As we start the new year, two events caught my attention.
Two Events
The first event was a video recorded by Dr. Peter Carter, a founding member of the Climate System Emergency Institute. The title of the video is November 2024: Tough Climate Times Ahead.
I have been following Carter’s videos for the last few years. His quiet message has been that, unless we take drastic action now, the consequences of climate change will be catastrophic. In this video he notes that the worst case scenarios predicted by scientists over the last decade or so are actually happening.
Carter is soft-spoken and data-driven. Yet he says,
Yes, it's time to panic.
It really is time to panic.
I don't detect any panic out there at all.
The second event to catch my attention was the mild snow storm that is currently taking place in central Virginia, where I live. The weather forecasters are predicting a couple of inches of snow, that will soon melt.
So, which of the two events are people talking about?
Net Zero Technology
As we have discussed in previous posts, the impetus behind creating this Net Zero substack was to determine which technologies are best for achieving greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050. But, we have seen that it is increasingly evident not only that we are not going to reach those goals, we are not even seriously trying.
I subscribe to a variety of technical journals to do with the energy and chemicals businesses. Those journals publish many articles describing different types of alternative energy. For example, there has been a flurry of articles recently to do with ‘Sustainable Aviation Fuels’. The unstated assumption behind most of these articles is that, if we transition to alternative fuels and energy sources then we will be able to save the climate and simultaneously maintain our current lifestyle.
In my view, this assumption is flawed. As the above vignette suggests, the great majority of people are really not all that interested in or knowledgeable about climate change. They are more focused on short-term issues. This being the case, we need to be evaluating Net Zero technologies, not only for their ability to avert climate change, but for their capacity to help us live in a climate that has already changed and that will continue to change.
