The Irresolvable Conflict Between Environmentalism and the Realities of Climate Disruption Don Siegel Professor Earth Sciences Syracuse University

Another Inconvenient Truth What Climate Change we Have Will Persist Regardless if we Reduce Emissions to ZERO.

Residence time = Volume/Rate Residence time = 3 gallons/1 gallon per minute= 3 minutes

CO2 Temperature

Adapt ?

EOCENE CLIMATE ?

Alternative 1: Renewables?

Tiny Piece of the Pie

Red = Blue Fossil Fuel Based Economy Fossil Fuel Based Economy

Nuclear?

Old Reactors + Magnitude 9 Earthquake and Huge Tsunami.

Wind and Solar?

Alternative 2. Scrubbing CO2 from Atmosphere

Imagine a Reservoir 500 feet thick and as large as NYS

Alternative 3: Geo-engineering the Atmosphere

National Academy Of Sciences 2015

Launch Stratospheric Aerosols $200 Million -- $2 Billion a year Ten 747 aircraft discharging through a fire hose. Artillery (NAS study 1992— ”surprisingly practical”)

Mt Pinatubo Volcano

Moral Quandary If we geo-engineer the atmosphere successfully… What is the incentive to stop burning fossil fuels? Why should go to renewable energy?

But Science is Irrelevant Compared to Feelings, Belief, and Your Social Circles

Media = All opinions are Equal. Plumber Cardiologist Both know hydraulics well….

What to do? Attitude Adjustment

Sustaining Ecosystems? What Ecosystems?

Dams Now… USGS

Dams Past…

Deforestation… Look At the Red and Orange No Orange Here Ten stories High

A Post Wild World?

“…European garlic mustard, thorny Japanese barberry, …soil with industrial nitrogen, exotic insect pests…ravenous deer..polluted, stunted, diseased, …This is authentic nature in the Anthropocene epoch.” Shahid Naeem Nature 477, 29–30 (01 September 2011

What to do? Wait until disasters and hope that human ingenuity can bail us out.

James Watt Steam Engine, 1769

53 23 December, 1947, Bell Laboratories

54 Rosetta space probe, with lander Philae, following comet 67P/Churyumov, November, 2014