The climate crisis is dictating what we can buy, and the list will never end | Opinion
Growing up and living in the Tri-Cities in the 1950’s to today was idyllic in many ways. For 37 years every summer we would drive up through the beautiful Cascade mountains to Mount Rainier and camp, hike, and sit around the amphitheater at Ohanapecosh campground listening to a park ranger describe the wonders of the mountain.
Recent trips to Ohanapecosh now require tent campers to stow all food items in cars at night and when not in camp (due to bears). For the previous 37 years we never saw a bear at Ohanapecosh. Why are park rangers now sounding an alarm about bears? Hmmm.
About 37 years ago James Hansen (NASA engineer) sounded an alarm about global warming. CO2 has been rising slightly since 1950 (about 2-3 ppm/year, now about .04% of the atmosphere). That was about 73 years ago. Today, the UN, President Biden, Gov. Jay Inslee, and others say we are in a climate crisis. It is a threat to humanity. If we do not do something now it will be too late. Droughts will be worse. Mountain glaciers will melt. Snowpacks in the mountains will decrease. Wildfires will be worse. Everything will be worse.
We have been hearing this for the last 37 years, that we only have 10 years left or it will be too late. If this is true, things will change for the worse at Mount Rainier. Those carefree days camping at Ohanapecosh may slip away.
According to the Biden Administration, in order to fix this “crisis” we need to spend $50+ trillion to make the US “carbon neutral” by 2050.
So, if we do that:
1) How much by 2050 will the US and global temperatures not rise?
2) In the end will we be better off living with less abundant, more expensive, non-dispatchable renewable electricity and a $50+ trillion debt, which ostensibly will provide an undetectable change in global temperature?
The earth has been slightly warming for the last 400 years. Over the last million years there have been swings in temperature of 10 degrees C. Hence, an increase of 2 or so degrees since the onset of the industrial revolution is not unprecedented. Those who advocate immediately peppering the landscape with windmills and solar panels do so based on climate models that overpredict warming by a factor of 2.
These renewables do not work economically (due to very low capacity factors) and they are not eco-friendly. They will not reduce drought and wildfires, increase the snowpack, or stop glaciers from receding in the state of Washington. I have no doubt Ohanapecosh at Mount Rainier will remain a favorite place to visit for decades to come, bear problem or not.
As long as climate is viewed as a crisis, we will live in a world that will dictate what car you can buy, what stove you can buy, what fertilizer you can buy, what food you can buy, when you can charge an electric vehicle, etc. The list will never end.
Craig Brown of Richland is a retired nuclear engineer (AREVA) with 30 years’ experience benchmarking reactor computer models.
