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Showing posts from August, 2021

Paying to Pollute

  Consumers can divide science into two broad categories. The first is production science. This science gives us stuff like cell phones, cars, refrigerators, and a trip to outer space if you have the money. The other broad category is environmental science.   This study allows us to survive by protecting the natural systems. Humans have been intrigued by nature. The early scientists were referred to as Philosophers of Nature. Early Philosophers of Nature were primarily interested in discovery by digging up, capturing, shooting, embalming, and stuffing whatever they found. Environmental science is much more than this. Except for a few brilliant individuals like Alexander von Humboldt, people did not connect the dots to understand how nature’s systems keep us alive. Man’s appreciation of nature started to change in the 1970s. The prolific songwriter Joni Mitchel sang, “Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. They paved paradise and put up...

IPCC Press Release

“Climate Change widespread, rapid, and intensifying.” “I used to say, when I was talking about climate change, that climate change is serious, certain, and soon. But this is no longer accurate. Now it is very serious, very certain, and now.” Linda O. Mearns, Ph.D. Senior scientist, Research Applications Lab, National Center for Atmospheric Research Linda O. Mearns of NCAR in Boulder, CO is one of four climate scientists chosen by the American Association for the Advancement of Science to comment on the recent Assessment Report (AR6) by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC was created by 195 member nations to synthesize a world climate health report every 6 to 7 years.   234 science professionals created AR6 drawing on 14,000, peer-reviewed science studies.   For a historical background of ARs here is a condensed progression of the IPCC reports from 1990 to today. AR1(1990): humankind is capable of raising surface-air temperature. AR2...

Time for optimism: Be an Earth Responder

  While we are inundated by news of another flood or overrun by news of regions desiccated by record heat and wildfire, it is time to be optimistic and act.  Nations are acting. The EU and China are crafting legislation to decisively reduce carbon pollution. Canada has a Carbon Pollution Fee. Nations are employing carbon neutral policies.   National macro-solutions use two strategies to humanely reduce the burning of coal, oil, and gas. One is the carbon credit trading system, the second a carbon pollution penalty.  Using carbon credits, a carbon polluter must buy credits from a carbon sequestering business. For example, a natural gas power plant could buy credits from a business that protects the Amazon Rainforest.  Since a polluter must buy credits, it raises his operating cost forcing him to pollute less. The straightforward method to entice industry to come clean is by imposing a penalty for dumping carbon garbage in the air. This is done via carbon ...