Back in 2014-ish, when I read it, this is the document that launched me into a year-long deep dive into this subject. I always give credit to the authors. They were full-on believers on saving the planet with renewables and set out to, once and for all, prove it. They say so in the paper. What they discovered was precisely the opposite, and, as good scientists do, accepted the failure of their hypothesis and published the result. In this charged political environment this took huge balls.
The conclusion, paraphrasing:
Even if we deploy the most optimal forms of renewables, not only will we not stop atmospheric CO2, it will continue to rise exponentially.
> We could then hope to reach 0 emissions
No, we cannot. That is a fantasy.
For starters, we consume about 35 billion barrels of oil per year, nearly 100 million per day. Our very lives are so dependent on this stuff that we are not going to dent this level of consumption. Even if we cut it in half, this will not slow down atmospheric CO2 contributions enough.
And, not, a conversion to electric transportation will not make this happen. There are 1.5 billion vehicles in the world. Replacing that entire fleet with electric powered vehicles will likely take somewhere in the order of 50 years, if even possible. We also have to manufacture 1.5 new electric vehicles to replace them, which means producing massive amounts of CO2 and consuming equally massive amounts of resources.
And then we have to CHARGE 1.5 billion vehicles per day, every day, all around the world. The global power generation system cannot handle this. In the US alone we would need somewhere in the order of one hundred giga-watt class nuclear power plants just to be able to deliver the kind of power (not energy, power is the problem) we would need to handle our entire fleet going electric. Even if I am off by 75%, we need 25 new nuclear power plants, along with changes to our power distribution infrastructure to be able to handle it all. We did not build an infrastructure that has a 100% excess generation and transportation capacity. Most power plants operate very close to full capacity.
And then there's the reality of what would happen if we reached 0 emissions (again, impossible, we have forest fires that release more CO2 in a few weeks than the entire fleet of automobiles in the US).
Let's say for a moment that we could actually reach zero emissions world wide. You do understand that if it is only the US or the US and Europe it is pointless, right? You do understand that seven billion people cooking food every day by burning something will produce a massive amount of CO2, right? Analyze any process, making clothes, preparing food, transporting and processing our excrement in towns and cities, you will quickly discover zero emissions is an absolute fantasy.
Let's ignore all of that reality and actually believe we can get to zero emission world wide. The entirety of humanity, zero emissions. Like we do not exist.
Do we actually know what will happen if we could achieve this fantasy?
These are atmospheric composition records extracted from ice core samples going back 800K years. In other words, we have good reliable and accurate data of a scenario, hundreds of thousands of years in duration, when humanity was "zero emissions" due to either being insignificant or not actually existing as we do today (7 billion people and our toys).
What does this data say?
It says that, if we did achieve zero emissions it would take about 100,000 years for a 100 ppm reduction in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
That is the baseline. Zero emissions == 1,000 years for a 1 ppm drop.
Now, go back and evaluate any proposed solution from this baseline.
"Cover the entire equatorial band with solar panels?"
Nope. This would violate the zero emissions scenario, therefore creating a situation where we would not be able to achieve a 1 ppm drop in a thousand years.
"Convert the entire transportation fleet to electricity?"
Nope. We would contribute even more CO2 and it would take somewhere in the order of 50 years. We would need to build thousands of new power generation plants. And, of course, there is no way to predict what the population of our planet would be, we are at seven billion today. Eight billion? Nine? Ten? More cooking. More clothing. More housing. More food. More everything. More CO2.
It does not take an advanced degree in math and physics to look at this and quickly understand the entire thing is a huge fantasy. This does not mean climate change is not real. It is very real. And this does not mean we should clean-up our act. We should. Yet not for some religious blind belief that we are going to save the planet. We cannot. And, if we act on some of the nonsense being pushed around we are bound to do more harm than good. Climate change has become a horrifically powerful political tool because both believers and zealots are following their "leader" blindly off the cliff. There's delusion on both ends of the scale. Some of us are in the middle saying "No! Stop! This is crazy!". Our voices, for the most part, are being drowned out by the delusion. I can only hope someone listens.
First of all, the transition to renewables is a complete fantasy that has already been debunked:
https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-...
Back in 2014-ish, when I read it, this is the document that launched me into a year-long deep dive into this subject. I always give credit to the authors. They were full-on believers on saving the planet with renewables and set out to, once and for all, prove it. They say so in the paper. What they discovered was precisely the opposite, and, as good scientists do, accepted the failure of their hypothesis and published the result. In this charged political environment this took huge balls.
The conclusion, paraphrasing: Even if we deploy the most optimal forms of renewables, not only will we not stop atmospheric CO2, it will continue to rise exponentially.
> We could then hope to reach 0 emissions
No, we cannot. That is a fantasy.
For starters, we consume about 35 billion barrels of oil per year, nearly 100 million per day. Our very lives are so dependent on this stuff that we are not going to dent this level of consumption. Even if we cut it in half, this will not slow down atmospheric CO2 contributions enough.
And, not, a conversion to electric transportation will not make this happen. There are 1.5 billion vehicles in the world. Replacing that entire fleet with electric powered vehicles will likely take somewhere in the order of 50 years, if even possible. We also have to manufacture 1.5 new electric vehicles to replace them, which means producing massive amounts of CO2 and consuming equally massive amounts of resources.
And then we have to CHARGE 1.5 billion vehicles per day, every day, all around the world. The global power generation system cannot handle this. In the US alone we would need somewhere in the order of one hundred giga-watt class nuclear power plants just to be able to deliver the kind of power (not energy, power is the problem) we would need to handle our entire fleet going electric. Even if I am off by 75%, we need 25 new nuclear power plants, along with changes to our power distribution infrastructure to be able to handle it all. We did not build an infrastructure that has a 100% excess generation and transportation capacity. Most power plants operate very close to full capacity.
And then there's the reality of what would happen if we reached 0 emissions (again, impossible, we have forest fires that release more CO2 in a few weeks than the entire fleet of automobiles in the US).
Let's say for a moment that we could actually reach zero emissions world wide. You do understand that if it is only the US or the US and Europe it is pointless, right? You do understand that seven billion people cooking food every day by burning something will produce a massive amount of CO2, right? Analyze any process, making clothes, preparing food, transporting and processing our excrement in towns and cities, you will quickly discover zero emissions is an absolute fantasy.
Let's ignore all of that reality and actually believe we can get to zero emission world wide. The entirety of humanity, zero emissions. Like we do not exist.
Do we actually know what will happen if we could achieve this fantasy?
Yes, we do!
https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/trends/co2/ice_core_co2.html
https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/images/air_bubbles_historical...
These are atmospheric composition records extracted from ice core samples going back 800K years. In other words, we have good reliable and accurate data of a scenario, hundreds of thousands of years in duration, when humanity was "zero emissions" due to either being insignificant or not actually existing as we do today (7 billion people and our toys).
What does this data say?
It says that, if we did achieve zero emissions it would take about 100,000 years for a 100 ppm reduction in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
That is the baseline. Zero emissions == 1,000 years for a 1 ppm drop.
Now, go back and evaluate any proposed solution from this baseline.
"Cover the entire equatorial band with solar panels?"
Nope. This would violate the zero emissions scenario, therefore creating a situation where we would not be able to achieve a 1 ppm drop in a thousand years.
"Convert the entire transportation fleet to electricity?"
Nope. We would contribute even more CO2 and it would take somewhere in the order of 50 years. We would need to build thousands of new power generation plants. And, of course, there is no way to predict what the population of our planet would be, we are at seven billion today. Eight billion? Nine? Ten? More cooking. More clothing. More housing. More food. More everything. More CO2.
It does not take an advanced degree in math and physics to look at this and quickly understand the entire thing is a huge fantasy. This does not mean climate change is not real. It is very real. And this does not mean we should clean-up our act. We should. Yet not for some religious blind belief that we are going to save the planet. We cannot. And, if we act on some of the nonsense being pushed around we are bound to do more harm than good. Climate change has become a horrifically powerful political tool because both believers and zealots are following their "leader" blindly off the cliff. There's delusion on both ends of the scale. Some of us are in the middle saying "No! Stop! This is crazy!". Our voices, for the most part, are being drowned out by the delusion. I can only hope someone listens.
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/reversing-ocean-acidification-aggr...