Not enough carbon to bake the planet

Good News

I received an email from a very nice person asking me if I had any good news considering my views on our energy condition. I do.

Here it is:

There is not enough coal, oil, and natural gas to cause the kind of devastating climate change you hear bantered about the mainstream media these days. This is not to say there will not be impacts, like 3 feet of water in your condo's lobby at some point if your condo happens to be on the beach in South Florida, it just will not be nearly as bad as currently projected.

Wanna know why I am so cock sure? If you took all of the hydrocarbons available, all the coal, oil and natural gas, methane from decaying permafrost, etc… by atomic weight versus the atomic weight of earth’s atmosphere it won’t be enough to get us to 500 parts per million of CO2, never mind the 1000 parts per million prediction that’s been getting traction in the media lately (and, yes, I took into consideration the atomic weight differential when O2 is added to C from combusted Hydrocarbons).

Don’t think that’s good news? You should, and it is. (There are a couple of wrinkles to this... like, if we could actually use all of the tar sands in Canada AND the shale in Colorado as quickly as we might wish we just might succeed in setting off the greatest mass murder event since those Bozos of the Third Reich. (Even I think I sound sensationalist now.) Not to worry. This is a NAFC probability (Not a Freaking Chance).

The bad news is still the bad news. There are not enough hydrocarbons available to us to kill ourselves with by continuing to live as we do - even if we wanted to.

mentatt (at) yahoo (dot) com