Maverick's World

The battle to control CO2 emission is lost - Focus on Methane now!

With the failure of Donald Trump to support the Paris accord, a lot of other players are likely to dissociate themselves from the Paris process. We have seen such developments in Norway, I am sure others are just waiting to find reasons to walk away from doing anything.

It hasn't sunk into most of people of the world that the battle to control carbon emissions is critical to humanity's survival. People still cling to antiquated notions of being able to pollute the earth with no adverse consequences in their lifetimes.

This is moral collapse that so many have suffered that it is impossible to get any meaningful progress on this issue. Whenever a pioneer like Obama comes along and pushes us forward, a Trump or Putin or some other asshole comes along and pushes us six steps back.

We draw ever closer to an extinction level event with each day that we sit on our rear and do nothing.

If the "Globalist Reptilian New World Order Cabal" that the Trumpers love to hate does indeed exist and it is actually trying to exterminate the Trumper Race... well then what better way to achieve this than to feed the Trumper sense of ennui on Climate Change issues?

When you try to bring up the need to do something on this issue  - the Trumper promptly disclaims all competency - "That's such a big thing I can't really do anything about that" says the Trumper. It is as if the Trumper believes that his Russian pals will ensure he survives the holocaust that inevitably follows, but the Trumper quickly defaults to "We can't do anything about that so we shouldn't even talk about it".

I am willing to entertain the fiction that somehow Trump actually won this election. I am willing to look past the RIS interference in WI, MI, & PA, if I could get some traction out of the Trumpers on critical issues.

But the Trumper calculus (like Trump's policy structure) is a fundamentally do-nothing affair. We are expected to fund giant walls to nowhere and tax cuts for the rich, but nothing of substance that would actually enhance true economic productivity. We are supposed to throw our life's savings into this "Stock Market" which is fluffed up by AIs running on Wall Street but we are not expect to ask what if any productivity increases can we expect at the personal level. Are we expected to keep borrowing money to pump into the stock market that is inflated with some Trump nonsense about a revival? or are we expected to pay back the debt we owe by working in more productive ways?

The Trumper has no answer to this. Their mental vacuum that matches the biggest primordial black hole.

The GOPers are not much better. They cling to the notion that they can have a stable political agreement with Trump. Somehow reap the benefits of association with RIS and still not face political consequences. Flake makes big speeches, Corker spouts all manner of wisdom, but they are all bark and no bite. Not one GOPer will impeach Trump. Grassley and Nunes keep running interference in the House and Senate.

And amidst all this Bannon has declared he will run for President.

I suppose if you wanted to ensure that the Great White Male fantasy of leading the US forever into the future is to finally destroyed - then these developments are positive but I worry what kind of world we will live in once this political goal is achieved.

I propose we do what we know is necessary to save the world and let those who seek personal destruction do whatever it is they do.

With attitudes where they are, I propose we explore ways of aggressively cutting man-made Methane emissions. At this time they are at 10 Billion Tons. Most of those are from agricultural sources. These agricultural sources could be exploited using biogas plants and turned into usable energy, biomass and natural fertilizer. A related idea would be to sell the CO2, moisture and heat produced from biogas production to greenhouses so as to boost their yield.

We have seen successful explorations of these ideas in Canada and a few places in the US. If we draw attention to those successes, we can stop the Methane beast.

As long as CO2 emissions continue to rise, we will see a gradual desequestration of Methane in natural sources. If we prevent the man-made Methane contributions we might be able to arrest the thermal runaway process that will lead to a mass extinction in the next decade or so.

posted by maverick @ 7:24 AM