Environment & Energy

...believe that the collapse of the climate is real and is caused by human activity. It was this one, by John Pershing of Climate Central:

The John Rassweiler Impact Lecture with speaker Climate Central on the 20th Anniversary of D&R Greenway’s Johnson Education Center

It ended up being depressing, because it was all about whether people believe extreme global heating is real, and if they believe it's caused by human activities and so on.

In the Q&A - everyone in the room of course understood that climate change is real and caused by human activity - people were carrying on about solar and wind, and interestingly in a way that was completely contradictory, about maintaining land use.

As the gadfly, I spoke up for nuclear energy and in opposition to so called "renewable energy" by noting that people have been chain sawing Joshua Trees in California, cacti that are 100s of years old with vast root systems that sequester carbon, to install industrial solar plants that will be landfill in 20 to 25 years.

The Climate Central guy after indicating that climate central's role is not to endorse solutions - he went on the remark on something about the antinuke club the Union of Concerned "Scientists" while acknowledging it was just that, an antinuke organization - but rather to get people to understand what's happening.

I pointed out that I monitor the Mauna Loa CO₂ regularly and that in 2000 the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste peaked at 372 ppm and that this week we're running at about 432 ppm, and that it's a little late, too late in fact, to be quibbling.

It was, in the end, depressing.

We are indeed, out of time. There are nuclear engineers, my son among them I'm proud to say, who are trying to save what is left to save and can be saved, but every day there is less and less that can be saved.

We're cooked.