive, not less. And at some point, except for recycled lithium, there will be unavoidable shortages—the current world reserve is an estimated 80 million recoverable long tons. At an average of 10 kg (22 lbs) of lithium per electric vehicle, that reserve holds enough for fewer than 10 million new cars—less that amount required by the manufacture of all other lithium-powered objects like cell phones. Add to that potential shortage, the inescapable fact that mining of a kg of lithium in places like the Atacama Desert requires 2.2 million liters (581,178 gal) of water. Plus, the toxic nature of the metal has recently led some Portuguese to file injunctions against lithium mining in and near their communities, even though the mining would create new jobs. * Serbia, also, considering the potential pollution of lithium mining has nixed the proposed mine at Rio Tinto. And another offsetting fact lies in the lithium battery fires. A recent EV fire took 12 hours and 75,000 gallons of water to douse. Imagine the damage if that vehicle had been inside an apartment building parking garage. Of course, sometime down our future, iron batteries might replace lithium batteries, so it would be foolish to rule out a future for EVs just because they now use toxic lithium and cobalt. And we can’t dismiss our history of having successfully dealt with other toxins, radioactive materials included.
But let’s say we go solar, total solar. The USA would need enough solar panels to replace the energy output of its current 7,300 power plants. And if consumers up their consumption, even more. An acre could accommodate 2,450 average-size solar panels, but nothing else. No farming there except for mushrooms growing in the shade beneath the panels. Now, no one I know suggests the US meets its annual need for four trillion kWh exclusively with solar panels. Given the amount of land with adequate sunlight per day to make the panels efficient, some billions of panels would be needed even in areas with abundant sunlight; cloudy areas like Ithaca, NY, would require more panels than Phoenix, AZ.
There’s a downside to every technology, even to the older tech like internal combustion engines and coal-fired power plants. But is a decision to alter the planet’s road to prosperity on the basis of a 1.5-degree C rise in global temperature truly prudent and environmentally sound? Is it not possible that those people in colder climes, after undergoing a rise in temperature, might be able to grow crops previously not tenable agriculture in their present climates?
A word about the Gulf Stream: Because water is denser than air and has a higher specific heat (requiring more energy to heat and holding the heat longer than air), the heated water of the tropics can move heat energy to higher latitudes through warm currents like the Gulf Stream. Should all Arctic ice melt, the cold water might shut down that transfer mechanism (the Gulf Stream, after all, is a “river” flowing in water) because icy water is denser than warm water. No one knows for sure what the effect would be. The tropics might get warmer while the temperate zones might get colder until the current “equilibrium” is restored. Gosh, this climate prediction stuff is really complex, isn’t it? Yet…
Yet, none of the foregoing will influence any climate alarmist to rethink the path he or she is on. Yearly conferences always result in the same eschatological rhetoric: “We have only seven years left (or eight, or nine, or ten—the number keeps changing).” And all the while that affluent countries like those in Europe and North America cut back on their cheap and abundant energy sources, the underdeveloped nations forge ahead to burn more coal, oil, and natural gas in an effort to raise the standard of living and the lifespans of their citizens.
And all of this because of a frequency only 1.5 microns in length.
*https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/02/01/south-america-s-lithium-fields-reveal-the-dark-side-of-our-electric-future
To survive on a risky planet, all life-forms need to recognize threats. Thus, evolution suffused biology with a sense of danger supported by fight or flight responses both to seen and to unseen, but still perceived, threats. Some threats are obvious, the snarl of a wolf through bared fangs or the open hood of a cobra are examples. Other threats, like viruses and bacteria remain largely undetected until they begin to wreak havoc on a species, often causing the flight response as seen in the 2020 pandemic when many ran to their respective hideaways to flee from the unseen spikes of a virus.
An individual coronavirus, such as SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19, can’t be seen unless one has a scanning electron microscope, so we become aware of it by its effects. Yersinia pestis, the zoonotic bacterium that killed an estimated 50 million people in the 14th century’s sweeping Black Death, is bigger than a virus, but is still only about three microns long. And another perceived threat, still small by our daily standards of measured waistlines and basketball player heights, is the 15-micron frequency of infrared radiation. That length is about equal to some Plasmodium pathogens that cause malaria—a malady that kills about half a million people every year. That which is little, it seems, can have big consequences. We do, it seems, have to sweat the small things.
Fifteen microns—I’ll repeat it because it has become so important in the minds of so many—is the measurement of a threat perceived to be as great as that ten-kilometer-diameter asteroid that killed 75% of life, including the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. Fifteen microns measures that ostensible threat not just to humans, but rather, like that bolide of long ago, to all life-forms. Fifteen microns is in the minds of many the measurement of death, the length of a threat so enormous it has been called “existential” by two presidents and a number of world leaders.
So now we know. Carbon dioxide absorbs energy in the wavelength of fifteen microns. That’s about the width of two average bacteria wiggling side-by-side, maybe a little less. The fifteen micron wavelength lies in the thermal infrared band, so carbon dioxide absorbs—and reradiates—heat energy. Those people who worry about “climate change” or global warming believe that the anthropogenic carbon pumped into the atmosphere will absorb so much energy at the fifteen-micron wavelength that Earth will warm catastrophically, thus the term existential threat repeatedly broadcast into our heads by unquestioning media, Hollywood’s elite climate experts, and politicians. And darn if it isn’t one of those invisible threats we know only after we see its effects like melting ice caps, warming and rising seas, dying coral reefs, droughts, floods, Cat V hurricanes, and tornadoes too numerous to mention in this brief essay. Did I mention the spread of tropical diseases? No? Tropical diseases will spread like uncontrollable wildfire—which, by the way, is another effect predicted by global warming alarmists. You are doomed, and you will sweat as you die. Or, so they say.
The current rate of warming, that is, the current demonstrable rate of warming based on data accumulated over several decades, is about 1.5 degrees Celsius per century, a rate that has occurred before--naturally. The measured warming is less than model-projected warming suggests—that is, models of climate unscientifically tell us what warming “should be” occurring, not what IS occurring. Nevertheless, the models have instilled fear of a dire threat in the minds of millions who have succumbed to economic hardships unnecessary in a world of cheap and abundant energy derived from fossil fuels—now seen as sources of that 15-micron wavelength absorption that “forces” the atmosphere to warm. But, as I have previously written, don’t get me wrong. Carbon dioxide, methane, and Earth’s chief greenhouse gas water vapor do, in fact “force” warming of an atmosphere. That’s been a good thing because it prevents Earth from having Martian climates and from returning to a condition called Snowball Earth.
Panicked by the assumed threat of that 15-micron forcing effect, the UN’s IPCC and some world leaders have declared fossil fuels anathema, and proclaimed the value of green energy sources like wind, solar, tidal, wave, geothermal, and nuclear energy as workable replacements for some of the energy needs of eight billion people. Unfortunately, those suggested alternatives to carbon for a planet with such a large population fail to meet all the current and projected energy needs. Yet, in the rush to convert, those in control have started humanity down a path to energy impoverishment.
You and definitely your descendants will undergo an energy impoverishment by replacing the cheap abundant stuff with the expensive and often unreliable stuff. Nowhere is this more evident than in California, where the legislature and governor have set a date for banning internal combustion engines. Have they replaced oil with snake oil?
California has no alternative energy plan in place that will supply energy to meet all the electrical needs of a state running on electric vehicles while still using electric lights, washers, dryers, refrigerators, freezers, furnaces, stoves, ovens, coffee makers, escalators, drills, saws, other tools, conveyor belts, cell phones, computers, and entertainment centers. In short, that obsession with the short measurement of fifteen microns will shrink California’s ability to operate at a level it now enjoys—note the recent request by the governor that EV owners restrain from charging their car batteries. Energy—and all that depends on it—will become an economic burden, an unnecessarily harsh one. And for what?
In two centuries the planet will as a whole be a guesstimated three degrees Celsius warmer if the current and actual trend continues. But that 1.5 -degrees-C-per-century is a general, and not a specific geographic trend, and it requires a “doubling” that isn’t guaranteed because temperature and carbon have a logarithmic relationship, not a geometric or exponential one.
The oceans and atmosphere move heat energy around the planet. The atmosphere also radiates it to space. That’s why we don’t have the extreme differences in temperature that the moon or a spacewalker has between areas lighted by the sun and areas in shadow. But that’s the planet as a whole. Every location has climate controls: Latitude, elevation, ocean currents, land-water distribution, continentality, prevailing wind systems, semi-permanent High and Low pressure systems, the position with respect to Hadley cells, days of cloud cover or sunshine, and even transpiring vegetation and soils. California ranges from deserts to redwood forests, from fertile valleys to barren mountains. A general trend over the planet might or might not affect each of these landscapes.
The politicians in California have committed the state to some imagined panacea of electric vehicles powered by wind and solar—probably not so much by nuclear because of bureaucratic processes and threats to such power plants by potential seismic activity. The current level of civilized luxury will become harder for the commoner to achieve as the state robs itself of abundant and cheap energy—while across the Pacific the massive carbon-emitter China continues to burn coal under the same atmosphere that blankets California.
Let’s analogize here. The Romans invented cement, using it, for example, in the famous dome of the Pantheon. With the fall of the empire came the loss of cement making. Its rediscovery had to wait centuries. In the forgetfulness of populations, ensuing generations don’t even realize what they do not know. Probably very few, if any, people in the Dark Ages said, “Gosh, I wish we knew how to make cement.” Those who will grow up in a California bereft of cheap and abundant energy will not know that life could be different, could be easier—as their ancestors, the current Californians, experienced it. They won’t know about the good ol’ times that with a more measured approach might have extended today’s prosperity far into the future. Two centuries from now, with temperatures in California very little changed from temperatures today, with periodic droughts and floods as have occurred for millennia, there will be unnecessary impoverishment. The cement of cheap abundant energy that currently holds together a prosperous society will be a thing of the long forgotten past. A new medievalism will prevail, all because of a fear of what the fifteen-micron wavelength will do.
And if the absence of cheap and abundant energy sources two centuries hence plays out as its absence now plays in undeveloped nations, then lifespans will shorten. One need only look at those countries where energy shortages can’t meet the needs of the population to see a future of shortened lifespans. And remember, nothing happens without the expenditure of energy. Don’t believe that? Try depriving your body of energy. So, decreased energy means decreased production of tools, machines, and even medicines. Tired of plastics, also? Then eliminating the fossil fuels from which they are made is right for you. Tired of driving on asphalt? Even tired of steel? Not to worry, without carbon, there will be no steel.
With mandated abandonment of fossil fuels, the promise of a bright future will fade; the lights will dim because no affluent country can cover itself in solar panels and windmills just to meet about half to three-quarters of the energy it now has from fossil fuels. We humans, after centuries of growing urbanization and technology, will become “villagized,” medieval-like. The landscape not covered by solar panels will support windmill towers, both systems revealing their limitations in their own short lifespans, inadequate energy production, and pollutant composition. Graveyards of giant fiberglass propellers and toxic batteries will dot the once arable soils. Ah! The paradise on Earth envisioned by Californians!
Now here’s where any argument against switching from fossil to green energy gets tricky. Should we use electric cars? The easiest answer is “Why not?” They do reduce the carbon dioxide emissions over the projected lifetime of the vehicles, starting about the EV’s 60,000-mile mark. But the argument for the vehicles is offset by an argument against them, that is, the amount of mining, shipping, and manufacturing that such vehicles require can’t be measured simply against the weight of fuel burned by internal combustion engines. The thousand pounds of batteries in an electric vehicle contain toxic materials that require, like gold, mining much—maybe more than 50 tons of rock—to acquire as little as a kilogram of metals. So, the “environmental argument” about EVs being better for the humanity depends on a dismissal of some ugly truths. For one, there’s a rather limited reserve of un-mined lithium, meaning that making an EV with lithium batteries will become more expensive, not less. And at some point, except for recycled lithium, there will be unavoidable shortages—the current world reserve is an estimated 80 million recoverable long tons. At an average of 10 kg (22 lbs) of lithium per electric vehicle, that reserve holds enough for fewer than 10 million new cars—less that amount required by the manufacture of all other lithium-powered objects like cell phones. Add to that potential shortage, the inescapable fact that mining of a kg of lithium in places like the Atacama Desert requires 2.2 million liters (581,178 gal) of water. Plus, the toxic nature of the metal has recently led some Portuguese to file injunctions against lithium mining in and near their communities, even though the mining would create new jobs. * Serbia, also, considering the potential pollution of lithium mining has nixed the proposed mine at Rio Tinto. And another offsetting fact lies in the lithium battery fires. A recent EV fire took 12 hours and 75,000 gallons of water to douse. Imagine the damage if that vehicle had been inside an apartment building parking garage. Of course, sometime down our future, iron batteries might replace lithium batteries, so it would be foolish to rule out a future for EVs just because they now use toxic lithium and cobalt. And we can’t dismiss our history of having successfully dealt with other toxins, radioactive materials included.
But let’s say we go solar, total solar. The USA would need enough solar panels to replace the energy output of its current 7,300 power plants. And if consumers up their consumption, even more. An acre could accommodate 2,450 average-size solar panels, but nothing else. No farming there except for mushrooms growing in the shade beneath the panels. Now, no one I know suggests the US meets its annual need for four trillion kWh exclusively with solar panels. Given the amount of land with adequate sunlight per day to make the panels efficient, some billions of panels would be needed even in areas with abundant sunlight; cloudy areas like Ithaca, NY, would require more panels than Phoenix, AZ.
There’s a downside to every technology, even to the older tech like internal combustion engines and coal-fired power plants. But is a decision to alter the planet’s road to prosperity on the basis of a 1.5-degree C rise in global temperature truly prudent and environmentally sound? Is it not possible that those people in colder climes, after undergoing a rise in temperature, might be able to grow crops previously not tenable agriculture in their present climates?
A word about the Gulf Stream: Because water is denser than air and has a higher specific heat (requiring more energy to heat and holding the heat longer than air), the heated water of the tropics can move heat energy to higher latitudes through warm currents like the Gulf Stream. Should all Arctic ice melt, the cold water might shut down that transfer mechanism (the Gulf Stream, after all, is a “river” flowing in water) because icy water is denser than warm water. No one knows for sure what the effect would be. The tropics might get warmer while the temperate zones might get colder until the current “equilibrium” is restored. Gosh, this climate prediction stuff is really complex, isn’t it? Yet…
Yet, none of the foregoing will influence any climate alarmist to rethink the path he or she is on. Yearly conferences always result in the same eschatological rhetoric: “We have only seven years left (or eight, or nine, or ten—the number keeps changing).” And all the while that affluent countries like those in Europe and North America cut back on their cheap and abundant energy sources, the underdeveloped nations forge ahead to burn more coal, oil, and natural gas in an effort to raise the standard of living and the lifespans of their citizens.
And all of this because of a frequency only 1.5 microns in length.
*https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/02/01/south-america-s-lithium-fields-reveal-the-dark-side-of-our-electric-future
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