Climate Challenges and Threats

There is a real need to protect the environment, and advocacy for the environment is great, but that advocacy can acquire traits of a religion, which at the extreme can even result in far-right eco-terrorism, and more in the mainstream can result in righteous environmentalism and embracing austerity and sacrifices as "an opium". The "righteous environmentalists" preach this austerity as necessary life of the future to an audience that just see the rich becoming even richer. This blindly serves an alternate agenda and needlessly alienates and disenfranchises much of the population. The result is do-nothing politicians to get re-elected instead of motivating voters for real action on climate change and electing leaders who will act.

At least, not a direct substitute. Solar and Wind have proven to be successful partial cost-effective substitutes for fossil fuels, but fossil fuels are stored energy, and solar and wind are not. Renewables are a disruption, and disruptions are usually not one-for-one substitutions. There are two strategies for replacing fossil fuels in the grid, and they can be used together: 1: Add energy storage for when renewable energy levels fall below a threshold. 2: Base load "solar and wind": Design to provide base load at a low threshold of wind and light. Without such strategies, it is impossible to reach the goal of removing reliance on fossil fuels. With the right strategy, it is possible to realise benefits go far beyond just replacement.

There are many claims that EVs result in more emissions than fossil fuelled vehicles. The reality is that even when an EV is powered from a 'dirty' grid, it is clear that driving an EV does creates less emissions. Plus, although some EVs create more 'build emissions', EVs still have less lifetime emissions, even on today's grids. The EV transition will reduce emissions provided it is not rushed. But the transition still won't produce the desired emissions until the grid is also clean, and it will take decades to replace traditional vehicles on any sensible schedule. Buying an EV is better for the environment in the long term than buying an ICE vehicle but can be worse for the environment than just keeping the current vehicle. The key finding is that while it is best to stop buying so many new ICE vehicles ASAP, there should be no rush to replace existing ICE vehicles with EVs, and instead allow existing vehicles the around two decades until their normal scrap date.

To examine information on climate science, or anything else really, you need to a sceptic. In the battle to come to a conclusion on climate science there are a number of hurdles to clear. Most people just give up and decide to believe whoever they prefer to believe. Genuine sceptics, as opposed to deniers, keeps looking for answers. I am by nature, a sceptic, and I am going to say that trying to clear all the hurdles required to reach an understanding of climate change is not easy. I suggest even someone as motivated as Greta Thunberg could stumble, as no matter how you look at it, somethings in what we are being told do not add up. This is a look at sceptics, and the key information needed to get things to add up.