You misunderstood. I am not at all against humanity becoming far better about not destroying the environment. Not at all. What rattles me are the fantastic assertions being made in the name of "saving the planet". The entire thing has become a religion (both deniers and zealots). And EVERYONE is making money off this thing.

I want us to have a look at the real science behind this problem and have an honest discussion about how to deal with it.

For example, there is no way to dispute that a planet earth without humanity has a natural atmospheric CO2 reduction rate of about 100ppm per 50,000 years (the range goes as far as 100/75,000).

This is, to repeat myself, indisputable. In order to challenge this assertion someone would have to prove that the 800,000 years of atmospheric composition data is flawed in some way. And they would have to prove how ice core atmospheric composition testing is flawed.

When I started to read on this subject I found this data. As an engineer, my first inclination was to seek information on both the accuracy and percentage error in these tests. I read papers and articles on the subject of atmospheric composition testing using ice core sample. I went at it skeptical as can be, convinced the errors had to be huge. Well, I ended-up discovering I was wrong. The techniques, methodology and data are extremely accurate and reliable.

Which means the conversation HAS to start there:

100 ppm/50,000 years, or
0.002 ppm/year, or
2 ppm/thousand years

These are scary numbers because of what they mean: If we are going to claim to be able to do better than 2 ppm in a THOUSAND years we have a HUGE burden of proof to pass. We have to explain how it is that we are going to affect planetary scale changes at a rate massively quicker than the planet has historically managed on its own. And that, I am afraid, might very well be in the realm of magic, not science.

This is why we already know that supplanting all power generation across the entire planet with the most optimal forms of renewable energy generation (in other words, imagine the most fantastically good forms of renewables and that's what we install) we won't fix the problem. Not only will atmospheric CO2 concentration not come down, it would continue to increase forever.

In other words: Anything we do that is less than all of humanity evaporating from this planet is but a rounding error in this problem. Even if humanity evaporates, that means we go back to a decrease of 2 ppm/1,000 years --AT BEST.

I am not trying to be negative. I am trying to be a realist about this. Destroying entire economies for sake of what has become religious belief is wrong and pointless.

Take this 2050 goal some are talking about. OK. Perfect. We know that atmospheric CO2 accumulation has been happening at about 2 ppm per year. Yeah, that's on us. Maybe not all of it, after all, this was happening before humanity existed on this planet. Let's just say we are in for 50% of that, or 1 ppm per year.

OK, then. We want to flatten the curve by 2050. What does that mean exactly? Do we want to negate our contribution only or do we want to negate our contribution as well as the natural rate?

In the first case we are talking about: 1 ppm/yr * 31 years = 31 ppm
In the second instance the number is doubled: 2 ppm/yr * 31 years = 61 ppm

Let's take the lower number: We want to "take back" 31 ppm in, well, 31 years

What's the annual rate of change? 1 ppm per year

OK, let's get rid of all of humanity and everything we ever built on this planet. An alien species helps us by teleporting everything into space by next Monday. Gone.

What's the natural rate of CO2 reduction then? 0.002 ppm per year

Oops.

We need to chip away at a minimum of 31 ppm during the next 31 years and even if humanity evaporates from this planet all we can get out of the deal is 0.062 ppm? That is the MAXIMUM we'll get without an single human on this planet and none of our technology, buildings, power plants, ships, cars, trains, etc.?

Yup. I have yet to find a way to refute this conclusion.

In order to explain how we are going to achieve this goal by 2050 we have to explain how it is that we are going to do FIVE HUNDRED times better than the planet could if we do not exist. That's where, I think, all of these proposals out there are nonsense. Not taking a flight "to save the planet" is nonsense. Buying an electric car "to save the planet" is nonsense. Installing solar panels "to save the planet" is nonsense. There are other reasons to do these things, but let's stop lying about what they might be.

I could go deeper into this topic. I've done a lot of research in trying to get to the bottom of it. One of the issues we have is that it is political and career suicide for researchers to go against the religion this thing has become. If someone said what I am saying here they can kiss their research grants, university or lab job and career goodbye. The money and forces at play are corrupting real science.

My conclusion today is that the solution must be found in three areas:

- Massive reforestation. We need to restore our forests and plant trees everywhere possible. In a city like Los Angeles (and other cities) we need to make grass lawns illegal and require the planting of trees. Trees are a simple technology that convert CO2 into, well, a tree

- With extreme caution (because the unintended consequences can be catastrophic to humanity) we need to look into chemical means of CO2 sequestration. This is not simple. It might even be impossible due to the planetary scale (conservation of energy, etc.)

Anyhow. I am all for humanity becoming much greener and cleaner. For the right reasons. We have to do it. And we also need to be honest about the global warming problem and talk about real solutions not ways to make money and fix nothing.

Side thought: It is likely far easier to launch a global movement to plant trees like our lives depend on it (which might be true) than to get people behind not flying and massive infrastructure projects that would cripple some economies, not to mention the unintended consequences of such actions (how much MORE CO2 would we generate if nobody flew?)