Overall premise is true. AMOC theory is weak, but the pure disinformation part:
The green energy attack is dated fossil fuel disinformation. Vanadium has always been BS. Cobalt and Nickel are no longer needed for best battery storage technology. Lithium can be replaced with Sodium that is already in commercial large scale battery production.
The only element in their list that is essential is copper. At 1B tonnes reserves, that would be enough to make 12B EV sized motors with battery connection wiring. Recycling is a source of copper.
One alternative to expanding electrical grid (which tends to use aluminum more than copper), and battery sizes, is H2 electrolysis and fuel cells. These typically use platinum group metals, but abundant magnesium and relatively abundant nickel catalysts have near commercial ready performance. H2 can also be cleanly synthesized from CH4 to produce graphite (also in OP scarce list) as a byproduct.
Disinformation about energy transition aside, very serious CO2 impacts from permafrost thaw and forest fires from existing locked in global warming can overwhelm the elimination of FFs.
The problem is that electricity is not substituting a large subset of total primary energy consumption. Like high-temperature industrial processes and reduction and synthetic equivalents for the materials and chemical industry. As they currently exist renewables are not autopoietic (self-building and self-sustainig) but merely extenders or multipliers of fossil energy sources. We currently lack the technology to change that and are unlikely to be able to as the time window to do that is closing. So that is the unhappy part.
In part, you are describing US policy to maximize oil dependence and rapid development expansion instigated by war and sanctions.
Like high-temperature industrial processes and reduction and synthetic equivalents for the materials and chemical industry.
It is true that this is slow, and slower in US, than China and EU plans. The catalyst for that is a carbon tax, and high renewables penetration such that green H2/electrochemistry is done from surpluses most days when every day renewables meet all electricity needs.
renewables are not autopoietic (self-building and self-sustainig) but merely extenders or multipliers of fossil energy sources. We currently lack the technology to change that and are unlikely to be able to as the time window to do that is closing.
The largest Chinese solar cell manufacturer has several 100% solar powered manufacturing facilities. Mining equipment is possible to electrify/H2 power. Medium heavy machinery is involved in solar and wind deployment projects, and I have seen “solar installing robots”. It is unfair to put highly automated renewables production and deployments on a different standard than fossil fuel extraction.
Ocean currents are on the verge of collapse. Food chain collapse will follow soon after. Won’t be good times after that.
Awesome blog post. This is the best part:
I’m not a climate scientist, but it seems rather obvious to me […]
The IPCC AR6 WG2 does not agree with the non-climate scientist blogger.
They don’t agree with a lot of what’s being observed. Take your pick on who is being realistic.
I often encounter, especially on social media, individuals who are convinced that the latest extreme weather event is confirmation that the climate crisis is far worse than we thought, and scientists and climate communicators are intentionally “hiding” the scary truth from the public. It is the sort of conspiratorial thinking that we used to find among climate change deniers, but increasingly today we see it with climate doomists.
- Michael E Mann
https://www.aps.org/apsnews/2023/09/climate-doomism-disregards-science
A new study has revealed that the language used by the global climate change watchdog, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is overly conservative - and therefore the threats are much greater than the Panel’s reports suggest.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190320102010.htm
As a climate scientist, it is my duty to tell you about what is happening to our world, whether it engenders fear or not.
A failure to do this will mean that the public is left ignorant of the true extent of the climate emergency, which in turn can only hinder engagement and action.
This is already becoming a problem, with many commentators on the right of the political spectrum, along with some climate scientists, denigrating as “doomers” anyone flagging the worst outcomes of global heating.
Such climate “appeasement” is increasingly taking the place of denial and could be an even greater driver of inertia than fear, as it plays down the enormity of the problem — and as an inevitable consequence, the urgency of action.
Bill McGuire
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/07/opinions/climate-scientist-scare-doom-anxiety-mcguire/index.html
It’s your choice to hold opinions over scientific consensus.
It’s known as climate science denial.
What? You literaly poster an opinion peace. By a climate scientist, yes, but so is the response I posted.
Plus, I quoted a study in reply to the comments about the IPCC.
How is that climate science denial?
The scientific consensus is in the IPCC reports.
And it is science denial to have a scientific opinion that is interpreting facts differently then the consensus?
Also, from my first source:
“The IPCC supports the overwhelming scientific consensus about human impact on climate change, so we would expect the reports’ vocabulary to be dominated by greater certainty on the state of climate science – but this is not the case.”
The IPCC assigns a level of certainty to climate findings using five categories of confidence and ten categories of probability. The team found the categories of intermediate certainty predominated, with those of highest certainty barely reaching 8% of the climate findings evaluated.
“The accumulation of uncertainty across all elements of the climate-change complexity means that the IPCC tends to be conservative,” says co-author Professor Corey Bradshaw, Matthew Flinders Fellow in Global Ecology at Flinders University. “The certainty is in reality much higher than even the IPCC implies, and the threats are much worse.”
I lost respect for Mann when he took the road to blaming “doomers” for why humanity isn’t taking enough action. That’s a bunch of bullshit, and he knows it. I’m not sure why he veered from trying to inform people that we are in deep trouble to pointing fingers at people who are concerned.
Btw Michael, no one is saying the scientists are hiding the scary stuff. They’re pointing to the same data everyone else is getting and asking why isn’t anyone who can change things screaming fire. You’re in that group, Michael. Why AREN’T you worried more? I don’t want to make any suggestions on why you’re playing this act because I don’t know, but you know the science, so you should know better.
These threads are filled with doomers who consider “it’s worse than we thought” to be true regardless of who claims it, and any data - how well grounded in science it may be - that doesn’t support impending human extinction as false.
It’s funny, but as Mann points out, that’s the very definition of climate science denial too.
Sure, doom and gloom just because it’s trendy is bad. But doom as in, “it is worse than thought previously, because of this and that point” is not part of that. It’s “oh shit, look what we’ve done”.
Ah, yes. Let’s not look at the data or what he is presenting. Let’s dismiss it with a lazy blanked statement. Because this is how science work. You don’t look at what is said. You look at who said it.
Felt like the title was hyperbole. Read it anyways. It’s surprisingly data-backed. It doesn’t exactly convince me I’m going to die from climate change, but it does make it very obvious we as a society are unable to stop what’s coming.
unable? we aren’t even willing to.
RNG isn’t fun without enough options.
