Rush transcript -
Day 4 - The frickin
Docs won't talk straight to us. $240 not $311 ton
I'm pretty outraged. Partly at myself. About a week ago I saw a global warming
article, one of the hundreds of titles I cull through everyday. I came onto an article and had a euphoric
sense of reaching a point of clarity; a
kind of clarity you need if your kid is deathly ill and you can't get straight
answers.
I recalled finding it
in a major IEA article; if that wasn't it it was climate progress. Actually, it
was a report on Nicholas Stern’s study at climate progress. Stern talked about $84 a ton in damage being
done by a ton of carbon so I quickly calculated 3.67, which I believe is how
much CO2 is generated by burning a ton of carbon, and came up with $311 per ton,
which I now see, is wrong. It would be
incorrect, it would be inverse, it would be more like $20 per ton of carbon. I haven't delved back into the article; I
haven't yet done the digging to figure out what the actual, a reasonable
estimate of the actual damage done by burning at ton of carbon. If I recall correctly, if we put more than
half a trillion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere between, well, ever, any in this
next century, we go over 1.5° C. May be
less than half a trillion tons, which is roughly what we have up there already
of CO2 from us this last 30 years, primarily.
So half a trillion
tons of CO2 divided by 3.67 would give us the number of tons of carbon that we
can still burn. Methane, natural gas,
that has to be added to the story. And
that divided into 20%, conservatively that we will destroy, into 20% the value
of the world for the next 2000 generations we are ruining, how many quadrillion
dollars is that, would tell us the cost of burning at ton of coal or oil. What's that, $1000, $10,000 a ton? Now
that I ball-park figured it out, try and work that out yourself. If I live long enough; if I remain
cognitively functioning long enough which am wondering about, my typing skills have
just totally bombed, and to make a mistake like this above, a miscalculation a
week ago… the fatigue of years without a break, the stress, the anemia, the
calorie deficit….
But you know what?
I'm not the Dr.'s. But I am what our
doctors are not. I'm a parent, a Bangladeshi
father; and the father of a daughter in 2050 looking at what our visionless, imaginationless,
gutless, cowardly, intelligentsia have done to my daughter, and I've beamed
back to 2012 simply with the ability to put my body in the way. And because the doctors won’t give a straight
answer, won’t give us actionable information - what has to be done by when - as
they would if they saw this as their own children; without question as they
would demand if they saw this as their own children….
I'm not complaining,
but I'm furious. I'm furious at myself. I'm furious at the insanity of the left,
of the intelligentsia, that they think they own this problem, they think they
have the right to being respected, to be listened to; to people being patient
with them…. I, John Q Bangladeshi father; I John Q multibillion father of
upcoming generations; I'm John Q Athabascan father; I’m John Q native Alaskan
father; I'm John Q father of 2050 girl….
You, the ‘Doctors’ on the left might want me to be patient but God
dammit I'll not be. I'll do what I can to do your job of getting actionable
information and yes I'll screw up that more and more as my body breaks down. But you'll not stop me from trying. God damn
you. Romm, McKibben, not so much Brown
and Mann, Hansen, they seem to be doing their best. God damn Climate Progress.org, American Progress.org. It’s not American progress, it’s a frickin
club. Just try leaving a comment that they don't find pleasant, that they don't
find agreeable, that actually wants some answers. They won’t get published on
their blog.
My sense of it is
that it was the intelligentsia on the left that was guillotined in the French
Revolution – ‘Left them eat cake.’
So the best I know
now is - I don't know what the price per ton is, what the cost to the future of
each ton burned is, and I'll probably try and figure it out dammit. I didn't
need another thing to do.
But for now, I'm back
at the $240 ton of carbon which is what the economists calculate is needed to
bend the emissions curve down 6% per year starting now; 6% from the current
projection as I understand it, to keep this under 1.5° C. And that I consider bedrock - 1.5° C. I consider it bedrock of my stand, of the
stand you should make. Look at the
Copenhagen Diagnosis, Google it. That
was put together for the Copenhagen climate conference in large part, as I
understand it, was put together by in part the island nations, the developing
nations. But unless I'm wildly incorrect it's the best statement so far, which
I may be wildly incorrect on this, if what Romm said in “Hell and High Water,”
before he kowtowed to the powers that be, when a blind man could have seen we wouldn’t
get a climate agreement in Copenhagen, same with McKibben, not so much Mann and
Hansen. Brown essentially has caved with his, ‘wartime speed, oh, call your
congressman…’ for six years now. ‘Oh,’ says Brown,’ ‘well I feel encouraged how
things are going,’ he says. I don't think… I don't think he's a Bangladeshi
father, or an Athabascan father, or an indigenous Alaskan father, or the father
of 2050 daughter. I know he’s not. I
know he is more of a human than that. He
wouldn't keep putting out these mealymouthed prescriptions if it were his
family. But it is mine; John Q.
