Corporations claim their fossil fuel emissions are a drop in the ocean. But what if we could count the real cost?
The biggest coal project before authorities in New South Wales, the Hunter Valley Operations mine, will emit the equivalent of about 809m tonnes of climate-warming carbon dioxide if it wins approval.
That number, for most people, will carry little meaning, as might the calculation that adding that amount of greenhouse gas to the atmosphere will cause an extra 0.00036C of global heating.
But what if the public was instead told that that amount of carbon dioxide would expose almost half a million people to unprecedented heat, or kill nearly 15 million coral colonies on the Great Barrier Reef every time it bleaches, or lead to more than 100 additional deaths from heatwaves in Europe to the end of this century.
All those statistics come from a new tool that translates the emissions from burning fossil fuels into estimated real-world climate effects taken from peer-reviewed climate studies.
But the brilliance, the versatility of madness is akin to the resourcefulness of water seeping through, over and around a dike.
F. Scott Fitzgerald - Tender is the Night (1934)
F. Scott Fitzgerald - Tender is the Night (1934)
6 comments:
Going by this universally applicable bollox, there are still parasites making money out of the agw fantasy.
Jannie - yes, money seems to be what keeps it going. Stop that and the fantasy stops, but the ridiculous mess still seems too profitable for that.
All contingent on the unproven theories that
1 Increasing CO2 above the level where all relevant wavelengths are already captured creates more heat retention.
2 That increased CO2 is a significant cause of warming and not a consequence of warming from other sources.
Anon - a neat summary. Those unproven theories seem to have a lasting momentum which has nothing to do with the scientific method. Social status, money and politics provide the momentum.
As the country warmed after the Little Ice age in 17whenever it was, do you think that people were going about the country shouting ,it is getting too hot and we are all going to die? Or did they think at last, I can take off my fleecy vest.
John - ha ha, putting like that brings out what nonsense it all is. We like warmth, it doesn't kill and destroy as cold can.
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