Forgetting my pile of as-yet-to-read books, when Mark Zuckerberg published his books-to-read list – for example here at http://tinyurl.com/npy2smc – I was delighted to see Vaclav Smil being cited as the one author to read under the heading Energy. He has long been one of my heroes on this and many other subjects about which he has written (just check out his publications in Wikipedia here: http://tinyurl.com/q9onoy6 ). [1]
Of special interest is this advice in his ‘Energy at the Crossroads: Global
Perspectives and Uncertainties’ [MIT Press 2003]:
“The fundamental reason why carbon dioxide abundance in the atmosphere
is critically important to biology is that there is so little of it.
A field of corn growing in full sunlight in the middle of the day uses up all the carbon dioxide within a meter of the ground in about five minutes. If the air were not constantly stirred by convection currents and winds, the corn would not be able to grow.”
A field of corn growing in full sunlight in the middle of the day uses up all the carbon dioxide within a meter of the ground in about five minutes. If the air were not constantly stirred by convection currents and winds, the corn would not be able to grow.”
Since the first ‘space salad’ was now grown and eaten by the
astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS), I wonder what
concentration of CO2 was used in the first actual ‘glass house for food’ in
Space, when even here on Earth glasshouse plant and food growers put additional
CO2 into their greenhouses to avoid their plants withering because of CO2
starvation.
{ PS on 04 JAN 2016: As Tim Peake's first interview from the International Space Station makes clear [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhzWTbe9WNc - at about 8 minutes in ] , the CO2 content of the ISS atmosphere is ten times that on Earth - to reduce fire risk - but plants obviously thrive on it }
{ PS on 04 JAN 2016: As Tim Peake's first interview from the International Space Station makes clear [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhzWTbe9WNc - at about 8 minutes in ] , the CO2 content of the ISS atmosphere is ten times that on Earth - to reduce fire risk - but plants obviously thrive on it }
The UN/IMF/IPPC stance on the subject just is not possible
considering THE FOUR LAWS WITHOUT WHICH NOTHING WHATSOEVER IN THE UNIVERSE THAT
HAPPENS, HAPPENS (as shown here: http://tinyurl.com/pvzva68 with its
corollary here: http://tinyurl.com/ot2hlp4 ,
or in another summary here: http://tinyurl.com/naexuho
).
In the US these natural laws are now, of course, superseded
by a 2007 Lysenkoist edict from the Supreme Court declaring carbon dioxide a
pollutant, and as a result it won’t be long until we see EPA staged Stalinesque
show trials. Lo and behold – here appears
one in the making:
Returning to pollutants from burning any fuels – coal, oil,
gas, wood etc –, the only pollutants given off are SOXs NOXs OBNOXs -- sulphur
oxides, nitrogen oxides, anything else ‘obnoxious’ incl carbon monoxide from
incomplete combustion, and, of course, particulates (that is the ‘smoke’ that
you actually can see – unlike carbon dioxide which is invisible, as are the
most dangerous particulates of less than 2.5microns in diameter; think of
asbestos) -- all of which are the province of clean air legislation.
The Economist of 15 August 2015 has drastic descriptions
of the pollution problems in China:
“The capital’s “airpocalypse”, the choking smog that descended on
Beijing in the winter of 2012-13, galvanised public opinion and spooked the
government…
Responding to the outcry, the government set up a national
air-reporting system which now has almost 1,000 monitoring stations, pumping
out hourly reports on six pollutants, including sulphur dioxide, ozone and (the
main culprit) particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in diameter, or PM2.5.
These are tiny particles which lodge in the lungs and cause respiratory
disease. The six are the main cause of local pollution but have little to do
with climate change, since they do not include carbon dioxide, the main
greenhouse gas… [1]
Pollution is sky-high everywhere in China. Some 83% of
Chinese are exposed to air that, in America, would be deemed by the
Environmental Protection Agency either to be unhealthy or unhealthy for
sensitive groups. Almost half the population of China experiences levels of
PM2.5 that are above America’s highest threshold. That is even worse than the
satellite data had suggested.
Berkeley Earth’s scientific director, Richard Muller, says
breathing Beijing’s air is the equivalent of smoking almost 40 cigarettes a day
and calculates that air pollution causes 1.6m deaths a year in China, or 17% of
the total. A previous estimate, based on a study of pollution in the Huai river
basin (which lies between the Yellow and Yangzi rivers), put the toll at 1.2m
deaths a year—still high.”
China Cities Smog here: http://tinyurl.com/pe9r4mc
And here are some pictures from Space: http://tinyurl.com/bbp4udl
.
Telling as these descriptions, graphic and views from Space
are – no mention of a single death or even illness caused by carbon dioxide is mentioned. Yes, CO2 has killed people and livestock, as
at Lake Nyos in Cameroon and elsewhere, see http://tinyurl.com/cdk54sd
, but not by being ‘poisonous’ but simply by swamping the local atmosphere with
CO2 to such an extent that there was no oxygen left and deaths were caused by
asphyxiation.
Coming back to books, Mark Zuckerberg mentions that Smil’s
book is about ‘physical rather than social sciences.’ But I find that the longer I
read up, and blog, on Clean Energy, that you cannot have CleanEnergy without
CleanPolitics, not least in light of President Eisenhower’s admonition in his
Farewell Address on 17 January 1961 “…the free university, historically the
fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery has experienced a
revolution in the conduct of research … [when] a government contract becomes
virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.” Much the same admonition
was expressed by Helmut Schmidt, the former German Chancellor, in his address
to the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft on the occasion of its Centenary Ceremony on 11
January 2011 in Berlin, under the title ‘The Responsibility of Research in
the 21st Century’. More at:
[PS: now sadly IN MEMORIAM on learning of Helmut Schmidt's death today, 10 November 2015].
.
[PS: now sadly IN MEMORIAM on learning of Helmut Schmidt's death today, 10 November 2015].
.
[NB: I have never met Helmut Schmidt, but come to remember it,
I did meet President Eisenhower in the Oval Office in July 1953 as an
American Field Service sponsored exchange student.]
.
.
In these respects, as addressed by Eisenhower and Schmidt,
‘social sciences’ are of no help – only some frank descriptions of political
reality are needed. Some primers I found useful are
Richard Buckminster Fuller
CRITICAL PATH, Hutchinson, London, 1983
Noam Chomsky
HOW THE WORLD WORKS, Hamish Hamilton, London, 2012
POWER SYSTEMS, Hamish Hamilton, London, 2013
Joseph A Klein
GLOBAL DECEPTION, World Ahead Publishing Inc, Los Angeles CA, 2005
Richard Buckminster Fuller
CRITICAL PATH, Hutchinson, London, 1983
Noam Chomsky
HOW THE WORLD WORKS, Hamish Hamilton, London, 2012
POWER SYSTEMS, Hamish Hamilton, London, 2013
Joseph A Klein
GLOBAL DECEPTION, World Ahead Publishing Inc, Los Angeles CA, 2005
[1] notice the continued allusion to ‘climate change’, as if
CO2 could possibly have anything to do with it – as stated by spokesmen of the
IPCC themselves no less: http://tinyurl.com/q4rtmvf
In this respect, I am aghast also at what I read in Scientific American (September 2015
issue), where on page 7 under the heading Science Agenda by the Editors:
Opinion and analysis from the
Scientific American Board of Editors:
“Then, as now, actions* were driven in large part by antiscientific
opposition to evidence that global warming has a human trigger”
*in relation to the NASA Earth science budget
allocation by the current administration.
I wonder what Martin Gardner would have had to say in his SCIENCE: GOOD BAD AND BOGUS when learning about this editorial board pontification of turning Scientific American into an oxymoron.
Not to be outdone, “This crime against future generations” blares
an Opinion headline on page 24 in The Times of 15 August 2015, with a sub-head
of “Earth’s
fate depends on action now over climate change.
Our short-terminism stands in shameful contrast to our forebears”.
Author being no less a person than Martin Rees – Lord Rees of Ludlow,
Astronomer Royal, who also is on the Board of Advisors of Scientific American.
Methinks all these Nuremberg
Meme Funnellers will have a lot to answer for – because
It ain’t necessarily
so. http://tinyurl.com/naexuho
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PS: some further useful links:
ROAYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
LINDAU #1
ADDENDUM posted 26 NOV 2015:
HOW TO BREAK THE CLIMATE DEADLOCK...
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PS: some further useful links:
Dr Tim Ball
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/07/28/a-co-founder-of-greenpeace-tells-the-truth-on-co2/
and here:
http://www.thegwpf.org/patrick-moore-should-we-celebrate-carbon-dioxide/
and the VIDEO here:
http://www.thegwpf.com/video-of-patrick-moores-gwpf-lecture-should-we-celebrate-co2/
and here:
http://www.thegwpf.org/patrick-moore-should-we-celebrate-carbon-dioxide/
and the VIDEO here:
http://www.thegwpf.com/video-of-patrick-moores-gwpf-lecture-should-we-celebrate-co2/
Dr Patrick Moore
LINDAU #1
The World's Scientists own words on Mann and his Hockey Stick
Soros buys Coal
And a flashback:
http://www.sott.net/article/277349-Top-scientist-resigns-from-post-admits-Global-Warming-is-a-scam
[1]
Why I do what I do is at
And on Sustainability:
SUSTAINABILITY - THE FULL MONTY is published by Lulu Press, at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/CleanEnergyPundit
Soros buys Coal
And a flashback:
http://www.sott.net/article/277349-Top-scientist-resigns-from-post-admits-Global-Warming-is-a-scam
[1]
To
stay with Vaclav Smil, my often quoted TYGER reads provider, e.g. in http://cleanenergypundit.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/tyger-tygers.html
I offer two further of his comments for consideration:
“Russia, too, is part
of my Europe. Arguments about Russia’s place in (or outside of) Europe have
been going on for centuries… I have never understood the Western reluctance of
the Russian hesitancy to place the country unequivocally in Europe… its
history, music, literature, engineering, and science make it quintessentially
European.” p.93
“Russia has another
strength in its intellectual capacity. The country has always had many highly
creative scientists and engineers, whose fundamental contributions are
generally unknown to the Western public. How many people watching a scanner
toting up their groceries know that Russian physicists, together with their US
colleagues, pioneered masers and lasers. (Nobel prices in physics were awarded
to Nikolai Gennadievich Basov and Aleksandr Mikhailovich Prokhorov in 1964 and
to Zhores Ivanovich Alferov in 2000.) How many people seeing the images of the
US Air Force stealth planes know that this class of aircraft began with Piotr
Iakovlevich Ufimtse’s (1962) equations for predicting the reflections of
electromagnetic waves from surfaces?”
And on Sustainability:
SUSTAINABILITY - THE FULL MONTY is published by Lulu Press, at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/CleanEnergyPundit
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
ADDENDUM posted 26 NOV 2015:
HOW TO BREAK THE CLIMATE DEADLOCK...
…either in accordance with
this article in the December 2015 issue of Scientific American and its
featured article which raises the question whether it is not only Lysenkoist –
as we know from its support of the HockeySchtick – or whether Scientific
American is now hell-bent to make an oxymoron of its title, when compared
to the considerations expressed in the Idiot Guide to Global Warming at
http://tinyurl.com/qjxakew ? You
decide!
