
The Hydrocarbon Era’s Spectacular End - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-06/the-hydrocarbon-era-s-spectacular-end
======
ixtli
As an aside, I found this article the be spectacularly well written:

> A central argument for fossil fuels’ continued dominance is that humanity
> will surpass 10 billion at some point, and all those people will want
> something like the Western living standards built over the past 100 years on
> the back of coal, gas, and oil. Yet what a poverty of imagination this
> betrays, especially in light of climate change, which hits the poorest
> hardest. How can that be the pinnacle of civilization? What even constitutes
> “higher living standards” in a world where the costs of our existing
> technologies are so transparent? Far from securing hydrocarbon dominance for
> another 100 years, the needs and aspirations of future generations demand it
> give way to something more sustainable.

~~~
philipkglass
When I go by the numbers it looks like there is _easily_ room for enough
renewable energy generation for everyone to consume energy services at
"Western" rates. But a number of caveats:

Energy production is the easier part. Storage is the harder part. It seems
like renewable electricity storage is just now getting to the point of
maturity that solar electricity production was 10-15 years ago. [1]

The model Westerner in question is someone more like the median Dane than the
median Texan. [2]

Some forms of consumption are going to be limited by constraints other than
CO2 emissions from energy. Ruminants emit too much methane for everyone to eat
beef like Australians. There are not enough redwood trees for the world's
populations to install redwood hot tubs like Californians used to. There is
not enough usable space in Luzon for most of the population to have a large
detached house even if there were clean energy for all those houses.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20595698](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20595698)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita)
[https://www.eia.gov/state/rankings/](https://www.eia.gov/state/rankings/)

~~~
csboyer
In the cited statistics, they may be conflating energy production/refining
with consumption. In Europe, the Benelux region has much higher consumption
then their neighbors. A bit surprising given similar weather, their love for
bicycles and well developed train infrastructure. State side, Louisiana has a
much higher consumption than rest of the deep South. Perhaps due to the small
population and the oil & gas production off of the carcinogenic coast?

~~~
philipkglass
Louisiana has a large number of facilities that make chemicals and fuels from
natural gas and crude oil. Those facilities dissipate much of the primary
energy in the inputs in the course of making refined output products. I think
that's where the high per capita figure comes from; it's e.g. energy losses in
facilities making ethylene from fossil inputs, _not_ the mere fact of
extracting fossil fuels. Since that energy dissipation happens in facilities
located within the state of Louisiana, staffed by Louisianans, I think it's
fair to include those facilities in the per-capita statistics for Louisiana.

The other popular perspective is that those figures really "belong" more to
the end consumer than to the producer. I don't agree, for reasons both
philosophical and pragmatic.

Pragmatic: it is easier to track what happens in large production facilities
than to track the ultimate retail fate of every gallon of gasoline coming from
Louisiana refineries. Trying to trace production to millions of consumers
instead of monitoring dozens of primary producers is a recipe for getting much
less actionable data.

Philosophical: producers are (IMO) more responsible for the
efficiency/pollution of production than consumers are. A consumer has no way
of telling at the point of sale how efficiently/cleanly the aluminum in a
laptop or plastic in a bucket was produced. Primary producers reap the profits
and make those process choices about production; it's also producers who
should most face the criticism for wasteful or polluting practices.

------
graeme
>Despite the falling costs and growing market share of renewable energies,
they still lack the killer app: a price on carbon emissions that would expose
the frequently hidden costs of fossil fuels. Conventional wisdom holds that
Americans, especially, wouldn’t stand for that.

This is why I desperately want a carbon tax above all else. Price in the
externalities, to accelerate existing trends in the energy replacement cycle.

I don’t think government can magic a solution into existence (thought basic r
snd d funding helps), but it is _well_ within government power to price
externalities. We can even lower other taxes that have negative effects but
are currently needed for revenue.

We may or may not make it, but such a tax will help speed all of our efforts
by growing the reward for non-carbon energy.

~~~
bsmith
I may be naive, but I think the real problem here isn't Americans per se, but
American corporations; once an industry in the states is large enough, taxing
it (in any meaningful way) is virtually impossible because of lobbying dollars
and backdoor dealings with politicians (e.g. "regulators," lol). Look at
sugar, plastic, corn, beef, etc. There are examples a plenty.

~~~
graeme
A bit of both. Corporations can’t lobby for open murder or human sacrifice:
they have to hew to popular opinion, as politicians do.

PR and propaganda can sway this somewhat, but not in a limitless way. The
single biggest factor blocking more urgent action is human nature: we tend to
the short term, we like to be comfortable, and we have a hard time imagining
things being radically different than they are.

I am not saying it’s impossible to convince the populace. I only mean to
counter the perception that resistance comes only or even largely from
corporations.

Iirc correctly americans only have a 10-15% spread on climate issues compared
to europeans.

~~~
chris1993
Motivation for broader action may wait for a climate change Pearl Harbor

------
acqq
> Primary energy consumption _grows at about 1% to 2% a year_ , and that rate
> has trended downward, more or less, since the 1960s. That’s _linear growth_

How come? Even "just" 1% per year growth in consumption is still exponential:
starting with consuming 100 of something this year, in 70 years you'll consume
200 per year, but after the next 70 years you'll consume 400 per year.

During the first 70 years you would have totally consumed 10000 of that
something, and during the next 70 years 20000 of that total. In the next 70
years, 40000 of that etc.

For 2% growth, each _doubling_ takes just 36 years.

More details, quoting Al Bartlett's "The greatest shortcoming of the human
race is our inability to understand the exponential function" here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20552490](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20552490)

------
simonebrunozzi
[https://outline.com/ExnMdm](https://outline.com/ExnMdm)

------
throw_archit
It's so disconcerting to watch organizations and architects like Arup and
Bjarke Ingels support stuff like this. From an artistic perspective it's less
interesting than Jeff Koons' proposed animated replica steam locomotive
dangling vertically from a crane ([https://www.thedailybeast.com/whatever-
happened-to-jeff-koon...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/whatever-happened-to-
jeff-koons-dollar25m-nyc-steam-engine)) and from an engineering perspective
it's silly. Koons' loco could have held itself together without any feats of
calculation but this is in the category of artist's fantasy made real by
extensive structural analysis (and quite probably extensive interior
reinforcement, not to mention a huge (floating?) foundation below the
waterline.)

Arup was paid tens of millions of public money by the London "garden bridge"
promoters. It's now expected to see their name on unusual large scale
spectacular engineering projects. But their organizational ethos is loudly
advertised as being altruistic and responsible:
[https://www.arup.com/perspectives/publications/speeches-
and-...](https://www.arup.com/perspectives/publications/speeches-and-
lectures/section/ove-arup-key-speech). It just comes across as smug and
sanctimonious, given the way Arup will apparently implement almost anything
with a large enough price tag attached. They really aren't a more evolved form
of consultancy, even if they claim that they are.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
I think it looks rather spectacular, and have no idea why "[...] an artist's
fantasy made real by extensive structural analysis" is anything negative.

If I were to define the perfect consultancy it would be pretty close to "do
really strange stuff that gets people thinking about important problems and
get paid well for it".

And FWIW, I believe they are proposing to build it on land, not have it
floating in water.

~~~
departinghn
(I've had to create another account to reply as I'm doing my best to leave HN
permanently. Part of this involves forgetting passwords as quickly as
possible.)

You admit that you have "no idea" what I'm talking about when I complain that
this is an artist's fantasy that can only be realized by recourse to massive
engineering resources. So it would have been nice if, instead of dismissing
what I was saying, you acknowledged the possibility that I have a legitimate
position on this, e.g. by asking for clarification.

If you research Thomas Heatherwick, the Garden Bridge, and Dustin Yellin, you
will find that Heatherwick is widely derided as a pied piper figure or a
"billionaire whisperer". His special talent lies in convincing the wealthy
that his expensive and impractical design ideas are worth implementing. The
Vessel at Hudson Yard is a recent example of a lame but mega-expensive
Heatherwick project.

The real point I'm trying to make here is that almost any project can be
realized if enough money is thrown at it. Being an artist is not necessarily
about having dreams and then raising tens of millions of dollars to make them
into reality. Economy of means is an important part of all creative activity,
and Heatherwick in particular doesn't get it. It's the old story of any fool
being able to do something for a dollar, but only an engineer being able to do
it for fifty cents. This applies to artists just as much, and it applies to
the bang-for-the-buck they get when making work.

Heatherwick is a good example of a designer who presides over bloated,
unclever vanity projects. Arup cheerfully accept millions of pounds to
actually bring his ideas somewhere near becoming reality. To take a built
example: Arup engineered the museum Heatherwick designed in South Africa which
includes a large atrium carved out of a preexisting set of concrete grain
silos. You can read here
[https://www.arup.com/-/media/arup/files/publications/t/arup-...](https://www.arup.com/-/media/arup/files/publications/t/arup-
journal_issue-1_2018.pdf) about the very extensive trickery necessary to make
this happen.

This Yellin proposal has all the hallmarks of that same process—an impractical
and unnecessary megalomaniacal creative gesture that only becomes possible
with a lot of engineering ingenuity and capital. The hard work is done by the
engineers, and of course they are delighted to be paid to be involved in
something so prestigious. They don't realize or just don't care that it's
bullshit by any measure of artistic value. That is the frustrating smugness
and foolishness that I am complaining about. This kind of project is a blue-
chip "boutique engineering" gravy train for Arup and similar organizations,
and the projects have zero positive impact on the world while at the same time
rubbing everyone's noses in the mediocre concepts of overrated designers like
Heatherwick and Yellin. It is grotesque, it has everything to do with vanity,
greed and wealth and nothing to do with stimulating important conversations or
improving quality of life.

You can find out all about Yellin online, and make up your own mind whether
he's a real artist with an important and thought-provoking message, or just a
hyperactive self-promoter. (He's well connected in certain circles but not
taken seriously as an artist by the art world any more than Banksy is.)

------
gridlockd
It's pretty short-sighted to point to latest market trends and infer that the
hydrocarbon fuels are on their way out and renewables are there to replace
them.

Yes, fossil fuels are down. Commodities are down. Companies benefiting from
government spending are up, and government spending is at record highs. Not
only that, pretty much any asset that you would expect to outperform in a bull
market is way up.

No surprises there, this is a decade-old bull market fueled by trillions of
worldwide cheap debt and quantitative easing. Yet, despite a supposedly
roaring economy, the money-machine that is supposed to be "for emergency use
only" just keeps on running. It's been working so well that "more spending" is
the only valid political platform for both parties.

What could possibly go wrong?

~~~
rossdavidh
The central issue, is that fossil fuels are a commodity, and solar and wind
are technologies. Both, of course, have physical components (coal, sand,
metal, etc.), and both involve technological progress (fracking is a
particularly important example), but the long-term trend of commodities is, at
best, up and down and up and down, whereas the long-term trend of technologies
is down.

This means that, because both solar and wind electricity have prices that
decline at an exponential rate (different from Moore's Law in the %/year, but
not in their shape), the fact that they are competitive now, means that they
will be far, far cheaper in the future. No matter how much of a head start you
give a linear process over an exponential one, eventually the exponential one
wins. Commodity prices are worse than linear; they are more similar to
sinusoidal.

The real issue now, which is not widely discussed, is how to prepare the world
for a time, within a decade, when every fossil-fuel dependent economy goes the
way of Venezuela. I don't think we are remotely ready to handle the fallout
from that.

~~~
gridlockd
This idea that technology improves exponentially ad infinitum is bogus.
Nothing in nature can grow exponentially in the long run. There are plenty of
technologies that have almost plateaued, passenger airplanes for instance.

In the past, people envisioned an era of free electricity because surely
nuclear energy would improve exponentially. It did not. Neither will
renewables.

~~~
rossdavidh
Sure, and Moore's Law for semiconductor transistors didn't last forever,
either. But, it lasted from the mid-20th century well into the 21st, over
several orders of magnitude reduction in cost.

The current exponential decline in the cost/kWh of solar and wind generated
electricity is not as steep, but it is exponential, and it has been going on
for decades. If it continues for even one more decade (and that seems quite
likely, as the amount of R&D going into it is increasing), then it will drive
all fossil fuels off the market. I don't think we're ready for that.

------
gibolt
Related article and discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19564179](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19564179)

------
singularity2001
Great article except for this prediction, Which fails to grasp the continuous
exponential momentum of solar price decay:

all-in cost of solar power has dropped 85% since 2010, and BloombergNEF
forecasts an additional 63% drop through 2050.

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/IYuQ6](http://archive.is/IYuQ6)

------
ThomPete
Sorry but this is wishful thinking to say the least.

Oil, coal and gas not only are cheap, reliable, plentiful and versatile
materials we have learned to turn into an excellent source for transportation,
they are also used for many other things we take for granted. Probably 80% of
the stuff we surround ourselves with is made of oil-based products some way or
another.

I happen to be involved with a group that is trying to find alternatives to
ex. plastic but it's simply not even close to looking like we have useful
alternative let alone for the multitude of usages plastic can be used for.

For energy, we are even further of. This is a physics problem it's not like
there were just a bunch of easy solutions waiting for someone to pick them up.
Oil won for a number of reasons.

What most people forget is that it's not like oil somehow dominated simply
because it was being promoted by some evil conglomerate, oil dominated and
still dominates because of the many different ways we can utilize it to make
our live better, safer, easier, richer more plentiful etc.

Furthermore things like this:

"> A central argument for fossil fuels’ continued dominance is that humanity
will surpass 10 billion at some point, and all those people will want
something like the Western living standards built over the past 100 years on
the back of coal, gas, and oil. Yet what a poverty of imagination this
betrays, especially in light of climate change, which hits the poorest
hardest. How can that be the pinnacle of civilization? What even constitutes
“higher living standards” in a world where the costs of our existing
technologies are so transparent? Far from securing hydrocarbon dominance for
another 100 years, the needs and aspirations of future generations demand it
give way to something more sustainable."

Is especially missing the point.

Nature didn't give us a safe and friendly environment we made unsafely, it
gave us a hostile and unfriendly environment that we through the use of ex
fossil fuels have made safe.

The poor nations will only be hardest affected if they don't have access to
cheap and plentiful energy which is what the environmental movement seems to
be pushing for.

I don't think that's done on purpose but the result is that poor nations will
be more dependent on rich nations if we don't allow them to gain propserity.

I know that this is heresy on HN but it needs to be said.

~~~
beat
It seems reasonable to me that the transition to renewables will make energy
even cheaper, and absolutely less dependent on international markets (like the
little problem that 40% of internationally exchanged oil flows through the
Strait of Hormuz). So it's almost certainly a good thing for poorer nations.

Contrast this with the ever-popular HN push for nuclear power. Many nations
lack the infrastructure to support such a complex and expensive endeavor, and
some frankly can't be trusted with it. So a nuclear future is far, far worse
than a renewable future.

Oil won for good reasons a hundred years ago. And it's going to lose for good
reasons over the next hundred years.

~~~
ThomPete
Which renewables are you referring to?

What renewables can both give us plastic, pesticides, concrete?

What renewables can deliver cheap, reliable, scalable energy anywhere needed?

The most popular forms of renewables like wind and solar are not even close to
being stable, reliable or cheap, furthermore they only deliver electricity
which is what? 20% of the total energy needs?

Nuclear is expensive because of the regulations not because of technology and
more people die from wind and solar than from nuclear.

Having been involved in investing in this space it's pretty obvious that we
aren't even close to having alternatives, as in not even in a couple of
decades.

You take away the Chinese investment in renewables and the rest of the world's
investment in renewables are falling not rising and even with the Chinese
investments it's stalling.

There is such an insane amount of groupthink going on here that I know people
aren't going to actually accept it but it's very easy to get a reality check
simply by taking $10K and find a company which you trust will succeed after
you do due diligence. You will quickly find out that we are kind of at the
forefront of energy and alternatives where we are and that means less than 1%
of the worlds global energy consumption (not just electricity) is wind and
solar.

A far cry from what you will hear german and danish politicians claim.

~~~
beat
Ok, you're just wrong on some of this stuff. When I say "renewable", I mean
wind and solar for the most part, so keep that in mind.

No, renewables don't solve the plastic/pesticides/concrete problem. It's
energy, not hardware.

Renewables can and do deliver cheap, reliable, scalable energy. The automobile
is a really good example of that, and electric cars are quickly edging out
internal combustion. I imagine we're no more than two decades from total
electric car base. There is such a thing as batteries, you know.

Wind and solar are only delivering x% of our power _now_ , but time moves, and
they are growing exponentially. Their lower cost provides a strong financial
incentive to do all new construction in renewables. So again, over the next
few decades, we will transition to a mostly-renewable grid.

Nuclear is expensive because it's hard, not because of "regulation". And
considering the track record of the industry and the consequences of failure,
I'm all for the regulation. If regulation was the problem, we'd see more
nuclear in nations with very little environmental regulation and strong
central governments, like Russia and China. But they still only get a small
fraction of their power from nuclear, and it's about to be outstripped by
renewables. Because renewable is much cheaper.

I wouldn't invest in the industry because a: speculating on individual
companies is just gambling (an industry fund would be different), and b: the
cost of energy is going to go down, so profit margins won't be great. It'll
wipe out the fossil energy industry, but the end result will be the world
spending less money for more energy. Bad investment, good for humanity.

~~~
coldtea
> _Renewables can and do deliver cheap, reliable, scalable energy. The
> automobile is a really good example of that, and electric cars are quickly
> edging out internal combustion. I imagine we 're no more than two decades
> from total electric car base. There is such a thing as batteries, you know._

The electric cars are still made, transported, maintained, and powered by
fossil fuels and nuclear.

Renewables at the moment (and for the foreseeable future) can't handle
changing the world's fleet (?), or even 20% of it, to electric cars...

Renewables are to projected to be around 16%-18% in 2040:

"Should progress continue at the pace currently forecast, the share of
renewables in final energy consumption would be roughly 18% by 2040"

[https://www.iea.org/renewables2018/](https://www.iea.org/renewables2018/)

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/United_S...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/United_States_electricity_generation_by_fuel_1990-2040.png)

~~~
beat
Yes, electric car manufacturing is still done largely with non-renewable
sources. But it's happening nonetheless. Manufacturers like Porsche and Volvo
expect to be over 50% EV by 2025. Even for fuel-based cars, plug-in hybrids
are becoming more common. So the auto industry will be switching quickly.

Unfortunately, we will still have other pockets where fossil fuels are much
harder to root out - heavy oil for shipping, jet fuel, and the existing base
of coal plants that aren't financially viable to replace. But how many decades
are left in those coal plants? Who will build a new coal plant to replace the
old one?

And as gasoline and coal are phased out, they will become more expensive, as
economies of scale drop out. Meanwhile, economies of scale in manufacturing
are a key reason for the drop in the cost of renewables. Market forces are
mostly on the side of renewables here, and trends even more so.

~~~
ThomPete
"expecting" is the problem word here. That means absolutely nothing. Its
marketing talk with no real foundation in reality.

Gasoline and coal will be phased out but it's not because of wind and solar as
they literally can't deliver what is needed and will need at a minimum nuclear
or oil or coal as backup when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining.

We are nowhere near fuel cells. One could even make a case for us being closer
to fusion than fuel cells.

~~~
beat
"When the sun isn't shining" shows that you really don't understand the field.
Again... ever heard of batteries? There are any number of ways to temporarily
store power. Collect wind/solar when the wind blows and the sun shines, and
have some spare energy cached when demand exceeds supply.

There's no "can't" anywhere in this. It's just a question of cost. And if
wind/solar + sufficient storage is _still_ cheaper than coal and gas peaker
plants, it wins. That's the way the entire industry is betting, worldwide. The
experts whose careers are on the line think this is the right path for a
reason.

~~~
ThomPete
I understand the field perfectly well, well enough to know a thing or two
about capacity factors.

It's not a question of cost but of simple physics.

Batteries aren't going to solve anything what so ever. We would need fuel
cells which is theoretically possible but as far out as fusion when it comes
to actually have something that works in practice.

~~~
beat
Until we get fuel cells that don't need a platinum catalyst, they're
irrelevant. Not enough platinum to scale.

------
beat
And the thing that's going to save us boiling frogs, if it's not too late
already, is the invisible hand of the free market. Fossil fuels are rapidly
getting out-priced by renewables, which are getting order-of-magnitude
improvements in cost.

We got lucky.

~~~
IpV8
I'd hardly say that the free market is the savior, The innovation in
renewables was the result of heavy government spending in R&D grants to
universities, subsidies on renewable tech, and cap and trade on emissions.
Lets hope that the free market can take the baton after government
intervention pushed down the initial price barriers.

~~~
beat
Mostly nonsense. The improvements we've seen over the past decade have been
improvements in manufacturing and other process, not subsidy. It truly is
cheaper now, and will get cheaper still. The free market has had the baton for
the past decade, at least. The main impediment is mostly the time scale of
power plant projects, and the cost of intermediate storage (which has also
plummeted).

And of course, this doesn't take into account our direct and indirect
subsidies to the fossil fuel industry - you know, like what we spend on a
military presence in the Middle East.

~~~
AlexandrB
> Mostly nonsense.

Citation needed. Even a market darling like Tesla benefited greatly from
government subsidies on “green” technologies.

~~~
beat
Tesla has more than doubled in size every year since it was founded. It has
grown faster than Amazon did. That's not subsidy, because subsidy is bound
politically and could not keep up with that sort of growth. No, that's what
being the best-bet winner for a trillion dollar market looks like.

------
aszantu
I recently thought... sure everyone says it's the CO², but then I saw articles
that said, the CO² didn't change as much as they said it did. 4% of the
atmosphere or so, because water takes it up and some kinds of stones do the
same. What if we generally just generate too much heat? And the heat gets
trapped in the atmosphere? Every time someone uses energy, it generates heat.
Everytime we make energy from hydrocarbon, we generate heat. Would there be a
way to let the heat go to space? Or if we want to preserve it on earth, a way
to turn heat back into hydrocarbon?

~~~
knodi123
> And the heat gets trapped in the atmosphere?

That's what CO2 does. It is a greenhouse gas, meaning it traps heat that would
otherwise have escaped into space.

> Or if we want to preserve it on earth, a way to turn heat back into
> hydrocarbon?

It is literally impossible to turn heat, by itself, into anything useful.
That's the 2nd law of thermodynamics, and it's a cruel mistress.

It's nice to think about alternative solutions to these problems, but you need
to have at least a _basic_ understanding of _basic_ level physics if you want
to discuss this sort of thing.

~~~
addicted
My biggest frustration with global warming deniers has been that I understood
the basics of global warming as a 6-7 year old, when I first read something
about the greenhouse effect (it wasnt even in the context of global warming).

The only basic pieces of information you need to understand climate change
are:

1) The greenhouse effect exists. That is, when you have something like glass,
it will let energy in in the form of light, but it won't let as much energy
escape once it's converted to heat. This concept can be grasped by anyone who
has walked into a car that has been parked out in the sun. And by the massive
clue in the name, that is the existence of greenhouses.

2) Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas. That is, it acts like glass does in a
greenhouse. This is harder to believe from first principles, but it's not that
hard to believe. For me the clinching explanation (again, as a kid) was
learning Venus was hotter than Mercury. And there is no reason to believe
folks are lying about this, and I don't believe anyone is even contesting
this.

3) Understanding how fossil fuels came into existence (basically, organic
material trapped over centuries in the ground. again, the clue is in the name)
and understanding the CO2 lifecycle, and how burning fossil fuels adds
material to the CO2 lifecycle that was not there earlier. This isn't something
that can be determined easily by a kid from 1st principles, but it's something
that no one is really contesting either.

Once you accept these 3 fairly straightforward basic physics phenomena, global
warming is inevitable.

The only questions are whether the release of CO2 is significant enough to
have an impact, where we have to rely on measurements and scientists. But
seeing that there was a fairly standard progression in how deniers would first
deny global warming was ever happening, then deny that it was anthropogenic,
then claim it wouldnt have as negative an impact, and now claim that well,
it's too late...let's look at mitigation; I was able to filter them out when
they were at step 1 itself.

Aside: I also want to point out the horrific misunderstanding people have
about the terms "global warming" and "climate change" which are fairly self
descriptive, but apparently is a nefarious effort to "hide the spike". Global
Warming (i.e., more energy in the earth's ecosystem due to the greenhouse
effect) leads to Climate Change (that is, changes in our climate behavior).

One is a cause, and the other is the effect. Both are valid and orthogonal
concepts, and not some sort of conspiracy.

~~~
leereeves
> 3) Understanding how fossil fuels came into existence (basically, organic
> material trapped over centuries in the ground. again, the clue is in the
> name) and understanding the CO2 lifecycle, and how burning fossil fuels adds
> material to the CO2 lifecycle that was not there earlier.

Adds material to the CO2 lifecycle that was not there earlier? Isn't it just
rereleasing CO2 that _was_ in the atmosphere earlier?

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Much of the coal comes from a unique period in earth's history when there were
many trees, but enzymes that could deal with lignins hadn't yet evolved. Which
led to a steady and significant accumulation of carbon in that coal.

Humans, and much of the life we see around us, evolved in the subsequent
periods of higher oxygen and depleted CO2. As we reverse that effect, we
return the atmosphere nearer to how it once was - when humans and such weren't
around. The planet and its life will be fine. Us and the multiple species on
which we depend may well not be.

By burning it we are releasing carbon that has been stored for millennia and
accumulated over millennia. It's introduced as though it were new into our
carbon cycle.

