Civil Defense Perspectives 34(5): September 2019 (published Decembrt 2019)
Some say the world will end in fire,
Robert Frost, 1920
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
According to one of his biographers, Robert Frost’s most famous poem, “Fire and Ice,” was inspired by Dante’s Inferno. The structure of the poem with two short last lines evokes the downward funnel of the rings of hell, with sins of passion at the top and the worst offenders, the traitors Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius, at the bottom submerged in ice up to their neck.
Astronomer Howard Shapley claims credit, reporting that Frost had asked him how the world would end. Shapley responded that either the sun will explode and incinerate the Earth, or the Earth will end up slowly freezing in deep space.
Writing about “Environmentalism as 21st Century Morality,” Allie Lowy (https://tinyurl.com/v83ljw4) draws a diagram of the descending circles of the Inferno: lust, gluttony, avarice, anger, heresy, violence, fraud, betrayal. Limbo, at the top, is where we exist now, with “the hesitance of world leaders to take strong, decisive action—despite conclusive evidence about our path of destruction and the dreary fate that awaits us.”
Given the alarmists’ message of despair, the metaphor fits.
One of the old deadly sins is apparently ok: “We’re not anti-lust categorically, but we know that effective means of contraception and abortion access are instrumental to culling the mass overpopulation of the Earth.”
And here’s a new definition: “Fraud, in our eyes, is when our country’s president lacks a basic understanding of what 97% of scientists are certain about: that humans are the main driver of long-term alterations to the world’s climate. Or withdrawing our country from the world’s most important, comprehensive policy to prevent that: the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.”
There’s no discussion of souls frozen in ice in the Ninth Circle—perhaps Hell will melt, like Greenland is forecast to do, instead of freezing over, like the crops in the U.S. Midwest in 2019, or much of the world during the Little Ice Age.
“Our World Is on Fire”
The School Strike, Extinction Rebellion, and other prophets of climate doom are warning of the “very real five-alarm climate fire we are threatened by.” There are indeed fires large enough to see from space all over the globe.
California has experienced another bad summer of wildfires. Southern California Edison calls it “the new normal: wildfire risk in the face of climate change.” SCE claims that “climate change is increasing the severity and duration of heat waves and other extreme weather events,” so that future fire seasons may be year-round (https://tinyurl.com/vq39xop). It is assumed that climate change” means that caused by human CO2 emissions, although much greater areas of forest burned in the 1930s (see DDP’s Climate Change IQ test, https://tinyurl.com/v7bd44g). Climatic factors related to frequency and intensity of wildfires are the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) (https://tinyurl.com/ummwc8o).
Ill-advised environmentalist policies are probably responsible for the ferocity and uncontrollable extent of the fires. It is likely that “prescribed burns once every 500 years are not enough.” In California, the rate of prescribed burning is only 0.2% per year. Australia manages 8%, and some experts recommend twice as much (https://tinyurl.com/urf2ysf). Prescribed burns cost about $35/acre, in contrast to $1,000/acre to extinguish a fire, writes Steve Milloy. And by clearing a forest by logging—which California forbids, one can make a profit.
Instead of forest management, utilities must spend billions on costly “green” energy schemes (including $2.2 billion in customer rebates for rooftop solar installations from 2007–2016) and hundreds of millions of dollars on providing discounts to low-income ratepayers who can’t afford the high costs. Pacific Gas & Electric rates are twice as high as in Oregon and Washington—but don’t count as tax increases (tinyurl.com/yx7jptw5). PG&E also gave $385,000 to Gov. Newsom’s wife to produce three movies on “gender representation,” writes Willis Eschenbach.
Fires in the Amazon—the “lungs of the world”—are sparking global hysteria. The 87,000 fires in the Brazilian Amazon in the first 8 months of this year represent a 76% increase over the same period last year. Brazilians don’t see it as a crisis. Farmers have used controlled fires to clear land for 5,000 years, and as a way to eliminate pests and create improved soil conditions (https://tinyurl.com/vnnwzda). Some fires are set for illegal deforestation to clear land for large agribusiness operations. Accused major culprits are the Harvard University Endowment and TIAA, a private pension fund that invests on behalf of millions of teachers, academics, nurses, and government workers nationwide (https://tinyurl.com/vz4qcha).
Even more fires are burning in sub-Saharan Africa than in the Amazon. Although this appears alarming, NASA concluded that these were set deliberately to manage land, enhancing crops and pastures, according to CNN (tinyurl.com/yxrtqnm6).
Horrendous fires have also ravaged Australia. Intrepid volunteer firefighter Tyson Smith posted on Facebook that environmental authorities must take the blame for death and devastation because they stopped mechanical clearing and fuel reduction burns (https://tinyurl.com/w58btq7).
The Ice Cometh
Given the cyclic nature of Earth’s climate, ice will come back, but when? Are early freezes mere weather, or the harbinger of a “Maunder Minimum” (tinyurl.com/y34597mn)? “The sun is the primary forcing of Earth’s climate system”—NASA, 2010.
California’s Dark Age
Because its equipment was blamed for starting past wildfires—it is facing $30 billion in liabilities—PG&E shut off power to some 700,000 homes and businesses in California when high winds and dry conditions were forecast. Most got little or no warning, and could get no information because the company’s website was down (NYT 10/12/19). There were no exceptions for hospitals, emergency services, or phone networks. The only advice to customers was to stock up on candles and batteries.
“Suddenly, Californians are learning to love fossil fuels,” writes the Wall Street Journal. “Stores have experienced runs on…emergency generators fueled by gasoline, propane or diesel. Napa County wineries and even the tunnel connecting San Francisco with the East Bay are operating on generators.”
“Most batteries that store solar power can’t keep homes charged for more than a day during a blackout, and most electric-car owners won’t have enough juice to escape the power outage” (tinyurl.com/y3zz8787). (Homes with rooftop solar panels didn’t have power either—that power is fed into the grid.)
The CO2 emitted in the state’s 2018 wildfires offset 2017 emissions reductions nine times over, but environmental regulators claimed that carbon from burned trees is “more natural” than that from “fossil fuels” (ibid.).
Salvation and the Electric Vehicle
Exactly 100 years since Studebaker ended production on its lineup of electric cars in 2012, the Tesla Model S was introduced. Electric vehicles stand at the center of every “green energy” initiative, and have been featured prominently in Democrat presidential debates. Former Vice-President Joe Biden promised a fleet of
100% EVs and 500,000 public charging stations by 2030 (https://tinyurl.com/yy3wz7bh). There are about 4 million EVs today, made possible by lithium-battery chemistry, for which the inventors, John Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham, and Akira Yoshino, received the 2019 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
Advocates claim that EVs are far simpler machines than combustion engines. But while the EV’s electric motor is simple, its battery is an electrochemical machine with thousands of parts and welds, along with wiring, electronics, and cooling. It’s just as complex as—and far more expensive than—the combustion-mechanical drive train that it replaces.
As to creating green new jobs, Tesla’s factory in Nevada produces about 1,000 propulsion batteries per year per 12 workers, while a modern engine and transmission factory produces about 1,000 mechanical-propulsion systems per year per only four workers. However, since most automakers aren’t capable of fabricating batteries, EV-battery jobs reside mostly in Asia.
Can the EV end our dependence on fossil fuels? The energy equivalent of 100 barrels of oil is required to fabricate one battery capable of storing the energy contained in a single barrel of oil. Accessing the necessary minerals (lithium, cobalt, manganese, carbon, nickel, copper, aluminum) needed to produce a 1,000-pound automotive battery entails mining and processing some 500,000 pounds of raw materials. Western nations have largely given up on related manufacturing, materials mining, and chemical refining industries. China has spent $60 billion cumulatively in domestic subsidies in order to become the dominant global player, and will now be cutting subsidies (tinyurl.com/y4hbtgmz).
Earth Is Different from Venus
To those who think Venus is an example of a “runaway greenhouse” effect because its atmosphere is 96% CO2, Tony Heller explains why Venus is so hot. Its atmospheric pressure is 90 times that of earth. Remember your gas laws from freshman chemistry: Gay-Lussac’s Law states that the pressure of a gas at a constant volume is proportional to the temperature. As the pressure goes up, so does temperature. Heller describes how temperature increases 30 °F as you hike from the rim of the Grand Canyon to the bottom. If the canyon were 20 miles deep, it would be as hot as Venus at the bottom, he states. The video of Heller’s talk (https://tinyurl.com/sv59ckd) includes numerous comments and links to a critique by Roy Spencer.
Heller also shows that the North Rim has two thick limestone layers in which fossil shells are found. As he explains, these layers were formed when the earth’s atmosphere had a CO2 concentration many-fold higher than today. The limestone is calcium carbonate, formed as marine organisms removed CO2 from the atmosphere and combined it with calcium dissolved from volcanic rocks (see CDP, July 2019, tinyurl.com/rw8mh84).
Arson
Queensland: In the past two years, 136 children have been charged with endangering property by lighting fires.
ISIS: At least four propaganda posters have appeared on the pro-ISIS Quraysh media outlet that urge followers to “ignite fires” as part of an ongoing jihad against America and its allies (https://tinyurl.com/y5q22783).
Brazil: Greenpeace blames President Jair Bolsonaro for using his power “not just to relax environmental controls but actively encourage development (read: destruction) of the Amazon rainforest, declaring ‘the Amazon is open for business’.” It acknowledges that agribusiness accounts for 25% of Brazil’s GDP—and says that its anti-growth recommendations “need not disproportionately” affect those who are historically “less implicated in man-made climate change” (tinyurl.com/vz433rw). But deliberate fires—both legal and illegal—to clear land may not be the whole story. Bolsonaro has accused Western non-governmental organizations (NGOs) of setting fires, filming them, and using them for propaganda. A fire may bring in a $500,000 donation. Some may set a fire to raise more money for a promise to extinguish fires (https://tinyurl.com/wbuk7ku). NGOs claim these accusations are false, an attempt to shift blame from Bolsonaro’s policies (NY Times 11/30/19, https://tinyurl.com/sv7yve6).
Cold Causes Devastating Crop Losses
The unprecedented October blizzard dumped up to 2 feet of snow from Colorado to Minnesota, causing one of the worst crop disasters that the Midwest has ever seen. Planting was late because of flooding, and only 15% of all U.S. corn had been harvested before the cold hit on Oct 6. Millions of acres of wheat and soybeans that were about to be harvested are now completely gone. Half of the potato crop was also lost. The “utter devastation” is expected to have ripple effects for years. The price of food is bound to go up (https://tinyurl.com/u46s7cv).
While enviros deplore its effect on climate commitments, Brazil’s soybean production is thriving (https://tinyurl.com/vz433rw).