Advice for discussing carbon dioxide from fossil fuels with alarmists (John Shanahan) USofA

Advice for discussing carbon dioxide from fossil fuels with: 1) extreme climate change alarmists 2) people who think that CO2 from fossil fuels will cause moderate warming John Shanahan, Editor of website: allaboutenergy.net January 17, 2020 Background

John Shanahan is a civil engineer who worked in commercial nuclear power design and licensing from 1970 through 1987. He worked with outstanding leaders in advanced nuclear power and production of radioisotopes for nuclear medicine and nuclear science from 1990 to 2020 and beyond. He works to contribute to public education about energy and energy by-products. Along the way, it became apparent that people need to learn how nuclear power fits in with fossil fuels. Fossil fuels created the modern world up to the present.

They have many uses. They can’t just be swept away on some extremist’s whim. This brings up the question of whether carbon dioxide from fossil fuels is causing serious man-made global warming? Should nuclear advocates and nuclear professionals claim that nuclear power can solve a hypothetical man-made global warming problem? Is this a serious mistake for nuclear power experts to claim fossil fuels are causing serious man-made global warming, man-made climate change, man-made climate disruption?

He studied the uses of many energy sources including fossil fuels and the carbon dioxide question in more than 700 articles with many viewpoints. He discussed these topics with hands-on experts for over thirty years. He knows how the general public acquires their knowledge of energy and climate, and how they respond to information he presents to them.

Discussing man-made carbon dioxide with leading alarmists is pointless. I’ve discussed the man-made carbon dioxide question with the same people in the general public for ten years and made no progress. They remain slouched on the couch repeating that 97% of scientists say that catastrophic man-made global warming is happening. Yet they continue to watch TV, use their iPhones, drive to the supermarket, expect fresh food from all over the world to be waiting for them to snatch off the shelves, go on far-away vacations, go on Disney cruises that mind the children. Everything requires fossil fuels.

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Freedom isn’t free. Prosperity doesn’t come from the government. Democracy has to be defended. Education needs to come from wise teachers, not brain-washing automatons.

Many global warming alarmists have almost no knowledge of the physics of the carbon dioxide cycle as it moves into the atmosphere from power plants, vehicles and industry and moves from there to forests, plants, is buried in the ground and ocean floor, and absorbed in ocean water. They only know messages alarmists and the media give them.

Their minds are closed to understanding actual climate change history and what is really happening now. Global warming alarmists frequently resort to insults and name calling toward people who think that carbon dioxide from fossil fuels is not causing catastrophic global warming. Some extreme global warming alarmists are interested in stopping use of fossil fuels just to take energy away from everybody and transfer wealth from people in North America and Europe to people elsewhere.

Many people love wildlife, forests, mountains, hiking, canoeing, fishing, bicycling, wilderness experiences, camping, clean water and clean air. Some of them learn in schools, from extreme environmental organizations, and the media that carbon dioxide from fossil fuels is causing man-made global warming, man-made climate change and man-made climate disruption. These are terms President Obama’s Alarmist Science Advisor John Holdren uses. Calling the molecule of life, carbon dioxide, a pollutant and demanding to get rid of it is not sound science nor good for the world economy. Think of the carbon dioxide that provides the food for this beautiful bird. Two identical CO2 molecules one good and one supposedly bad is impossible. Just voodoo talk. Showing videos to school children leaving them terrified that they are going to die from carbon dioxide is criminal. If teachers, media and environmental organizations are all wrong, why?

Some climate perspective There are hundreds of PowerPoint Presentations and videos about the history of atmospheric carbon dioxide, each backing the author’s viewpoint. Which ones are right, the alarmists or the others? Here are reports from scientists in Germany, Poland, South Africa and the United States 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7)

Uli Weber, geophysicist – Germany Zbigniew Jaworowski – multidisciplinary scientist - Poland Kelvin Kemm, nuclear physicist – South Africa Ed Berry, atmospheric physicist - USA William Happer, physicist - USA Howard Cork Hayden, physicist - USA Tony Heller, geologist, electrical engineer - USA 2

8) Gregory Wrightstone, geologist – USA

If the public really wants to know the science of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels, they can start with the presentations above. They say two things: a) Rise in atmospheric temperature causes increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. The alarmists say the opposite. What the alarmists say is not what is happening. b) The above authors say that the alarmists are mainly out to stop the world from using fossil fuels, period. It has nothing to do with carbon dioxide. That is really evil.

All that is needed to know if carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is causing catastrophic man-made global warming is to understand the graph of temperature and carbon dioxide below. It was provided by geologist, Terry Donze.

NOTE: The horizontal axis is 400,000, 300,000, 200,000, 100,000 years before now.

This graph clearly shows that change in temperature happened first. This caused release or absorption of atmospheric carbon dioxide in the oceans. Change of atmospheric CO2 happened second. The UN IPCC, President Obama’s Science Advisor, John Holdren, other scientists and generalists, even nuclear energy advocates sounding the global warming alarm say the opposite. They say that a change in carbon dioxide causes a change in temperature. Nature proves the alarmists dead wrong. No scientific explanation needed. Just read the graph for 400,000 years and know that the largest forces of change are from the sun and other natural events. Change of atmospheric temperature drives change of atmospheric CO2. The origin of this graph is in the 2003 scientific paper by Leonid F. Khilyuk and George V. Chilingar, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Southern California, Figure 8 on page 367.

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The summary of this paper says: The writers show that the present-day global warming is not due to the increase in the volume of greenhouse gases, but rather to the increased solar activity. It appears that we are at the rising phase of the latest 80–90 year cycle of the solar activity. At the present time, there is no sound justification for the cut in the man-induced carbon dioxide emission as required by the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. The rising global temperature drives large volumes of CO2 from the ocean water into the atmosphere.

Thus “cause” and “effect” of global warming phenomenon are misunderstood by many scientists.

Conclusion The text and links in this essay are John Shanahan’s attempt to offer simple answers for the questions: Is carbon dioxide from fossil fuels a pollutant? Is it causing catastrophic man-made global warming? Must the world stop or reduce use of fossil fuels for this reason? He concludes that carbon dioxide from fossil fuels is not a pollutant. The world can continue to use fossil fuels to maintain the modern world and expand it to others.

Should we make any changes? Yes! We should use fossil fuels wisely to make them last longer, not squander them for example by millions of cars crawling at a snail’s pace for hours in the morning and evening in clogged commuter traffic and by wasting them in poorly insulated buildings. Develop cities that offer good opportunities to live closer to work. Provide cost effective mass transportation alternatives, including tree-lined bicycle paths like in The Netherlands and Germany.

Require utilities and industry to use cleaner fuels and pollution control technologies.

John Shanahan is a retired civil engineer dedicating full time to education about energy and energy by-products. He works with hundreds of similarly minded professionals, teachers and students around the world. He is Editor of www.allaboutenergy.net. He is grateful to his high school, college and environmentalist friend, James Gmelin in Mount Kisco, New York for encouraging him to write this article.

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