Fusion Still Unready To Save Us

Update 12-19-2022:  An edited version of this appeared in the Sunday 12-18-2022 Waco "Tribune-Herald" paper as a board-of-contributors column.  

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With scientists achieving “breakeven” at the national ignition facility,  their press release has been ballyhooed into notions that fusion is here to save us immediately from energy shortages and climate change.  Wrong!

Excerpted from an NBC News release 12-13-2022:

“While the Livermore team achieved what researchers call a scientific break-even or energy gain, it did not achieve an engineering break-even: The inefficient lasers used in the experiment required about 300 megajoules of energy to fire just 2 megajoules of energy into the experiment. The reaction produced about 3 megajoules of energy.”

and

“Scientists must now find ways to reduce inefficiencies, burn a larger portion of available fuel during the reaction and harness the energy for use as electricity, said Troy Carter, a professor in UCLA’s department of physics and astronomy and the director of the Plasma Science and Technology Institute.”

And here is an image of the target bay: 

My take on it:

Figured as output/input,  the scientists are comparing fusion energy released (as heat) to the incident laser light energy on the fuel pellet that compressed it:  3 megajoules/2 megajoules = 1.5,  which is greater than 1,  indicating they got more fusion-derived heat energy out,  than they put in as laser light energy (or magnetic confinement energy,  or whatever type of energy the experiment used). 

That definition of the ratio is termed “scientific breakeven”,  and this is the first time that ratio has ever exceeded 1 in anybody’s experiment!  That is quite the significant achievement!  However,  bear in mind that many experimenters have been trying to do that ever since the early 1950’s (some 7 decades ago).

That achievement says getting energy from fusion is actually theoretically possible.  But it ignores the efficiency of producing the input laser (or other) energy,  and it ignores the efficiency of utilizing the output heat to make usable electricity.  The second quoted paragraph above says exactly that,  but without any numbers to “calibrate” the notions.  Allow me to “calibrate” it for you:

Per the quoted data in the first quoted paragraph,  the efficiency of producing those 2 megajoules of laser energy is 2 megajoules/300 megajoules = 0.67%,  which is really,  really low! 

A heat engine is required to produce electricity from the released heat of fusion.  The best of those that we have,  are the steam-powered generators at power plants,  which are limited by the laws of thermodynamics to efficiencies in the range of 25-50%.  I will use that value range for illustration.

What all that really says,  from the viewpoint of any engineer actually tasked to build a powerplant,  is that the output should be the producible electricity,  say 25-50% x 3 megajoules,  or 0.75-1.5 megajoules.  The input is the energy required to actually produce the laser energy in this case,  which is the 300 megajoules quoted. 

Looked at that way,  the ratio is 0.75-1.5 megajoules/300 megajoules,  or about 0.25-0.50%,  and very likely lower than that.  And yet THAT is the ratio that really needs to be greater than 1 for a real-world powerplant design to work!  That would be “engineering breakeven”. 

It took 7 decades to achieve “scientific breakeven”.  It is unrealistic to expect that reaching “engineering breakeven” won’t require a similar number of decades.

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What we face:

We face a shortfall of grid capacity as the population increases and as motor fleet electrification proceeds,  plus we face a climate disaster already in progress.  For our energy and climate needs,  it is obviously wiser to count on techniques that we already have operational. Those are fossil fuels,  hydroelectric,  nuclear fission,  solar,  and wind.  Nothing else is operational.

How we can face it:

All the fossil fuels produce greenhouse gas emissions,  and the technologies to reduce or prevent that are simply not operational.  Of the fossil fuels,  the one cleanest of both ordinary pollution and greenhouse gas emissions is natural gas.  But you must pay careful attention to stopping the leaks from,  and the freezing of,  those pipelines and distribution infrastructure.  We know how to do that,  but we have yet to make those into regulatory requirements.  So,  change that lack!

Hydroelectric capacity cannot be expanded much further:  we have already dammed all the dammable rivers in the US.

Solar and wind are already 20+% of the Texas grid capacity,  but because of their intermittent nature and long-distance transmission losses,  they cannot be much more than that percentage,  until “grid-scale” energy storage is operational.  It is not yet operational.

That leaves nuclear fission,  which is free of conventional pollution and free of greenhouse emissions,  but does incur radioactive wastes and risks!  It has to be done “right”,  which prioritizes safety over profit,  which the US Navy has long-demonstrated really works.  It also needs a short-term and a long-term solution for dealing with the nuclear waste stream. 

The short-term nuclear waste solution is using the Yucca Mountain disposal facility already constructed in Nevada,  but so far never used.  Long-term,  we need to re-process spent nuclear fuel,  which might reduce the waste stream amounts,  by a factor approaching 10.

Just cut the red tape (while maintaining and enforcing the safety requirements) and get on with building nuclear plants as rapidly as we can!  We already know how.  No,  it’s not the cheapest source of electricity,  but it alone meets all the steady generation-capacity and emissions requirements.

My recommendations in a nutshell:

On Climate Change and Solutions

This was submitted as a possible guest column to the Waco “Tribune-Herald.  They may or may not choose to use it.  However,  either way,  people need to see this.  This is what the issue looks like when you ditch the politics,  party agendas,  and lobby money.

Update 10-5-19:  the Waco "Trib" used an edited,  slightly-shortened form of this article in today's (Saturday's) issue.  In both forms,  I hope the message comes through clear:  we passed the tipping point for very destructive sea level rise many years ago.

Better get prepared for that,  and try to limit it to no more than the 7 meters I suggested in the article,  which is what freeing the renewables from the intermittency problem (so they can quickly outcompete fossil fuels in the marketplace) is really all about.

If Greenland and West Antarctica both should fully deglaciate,  that's closer to 14 meters rise.  Add in all of East Antarctica,  and it's 74 meters (243 feet).  That's the math.  The geology says that (and even higher due to thermal expansion in a hot ocean) has happened before.  That's the history. 

It's about math,  physics,  and history.  Hard evidence.  Opinion has nothing to do with this.

Article as submitted -------------------------------------

There has been lots of talk lately about climate change.  Teenage activist Greta Thunberg,  and youth worldwide marching in the streets over this issue,  have been in the news of late.

If the climate warms,  the ice melts,  that’s just physics.  Ice melting above sea level raises sea level,  same as ice or water added to an already-full glass of iced tea,  again just physics. 

Here’s the list of potential sea level rise amounts calculated at 100% melting: 

mountain glaciers 1 meter, 

Greenland 6 meter,

West Antarctica 7 meter, 

East Antarctica 60 meter.  

This is based on ice volumes observed in recent history located above current sea level,  as best we know the numbers.  You cannot fight the math,  either! 

Here’s the current status of that ice: 

When I was a boy in the 1950’s,  the mountain glaciers seemed permanent.  But over the last quarter century,  they have already receded by half. 

When I was a boy in the 1950’s,  the Greenland ice sheet seemed permanent.  Then about a quarter century ago,  the first signs of melting began to appear.  Now it looks like Greenland is deglaciating to one extent or another.

When I was a boy in the 1950’s,  the Antarctic ice sheets seemed permanent.  Now in the last few years we are seeing the same signs of melting in West Antarctica that we saw in Greenland starting about a quarter century ago.  (Nothing really alarming in East Antarctica.  Yet!)

On the gross assumption that only half of each showing signs actually melts,  and another gross assumption that East Antarctica remains stable,  that’s 0.5 + 3.0 + 3.5 meters = 7 meters sea level rise to be expected over the next several decades.  (A meter is about 10% longer than a yard.  7 meters rise is about 25 feet of rise.)  You cannot argue with math! 

This is horrific!  Why is this horrific?  Because:

(1) a majority of humanity lives within 1-2 meters of current sea level,  and

(2) most of humanity’s most valuable assets are within about 5 meters of current sea level. 

Given those two vulnerabilities,  a 7 meter rise clearly leads to mass migrations simultaneous with mass economic devastation,  the likes of which we have never before seen in all the history of our civilization. 

Whether this is human-caused is largely irrelevant,  because it is quite apparently happening no matter what!  It is prudent to do less of those things we already know act to make the problem worse.  Those are,  primarily,  release of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.

Of those,  methane is by far the more potent warming agent,  but there is way far less of it.  Carbon dioxide has the longer effects over time,  because its apparent lifetime in the atmosphere exceeds 300 years,  according to the chemists.  Most of the carbon dioxide emissions come from burning fossil fuels.  That’s just the facts;  you cannot fight physics and chemistry.  Or history.

Some folks point at water vapor as the strongest “greenhouse” agent of all,  but this one gets complicated by unstable feedback effects that the other two “greenhouse” agents do not share.  A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor,  adding to heating effects.  A warmer ocean supplies more water vapor to the atmosphere.  This feedback acts in a direction that makes the flips sudden between a colder,  drier-overall climate and a warmer,  wetter-overall climate.  

It is clear that we need at least to drastically reduce our emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels.  It is not quite clear just how to do that,  not just yet.  There is a growing consensus that we need to replace fossil fuels with solar power,  wind power,  and nuclear power.  All three have serious impediments not so often discussed in public. 

Nuclear has a safety problem,  or else the unmitigated disasters of Chernobyl and Fukushima would not have happened.  (Three Mile Island was not one of these!)  Nuclear needs to be updated to the newer all-passive emergency cooling designs,  and it needs more adequate geological-record design criteria for resisting earthquakes and tsunamis,  not the historical-record criteria used up to now.  It also needs a solution to the waste disposal problem (fuel reprocessing is likely a component of that). 

Both of the renewables have an intermittency problem incompatible with providing electricity “24/7 no matter what”.  The sun does not always shine,  and the wind does not always blow.  Transferring power from one region to another through the electric grid suffers losses approaching 50% over the indicated distances.  Plus,  all of North America is dark at night. You cannot fight physics!

Crudely,  half the energy used in America is electricity,  and the other half transportation fuel.  Efficiencies-of-use aside,  we will obviously need a substantially-bigger electric grid capacity to support the move to electric cars and trucks.  So,  I focus on the electric grid.

For electric generation,  wind power is far cheaper than coal already,  and it is essentially competitive with fracked natural gas.  Solar is very close to being competitive,  and will be increasingly competitive as more and more of it gets fielded.  Arguments about subsidies for renewables are basically irrelevant,  because the fossil fuel industry also has them in one form or another,  and for well over a century.

It is the intermittency of renewables that holds back deploying more than 20% of them in the mix of electric power sources.  This has long been demonstrated by the Europeans,  who already use it to its intermittent max. 

If there were a grid-scale energy storage solution,  the intermittency objection goes away!  Thus renewables could outcompete fossil on price,  and accomplish a simple market-driven and fairly-rapid takeover.  No need for state-mandated solutions!

This need for an intermittency solution has been known for 2-3 decades,  yet there has been no “Manhattan Project” to solve the grid-scale storage problem!  This stalemate was driven by lobbyist money buying-off Congresses and Presidents.

Solve THAT,  and renewables will take off,  without a disruption in electric service,  or a disruption to the economy.  It means more jobs,  not less:  nobody yet knows how to automate-away the jobs of solar or wind power installers and hardware producers!

Possible storage mechanisms include elevated water reservoirs,  compressed gas in caves,  batteries of multiple types,  flywheel storage,  and more.  One in particular stands out to me as a really near-term item:  the so-called “flow battery”.  This is really a reversible chemical reactor with two tank farms storing the chemicals. 

For storage,  you send “product” chemicals plus electricity through the reactor to create “reactant” chemicals that you store in one tank farm.  For power when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine,  you flow reactant chemicals through the reactor,  which then produces both electricity,  and “product” chemicals which you store in the other tank farm.

We already know how to build chemical reactors and tank farms and local pipe networks,  as anyone passing through the regions around Pasadena,  Texas,  can see.  This therefore seems like a really high-probability output from any “Manhattan Project” on renewable-storage that we might attempt.

So why isn’t any of this already underway? 

Quite frankly,  because of your voting patterns:  electing and re-electing do-nothing politicians beholden to lobby money. 

Change is required,  for the sake of your children!

Related Articles ----------------------------------------

The following list gives related earlier articles (pretty much superseded by this one,  except for the versions of the little trade matrix).  Use the navigation tool on the left of the page.  Click on the year,  then the month,  then the title.  The list also gives the filtering search keywords associated with these articles.

18 January 2018,  “Weather Versus Climate”,   climate change,  idiocy in politics

15 April 2017,  “Do We Fight Global Warming Or Not?”,  bad government,  bad manners,  climate change,  idiocy in politics

12 January 2010,  “On Global Warming”,  bad manners,  bad government,  climate change,  idiocy in politics

Weather Versus Climate

This sketch explains why a cold winter does not disprove global warming,  despite what the skeptics so love to claim.

While only an over-simplified  sketch,  the picture speaks for itself.  If you see both harsher winter cold snaps and hotter summer heat waves,  that's one of the tell-tale symptoms of global warming!

As indicated in the sketch,  the extra heat energy goes into powering wider weather swings.

We can always debate as to why the warming might be occurring.  But it is definitely occurring,  despite the harsh winter conditions of January 2018.

If you want to see something about causality,  go see the article titled "Do We Fight Global Warming or Not?",  dated 4-15-17,  on this website.

Do We Fight Global Warming Or Not?

Update 6-14-18:  In the last couple of days it has been revealed that we now have hard evidence that the West Antarctic ice sheet is destabilizing,  the same sort of way that the Greenland ice sheet has been destabilizing. 

In the past I have used these estimates of sea level rise for the various sources of ice:  mountain glaciers 1 m,  Greenland 6 m,  West Antarctica 7 m,  and East Antarctica 20+ m,  plus "several more" meters for thermal expansion as the ocean warms.  Sea ice contributes zero,  it is already floating. 

The thermal expansion effects are delayed,  while ice losses are more immediate.  The ice losses listed are associated with those rises only if 100% of that source of on-land ice fully melts. 

In the past,  I have treated the melting of mountain glacier ice as "already underway",  and Greenland as "getting started",  with West Antarctica and East Antarctica "still stable".  I have assumed only 50% melting,  for 50% of 1 + 6 meter = 3.5 meter sea level rise,  on a gut-feel time scale of 50 to 100 years. 

Such a rise would be devastating to civilization,  since more than half the world's people,  and the majority of its immovable assets,  are within 3.5 m of current sea level.

Now I have to include West Antarctica.  50% of 1+6+7 meters = 7 meters of sea level rise on a gut-feel time scale of 50-100 years.  You need to think "crash of civilization",  in which case agriculture reverts to primitive methods,  and 90% of us must perish. If you have to ask why,  you're far dumber than you think.

In the past I have said that we are probably already past a tipping point for human-caused climate change,  which renders mitigation efforts only a delaying tactic.  If that is so,  we'd better start figuring out how to cope.  Not much of that is yet going on.  What is,  is looking at fractional-meter rise.  And that's wrong.

With West Antarctica now known to be destabilizing,  I am now personally sure we are past the tipping point.  This WILL happen,  and much sooner than anyone thinks!  We now have very little time left to figure out how to cope with 7 meters (about 23 feet) of rapid sea level rise.  In only 50 to 100 years,  and then doubling again due to thermal expansion in the following century. 

So,  whether you believe on human-caused climate change or not,  I recommend that you read on,  anyway. 

If you cannot be persuaded by actual data,  then there is no hope for you.  You deserve the fate that awaits you.  And most of you will live long enough to see it begin.  And begin it already has.

Note:  article was updated 4-23-17 in purple text below to include sources of traceable data.  

Note:  another update added below in blue text 4-25-17.

Note:  one slight edit adds an item in red text below 5-4-17.

See Also "Weather Versus Climate",  posted 1-18-18 on this website.

This is an issue that has become politicized to the extreme,  which precludes rational action. What I present here has absolutely zero to do with ideologies or politics.  It is simple logic and common sense. 

There are two things to consider,  but only one available choice.  Whether humans cause global warming or not is not a matter of choice,  it is something decreed by nature,  which does not tell us which is true.  Our only choice is whether or not to act,  based on what we do know. 

What we know is this:  (1) there is a huge volume of ice on Earth located above sea level,  (2) if even some of it were to melt,  sea levels would rise sharply,  (3) added heat melts ice,  and (4) most of our critical institutions and a major fraction of our population live in the zone threatened with flooding. 

What portends here is a disaster far exceeding the temporary flooding of a city by a hurricane,  or the migration of millions out of Syria and Africa to escape war.  What could happen is the forced migration of billions,  and (nuclear) war over failing food resources.  So,  this decision is important to get “right”. 

Filling Out The Decision Matrix

One simple way to decide this is by a version of the trade study matrix,  a pretty standard tool.  However many choices you have is the number of columns (in this example 3),  however many versions of the unknown natural issue there might be is the number of rows (in this example 2).  That gives you a 6-hole pigeon-hole matrix to fill in with likely consequences. 

There are two rows because human emissions might,  or might not,  cause global warming.  You do not get to choose between them;  this is decided by nature,  not humans. 

There are three columns instead of two,  because if we decide to act,  there’s two ways this action might turn out.  There is only one,  if we choose not to act.  Acting versus not acting is the choice available to us.  If we act and it doesn’t work,  we’d better already be working on how to cope (the third column).

As for the consequences,  they need not be detailed,  and it is OK to exaggerate them for better contrast.  

If we choose to act,  we will spend lots of money to act,  and there will be monetary losses,  too.   These costs could range from significant (damaged economies) to catastrophic (going back to the stone age).  That variation doesn’t matter,  just fill in all four “choose to act” cells with “lose $$”.

If we choose not to act,  then the consequences depend upon what nature does not tell us:  whether or not human-caused global warming is real.  If not real,  there will be no meltdown,  no sea level rise,  no migrations,  no war,  and no money lost.  If real,  all those things will happen,  and both money and lives will be lost (at catastrophic levels). 

That fills in all 6 cells with consequences.  5 of the 6 involve lost money,  there is no avoiding that.  1 of the 6 involves life loss as well as loss of money;  that one is really bad.  1 of the 6 has no bad consequences in it at all. 

Now We Must Choose

You cannot choose which row you want (political ideologies notwithstanding).  You can only choose a column!  The standard way to use the matrix is to pick the outcome that you cannot abide,  and then cross out the entire column that contains it. 

In this example,  losing lives is to be avoided,  which rules out choosing not to act.  This valuing of lives over money is in accordance with the teachings of all 3 Abrahamic religions in the West.  Most of the Eastern religious traditions agree. 

That result says:  act,  and be prepared ahead of time to cope,  if your initial action fails. 

Did you notice that not once did I refer to any of the prognostications or temperature history data of the climate science community?  I didn’t need it to make this decision.  I need it only to help define the actions we might take to mitigate this threat:  reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

And,  there is another independent science dataset that says the same thing:  observed ice melting behavior as the fossil fuel-guzzling population has exploded.  Getting the same answer by two independent means lends a lot of confidence to that answer. 

Update 4-23-17:  Sources of Real Data to Consider

There are ice core data that cover atmospheric composition during the ice ages and the warm periods in between.  This is based on the actual composition of the ancient air trapped in the bubbles in the ice.  The atmosphere is mixed well enough that this composition is not restricted to polar regions,  it is global.  These can be dated by the layers,  similar to tree ring dating.  Here is that data for atmospheric carbon dioxide over the last 400,000 years,  obtained right off a NASA website:

You can see the 4 dips to 180-200 ppm at the height of each of the 4 main glaciations of the ice age. We know when these glaciations occurred from the timing of the evidence in the rocks:  they show marks of glacier passage,  and the debris left behind on melting.   Note that it never got above about 280-290 ppm during the deglaciated warm intervals.  Ancient is to the left,  modern is to the right.  You can even see the little "wiggle" in the curve at about 260 ppm about 10,000 years ago that is the sudden cool-down they call the "Younger Dryas".  

From 180 ppm to 290 ppm encompasses atmospheric composition all the way between fully glaciated to fully warm.  Correlation does not establish causality,  that has to come from elsewhere (such as basic demonstrable physics).  So,  is something else going on?  Such as Milankovitch orbital cycles?

The thing we have that best models the cycling of the ice ages is Milankovitch orbital cycles.  This is not really a fully causal model,  except for the notion that more sunlight striking northern hemisphere land leads to warmer conditions globally.  It pretty much correlates with the advance and retreat of the ice;  not perfect,  but very,  very good.  It is limited;  for one thing,  the distribution of continents was different millions of years ago.  

The basic physics is simple:  ice melts if heated.  The Earth's "average" temperature is an energy balance between lots of visible and ultraviolet light coming from the sun,  and some heat of radioactive decay and original formation escaping from the interior,  versus the infrared heat re-radiated back out into space by the warmth of the Earth's surface.  And,  extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere interferes with that re-radiation,  because it is less transparent to infrared than oxygen and nitrogen,  so the surface must warm further to radiate against the resistance of the carbon dioxide.

You can verify this effect for yourself without actually doing sophisticated measurements:  simply set two bell jars covering thermometers out in the sun at the same time.  One has air,  the other you fill with carbon dioxide (the extreme case).  Both thermometers rise.  But,  the carbon dioxide-filled jar's thermometer will read a lot higher than the air-filled jar's thermometer.  Both are "greenhouses",  but the carbon dioxide gas is far more potent as such than oxygen and nitrogen in the air.  

Another version of that very same chart I obtained from Wikipedia,  to which an inset was added showing atmospheric composition over only the last few centuries.  This makes the point that our unburying of carbon-containing fossil fuels and releasing it as exhaust gas carbon dioxide,  has had effects since the start of the Industrial Revolution,  and really sharp effects in the last 5 decades as our population explodes exponentially.  

If you look on much longer time scales,  there are other things going on as well.  On a time scale of 100 million years,  the astrophysicists tell us the sun has brightened by 4% or thereabouts.  On a 4.6 billion year time scale,  they tell us it has brightened by about 30%.  

Before about 380 million years ago,  there was no life on land.  Before 600 million years ago,  there was only single cell life in the ocean.  Before about 2.5 billion years ago,  there was no oxygen in the atmosphere.  And who knows what the surface air pressure was during those times (which also affects how good a "greenhouse" it makes)?

All we know is that there more carbon dioxide half a billion years ago than in "recent" times (only the couple of million years).  The sun was dimmer,  and yet the geology indicates ice-free conditions.  This chart was published a few years ago in the refereed journal "Science",  published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  It's based on atmospheric composition inferred from rock chemistry,  and it's pretty good back to the Cambrian,  570 million years ago.  Much before that,  it's inherently rather speculative,  which explains the scale change representing time.  These are indirect measures,  which explains the lack of scale tick marks on carbon dioxide concentrations,  which were roughly around 1000 to 2000 ppm during the Mesozoic.  

Update 4-25-17:

What the long-term carbon dioxide and temperature chart makes clear is twofold.  (1) Carbon dioxide fluctuations do not cause ice ages,  because there was little change in level during the Pleistocene Ice Ages,  and carbon dioxide levels were much higher during the earlier ice ages.  (2) Carbon dioxide in the air does indeed warm the planet,  as evidenced by ice-free intervals at high carbon dioxide earlier in Earth's history,  when the sun was significantly dimmer.  

Something else causes ice ages.  Many things,  this is poorly understood.  There have been many of these ice age events over geologic time:  the Pleistocene event we are most familiar with,  the Jurassic-Cretaceous event,  an event between the Carboniferous and the Permian,  another between the Ordovician and the Silurian,  and who-knows-what during Pre-Cambrian times.  

Climate-Modeling Science

The overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that humans are causing major effects with greenhouse gas emissions.  They arrive at this conclusion with a combination of (1) computer modeling of climate,  and (2) various proxies for past temperature data earlier than historical measurements. 

There is inherently a lot of uncertainty in the computer modeling,  and a lot of inference in the proxies for past temperatures (unlike the ice core data for atmospheric composition).  There is potential for error,  disagreement,  and even fraud.  Many folks outside the community are uncomfortable with that,  and this is the weakness exploited by those who prefer to disbelieve that we are causing climate change. 

Ice Melting Behavior

Ice behavior is unambiguous.  The mountain glaciers have been generally receding since the 19^th century.  Now there are enormous summer sea ice losses,  and thousands of summer meltwater lakes on Greenland,  that we have never seen before!  The co-timing of these symptoms with the increases in measured atmospheric carbon dioxide to unprecedented levels since 1958,  is quite damning.

There is a documentary film available in whole or in part on Youtube named “Chasing Ice”.  It was made by James Balog as part of his Extreme Ice Survey (EIS).  The award-winning film was first shown in 2013.  The time lapse photography of many glaciers' melt-back in the last 30 minutes of that film makes my point better than any words. 

Trade Study-Recommended Actions

The mitigation action to take first is to cut back carbon dioxide and methane emissions as fast as we can,  but without hurting or killing somebody for lack of energy, which limits how fast we can do this.  The coping action to take in case mitigation fails is twofold:  (1) start stockpiling foodstuffs,  and (2) to start moving critical institutions and assets to much higher ground.  

Any other “geo-engineering” activities we contemplate must be reversible,  because we simply do not know that they will do more good than harm.  If they do not work,  we have to be able to undo them. 

It is that simple. And it is that stark.  And,  it has absolutely nothing to do with politics or ideology.  Those who claim otherwise are lying to you.  Follow the money to see who and why. 

Previous Related Article on this Topic

There was one earlier article that I wrote on this topic,  which the current article updates and replaces.  That was “On Global Warming”,  dated 1-12-2010,  and sharing the same search keywords you can use to filter searches for this topic on this site:  "bad government",  “bad manners”,  “climate change”,  and “idiocy in politics”.  That older article was last updated in 2014 to show a simpler 4-cell version of the 6-cell trade study matrix presented here.   It now refers the reader to this article.  

On Global Warming

Update 4-15-17:  A newer article dated 4-15-17 and titled "Do We Fight Global Warming Or Not?" updates and replaces this one.  They share the same search keywords that you can use for search filtering on this site.

This is the text of my response 1-12-10 to a friend's forwarded article, concerning the debate over global warming. ----  (updated 2-27-14 in red,  and with illustrations)

Myself, I put more faith in observed ice behavior than actual or proxy temperature records. The actuals don't go back far enough. It is really hard to calibrate proxies adequately.

The empirical observation is that Milankovitch orbital cycles match glaciations and deglaciations very well (but not perfectly) over the last 3-4 million years of geologic record. There is really no adequate causality to explain this match-up fully, it is not a full theory or an established fact, just a empirical observation. However it holds up, in spite of a periodicity change from 100 kyr dominance to 40 kyr dominance during the last ice age.

(And you notice that I did not say a word about CO2 or its relative timing.)

Milankovitch cycles says that the big glaciers should already be forming in Eastern Canada, but they are not. The Arctic ice cap has instead been shrinking for at least the last 50 years. With the caveat that the match isn't "perfect", something appears to be different this orbital parameter cycle. The model is failing to match what is really happening.

Depending greatly upon whose data you believe, the divergence started 50 years ago, 2-300 years ago, or even 8-10,000 years ago. But there is a divergence. For whatever reason.

The volume of ice at risk of melting that is located above current sea level is enormous. Depending upon what you assume could melt, the rise could be anywhere from 1 to 100-something meters. There are roughly half a billion people living within 1 meter of current sea level, and nearly all of us live within 100-some meters of sea level.  Some sea level rise estimates are given in Figure 1,  added below as part of the update.  These are for "near-term" (century-scale) expectations.  Longer term,  more ice melts and the sea level rise is higher.  

Billions could soon be on the move from flooded homes, and we demonstrably cannot handle the temporary evacuation of one flooded city of less than a million folks. I see a total disaster looming here, do you? You should. So should us all.

Now (and only now) does CO2 and CH4 get into it. Lab experiments with bell jars and bottled gases easily confirm the "greenhouse" effect of these gases. If their budgets rise in the atmosphere, there could well be some sort of warming effect, simply because it does happen on a small scale in the lab. It is therefore likely that there would be greenhouse warming, if enough gets added.

How likely, who knows? How much is enough? Who knows? The Keeling curve of measured data shows CO2 went from 280 ppm in 1958 to about 387 ppm today (400 ppm as of Feb 2014,  but I don't think that's been seasonally adjusted to an annual average yet). That's almost a doubling in about half a century. The trend is not linear, but concave upward (accelerating). That's real data at a single location (Hawaii).

In view of the looming potential flooding disaster, it makes sense to buy time by reducing those activities we know would make the problem worse: i.e., greenhouse gas additions to the atmosphere. This may or may not actually have the desired effect, but it surely seems a prudent thing to try. We need to buy that time to figure out how to deal with the migration of billions. We clearly do not know how to handle such a migration right now.

The global warming debate as currently framed is entirely foolish and pointless. It should be focused primarily on how to cope with the coming migrations, and secondarily on how to buy the needed time. Here's the rub: time looks to be short. Greenland is beginning to deglaciate (worst case 6 meter rise, perhaps within a century), and the mountain glaciers are almost certainly disappearing within a decade or so (1 meter rise). As for the rest, who yet knows?  West Antarctica is showing some signs of instability in 2013 and 2014.  East Antarctica,  not so much,  but changes in ice flow speed there have been noticed recently.  

I will admit to this human failing: I get really pissed off by the current "debate". Condemning billions to starvation and death as civilization crashes, for the sake of profit or political advantage now, is a crime against all of humanity that makes the WW2 Holocaust pale in comparison.

Now,  instead of an emotional,  rhetorical appeal,  try logic.  

Figure 2 below,  added as part of the update,  shows an oversimplified form of a standard trade study tool:  the decision matrix.  There are,  in this oversimplified example,  two choices available to us,  arranged here as column headings:  do we attempt to do something,  or do we do nothing?  The choices not available to us are Mother Nature's "decisions",  shown here as row headings:  either human-caused warming is real or it is not.  In the four cells are very brief descriptions of the consequences appropriate to the corresponding combinations of column and row headings.  The contrast is easiest to see,  if you overstate them a little,  and that hurts nothing.

You have to do this right:  you cannot choose a row (in this example),  because that is a matter of what nature does,  not a matter available for human choice.  We humans must choose (in this example) either one column or the other,  and then let the chips fall where they may,  regardless of the "choice" nature makes.  You do that by eliminating the column with the outcome in it that you cannot tolerate,  no matter what the other cells in that column offer as outcomes.  That's the proven strategy that is part of this method.

There is simply no other rational way to make the decision.  

In this example,  there is only one cell with a good outcome,  that corresponding to "we do nothing" and to "nature says humans do not cause warming".  The cell with the worst outcome (civilization crashes and most of us die) is in the same "we do nothing" column,  for the case where nature says we humans really do cause climate warming.  The other two cells also have very bad outcomes (our global economy gets wrecked),  but those do not appear to be as bad as "civilization crashes and most of us die".  

So the only rational choice available to us is try to do something to mitigate our greenhouse gas emissions,  as being the choice that kills the fewest of us.  

The  belief that we cause,  or do not cause (take your pick,  it doesn't matter),  climate warming is quite properly discounted in the decision-making process,  precisely because it is a matter of belief,  not a decision under our control at all.  (Politicians hate that,  by the way.)  

The beauty of this is that we do not even need to know the answer to nature's "decision":  we do not need to know "for sure" whether human activity causes,  or does not cause,  climate warming.  We can still make a good decision.

 Figure 1 -- Figures for Ice Melt Effects on Sea Level Rise

Figure 2 -- Simplified Version of Decision Matrix for Climate Change