> Germany is just another case of politicians not listening to experts.
The politicians pay the “expert”. So unfortunately, I think you’re mistaken. This was my primary point, you get what you pay for.
I totally agree any engineer or frankly anyone with baseline competency and a minor amount of research would come away with the same conclusions. The challenge is these “experts” have every incentive to push the political agenda. Further, they’ll ban anyone who disagrees. How many “global warming deniers” (99% of whom just believe humans aren’t the primary cause) are banned from discussion? All of them. They are all ridiculed, banned, and many can’t get grants or publish.
Th challenge is even with storage capacity (even a hell of a lot of it), you’re still going to get issues on the edges. For instance, if a volcano erupts and blacks out a region relying on solar… you’re out of luck.
> How many “global warming deniers” (99% of whom just believe humans aren’t the primary cause) are banned from discussion? All of them.
You only have so much time for nonsense. There's no question that humans are driving climate change at this point. Might as well ask why we don't accept papers arguing for flat Earth.
> For instance, if a volcano erupts and blacks out a region relying on solar… you’re out of luck.
What happens if your primary natural gas supplier starts a war and you have to sanction them? As you can see this is not a problem with renewables so much as with single points of failure. Volcanic eruptions don't stop wind power, or tidal power, or geothermal power, or nuclear power.
> How many “global warming deniers” (99% of whom just believe humans aren’t the primary cause) are banned from discussion?
First of all, it doesn't matter if humans are the primary cause. Any negative consequences of climate change affect us exactly the same way regardless of the cause. We are in fact much worse off if humans aren't the primary cause, because it would mean simply reducing human emissions would not be enough. We would need to do things to actively reduce greenhouse gas levels from non-human sources too.
Second, humans are in fact the primary cause. We know this because (1) we know what role greenhouse gases play in warming, and (2) we know that the rapid increase in greenhouse gases over industrial times is due to human activity.
We know the role of greenhouse gases because we can measure incoming and outgoing radiation at the surface, at various levels of the atmosphere, and in space. We can measure temperatures at those places too. We can literally see incoming radiation heating the surface, being reemitted as infrared, and getting blocked from leaving by gases in the atmosphere. We can measure the spectrum of the radiation at various levels to find out how much is getting absorbed where, and we can look at the absorption spectrum of the various gases there to see which ones are responsible.
We know humans are responsible because we can look at the gases involved and check the isotope ratios of the carbon in those gases. Carbon from living or recently living sources has a different isotope ratio than does carbon that has never been involved with life or has not been involved with life for a very long time. This is because cosmic rays hitting the upper atmosphere convert nitrogen into C14 which gets distributed throughout the atmosphere, and gets included in living things, and gets put back into the atmosphere when living things that breath exhale or when they die and decay unless the die someplace where they won't be eaten or used as fertilizer by some other living thing.
Carbon that is not involved with living things has its C14 decay (half life 5730 years). By looking at the fraction of the atmospheric carbon that is C14 we can determine how much of the carbon came from ancient sources. There are geological sources that put ancient carbon into circulation, mainly outgassing from mid-ocean ridges and volcanoes, which do put a lot of carbon into the atmosphere. But their activity has not changed much in industrial times. There is a human source that puts ancient carbon into the atmosphere: burning fossil fuels. That has changed massively over industrial times and correlates nearly perfectly with the increases in ancient carbon in the atmosphere. Hence we can include that the greenhouse gases that are driving climate change in fact come from human activity, specifically burning fossil fuels.
> We are in fact much worse off if humans aren't the primary cause, because it would mean simply reducing human emissions would not be enough.
Enough for what? I'm not convinced the climate changing is a bad thing. Nor have I seen evidence it in fact is changing at any alarming rate (and I worked in this space for a while).
Increasing the temperatures and increases in carbon mean more food and more habitable land. "Global warming" is the best thing that has ever happened to humanity. The world has been warming for around 20,000 years and even if we take the argument "global warming" is bad at face value... Supposedly, there is no evidence we caused global warming until the industrial revolution -- right?
Recall history class, when the North American continent was covered in a sheet of ice. Recall history class, when you learned the largest dessert in the world was a green oasis until the last few thousand years.
> We know humans are responsible because we can look at the gases involved and check the isotope ratios of the carbon in those gases. Carbon from living or recently living sources has a different isotope ratio than does carbon that has never been involved with life or has not been involved with life for a very long time. This is because cosmic rays hitting the upper atmosphere convert nitrogen into C14 which gets distributed throughout the atmosphere, and gets included in living things, and gets put back into the atmosphere when living things that breath exhale or when they die and decay unless the die someplace where they won't be eaten or used as fertilizer by some other living thing.
Oh boy... C14 comes from nuclear reactions and atmospheric production. If we get hit with a solar storm you're going to see an increase in C14. You'll also see a spike after nuclear testing. I see what you're saying regarding the idea that we can see how much carbon came from ancient sources, but IMO that is pseudo-science. The baselines simply aren't there.
Which brings me to my next point, you say a very authoritative statement "Second, humans are in fact the primary cause." --
Again to my parent comment, politicians are using this "science" to hammer home their political agenda. They aren't funding contrarian research and if you share an alternative, research backed view, you wont get published. It'll be blocked by the editors of the journal (who happen to also be publishing research on how climate change is dire & are often political ideologues).
Having read a LOT of these "research papers" and having worked on climate models. I can tell you, at least I am highly unconvinced. Often these papers will cherry pick their results that they want. In simulations they'll modify their variables and make assumptions. If you read the papers you can see these curves that look too perfect for their theories. Then in a decade or two they don't pan out. The reality is "science" is hard. Anything said with certainty is almost certainly an opinion or belief.
You want to know how I know the authoritative statement "Second, humans are in fact the primary cause." is unknowable? Because we only have ~100 years of measured data. We have statistical reasons to believe certain things (like temperatures in particular regions), but we don't have proof. It is conjecture. It could be right, it could be wrong. Frankly, I don't know. I also know no one else actually can prove their correct -- so all theories should be on the table.
C14 from solar storms and nuclear testing can be taken into account. If for some reason it was not taken into account when someone was using isotope ratios to determine how much of the atmospheric carbon is from ancient sources, or if there was some other C14 source that was missed, the result would be that the calculated amount of ancient atmospheric carbon would come out lower than the correct amount.
As for having only ~100 years of measured data, around 70% of the increase in atmospheric CO2 in the last several hundred years has taken place in the last 60 years. We have much more than enough measured data to say that nearly all of that increase in the last 60 years is due to human activity.
BTW, that also matches very well the curve you get when you try to calculate human CO2 emissions over time by looking at the known sources of human CO2 emissions and estimating their growth over time by looking at the economic records. Most of the human sources are commodities and there is extensive historical data on their markets.
> Increasing the temperatures and increases in carbon mean more food and more habitable land. "
More CO2 actually decreases the nutritional content of grown food.
Also, if the climate changes faster than animals can adapt, it can lead to a collapse of a number of food chains that many people depend on.
Finally, I'm not sure why you assume more land would be habitable when some currently habitable zones are on the brink of becoming uninhabitable. You just seem to assume that we'll end up better off because…?
> Nor have I seen evidence it in fact is changing at any alarming rate (and I worked in this space for a while).
Surely you agree that temperatures are changing faster than at any point in history that didn't involve some ecological catastrophe.
> Recall history class, when the North American continent was covered in a sheet of ice. Recall history class, when you learned the largest dessert in the world was a green oasis until the last few thousand years.
So your argument is, "there have been significant natural climate changes that caused ecological upheaval, therefore we shouldn't worry about this climate change that is also sure to cause ecological upheaval "? I honestly have no idea why you would find that reassuring.
Best case projections are still quite disruptive, and worst-case projections are catastrophic. Maybe a little more caution is warranted when the survival of humanity may be at stake, don't you think?
> You want to know how I know the authoritative statement "Second, humans are in fact the primary cause." is unknowable? Because we only have ~100 years of measured data.
You really need to read some more if you think we don't have evidence of the temperature record before that.
The politicians pay the “expert”. So unfortunately, I think you’re mistaken. This was my primary point, you get what you pay for.
I totally agree any engineer or frankly anyone with baseline competency and a minor amount of research would come away with the same conclusions. The challenge is these “experts” have every incentive to push the political agenda. Further, they’ll ban anyone who disagrees. How many “global warming deniers” (99% of whom just believe humans aren’t the primary cause) are banned from discussion? All of them. They are all ridiculed, banned, and many can’t get grants or publish.
Th challenge is even with storage capacity (even a hell of a lot of it), you’re still going to get issues on the edges. For instance, if a volcano erupts and blacks out a region relying on solar… you’re out of luck.