Global Warming: the Problem

By Wilfred Candler

In 2007 Wilfred Candler wrote and self-published “Global Warming: The Answer”. It advocated a tax of $250 per ton of coal. Unfortunately, it was not widely read. Now (2021), he wants to share his concern that the problems of Climate Change are vastly more multi-dimensional than we had any idea of 14 years ago. It is no longer a simple problem of using fossil fuels. Still, as Christopher Clugston has pointed out, we are rapidly exhausting the world’s supply of a wide range of non-renewable natural resources.
Moreover, fossil fuel companies are actively promoting the continued use of fossil fuels and even supporting environmental groups providing their objection to fossil fuels extends to nuclear. Meanwhile, the world population is almost eight times the level before our use of non-renewable resources, and per capita consumption is a thousand times what it was in 1750.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665534178

Book preview

© 2021 Wilfred Candler. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse   08/05/2021

ISBN: 978-1-6655-3414-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-3417-8 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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links contained in this book may have changed since publication and

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of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher,

and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge the much appreciated editorial assistance and grammatical corrections from my wife Margaret and my half-sister Anna Candler.

Notes for reading this book

With the advent of the internet and associated programs like YouTube, writing a book like this is challenging. However, there is so much supporting material available to readers who want to explore the issues I raise in more detail.

Also, it is difficult to predict how readers will tackle this book – in hard copy or as an e-book. To solve this dilemma, I have done the following:

1. Set the book up to be read in hard copy while providing links in footnotes to allow readers to look at extended reference material if they want.

2. Created a website www.globalwarmingproblem.com where readers can more easily access the references mentioned in the footnotes. This option allows for additional material to be added.

Will Candler

Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1     Crop Circles (Intelligent Life in The Universe)

Destroying Intelligent Life in the Solar System?

Chapter 2     Nuclear Electricity (Our Big Hope)

Nuclear Power

Generic Molten Salt Reactor Design

Expanding Fossil Power Generation

Summary

Chapter 3     Governance (One World)

One World

Economic Organization: too many lifestyles

Capitalism

Growth

Natural World?

Taken Together

Chapter 4     Fossil Fuels. (Must Be Minimized)

Reduced Fossil-Fuel Use:

Solar and Wind Need Backup:

Innovation:

Summary:

Chapter 5     Clean Air (Must Be Restored)

Chapter 6     Non-Renewable Resources (A New Problem)

Reproductive Health:

Chapter 7     Non-Biodegradable Plastic (Must Be Stopped)

Chapter 8     Collapse (How Will It Happen?)

Global Warming

Raw Material Shortages

Chapter 9     Response (Why is There None?)

Chapter 10   Equilibrium (How Defined?)

Chapter 11   Ignorance of Environmental Activists (Must Be Remedied)

Population: A Difficult Problem

The Emperor has No Clothes

Ignorance

Chapter 12   Time To Start? (Now!)

Chapter 13   Origin (Of Addendum)

Conclusion

Chapter 14   Lack of Leadership (Terrifying!)

Chapter 15   Our Fundamental Problem (Ignorance!)

Chapter 16   Two Problems. (Urgent and Too Late)

Chapter 17   How to React? (Very Difficult)

Good Ideas. (The Future?)

Annex: The Carbon Cycle

Foreword

In 2007 I self-published a book Global Warming: The Answer, which recommended a tax on fossil fuels of $250 per ton of carbon, to give a total revenue of $406 billion, and allowing an annual energy dividend of $2,000 for all who had cast a vote in the most recent Presidential election (page 83). The book was not widely read, and indeed, its recommended tax and energy dividend never reached the popular press. As this book will discuss, our problem appeared much simpler more than a decade ago. (I am not sure it was, but we could have made progress on the issue of excess fossil fuel use before stumbling on the other dimensions of our growth/resource shortage problems.) Citizen’s Climate Lobby (CCL) recommended in 2008 a tax of $15 a ton of CO2, increasing $10 a ton each year, which would be $155 a ton of CO2 today. They did not get this adopted in 2008 and have stayed, year after year, with the initial tax of $15 a ton. In this book, I agree with their initial recommendation of $155 a ton of CO2 in 2022, although this is less than I recommended (in 2007) be paid in 2007.

I have included Chapter 1 of Global Warming the Answer as an Appendix since it is my impression that even in 2021, very few climate activists understand the fundamental problem of Global Warming, namely that we are adding carbon (in the form of CO2) to the carbon cycle. When a tree is burned, the carbon in the resultant CO2 is not "carbon added to the cycle; it is Carbon moved within the cycle". Previously, the carbon in the tree was moved by photosynthesis from the atmosphere to the tree as it grew. Thus, it is moved within the carbon cycle. The carbon typically has been within the cycle for literally millions of years, sometimes in the air, sometimes in the sea and oceans, sometimes in vegetation, sometimes in animals or micro-organisms, and so on. This is in marked contrast to the carbon in fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas), which has been out of the cycle literally for millions of years. Therefore, when scientists calculate the carbon cycle amount, they do not include reserves of fossil fuels. If scientists calculate the total world reserves of carbon, they would be included, but they are not in the carbon cycle. When environmental activists speak against livestock, they demonstrate that they do not have the first, most elemental, understanding of the problem. Sure, when animals (or humans) breathe out, they add CO2 or methane (CH4) to the atmosphere. Still, the half-life of CH4 is 12 years before it decays into CO2 and H20, and any CO2 breathed out comes from carbon ingested from plants which in turn gets carbon from the atmosphere, so it is being returned to the atmosphere not added.

After completing Chapter 12, I received a copy of a talk Sam Hopkins had drafted for an annual reunion at Harvard, published as the Annex to Chapter 13, and led to Chapters 14 to 17. In turn, this focused my attention on the fundamental disinterest in the problem of the continued viability of our economic organization by leading politicians, captains of industry, or the leadership of grassroots environmental organizations.

As reviewed in The Answer, we have known of atmospheric Carbon Dioxide emissions since 1856, and indeed a pencil and paper calculation published in 1896 by Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist, showed this would probably lead to modestly higher temperatures. Widespread awareness of the Global Warming problem was perhaps more significant in 2007 than it is today. That was due to Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth and Professor Jim Hansen’s testimony to Congress on a hot day in 1988. The problem of Global Warming has thus been popularly known for over 30 years. From 1988 to date, all politicians have known that some scientists claimed that increased atmospheric CO2 (ACO2) is causing Global Warming. Yet, many chose to ridicule the idea, and no mainline politician acknowledges that many in the scientific community feared increased warming. Scientists have not helped by publishing highly focused studies of one impact of Global Warming, often warning that this impact alone could become significant by 2100. Even before Trump, some went on to dissociate themselves from the idea. But no one claimed that the concern did not exist. Trump went on to explicitly claim such fears were unjustified and to accelerate the use of fossil fuels. Even without Trump’s election, it is now doubtful if we would have been able to recover from the myriad impacts of flawed policy. As this book will argue, the severity and extent of associated problems that Trump has ignored have only recently become evident.

As will be discussed, we are only now beginning to recognize that the Earth’s supply of many resources is limited, and the capitalist belief in endless growth is doomed to end catastrophically. But worse, far worse, is the incredible self-satisfied ignorance of many of our environmental leaders and their modest but justified support by fossil fuel companies.

Despite my very jaundiced view of the quality of much of our environmental leadership, I have one optimistic message, namely: We cannot wipe out intelligent life in the Universe. I discuss this in Chapter 1 since many readers may find later chapters on the severity of the problems we face too depressing to continue. I do not aim to lose you, but you deserve to take at least one optimistic message from your efforts in reading this book.

This book is much shorter than I envisaged it, more of a pamphlet. I apologize if it is somewhat repetitive. If something is relevant in context, I find I have repeated it rather than cross-reference. This means you can dip in and out without reading the whole book/pamphlet. I feel my arguments are complete, but please let me know if you find my opinions incomplete even with the repetition, admin@theglobalwarming problem.com

In drafting this book, it has been slowly born in upon me that our political and economic leadership does not understand the problem of Global Warming. Faced with the renewed cancellation of the Keystone pipeline, Union Leadership pronounced the importance of continuing other pipelines because their construction provides many good-paying union jobs. No thought that the resulting pipelines will provide gas will result in global warming emissions: The same emissions as the Keystone pipeline would have generated. The existence of which was the primary reason for widespread opposition to the construction of the pipeline. No recognition that increased fossil emissions (from coal, oil, or natural gas) adds to carbon in the carbon cycle will lead to higher atmospheric temperatures, increased oceanic acidification, and a deteriorating world climate. President Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone pipeline was a disappointment for true environmentalists since he should have canceled all/any new pipeline construction in the United States. Note that the cancellation of one specific pipeline represents fulfilling a campaign promise: It does not mean a whole new energy policy. The cancellation of all new oil and gas pipeline construction in the US and the cancellation of all incomplete fossil infrastructure construction nationwide would signal a new energy policy.

The Union supports pipeline construction because construction would provide many good-paying union jobs. This pays absolutely no attention to the impact of the pipelines’ operation once constructed. One wonders whether this union leadership would have supported the construction of Concentration Camps in the Ukraine because of the large number of ‘good-paying union jobs’ created during construction? We must understand that current Union Leadership is not evil or ill-intentioned: They just have not considered the impact of pipeline construction, and if they had, would likely have welcomed the lowered price of fossil fuels, as likely leading to increased consumption. The point is that Union and political leadership has no understanding that current levels of fossil fuel consumption are expected to result in civilizational collapse in a matter of decades. I do not begin to understand this: Do they not realize the connection between increased fossil fuel use and the demise of our civilization, or do they recognize this but prefer consumption today despite the civilizational collapse in the easily predicted future?

The US political system happens not to e supportive of a political solution to the crisis because the Republican Party supports the rapid growth of profits, output, and consumption. As a result, activists’ primary hope is for favorable climate policies from the Democratic Party. Still, the Democratic leadership feels that environmentalists have no sensible alternative to voting Democratic. The leadership thus feels no need to cater to the party’s environmental wing. Far from it: The leadership is tempted to capture as many Republican votes as possible by moderating the Democratic environmental platform. Absent environmentalists active in the Democratic leadership, we can expect Democratic environmental policies to be better than Republican, but not by much!

It is pretty simple: To avoid eventual climate collapse, we must stop adding carbon (like fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) that have been out of the carbon cycle for literally millions of years) to the carbon cycle. Indeed, we must remove much of the carbon we have added since 1800 until we have ACO2 down to about 325 ppm or below, as long advocated by Prof. Jim Hansen. If we want to get back to about 325 ppm of ACO2 (from the current, say 417 ppm), then an obvious first step is to stop increasing the rate of using fossil fuels. To prevent increasing the rate of using fossil fuels would be progress - not a solution, but progress. We are still drilling for new natural gas fields and building new pipelines to carry more natural gas to market. We are building new industrial plants designed to depend on fossil fuels, new houses to consume it, more cars (until 2030) dependent on it, and on and on. We are not even discussing how our expanded use of fossil fuels is to be controlled. Instead, we rejoice in new investments that will necessitate good-paying union jobs. If President Biden ended all pipeline construction, it could be argued that he