If environmental issues are going to be solved, it is we the engineers of the world, who will do it, not the activists.
I worked at a company that made power inverters for solar arrays and fuel cells, making me more valuable than all the activists the world has seen. Looking at the life cycle costs, solar arrays can be a tough sell. The energy requirement (I hate the term carbon footprint) of making a solar array is huge and not likely to be recovered for many years and of course, one hailstorm can make it the most energy-expensive power source in history. Similarly, hybrid cars only recover their extra energy costs compared to internal combustion cars only after 250,000 km and pure electric after 500,000 km because there is an energy of processing required for the materials used. One wafer of integrated circuits costs the energy of one ton of hydrocarbon fuel to process.
The activists usually can't answer simple questions about the environment, let alone fix things.
Let's try a simple set of test questions:
1. What gases are not greenhouse gases by molecular structure?
2. What range of wavelengths correspond to normal earth temperatures?
3. What wavelengths are absorbed by carbon dioxide?
4. Has the world ever been warmer in prehistoric times?
5. has the world ever been warmer in modern times?
6. Do modern high-compression automotive engines make the problem worse or better?
7. What determines if a year is going to be El Niño or La Niña?
In a modern technological society, stupidity is a sin and education is the first step in solving a problem that cannot be solved by demonstrations.
Any takers?
1. Only monatomic molecules and diatomic molecules where both atoms are the same are not greenhouse gases. The rest of them are.
2. 8 to 14 micrometres with the shorter wavelengths being hotter.
3. Carbon dioxide absorbs wavelengths at 15 micrometres but nowhere else in the 8 - 14 micrometre thermal band. The poles will get warmer but nowhere else.
4. In the time of the dinosaurs the average temperature was 5°C/9°F higher and due to the plant growth, the amount of oxygen in the air was 30% and the carbon dioxide content was 1100 ppm, not the 415 ppm we have now. Snowball earth melted when volcanoes drove the carbon dioxide content to 7000 ppm.
5. A thousand years ago it was warmer. We know this because settlers in Greenland grew crops of rye. What followed was the "Little Ice Age" from 1100 to 1850 AD.
6. Older low-compression engines had an air cycle efficiency of about 54%. High-compression gasoline engines have an air cycle efficiency of about 57%. Diesel engines have an air cycle efficiency of about 68%.
7. El Niño is when undersea volcanoes east of the Philippines are active and La Niña is when they are not.
Consider yourself much more educated than most people if you got one question right. Effective activism requires knowledge. A proper lobbying effort to aid the environment would have a bill spelled out in all the necessary legalese, ready to be passed by congress and the senate - they won't do it themselves and they don't have the education to know what to put in it. The accompanying documentation should spell out the cost of implementation and the cost of the measure not being implemented. A bunch of people carrying signs and shouting slogans is not going to get anywhere. Pick an issue, do your homework, put a bill ready to be passed in the hands of the congressmen and push it through. This is the only way to be effective.
