Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Stopping emissions would help, but we won't even do that


Global warming has reached the point where direct death from heat is already killing us in significant numbers. Temperature/humidity combinations that are deadly range from 35C/100% to 47C/50%.

Stopping human carbon emissions is not enough. We have already started feedback loops that release naturally stored carbon.

Meanwhile all human activity, regardless of fuel source, generates heat: vehicles, roads, buildings, stainless steel, cement, etc, and that heat will continue to be generated for maintenance, even if all done by wind and solar.

One can argue that if we stop emissions and growth, the amount of heat from human metabolism is a very small percent. But we cannot even get to that argument because we have not even slowed the growth of emissions, let alone stop them.