Global warming - an urgent problem requiring radical solution (no politics or religion)

Your uncle is the Phillip Bogert who is an engineer with NASA?

That's one of the most worrying posts I've seen in a while...

If he was/is a meteorologist with NOAA he is a different Phillip Bogert to the engineer at NASA.

Privately owned vehicles are wasteful. Most of the time your car is parked. I think shortly their will be fleets of robot cars patrolling the streets 24hrs a day available to transport citizens and will be accessed by an app on our phones.

Everyone will live in cities. All agriculture will be performed by robots on corporate plantations.

s23bog

I don't know if that is meant to be humour/ trolling or if you are a genuine fruitloop but I suggest you keep to the forum topic. 

Thought so, based on the specialism.

There is a lot more interest in stopping storms, but it is challenging.

It would not only disrupt play, it would make it very difficult for people to drink their beer.

Oh-Kay...

I only bumped this because of my bimonthly forum report and this is the eleventh biggest thread

Far from it. We live in a world where CO2 levels are rising faster than they ever have been before, and even a massive shift to renewables has scarcely slowed the rate of progress to disaster. The world needs repeated strengthening of the transformation to a sustainable, low environmental impact global economy, which has only just begun.

Of course global warming is not the only serious environmental problem, nor the only global environmental problem that is a threat to the planet. The same applies to the others, such as damage to the ozone layer, or the destruction of ecosystems.

Well, I don't claim ownership to the ideas, but the key is to shift the world to predominant use of renewable energy. There is plenty of it, and it is suitable directly or indirectly for all purposes. As of today, both solar and wind are highly economical compared to fossil fuels and even more so versus nuclear.

The big challenge to this crucial goal is the variability of renewable energy sources. This becomes a big problem as larger quantities of renewable energy are used. The solution is a combination of short and long term energy storage technologies (at present all of which are rather expensive or limited in scale) and very large scale distribution (which averages out the variability). Grids thousands of miles across use renewable energy more effectively and provide a better quality service.

Because people make money from fossil fuels in a way that can't be made from renewables. Oil and coal are commodities that can traded. And money is power so the powerful are protecting their interests. Usually by lobbying and 'persuading' politicians who don't have to account for long term consequences and are only interested in short term electoral gains. 

So we are literally jeopardising our futures because of short term profits and around 70% of emissions ever emitted can be traced back to 100 companies. That's a very small number of people getting rich at our expense and at a cost to our descendants.  It can be argued exactly how serious that cost will be but there will definitely be one, both in terms of finance and quality of life. 

What needs to be done - (as Elroch says) develop renewables, large scale grids, storage, new infrastructure is needed especially for transport, cut back on coal, oil and minimise wastage, I personally think that some bright spark (pun intended) will come up with a game changer on storage technology and then everything will change faster. If that doesn't happen our only hope is to develop a way of removing co2 from the air on large scales. 

I edited #8741 to include some ideas at the end...

The whole point is to cut back on co2 emissions. If you can't accept that you are in disagreement with practically all the experts who have thousands of peer reviewed papers and an overwhelming body of scientific evidence backing them up. Only cranks and conspiracy theorists have the foolishness to take such a position and they never back up their arguments with actual data. 

As for using whale oil, it should be obvious why that would be a bad idea - Here's 4 reasons for starters -

1. There aren't that many whales left,

2. Burning oil lamps is dangerous and (I would imagine) smelly. 

3, Using electric is cheaper and more convenient. 

4. Whales contribute to the health of our ocean ecosystems and thus help replenish fish stocks.  

Yes this is already happening with renewables. Its just that some are entrenched (and/or invested) in their old fossil ways. For example our UK government has given the go ahead for fracking in certain areas. Fracking isn't even cost effective. 

Absolutely. Although energy efficiency is important - because it gets more utility out of energy, which is what really matters - there is no reason why any human energy desires cannot be obtained through sustainable means. The resource available (from solar and wind) is truly enormous, and if we ever want more than 1000 times the energy we use now, there is a trillion times as much available in space.

Inventors are not the same as scientists. Climate scientists point out the problem, others need to find solutions (or allow catastrophe). Pretending there is no problem is not a sane option.

More than half of new generating capacity worldwide is renewable, as of 2018. It takes time to change. Eg in 20 years most land transport will be electric.