Climate has always changed. That’s the science. No matter how much money we throw at it it will have little affect. It is possible there is someone alive now that will find an alternative energy source that will stretch out our oil resources until that alternate energy will be modified into the primary source. The two biggest things we have now that would be really give a more time and stretch out the oil resource are politically untouchable due to not properly educating the people on them. That is due to the total mistrust, rightfully so, of every corrupt to the core government. Which government? Which political party? Every one of them in the history of mankind. Oh, nuclear power and H2 powered vehicles.
@Thatsright Climate has always changed: true, but not the whole story. You have neglected to mention some crucial points.
The global warming / climate change we're seeing in the last 100 or so years is MUCH different from anything measured in the glacial & sea sediment records covering the last 800,000 years. CO2 is rising 100x faster, and temps 10x faster.
"How is Today’s Warming Different from the Past?" https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/GlobalWarming/page3.php "As the Earth moved out of ice ages over the past million years, the global temperature rose a total of 4 to 7 degrees Celsius over about 5,000 years. In the past century alone, the temperature has climbed 0.7 degrees Celsius, roughly ten times faster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming."
How is today's CO2 increase different? https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide "The annual rate of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 60 years is about 100 times faster than previous natural increases, such as those that occurred at the end of the last ice age 11,000-17,000 years ago."
Fact is, anthropogenic global warming is accepted by a YUGE segment of the scientific community. Would you accept the consensus opinion of the American Physical Society AND the American Chemical Society? How about the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and at least 15 other national organizations of publishing scientists? See https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
Here's 800,000 years of climate data, covering about 7 ice ages. The data comes from bubbles in glacial ice, and is corroborated by data from lake & sea floor sediments. https://icecores.org/about-ice-cores CO2 & methane & temp data
Here's where the various data sets were collected:
The most salient thing about the 800,000 years of climate data is the rate of change during those previous 7 ice ages compared to the current rate of change this century.
@ElwoodBlues Why do you bother with data? Climate deniers have made up their mind and NOTHING will convince them otherwise because that would mean having to face a terrifying reality.
@Kypro They’re not sustainable without oil. I know the giant company windmills a 0 net gain or loss in carbon footprint. Lithium batteries are an ecological nightmare. All three of those are buying very little time. Someone, somewhere will figure out something that is sustainable. H2 vehicles are in experimental stage. Some over the road trucks have been built and are super powerful. These vehicles have a lot of promise. Fusion is a long way away from being ready for consumer use. A breakthrough was made a few years ago. Something world changing will be discovered.
(1) Nobody is saying zero oil; they're saying less than 2 tons of CO2 per person. "No oil" is a straw man.
(2) Large wind turbines: the carbon footprint of a large offshore wind turbine is between 4 and 25 grams of CO2 equiv. per kWh with modern, large turbines reaching the lower end of this range. For comparison, natural gas is 437 to 758 grams of CO2-equiv per kWh depending on life cycle costs. In short, the windmill is roughly 20X to 50X cleaner over the life cycle. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/06/whats-the-carbon-footprint-of-a-wind-turbine/
(3) Lithium batteries are very easily recycled; current processes recover 95% or more of the lithium, nickel, cobalt, and other metals. https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/news/responding-recovering-and-recycling-lithium-ion-batteries-after-accidents-and-natural-disasters/ Redwood has contracts with General Motors, Toyota, Ford, Volvo, and BMW among other companies.
(4) Sodium ion batteries are coming into commercial use for non-vehicular applications such as utility scale peaking plants. Lower energy density but much cheaper, safer, and even easier to recycle.
