�An Update on Climate Change�Hope for the Future�(Get rich and save the world… or else)
G. Comer Foundation
Richard B. Alley
Penn State
Foxdale
March 19, 2024
Please note: I work for Penn State University, and
help UN IPCC, NRC, etc., But I am not representing them, just me.
Thanks to:
🡪Roy Greenfield
🡪Foxdale
🡪My dear wife Cindy
🡪And you for coming today!
Penguin pictures from my trips are just for fun
(I will show a few pictures that are not mine, taken from the web under fair use)
Janet, Cindy, Karen, Richard Alley, Athabasca Glacier, Jasper, Alberta, Canada
Janet, science teacher & dept. head
Karen, glaciology professor & hammered dulcimer teacher
Cindy librarian, now quilting teacher
Old guy
Sierra Melton
Thomas Givens
Ian Lee
Emily Schwans
Great current grad students
Amanda Willet
Carl Fredrick G. Aquino
I’ll show:
🡪History and value of our energy use
🡪Good from fossil fuels 🡪Greater good from building sustainable system
We can solve problems!
Here is a do-it-yourself
cell-phone kit
Sand, oil, rocks…plus
science, engineering,
design, marketing, banking…
Einstein’s relativity in GPS,
quantum in the computer
We can solve energy, too…
Energy use
Human diet ~2000 Cal/day (8400 kJ/d)
~100 W—one old lightbulb always on
External use (oil, coal, wind, sun…)
We enjoy the good from this energy
Still more than 80% oil, gas & coal,
in US and world
We are hunter-gatherers of energy
Our history since “discovery” of fire
🡪Burn some energy source much
faster than nature makes more
🡪Suffer pollution, other problems
🡪Face shortages, with more problems
🡪Find something else to burn
Here is a little history of this in USA
(For first time ever, we can do better!)
Abandoned iron furnace along main road into our
town…
http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/97hopewell/97visual1.htm
(National Park Service, Richard Schlecht, illustrator)
Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/ppet/cornwall/page2.asp?secid=31
Colliers (also spelled colyers) preparing to make charcoal for use in iron furnaces. This pile would be covered with dirt and then fired for ~2 weeks, with great care to drive off unwanted materials without burning up the wood.
Charcoal making
US National Archives
(reenactment done for historians)
Logging for charcoal—about a square mile of trees per furnace per year to smelt the iron and fuel the workers
Photo US National Archives
Pennsylvania place names:
🡪“Furnace” and “Forge”
that we still remember
🡪Many more have been
largely forgotten
http://pennsylvania.hometownlocator.com/
“Penn’s Woods” to “Pennsylvania Desert”
Pennsylvania State Archives, Tioga County, early 1900s, hosted at http://explorepahistory.com/displayimage.php?imgId=1-2-7A
NOT just them. Manhattan probably largely deforested still in 1600s, and Common Council passing many laws on property rights to wood, fair trade in wood, how big is a cord, etc. (see, e.g., Howe, R. Notes on the Deforestation of Manhattan Island, 2012, http://www.gothamcenter.org/blotter/?p=690 )
Governments intervene more in times of crisis and shortage…
1620: Pilgrims found Cape Cod “wooded to the brinke of the sea”. 1695: Eastham banned even personal logging. Had used wood to boil sea water for salt to pack cod for trade. Solution? Windmill system pumping
water into solar
drying troughs.
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002698808/Currier and Ives, Whale Fishery: Attacking a right whale, Library of Congress
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002698808/Currier and Ives, Whale Fishery: Attacking a right whale, Library of Congress
After Bardi, 2004; data from A. Starbuck, History of the American whale fishery, Seacaucus, N.J. 1878
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002698808/Currier and Ives, Whale Fishery: Attacking a right whale, Library of Congress
We can’t go back—total US whale-oil production in 1800s less than 12 hours of recent US oil use!
Oil gusher in Port Arthur, Texas, c. 1901 Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (link is external). © F.J. Frost, no known restrictions on publication.
We have trees and whales because we burn fossil trees and fossil algae
NOT a new idea…
“GRAND BALL GIVEN BY THE WHALES IN HONOR OF THE DISCOVERY OF THE OIL WELLS IN PENNSYLVANIA”, VANITY FAIR, 1861
New Bedford Whaling Museum
“This oil well threw pure oil 100 feet high.”
“This oil well is now flowing 355 Barrels daily.”
The AMERICAN PETROLEUM POLKA,
1864.
Pennsylvania wells.
Library of Congress
Pennsylvania State Archives, Tioga County, early 1900s, hosted at http://explorepahistory.com/displayimage.php?imgId=1-2-7A
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002698808/Currier and Ives, Whale Fishery: Attacking a right whale, Library of Congress
Trees and whales mostly grew back in ~100 years. Large problems until then.
Fossil fuels will grow back in ~100 MILLION years. We must change!
Our current system unsustainable
First commercial oil well (1859) where native
people had used natural oil seeps for millennia
TV show when I was a kid:
“Come & listen to my story ‘bout a man named Jed,
A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed,
And then one day he was shootin’ at some food,
And up through the ground come a bubblin’ crude,
Oil, that is, black gold, Texas tea”
Now, we frack, and can spend well over
$1 billion on an oil platform…
Energy return on energy invested—the payoff for drilling or making solar cells—is industrial secret in oil, but probably better for new renewables than for new oil
There is still a LOT of tar sand, oil shale, etc. to change the climate first, but we must change our energy system—100 million years to get more fossil fuels
And, if we burn before we learn, we will change climate in ways we really don’t like
Basis for expecting global warming is PHYSICS
**Known for over a century
**Refined by Air Force after WWII (operations,
communications,
heat-seeking missiles)
**Observed today by
satellites, etc.
**Successfully predictive
Satellite: Energy to space to cool Earth
Basis for expecting global warming is PHYSICS
**Known for over a century
**Refined by Air Force after WWII (operations,
communications,
heat-seeking missiles)
**Observed today by
satellites, etc.
**Successfully predictive
Energy blocked by CO2
Satellite: Energy to space to cool Earth
Basis for expecting global warming is PHYSICS
**Known for over a century
**Refined by Air Force after WWII (operations,
communications,
heat-seeking missiles)
**Observed today by
satellites, etc.
**Successfully predictive
Energy blocked by CO2
Energy blockable by more CO2
Satellite: Energy to space to cool Earth
Per person per year in US
🡪Trash we throw away at curb ~½ ton
~16 tons
And this is changing climate
Warming effect of our CO2 is
not the least bit surprising
(Arrhenius calculated in 1896)
What’s surprising is how much
fossil fuel we burn…
I’ll come back to good news
if we restrain CO2 efficiently
But first, if we don’t…
If we don’t restrain CO2
Destroyed buildings are seen on a deserted street in Homs, Syria January 30, 2013. https://editorials.voa.gov/a/iran-complicit-in-syrian-horror/1597170.html
~500,000 people killed in Syrian Civil War (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/13/world/middleeast/syria-death-toll.html )
2015, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA
…drought contributed to the conflict in Syria…
…anthropogenic forcing has increased the probability… 2 to 3 times…
Zhao, T., and A. Dai, 2015: The Magnitude and Causes of Global Drought Changes in the 21st Century under a Low-moderate Emissions Scenario. J. Climate. doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00363.1, in press.
Future drought with warming
Green=less drought
All other colors=more drought or a lot more drought
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a004200/a004270/10yr_-3to3_rcp85.mp4
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2881/earths-freshwater-future-extremes-of-flood-and-drought/ Drought history, and future under strong warming, NASA
🡪Fire frequency depends on
MANY factors
🡪An important climate-
change contribution to rising
fires is already documented
🡪And, more is projected
🡪Even in PA…
🡪Fire frequency depends on
MANY factors
🡪An important climate-
change contribution to rising
fires is already documented
🡪And, more is projected
🡪Even in PA…