J.C. Moore Online

Current Events from a Science Perspective

The Cornwall Alliance was originally created to help Third World countries deal with climate change. However, it has been taken over by E. Calvin Beisner, who uses it to spread climate change denial using pseudoscientific and religious arguments. You can identify climate change denial by the adjectives and adverbs used.

Beisner: One recent example is the announcement,” Cornwall Alliance Director of Research and Education exploded all kinds of myths about dangerous, manmade global warming/climate change …” .

#The Director of Research referred to is David Legates. As described by Wikipedia, “Legates has spent much of his career casting doubt on the severity of climate change and the human causes of warming. He is affiliated with the Heartland Institute, a think tank that promotes climate change denial.”

Beisner: “Bad Climate Data Brings Wrong Conclusions”, which says,”Two new internationally peer-reviewed studies published in major scientific journals have documented misleading Northern Hemisphere temperature data and attribution analyses indicating inadequate considerations of Urban Heat Island influences and dominant influences of the sun in producing warming and cooling changes.” #Certainly, cities are much warmer now, but they have little effect on worldwide temperatures. Beisner is correct that the Sun, through the Milankovitch Cycles , have a dominant effect on the Earth’s temperature. However, the Milankovitch cycles predict that the Earth should be cooling slowly for the next 20,000 years. But it isn’t. See the illustration above.

Beisner: “Climate Catastrophists at the UN Global Climate Summit Are Exploiting Religious Leaders. What is happening at the United Nations Climate Summit? Apparently, a lot of exploitation of religious leaders. Unfortunately, most of these leaders, including Pope Francis, seem far too eager to be exploited. ” #Pope Francis is a chemist and believes the predictions of climate science. If anyone is exploiting religious leaders, it is E. Calvin Beisner.

Beisner: “Arctic ice at decade high level: can Doomsayers explain? ” # There is no need to explain. This is just the denial of scientific research. NASA reports that Arctic sea ice extent is shrinking by 12.2% per decade due to warmer temperatures.

Beisner: “On the same day that Hurricane Hillary brought record rainfall to Los Angeles, a magnitude 5.1 earthquake occurred in nearby Ojai. “To the truly enlightened, these rare disasters should serve as a warning from on high that the Golden State is headed for a massive downfall – punishment for trying to force smog-fighting electric vehicles on smog-free America.” 

# Wow! Divine retribution for trying to reduce air pollution. And, America is not “smog free”.

Beisner: “Pope’s Climate Harangue Shows that He Should Stick to Theology and Leave Climate Policy to Those Who Follow Facts”.

#As noted above, Pope Francis is a scientist and is certainly qualified to speak on climate policy. Apparently, Beisner considers his own religious views to be the facts.

Beisner: “World leaders continue experiencing a dangerous delusion of a global transition to “just electricity” that they believe will eliminate the use of the crude oil…”

# Oil is a valuable natural resource, and no one is recommending that we completely eliminate its use or transition entirely to ” just electricity”. The carbon dioxide and plastics we produce from oil are threatening the Earth and its ecosystems. We should begin conserving petroleum for future generations and transition to other sources of energy as quickly as possible.

Beisner: “Try to forget for a moment that wind and solar are unreliable, intermittent, weather-dependent sources that can’t be scheduled to provide power when needed most — like maybe recharging a gazillion new government-mandated electric vehicles on windless nights.”

# There are a few exaggerations there. We should remember that during winter storm Uri, wind and solar provided energy as usual, while gas, coal, and oil sources froze up. We need a mix of energy sources to handle emergencies and to use while transitioning to renewable resources.

Beisner: “Wind Unaffordable and Costs Common Sense”.

# The costs of renewable energy projects are now less expensive than even the cheapest coal and gas fired power plants. As to environmental costs, Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank, used the results from formal economic models to estimates that the overall costs of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever. And, if not addressed immediately, the cost of mitigation and damages could rise to 20% of GDP by 2050 – with the additional cost and risk of an environmental catastrophe.

Beisner: “Thailand’s Tiger Turnaround Contradicts Climate Fearmongering“. Tiger populations in two of Thailand’s wildlife sanctuaries grew from 42 in 2012 to about 100 in 2022.” This defies the climate-obsessed mainstream media’s doomsday narrative which blames anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions for declines in animal numbers and even extinctions. # Conservationists managed to increase the Tiger populations in Thailand, and Beisner claims it disproves global warming. That is a bit of a stretch.

Beisner: “Knowledge shared is power multiplied. Together, we can give the gift of knowledge that will empower men and women around the world with the confidence and tools to confront the irrational climate alarmist policies that will ultimately harm the poor.”

#While it is the richer nations that emit most of the greenhouse gases that are causing climate change, it is the poorer countries that suffer the most from the droughts, floods, and extreme weather. Although E. Calvin Beisner professes concern for the poor, there is little evidence that he has actually done anything to help them. Although Beisner collects money from churches and donations from his website to help the poor, Charity Navigator reports that the Cornwall Alliance does not donate enough to be evaluated as a charity.

(c) 2024 – J.C. Moore

Exxon Mobil’s scientists discovered in about 1980 that the continued use of fossil fuels would have serious consequences for the Earth’s climate by 2030. Instead of searching for solutions, Exxon Mobil’s management disbanded the science research group, and began a campaign of misinformation to protect their profits. The Cornwall Alliance later became part of that misinformation campaign.

The Cornwall alliance was originally formed to protect indigenous people and the poor from the effects of global warming. E Calvin Beisner hijacked the name, and his efforts to protect the poor mostly amounted to promoting their use of fossil fuels. Indigenous communities do not have the wealth or the infrastructure for fossil fuel use and they have lived for centuries without using them. However, Dr. Beisner uses the poor in his religious arguments to promote fossil fuels. He publishes a weekly blog where he denies the findings of climate scientists, attacks renewable energy sources, and promotes the ideas of the 1% or so of scientists who are critical of global warming. I have followed his blog for years, and here are a few of his opinions from the last six months:

• “… the political left has declared gas stoves to be a threat to humanity.” Not exactly, but research has found that gas stoves emit nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide. Their use is the source of much of the methane that escapes into the atmosphere. Note that he always blames the political left and liberals, as it just wouldn’t do to say “scientific research has found…

• … Your retirement fund may have been shanghaied by BlackRock and Wall Street asset managers to advance political causes they think will make the world a better place. Or, they may realize that fossil fuel use is declining and it makes better sense to invest in renewable energy.

• … People in America and around the world are in danger of becoming slaves to scientism and scientocracy. That is how he describes sound science based upon evidence, as opposed to the scientists he quotes – who have little evidence. He warns against the danger of merging science and religion, and then he merges anti-science views with religion. Which is more dangerous?

• He asks, “Should we trust the UN’s climate science? The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is made up the of world’s best climate scientists and is based on the best data available. Dr. Beisner doesn’t trust them because they publish a report detailing why we need to cut our greenhouse gas emissions.

• And then he went after the” False Promise of EVs”. One of his claims is that the government is imposing its plans on car manufacturers. However, it might be because consumers are choosing EVs for all the advantages they have over internal combustion engines.

• He claims that next-generation science standards are a “serious threat to the education of America’s children”. He does not want them to be taught about evolution, which he conflates with the “dogma of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.” It might be okay to conflate them, as they are both soundly based on scientific evidence.

• He claims that there are competing worldviews of Environmentalism and Christianity. Dr. Beisner would like you to believe this, but the reality is that most mainstream Christians and Evangelicals believe that God expects Christians to protect the Earth and its environment.

• He asks, “Is the true crisis climate change… Or climate policy?” Naturally, he thinks that it is the climate policy, as it calls for a reduction in fossil fuel use. He follows this up with an invitation to the International Conference on Climate Change (not to be confused with the IPCC), which is a meeting sponsored by the oil companies and devoted to research disputing the findings of climate science.

• He thinks that India’s recent lethal cold spells are evidence that there is no global warming. However, the warming Arctic has changed the jetstream so that it creates a polar vortex where frigid air is pulled further south. He thinks he has found the ultimate contradiction, but it just confirms what climate scientists have found.

• He thinks that “The end of oil will be the end of civilization”. That sounds strange coming from someone who claims to have a Doctorate in History. The earliest known civilizations arose in Mesopotamia about 3500 B.C., and civilization had existed for over 50 centuries before oil came into widespread use. Some scientists, on the other hand, are worried that global warming will lead to the end of civilization as we know it.

• Finally, he calls scientists “doomsayers” when they report about the ill effects of global warming upon the Earth and its inhabitants. They are just reporting scientific evidence supported by data. It would be to mankind’s advantage to listen to the scientists before we reach a tipping point from which we can never recover.

The opinions listed are only from the last six months, but the Cornwall Alliance has advanced such opinions for over a decade. Dr. Beisner will not divulge the source of the considerable amount of funds needed to support the Cornwall Alliance, but all trails seem to lead to fossil fuel companies. He would like for you to believe the money comes from donations, but Charity Navigator reports that the Cornwall Alliance does not receive enough in donations to be evaluated as a charity.

(C) – 2023. J.C. Moore

Note! The Cornwall alliance newsletter regularly publishes some spectacular misinformation. Here is a sample of it:

10/6/2023 On the same day that Hurricane Hilary hit Los Angeles, a magnitude 5.1 earthquake occurred in nearby Ojai. Mr. Beisner said, “To the truly enlightened, these rare disasters should serve as a warning from on high that the Golden State is headed for a massive downfall – punishment for trying to force smog-fighting electric vehicles on smog-free America and the world.” – Wow!

07/27/2023 The Cornwall alliance want you to know, ” Global Warming Saves Lives”. – This advice comes during the most severe heat wave the Earth has experienced in last 10,000 years.

07/13/2023 “Biden’s Energy Policies Cost US Households More Than $2300 Since 2021”. – They ar. apparently blaming Biden rather than the oil companies for inflation. Nicholas Stern, past president of the World Bank, calculated that global warming is costing us 5% of the GDP, about $800 billion, each year.

07/06/2023 ” Americans Increasingly Choose a Warmer Life“. – You actually have no choice. The earth’s temperature has gone up about 2.1°F in the last century, and it’s going to keep rising as long as we listen to Dr. Beisner.

06/25/2023 “Epic Fail in America’s Heartland: Climate Models Greatly Overestimate Corn Belt Warming“. – This comes as crippling heat waves are striking the midwest and Texas and as Oregon is suing Exxon and other oil companies for the damage when 2020 temperatures reached 116° -in Oregon?

04/13/2023 ” Nearly a billion Indians use coal to Cope with heat waves.” – Apparently, E Calvin Beisner thinks India should burn more coal. The heat waves are made worse by the CO2 emitted from coal. So burning more coal will release more CO2 which will make the heat ways worse. The coal companies that help finance the Cornwall Alliance are happy with that.

3/10/2023 “The Economic Case for Net Zero Is Zero “Implementing net zero will depress the global economy more than the atmospheric warming that the campaign against carbon dioxide emissions is supposed to prevent.” – Apparently Mr. Beisner has not read the Stern report which, using the results from formal economic models, estimates the overall costs climate change is equivalent to losing at least 5% ($727 billion in 2010) of global GDP each year. And unaddressed, the cost could rise to 20% of GDP or more by 2050 – and increase the risk of an environmental catastrophe.

3/14/2023  “’The Climate Crusaders Are Coming for Electric Cars Too,’ a prophesy consistent with a concerning social control trend I have witnessed.” – Apparently, Mr. Beisner thinks the Climate Crusaders want you to walk to work.

4/11/2023 “The science teachers’ bureaucracy is driving climate education into an unquestioning adherence to unscientific methodology.” – Science teachers’ bureaucracy?

It is difficult to explain how global warming can cause some of the extremely cold weather we have been experiencing. The Arctic is warming much faster than the rest of the earth. The warmer Arctic destabilizes and weakens the jet stream, causing it to pull frigid air down from the Arctic into the United States.

The weaker the jetstream, the slower the loops (called Rossby Waves) move from West to East. This causes the polar vortex pattern to persist longer over the United States. This is like a weather event – and when it will happen is difficult to predict. However, all indications are that we will have many more such events as the Arctic warms.

Fossil fuel companies knew in 1979 that carbon dioxide emissions would cause the Earth to warm, creating undesirable consequences for the Earth. By 1981, the Exxon scientist concluded that the burning of fossil fuels could be catastrophic for some of the world’s population by 2030. The choice between huge profits and the possibility of harming the Earth and its inhabitants was a tough ethical choice for Exxon’s scientists, but not so much for management. They launched a campaign to keep the truth hidden and to keep themselves from being regulated. Their main strategy was obfuscation and denial.

Evangelical Christians were some of the first to become concerned about how global warming would impact the Earth’s population, mainly the poor. Genesis 1:28 says, ” Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”  Generally, those who argue for Christian stewardship think that “dominion” means “benevolent rule”. The Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, in 2000, developed the Cornwall Doctrine. Its main goal was to address the challenges faced by indigenous communities and the poorer countries as they faced climate change.

In 2008, the Cornwall alliance was taken over by Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, a Dominionist, who interprets the scripture to mean “subdue and exploit”, an interpretation which is received quite favorable by oil companies. Beisner argues that we should take what we wish from the Earth, without regard to its effect upon the environment. As far as the catastrophic effect on some of the world’s population, Beisner assuages his conscience by claiming that efforts to limit carbon emissions are actually harming poor countries by denying them fossil fuels. Poor countries do not have the resources or the infrastructure to use fossil fuels and distributive energy sources, such as wind and solar, would be most useful to them. And, indigenous communities will be hurt the most. The way of life that has sustained them for centuries is now being disrupted by climate change.  They do not have the resources to withstand prolonged droughts or protect themselves from sea level rise or flooding.

Beisner uses religious arguments as the apparatus of justification to reach out to conservative Christians and solicit donations. There is little evidence that the money goes to the poor. Charity Navigator says, “This organization cannot be evaluated by our Encompass Rating methodology because it files Form 990-N, as allowed by the IRS for charities with less than $50,000 annual revenue.” The Cornwall Alliance is funded by dark money and there is no way to establish how much money it collects, who supports it, or how the money is used. Critics of the Cornwall Alliance have accused the organization of being a “front group for fossil fuel special interests,” citing its strong ties to the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, which in the past was funded by oil industry giants such as Exxon-Mobil and Chevron. 

Beisner uses “climate alarmist”, in a pejorative way, to describe the 99.5% of climate scientists who know that climate change is caused by man’s activity. Of course, scientists are alarmed as Beisner, and others like him, are part of a disinformation campaign to keep governments from taking action on climate change. E Calvin Beisner does not like being called a “denier”, but denying scientific evidence is his main way of dealing with those “science alarmists”. And, he uses religious arguments to bolster his position.

Beisner is quite concerned that Katharine Hayhoe, an evangelical Christian, is infringing on his territory. Dr. Hayhoe is a Canadian-born climate scientist now living in Texas. She is excellent at communicating complex ideas, and her website and her recent book, Saving Us, are excellent primers on climate change, understandable to a non-specialist audience. Her explanations are not just limited to science but extend to religion, politics, and behavioral psychology. I sent a copy of her book to E. Calvin Beisner. He sent me a nice thank you for the book and said he hadn’t gotten around to reading it yet. Along with the letter were enclosed, not one, or two, or three…., but nine articles criticizing Katharine Hayhoe. The articles claim she is entangled in climate idolatry, has no business venturing into theology, is a climate alarmist, is wrong about global warming affecting the weather, and implies she could not believe in God and also man-made global warming. Beisner is sure these are true, even though he has not read her book.

Beisner likes to use religious arguments, but his views are at odds with both religion and science. Apparently, he has very little understanding of ecology. Pope Francis’s encyclical on ecology, Laudato Si, says that “climate change is real and mainly a result of human activity.” “The problem is urgent. Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years.” Beisner claims that Pope Francis was just wrong, probably news to most Catholics. Beisner’s position is even at odds with his own Presbyterian faith. The Presbyterian Church is now recommending divestment from fossil fuels and it was one of the first churches to address global warming. The Presbyterian Church first noted its “serious concern over global warming at the 1990 General Assembly, when it warned that the global atmospheric warming trend (the greenhouse effect) represents one of the most serious global environmental challenges to the health, security, and stability of human life and natural ecosystems’’.

E. Calvin Beisner is certainly right about one thing. Scientists are alarmed because they understand that we are beginning to reach a tipping point from which we will never recover. Scientific models claim we have till about 2030 to reduce our carbon emissions – or the oil companies’ early predictions of catastrophes will come true. Beisner often dismisses any predictions about the future made by scientists by claiming they are based on computer models. However, computers are the way we now store and process information and models are the way that scientists understand complex systems. And, the Cornwall Alliance serves as a good model for understanding global warming denial. 

(c) 2022 JC Moore – all rights reserved.

The countries of the world have reached a consensus that we need to reduce our carbon emissions. One proposal to do that is to switch to a hydrogen economy. The problem is that currently about 95% of the hydrogen we use is made using fossil fuels, which is an energy-intensive process that produces more CO2. The fossil fuel companies plan to get around that is to capture the carbon produced and store it (CCS). The questions that must be answered are how to capture the carbon, where to store it, and how much it will cost.

It is possible to capture the CO2 and there are now several plants currently doing it. Much of the captured carbon is currently used to produce more fossil fuels, so there is little gain in doing it. The chart below will give you an idea of the magnitude of the problem. Currently, we are adding 35 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year. The amount of carbon currently captured is 0.006% of that, an amount so small that it could not even be seen on the chart.

If carbon capture could be scaled up to capture most of the CO2 we are emitting, then where would we store it? The most obvious solution is to store it where it came from. The carbon from coal is mostly from strip mines and open mines, and it cannot be stored there. For petroleum and methane, storing it back underground is a possibility. However, burning them combines them with oxygen – and increases the mass and volume by a factor of two or three. It would be impossible to store more than a fraction of the CO2 back underground.

Assuming we could capture the carbon and find a place to store it, what would be the cost? This would involve acquiring the land, building the thousands of CCS plants required, and providing the energy necessary for the process. That cost has been estimated to be about $5 trillion a year, at current prices, for the rest of this century. There are certainly much less expensive options available.

So there you have it, the amount of CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere is far too great to capture, there is no adequate place to store captured CO2, and the cost would be astronomical. However, the fossil fuel companies are willing to try if we subsidize their costs, fund their research, and wait 80 years. It will be painfully obvious, long before then, that CCS is unworkable. The best plan is obviously to stop putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, a solution the fossil fuel companies are unwilling to accept.

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Science is about using observation and reason to understand the physical world. Here are some of the latest observations showing how increasing greenhouse gases are changing the Earth.

CO2: Man is now putting about 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air each year. About half of it dissolves in the ocean, making them 20% more acidic, and the rest increases the concentration in the air.

 

Temperature: CO2 is one of the greenhouse gases that warm the Earth, and NASA’s graph shows how its increase is changing the Earth’s temperature:

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The Sun: The current global warming is often wrongly attributed to an increase in intensity of the sun. The sunspot activity does not show up above the noise in the temperature record above – and the solar irradiance increased slightly until 1960 and has declined slightly since then.

Arctic Ice: Many of the changes in the Earth are subtle but this NASA picture clearly shows  how the Earth is changing:

The Arctic is Warming: This is affecting the ocean currents and the jet stream – and causing extreme weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere.

Arctic ice:  The next two graphs show quantitatively how both the extent and the volume of the Arctic ice are changing.

Antarctica: Research by Steig and by O’Donnell  show that Antarctica is warming. The warmer oceans result in more snowfall which increases the inland glacier mass, but the erosion of ice by the warmer oceans is causing an overall loss of ice mass.

Greenland: The Greenland ice sheets are also beginning to decline. Melting Greenland’s ice would cause sea levels to rise 10 feet,

Ocean Level Rise: The melting ice sheets, melting glaciers, and thermal expansion are causing the oceans to rise by about 3 mm per year which, though it seems small, amounts to an increase in ocean volume of 1190 cubic kilometers/yr.

Severe Weather: Warmer temperatures increase both the rate of evaporation and the energy and moisture in the air. This has doubled the incidence of severe weather, floods, droughts, and wildfires.

Economic Costs: Large secondary insurance companies such as Suisse Re now consider global warming a risk factor as there has been a fivefold increase in billion-dollar weather events in the last 30 years.

Droughts:  Since 1980, drought conditions have grown worse worldwide, and no one disputes the effect of droughts on food production. Here is how droughts have become worse in the Southwest United States.

Food Production: The increasing CO2, temperatures, and droughts are expected to decrease food production worldwide.

Extreme Temperatures: Climate scientists now have enough data and computing power to estimate the probability of extreme weather events. The figure below, from a paper by Hansen et. al., shows how the distribution of temperature has varied over the past 60 years. Extremely hot temperatures, those over 3 standard deviations from the mean,  are now over 20 times as probable as for the 1950 – 1980 period and 10 times as probable as for the 1980 – 2010 average.  That means that extreme temperatures that affected 1% of the landmass in 1980, now affect almost 10% of the landmass annually.

Note: This was posted on 08/31/2011 and updated on 04/03/2012,08/11/2012, and 02/12/2013. It was reposted on 08/27/2021.

(c) 2011  J.C. Moore

Related

Science, Global Warming, and the Ice Age MysteryDecember 31, 2010 In “Climate Change”

Is Global Warming Naturally Occurring? November 12, 2010, In “Climate Change”

Science, Climate Change, and the Greenhouse effect December 13, 2010, In “Climate Change”

Tags: Acidic Oceans, Antarctica ice, Billion-dollar weather events, Climate Change, CO2, droughts, extreme temperature probabilities., global Warming, Greenhouse Effect, ice-ages, James-Hansen, Keeling Curve, Munich Re, NASA’s temperature graph, Ocean level rise, Palmer Drought Index, polar ice melting, Solar irradiance, Sun, sunspot activity

There’s a little bit of truth to every myth, and the hydrogen economy is no different. Hydrogen fuel cells would be wonderful for the environment. They combine hydrogen with oxygen from the atmosphere to produce electricity, and they emit pure water. The hydrogen can be made by electrolysis of water, and the energy for the electrolysis can be provided by renewable energy such as solar and wind. Though hydrogen must be stored at high pressures or low temperatures, it can be transported and used to replace fossil fuels in most of their applications. Then why are the fossil fuel companies so eager to transition to a hydrogen economy? They now are applying for grants from stimulus money for research on hydrogen power. There must be more to the story and that is where magic comes in.

It would take a tremendous amount of magic to make hydrogen a viable source of energy within 30 years. Currently, 95% of commercial hydrogen is made from fossil fuels, primarily methane. Producing hydrogen from methane is energy intensive. It requires that methane be reacted with steam-heated to about 1100°C. That reaction produces hydrogen and carbon monoxide – which is then treated with additional steam at 380°C to convert the carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide. Not only is carbon dioxide produced as a byproduct, but it takes a tremendous amount of fossil fuel to heat the steam hot enough to carry out the reaction. Hydrogen produced in this way is called Brown hydrogen, because of all the fossil fuels used. You’re probably beginning to see why fossil fuel companies are so eager to transition to a hydrogen economy.

But wait. All we would need to do is capture the carbon dioxide produced in making Brown hydrogen and store it underground. Hydrogen could then be produced without adding more CO2 to the atmosphere, so it is called Blue hydrogen. Fossil fuel companies are now pursuing grants and subsidies to develop Carbon Capture and Storage Systems (CSS) to do just that. But there are a few problems. Fossil fuel companies knew as far back as 1979 (see memo below) that adding more CO2 to the atmosphere would cause global warming and damage the environment. A CSS system requires little new technology, so why did they not develop CSS then – and global warming would never have become a problem. Fossil fuel companies did not do it because it would have made their products more expensive, and demand would have gone down. And they are even less serious about developing CSS systems now. With prices dropping on renewable technologies and energy storage systems, CSS would make carbon or hydrogen fuels so expensive that it would accelerate the transmission to renewable energy and battery storage.

Though there are currently large supplies of methane available from fracking operations, using fracked methane to produce hydrogen just isn’t a good idea. The main problems associated with fracking are methane leaks and earthquakes (caused by the disposal of fracking fluids). It has been estimated that about 20% of the methane produced at the wellhead is lost through transmission losses and leaks. Because so much methane is lost during production, France has recently prohibited American fracked methane from being sold there. Though the amount of methane in the atmosphere is small, methane is 72 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. As the graph below shows, the methane concentration in the atmosphere has grown exponentially – and it now accounts for about 1/4 as much global warming as carbon dioxide.

That brings us to hydrogen produced by electrolysis, called Green hydrogen. To create the infrastructure to produce enough Green hydrogen to transition to a hydrogen economy would take more than 30 years. To get there, we would have to start now. That would require Black and Brown hydrogen to be used while we develop a CSS system, and then Blue hydrogen could be used until we have a fully operational Green hydrogen infrastructure. We would be dependent on fossil fuels for at least 30 more years, and the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would certainly go up. The best carbon capture systems are trees, oceans, and soils (through regenerative agriculture). Currently, those systems have not been able to keep up. Deforestation, commercial farming, and the acidification of the oceans are exhausting those systems’ abilities to capture CO2. The environment of the Earth cannot absorb much more carbon dioxide, and we certainly can’t wait 30 years on the chance that a commercial scale CSS system will be developed.

Hydrogen is very useful for things such as welding, food processing, ammonia production, and rocket fuel – but it will never be useful to power our economy. That is because a hydrogen economy would be terribly energy inefficient. If you were to use electricity from wind to produce hydrogen, transport the hydrogen to where it is needed, and use hydrogen fuel cells to power your car, about two-thirds of the energy would be lost in the process. The electrical energy that would take you 300 miles in a battery-powered car, would only take you 100 miles in a hydrogen-powered car. There is also no infrastructure in place to conveniently transport large volumes of hydrogen. Natural gas pipelines could not be used, as hydrogen reacts with metals and makes them brittle. I contrast, transmission lines for electricity are already in place and, if upgraded to handle the larger load, they could deliver power directly to your home and your car – and do it three times more efficiently.

Finally, hydrogen is explosive. If you have ever seen a hydrogen filled balloon exploded, you are probably aware of the tremendous power of a hydrogen explosion. Hydrogen explosions are rare, but are bound to happen if hydrogen were in wide use. A hydrogen explosion occurred in an AT&T Uninterruptible Power Source battery room in 2020. The explosion blew a 400 square foot hole in the roof and collapsed walls and ceilings throughout a large portion of the 50,000 square foot building. Fortunately, the computer/data center was vacant at the time and there were no injuries.

All things considered, unless you own a fossil fuel company or believe in magic, trying to convert to a hydrogen economy is a really bad idea. 

© 2021 – J. C. Moore. All rights reserved.

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Greenhouse gases play a huge role in keeping the surface of the Earth warm. Without the greenhouse effect, the temperature of the Earth would average about -18°C, and all the water on the Earth’s surface would be ice. The average temperature of the Earth’s surface is now about 15°C and rising. The graph below shows the concentration of the main greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, and how they have changed in the last two millennia. 

Inarguably, an increase in the greenhouse gas concentrations will warm the Earth – and we are seeing that happen. The average temperature of the Earth is now 1.2°F warmer than it was in 1850. The temperature of the Earth was fairly constant over the thousand years before the industrial age, and people, plants, animals, and our agricultural practices have adapted to that temperature. What will happen as the Earth’s temperature rises? We are finding out, and the effects are alarming.

Of the greenhouse gases, water accounts for about 70% of the greenhouse effect, carbon dioxide about 20%, methane 4%, nitrous oxide 1%, and the other greenhouse gases together about 5%. Our efforts to reduce global warming have focused mostly on carbon dioxide, as its concentration has increased over 40% from our use of fossil fuels. It will take time to phase out fossil fuels and transition to the use of renewable energy. The concentration of methane has grown appreciably in the last century, from about 800 parts per billion (ppb) to over 1900 ppb and it is rising rapidly. Methane has about an eight year half-life in the atmosphere before it is converted to carbon dioxide by natural process. The methane in the atmosphere would decrease quickly if we stopped putting it there. That is important, as methane has about 72 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.

The main cause of the rise in methane is commercial leaks, oil production, and fracking operations. In commercial sales, it is sometimes less expensive to ignore small leaks than to fix them. But many small leaks add up and it has been estimated that about 10% of natural gas put into pipelines is lost before it reaches the end user. Some of those problems could be fixed. Methane is also produced as a byproduct of oil production. If the amount of gas is too small to be sold commercially, it is often flared, i.e., lit like a torch. That converts it into carbon dioxide, which is less damaging to the environment. 

Fracking operations now produce a tremendous amount of natural gas for commercial use, and considerable amounts of methane escape into the atmosphere from the drilling operations and pipeline leaks. It requires effort and resources to contain the methane at the wellhead and to fix storage and transmission leaks. The EPA requires that leaks be self-reported, but often they were just ignored. Just recently, it has become possible to detect methane from GHGSat satellites. Below is a map that shows eight leaks in a 25 mi.² area in Turkmenistan, as they were seen by satellite. Estimates were that those leaks accounted for about 10,000 kg of methane a day. The methane was from fracking operations, pipeline leaks, and unlit flares.

Before satellites, most methane emissions were discovered by infrared cameras. Using them, it was found that the methane emissions from the Permian basin in Texas and New Mexico were much greater than those reported. Much of that came from unlit flares, which could easily be corrected. One accident at a gas well in Ohio is now thought to be the largest methane leak ever in the United States. Three different oil and gas facilities in Algeria were found to be leaking methane amounts equivalent to the carbon dioxide produced by a medium-size coal-fired power plant. The detection of leaks has been spotty and regulation of leaks has been difficult in the past. There is considerable economic incentive for gas companies to reduce methane emissions from leaks. However, it is expensive to send out crews to detect and repair smaller leaks, and many companies have just let them go.

The EPA expects the oil and gas industry to self-report and to repair leaks, but many companies just don’t. There are plans to deploy seven more GHGSat satellites to monitor greenhouse gas emissions. With them, it will be possible to detect and enforce the regulation of many methane leaks. It has been estimated that cutting methane emissions by 40% would have the same effect as taking 60% of the world’s coal-fired power plants off-line. And, we could easily cut methane emissions by 40% within the next decade.

(C) 2021 J.C. Moore All rights reserved.

The Arctic is much warmer now than it was 30 years ago. They even had 100° days in Siberia last summer. The warming Arctic has caused changes in the jet stream, which controls the Northern Hemispheres’ weather. The Rossby waves in the jet stream,  that move from west to east across the United States, (see picture), now come down further and move slower from west to east.

This means that the jet stream can sometimes pull Arctic air down from the Arctic region, called a Polar Vortex. The slower movement of the Rossby Waves causes the extreme cold to persist for longer. It is 3° today in Kansas, the windchill is -15°, and this cold spell will persist for about a week. If it is extremely cold and snowy where you live, you can thank global warming for that.

In his internationally renowned work, Capital in the Twenty-First Century,  Thomas Piketty says that extreme economic inequality can only be sustained by “apparatuses of justification.”  He states, “ The existence of such “apparatuses” can hardly be disputed; the notion that wealth rightly belongs to those who possess it, no matter the means by which they acquired it or the needs of others around the world, is certainly well within the mainstream of contemporary thought, especially in North America and Europe. Ideas such as this did not, however, permeate contemporary culture on their own. They are derived, developed, and distributed by corporations, government offices, “independent” think-tanks, etc.” Two apparatuses of justification that immediately came to mind are trickle-down theory and the lies created by the Cornwall Alliance.

The trickle-down theory claims that the best way to promote economic prosperity for everyone is to give tax breaks to large corporations and those already wealthy. The idea this promotes is that they will create jobs and provide opportunities for those less well off. It was tried on a large scale in the United States under Reagan, Bush ll, and Trump. Over the years, many poor and middle class citizens have voted for politicians advocating trickle down theory. It is a flawed theory, wealth actually flows upward and pools at the top.  Meanwhile, after 40 years, they are still waiting for their share of the wealth trickle-down. The wealthy have become wealthier, the poor poorer, and the economic inequality in the United States has grown to unacceptable levels, as shown in the graph below.

After all that time, many Americans still do not realize how they have been fooled, as the chart below shows.

The Cornwall Alliance was originally started to help the poorer countries adapt to climate change. When E. Calvin Beisner took over as its spokesman, he interpreted that to mean that the Third World countries needed to use more fossil fuels. Never mind that they do not have the infrastructure or wealth to acquire and use them. Under his leadership, the Cornwall Alliance has become funded by dark money, most of which can be traced to fossil fuel companies. Who else? Beisner created the Green Dragon Monster, which he uses to represent environmentalists who want to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. He uses “climate alarmist” to represent the 99.5% of climate scientists who have shown that climate change is caused by man’s activity, and “climate doomsayer’ for those who agree with scientists that global warming is harming the Earth.

Beisner uses religious arguments to reach out to conservative Christians and solicit donations. There is little evidence that the money goes to the poor, being used mostly to pay himself to distribute his message. He interprets, “God giving man dominion over the earth ”, Genesis 1:26-28, to mean that God has given man the right to exploit nature as he pleases. Apparently, he has very little understanding of ecology. Pope Francis’s encyclical on ecology, Laudato Si, says that “climate change is real and mainly a result of human activity.” “The problem is urgent. Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years.” Beisner claims that Pope Francis was just wrong, probably news to most Catholics.

Beisner’s position is even at odds with his own Presbyterian faith. The Presbyterian Church is now recommending divestment from fossil fuels and it was one of the first churches to address global warming. The Presbyterian Church first noted its “serious concern over global warming at the 1990 General Assembly, when it warned that the global atmospheric warming trend (the greenhouse effect) represents one of the most serious global environmental challenges to the health, security, and stability of human life and natural ecosystems’’.

There are many other examples of apparatuses of justification. You may recognize them by their tendency to label their opponents with unflattering terms; by their opposition to scientific research; by their derision of mainstream religious leaders; and, by their distortion of the truth. Ask yourself, “Who profits from their message?”, and if it is a special interest group, recognize it for what it is. And above all else, vote for the political candidates opposed to those special interest groups.

© 2021 – J.C. Moore, All rights reserved.