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New Edward Teller on Global Warming.
From 1959.

Via Tom Levenson at Balloon-Juice:

Onwards. To the question of what did they know and when did they know it — asked of the oil industry about the risks its product posed to global climate — the answer is, pretty much all they needed a very long time ago, as reported in this piece in The Guardian (h/t Adam Silverman, who forwarded it to me) “On its 100th birthday in 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about global warming.”



Money grafs:

Teller’s task that November fourth was to address the crowd on “energy patterns of the future,” and his words carried an unexpected warning:

Ladies and gentlemen, I am to talk to you about energy in the future. I will start by telling you why I believe that the energy resources of the past must be supplemented. First of all, these energy resources will run short as we use more and more of the fossil fuels. [….] But I would […] like to mention another reason why we probably have to look for additional fuel supplies. And this, strangely, is the question of contaminating the atmosphere. [….] Whenever you burn conventional fuel, you create carbon dioxide. [….] The carbon dioxide is invisible, it is transparent, you can’t smell it, it is not dangerous to health, so why should one worry about it?

Carbon dioxide has a strange property. It transmits visible light but it absorbs the infrared radiation which is emitted from the earth. Its presence in the atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect [….] It has been calculated that a temperature rise corresponding to a 10 per cent increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge New York. All the coastal cities would be covered, and since a considerable percentage of the human race lives in coastal regions, I think that this chemical contamination is more serious than most people tend to believe.


…After his talk, Teller was asked to “summarize briefly the danger from increased carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere in this century.” The physicist, as if considering a numerical estimation problem, responded:

At present the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by 2 per cent over normal. By 1970, it will be perhaps 4 per cent, by 1980, 8 per cent, by 1990, 16 per cent [about 360 parts per million, by Teller’s accounting], if we keep on with our exponential rise in the use of purely conventional fuels. By that time, there will be a serious additional impediment for the radiation leaving the earth. Our planet will get a little warmer. It is hard to say whether it will be 2 degrees Fahrenheit or only one or 5.

But when the temperature does rise by a few degrees over the whole globe, there is a possibility that the icecaps will start melting and the level of the oceans will begin to rise. Well, I don’t know whether they will cover the Empire State Building or not, but anyone can calculate it by looking at the map and noting that the icecaps over Greenland and over Antarctica are perhaps five thousand feet thick.


They knew. The foundations of this reasoning had been well known, wholly established physics since no later than 1895. I’m guessing Pruitt and Zinke and the rest know too, and they don’t give a tinker’s damn, because there’s money and power in black gold, and not nearly so much in the breeze and the stray photon. Climate change kills; it creates refugees (including within the US); it sparks conflict; it wrecks lives — all these sorrows attend us now, and there’s more to come. Maybe some, or even most of what’s past couldn’t have been prevented, along with some of what’s to come — but we aren’t even trying now at the federal level, and that misery is all on the Grotesque Old Party.


Teller was a monster, but he understood physics.

(See the link for embedded links.)

Cheers,
Scott.
New Indeed, he understood physics!
Alex

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

-- Isaac Asimov
New Simply Boffo Bloon Juice.. and reminder
that I need to 'attend' there more often ... in the search for daily Intelligence in a failed-State. Too many distractions.. carz, illness elsewhere.. but still: Cats have evaded the only occasional cars-on-road to this cul-de-sac, remain healthy it seems ... and one is asleep on bed--a sleeping cat surely epitomizes that Complete-rest (as escapes so many denizens of our $$-controlled, commuting myriads at dawn each Commercial-day, y'know?)
One can learn a lot from these critters, I find. (For another friend: it's her Horses that keep her sane..)

This B-J compilation of the details of the dis-US's Fall towards either Insurrection (so unlikely amidst the comfortable/the obscenely-Comfortable) and rampant in the insufferable lo-information bloc ... is a gem of concision-with-Links. It has never been so Pellucid as Now: that every hour in which the Drumpf cabal Controls our future is a giant-leap Downwards. A 'congress' whose obloquy will be referenced/Despised by all successors--if there are such--for generations ... corrupts via every day We Tolerate their premeditated dismantling of most-every facet of the Constitution which they ignore, oft for personal-profit via smirking..! bald-faced-Lying and propaganda as makes Göbbels' speeches ..seem almost profound.

Carrion.. it's already in your Soylent-Yellow fast-food, as seems to stoke the brain-damage now so apparent, in its pandemic symptoms. Who Knew (in years past) that the savageness of My Gramma had spread exponentially (Human Events ... their bible ... still Lives in millions of brain-pans, and may appear as #1 on the necropsy of this ex-Republic.)

Nullo illegitimi carborundum is my shield against (that other Murican pandemic: Depression; as rampant as the current mere 'opioids' pandemic).
And for clear-cause: Liff Here has become--for the vast majority of the vox populi--a daily trudge through un-Civil 'justice' and un-Working medicine computer-"solutions" purveyed by white-coated minions whose eyes, when Noticed clearly: seem dull and un-perceiving of the humans before them ..as many contemplate their new Porsche (as the old one is nearly 3-years Old) as.. their actual-main earliest attraction to the craft was all-about the $$$..

Maybe the over-population has rendered 'Planners' completely incapable of the Scale/Relativity demanded ... even to achieve 'stasis' as all matters spin Out-of Intelligent control. Nature prescribes in such circumstances: Decimation, last I read. Maybe the Next Flu strain shall accommodate--remember 1918 when returning troops from the bloodbath of that War to End all Wars ... came "home"/infected en masse. Eh?

I'll watch, but cannot possibly engage in the sturm und drang now not "before us" but "immersed within". None of us could be prepared to actually Witness: complete dismantling of--not merely "the environment" but, of the chance even to nurture Sound-minds amongst the tykes--now nodding-out in perpetual computer games in most waking hours, fueled by Corporate food-like substances. I Can distance-self from that lugubrious free-fall, I am relieved to observe. (Elsewhere lives inchoate Madness, even I can tell. {{whew!}}
I realize too, that I'm fortunate not-to-suffer that list of maladies of many my age; one does not 'earn' such a reprieve; there's no ego-credit for random-luck, right? And as Ben Franklin opined,
"..I might someday achieve humility.. but then Vanity.. (forget the remainder: he thought that might prevail..)

Stay cool, y'hear? this has Got to be: the most intense Shaggy-Dog-Story ever witnessed in history! I wot :-)
(And in 100 years there Will be all-new-people! ... if quite a lot fewer. And Wiser, we may always hope.)
We have cold-blooded Work to do: GET THOSE BASTARDS OUT! by all means possible/discoverable.
New Yeah, it's a pretty good place.
The pie filter keeps the trolls under control, mostly, and there's a good variety of "front pagers" and things to talk about.

But it does get kinda insular at times. I fit in with the general take on politics there, but I do wonder if it's become too much of a "mutual admiration society" and we convince ourselves that we know how to win and make progress. November 2016 was more than a bit of a shock to me... :-(

I really dislike the lack of a threading option in the presentation, all the WordPress quirks (can't use certain mysterious spam words or the post vanishes), the link limits, the inability to post images, and the way discussions die so quickly there (I can't camp out there for hours at a time too often). But, nothing's going to change on the threading score. ;-)

Overall, things are getting better in many, many ways (Ebola vaccines, Cholera vaccines, etc.) and we can't ignore that. But we can't take any progress for granted. Too many powerful forces want to drag us back to the 1850s. :-( Fortunately, women and minorities are energized now - they may yet again save us...

How's the car search going? Are people finding ways to recover from the fires, mud, floods, etc., out there?

Hang in there, and keep the kitties happy.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Agreed, in 'women' (writ large) and minorities seems the major Hope available.. if there's a Next
SImilarly, in countless newish-means of communicating lies daily improved tactics against the Visigoths now not merely at-the-door ... but trashing the entire household; still, anyone still dozing away in that Complacency fantasy brain/off state.. is also a major Enemy towards recovery. Sic transist and all that.

Carz: it seems that Foord HAS kept their (actually generous!) promise of recompense, by check alleged at dealer: now (!) The cynic-within does however marvel at any such mondo-Corp actually Being 'generous' (thus: by Not-listening to their own gaggle of legal beagles who could spin mindless-delays and nickel-dime stuff/we all know that drill.)

Having spotted the achilles-heel-of 'hybrids' [simple old MTBF for the complexity of TWO complete power systems]--for which You pay all along, etc.
(That plus the entry cost as say, for the KIa new plug-in offering)
That too-many-$$ left moi with good impressions (not only by the BS-dismantlers at TTAC) but others:

Seems it's to be a '18 Hyundai 'ECO' as blows the doors off many hybrid MPG claims re "economy" but--also-too--has a Sport-mode and the kick-in-ass (measurable 0-60 performance ∆) of the smaller but Turbo! engine, not unlike the Black Shadow vee's Torque vs. all those vertical twin screamers. (Ran out of options for a left-over '17 and better rebates. Pity not a hatch-back but them's the brakes-breaks)

Recovery: last week was a kinda Haul the Debris truck-fleet thing. I drove over the road where I used to get barbered ... it looked exactly like Berlin '45 there, The salon /nearby houses completely obliterated. With housing another Universal Murican-nightmare, many folk are in precarious straits (even had we actual sane governance--but still, Gov. Jerry + State legislature are still amidst the remaining Good-guys of governance. ie
I was f*ing Lucky during crap-shoot of the two weeks of this plot being In- then Out-side of that Red-zone.
(Just across creek, a huge mansion of a local Gentry dynasty went *poof*. Cthulhu works in mysterious Ways.

More luck: the Opossum who cadged food, whom I ƒeared-lost.. came Through and looks back st me (in kitchen) after my X-10 Syst raises the lighting on his approach to dish: I wave/s/he? eats. All is well for yet another critter. Makes endorphins, all that.

Glad that you too have survived Cthulhu's warz on Repo-grade Weather in your bailiwick; saw the pix from the ground in your parts.. ... lit the Survival candle then (as the whole E. bloc of the dis-US got What-global warming? schadenfreude from the plurality of dysfunctional Despicables :-/

We Shall overcome it seems, so long as Young Un possesses the insight that: this Drumpf Clan is due for extirpation by most Americans du jour.
Drumpf + New/or Old nukes must be --[separated]-- before we have any actual Hope, here, I wot.
     Edward Teller on Global Warming. - (Another Scott) - (4)
         Indeed, he understood physics! -NT - (a6l6e6x)
         Simply Boffo Bloon Juice.. and reminder - (Ashton) - (2)
             Yeah, it's a pretty good place. - (Another Scott) - (1)
                 Agreed, in 'women' (writ large) and minorities seems the major Hope available.. if there's a Next - (Ashton)

Dude, down the hall and to the left. That’s who you want.
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