No, we are making climate warming worse!
A survey of the world’s top climate scientists, conducted by Englland’s Gardian newspaper, foud that 50% of them expected the world’s average temperature by 2100 to rise by 3º C (5.4º F) and 80% expected them to rise by at least 2.5º C (4.5º F)1.
Unfortunately. the most recent climate models are showing more warming than the average of the above survey — 2.5C to 5.0C by mid- or late- 2000’s.
Everyone agrees, but….
Everyone agrees that electrification, even with fossil fuels, creates less greenhouse gas than direct combustion. Everyone agrees that solar, wind, and nuclear power generation reduce the use of fossil fuels. And almost everyone agrees that it would be best to slow and eventually stop climate warming.
However, we are not limiting climate warming. In fact, we are going backwards. As I write, CO2 emissions for the last 12 months increased by the biggest amount ever — as measured at the top of Mona Loa in Hawaii and elsewhere. And, the global lower atmosphere temperature this year, as measured by satellite, is above any previous level by one-half degree Celsius — the biggest yearly increase ever.
The increase is largely due to energy use growth in the big emitting nations: China and India, which has more than cancelled the very small savings in Europe and the United States. European savings are less than publicized — one reason being the wood pellet scam and another being that wind and solar energy savings are a very small portion of total energy use. In the United States, CO2 emissions have declined in the last couple of years, but only by about 1/2 percent.
(For a nation by nation update on the fossil fuel use for electricity, see this site: https://ember-climate.org/countries-and-regions/ To look at the examples of those European nations who strongly support green energy see my page: Some climate progress is better than none — Denmark and Germany
And, what do we plan to do in the years immediately ahead? We plan to expand data centers and Internet technologies that consume huge amounts of energy for gaming, socializing, commerce, artificial intelligence or creating e-money. We will provide more energy to increase the amount of food, to desalinate water, and to provide additional robotics and mechanization, to increase air conditioning. We will spend a fortune researching advanced geothermal and fusion technologies that we know, if effective, will be too late and too expensive, rather than investing in existing technology. We will install a small amount of wind, solar and biomass rather than nuclear, even though we know they cannot end more than a fraction of fossil fuel use; and we will increase harvests of forests for fuel, thus actually increasing warming.
On the individual level, many of us will urge our politicians to do something. Yet many of us will jet across our country or the world for vacations, weddings, hiking, or even environmental conferences . We will add lighting and appliances, and if we can afford to, upgrade to larger homes and apartments, build more homes, and then heat, cool, and furnish them. If we can afford to, we will buy expensive electric automobiles with big batteries, that many of us wil not use sufficiently to pay back the battery’s environmental impact — while we may well use a large, powerful gas guzzler for road trips.
Energy Growth in the United States, China and India, among other nations, more than cancels, any saving made elsewhere.
China, in 2023, used almost twice the energy of the United States — more than a quarter of the earth’s total, and India used more than one-half as much energy as the USA. China’s energy use grew at 6.6% (a doubling time of 11 years, but its use of fossil fuels is at last growing by less due to a huge solar program). India’s fossil fulle use grew at 5.1% (a doubling time of 14 years).
Electricity only provides one-tenth of all energy. Of this wind and solar now provide about 14% — that is, presently wind and solar provide 1.4% of all world energy, while nuclear provides 10% of electrical power or 1% of all energy.2
Human nature is acquisitive — and people strongly oppose having things taken away. Therefore, drastic measures are unlikely. Climate warming will continue and our descendants will suffer the consequences.
Given this disappointing assessment, what are we to do? Some progress in stopping warming is better than none. And, there are other good reasons for a country to transition from fossil fuels. We should save oil and gas reserves for making chemicals and materials. We should attain energy independence without degrading the environment.
What must we do to slow global warming?
- (Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/08/world-scientists-climate-failure-survey-global-temperature ↩︎
- (Sources: https://yearbook.enerdata.net/total-energy/world-consumption-statistics.html. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/nuclear-power-in-the-world-today#:~:text=Nuclear%20energy%20now%20provides%20about,of%20the%20total%20in%202020).https://yearbook.enerdata.net/renewables/wind-solar-share-electricity-production.html. ↩︎