CHALLENGING CLIMATE CHANGE 2019

To:     The Right Honourable European Commission President Hon. Jean-Claude Juncker 

From: Athinarayanan Sanjeevraja

Date: July 27, 2019

RE:     CHALLENGING CLIMATE CHANGE 2019   

Suggestion:

Hon. European Commission President, let me start by paying my respects to you and through you to. One of my beloved ‘European Commission’ tweeted that “tackling climate change can be a driver for growth and jobs”. It is absolutely true Hon. President. In fact, I wrote to Hon. German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel dated on June 28, 2019 that we never achieve a quantum leap of economic growth by using first and second industrial revolutions in 21^st century. We need to switch to renewable technologies which should be competitive (clean energy sources). None of the renewable technology is competitive. I believe that future demand will shift to the most energy and environmentally efficient products and investment in research to make products more energy efficient to achieve quantum leap of economic growth in 21^st century. We should encourage more energy and environmentally efficient products by giving incentives. I think, we lacked the vision and courage to take a radical step in last decade.  However, we realised it today. It is true that market economies seem incompatible with the requirements of change needed to prevent environmental catastrophe. If it is possible, we need to change the economic development model within a defined period of time tackling climate change by giving economic incentives to corporate Europe low greenhouse gas particularly methane at sustainable costs. This will intend to change the consumer habits so that consumers switch as much as possible to cleaner forms of energy in 21^st century.

Hon. President, most of the international media recommended that planting trillion trees to tackle climate crisis. Planting more trees does not solve the problems because tree planting would have a market effect on CO₂ it might reduce the need for other natural phenomena if we encouraged corporate Europe low carbon. Moreover, CO₂ gases are the problems very much higher altitude. I doubt that planting more trees tackle climate change. It will be fairly small part of the carbon solution. If we plant a trillion trees, we’d put the earth back to pre-warming levels of carbon-dioxide. That’s it. Let’s talk realism_, trees are wonderful, lets plant trees. Trees and plants love carbon. CO₂ is vital plant nutrients which increases the growth rate of plants if more CO₂ is available. The higher the CO₂ concentration, the faster growing plants, larger and more disease resistant plants are.  Hence, for farming the higher the yield per units of input there will be. Carbon dioxide is most important gases on the earth. It consists of one part carbon and two parts oxygen. Increasing carbon-dioxide does help photosynthesis. During photosynthesis, plants use carbon-dioxide to produce carbohydrates. Photosynthesis is absolutely necessary for the survival of life for both humans and animals on earth as humans and animals depend on plants for food. Carbon-dioxide is a by-product of metabolic activity. Carbon-dioxide is required by plants to build tissues which are absolutely essential to life. As a Chemist, no one has showed that carbon-dioxide is a significant temperature driver either through past statistics or computer simulation to date. It is already known that ice-core samples that CO₂ does not drive the earth warming and cooling cycles but rather CO₂ rises in response to the earth warming due to the oceans releasing dissolved  CO₂. Hence, there cannot be any run-away heating effect due to increased levels of CO₂ or it would have already occurred Ice-Age or there could never be the Ice-Age cycles. I learned from many climate change documentaries that greenhouse effect in greenhouses was not due to CO₂ accumulation but the suppression of turbulent exchange with atmosphere outside of it. It is the difference between greenhouse and an atmosphere with the input/output exchange with the space environment for Earth. As a Distinguished Chemist, CO₂ emissions have a negligible warming effect. Because CO₂ level fell during winter and rose when summer happened. This fluctuation is not due to industrial activity. It is natural phenomenon that related to the solubility of gases in water depending upon the temperature of that water. Cold water absorbs and holds more gas, when it warms it ejects gas claiming it caused warm as oceans become warmer. Recently, I watched the video of Mr. Rush Limbaugh that Mars is not heating up despite it has an atmosphere of 98 percent carbon-dioxide. But Mr. Rush Limbaugh didn’t mention that 40 million more miles from the sun than we are. I know that atmosphere of Mars is more than 100 times thinner and less dense than Earth atmosphere. This is one of the major reasons Mars is not warmed by the carbon-dioxide. Moreover, it was discovered that carbon-dioxide has the properties of trapping heat. There is no controlled experiment that can demonstrate carbon use is responsible for climate change. Increasing levels of carbon-dioxide not only drive food crop growth rates but it allows crop growth with less water, much less water which will result in a large increase in arable land. The enhanced returns to agriculture not just drive agriculture growth but it drive growth across the economy. Moreover, increasing level of carbon dioxide is also drive forest growth rates. Thus, we should not rush to condemn that CO₂ as a danger. We are obviously serious lacking in education.

Hon. President, IMHO, we need a solution that will make material impact in less than decade. There are legions of dedicated European researchers who can find answer to some aspects of climate change solutions. Something should be done to solve climate change. Legions of dedicated researchers should make an effort to get measure of what is being done about climate change. They need to find an enormous number of peer review journals that covers climate change. If they started to investigate the literature, I am pretty confident that they will find the body of climate change that works. We should not fall into political alarmism like the US which will make climate change transisition most difficult and with worst results. Most of the government programmes are based on financialism. Our EU government social programmes particularly climate change should not be based on financialism which will fail simply. I have seen climate change statistics in Google search. IMHO, making up climate change statistics is pretty pointless unless this statistics will be useful for predicting how to address the climate change problems. Similarly, words and virtue about climate change won’t do anything. Every day we get masses of protests from celebrities and school children. They all simply seeking publicity without the understanding of basic facts of climate change which are of utmost importance.

Hon. President, there are many international Medias to direct some trillion dollars on impeding climate change progress. IMHO, it is the ultimate form of hubris. Most likely a waste of what should be limited resources? No realistic solution as ever. International media should take responsibility in order to tackle the climate change in raising the awareness of facts and issues surrounding environments and climate change. A recent good example of this would be the BBC documentary narrated climate changes the facts. But we are not getting real copper bottomed advice from world’s foremost atmospheric scientists, geophysicists, climatologists or Pale-climatologists till date. We do not have workable comprehensive solutions till date. IMHO, different types of actions are needed to fight climate change because it is a chain reaction. Climate is a coupled non-linear chaotic system. That kind of system cannot achieve balance but it is in continues change. Climate change is also influenced by melting ice and permafrost which is beginning to release its huge reserves of methane which is more than 50 percent more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon-dioxide. Mercury emissions, greenhouse gas emissions, use of HFCs that punch holes in our ozone layer, subtle changes of the Sun spots, distance of the Earth from the Sun which changes the intensity of the Sun itself and changing weather patterns and so on. Climate change has many intractable problems that we face in global commons. Trying to model such intractable problems is staggeringly hard. The real obstacles to overcome climate change is issue of technology, economic impact and crucially sociological. It is highly improbable to resolve climate change unless effective and accountable global governance is created. Of course, this can’t be delivered overnight. We need sensible solutions that overcome technological issues, economic impact and sociological barrier like safety, health, standards of living to resolve climate change. We will make good progress if we have more properly enforced environmental and climate change policies.

Hon. President, some of the environmentalists recommended reforestation. IMHO, reforestation would never be delivered because it is very considerable practical constraints such as suitable lands needs to be found and procured, we need support from communities and governments, we need funding to be secured, seedling raised, labour sought and so on. The constraints and risks make it impossible to achieve within any realistic timeframe even if it is cost effective. Reforestation is not the sole solution. Environmental policy need to be based on hard, crucial and verifiable facts. Until we have a scientific breakthrough on climate change we have limited options.

Hon. President, Paris Agreement is one of most important agreement on the planet but it is not binding and it doesn’t have the collective fortitude to make a strong statement about saving the planet. Paris agreement mentioned the warming needs to be kept well below 2 degrees without defining what this is but the IPCC special report in October 2018 stated that the world needs to cut emissions by 45 percent by 2030 and net zero by 2050 to keep warming up to 1.5 degrees to avert dangerous consequences. There is a huge difference in consequences between the 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees scenarios. It is virtually impossible to assign the degree to which climate change is manmade. Moreover, Paris Agreement doesn’t ask the nation who is more than doubled their emissions to reduce the rate of emissions. Fake projections and false assumptions putting into a macroeconomic model that is more spacious than the climate change models. Science consists of multiple disciplines such as discoveries and inventions but it is not solely about the climate change. I don’t think there is a scientist in the world who believes to stop climate change. IMHO, it is pointless to argue about climate change policy when a solution is not in sight. As a Distinguished Chemist I believe that permafrost releasing methane which is worst global warming gas than carbon-dioxide. Industrial greenhouse gas emission is also accelerating the climate change. Skilled Scientists should figure out about what would be required to cut greenhouse gas emissions? And what extra carbon-dioxide in the air would do?

Hon. President, there is a huge difference in consequences between environmental economists and ecological economists. Environmental economists tend to use micro economic models but Ecological economists tend to use less reductive techniques for ecosystem services including payment. Moreover, IPCC policy is solely based on computer simulations. As an Analyst, I knew that computer simulation can be attempted to solved through approximations with degrees of uncertainty due to the introduction of several own defined parameters. I say with confidence that error must propagate when mathematical operations are performed through approximate and uncertain data. Thus, IPCC environmental policy never fit in with IPCC’s assigned climate change mission. IPCC’s executives and policy makers may disagree with it. They may argue that there is a huge difference between measurement and estimation. Measurement to the entire atmosphere is not same as measuring the individual measurements. Measurement to the entire planet is an estimate not measurement. I fully agreed but any cataclysmic prediction by using computer simulation model as basis for environmental or climate change or public policy must propagate error for sure. In addition, any predictions that is derived from computer simulations that have not been able to reproduce historical results and have so far uniformly failed to predict even near-term changes. Mark my words. IMHO, we are gloating over economic slowdown without actually doing anything for climate change or environment. I have said so earlier, Carbon-dioxide is absolutely essential to life on earth. Carbon-dioxide can be a resource. We are in serious carbon-dioxide drought since we implemented carbon tax.  Carbon tax will not make statistically significant difference. But carbon tax intended to increase our gasoline prices, carbon tax intended to increase our electricity rates and carbon tax intended to increase our tax burden. Carbon tax is not the sole solution. We have yet to invent new renewable technology which is more competitive. Our carbon tax policy is pulling money out of the system. We could have been used to put carbon into the ground through agricultural policy. We are destroying our economy into misery in a vain attempt to control carbon-dioxide. Methane is considerably more potent greenhouse gas than carbon-dioxide. We must attempt to control methane rather than carbon-dioxide to tackle climate change. I have to say the conclusion that we need European law immediately to control or decrease methane level. We need to think how to make greener choices easier and more affordable in Europe. The EU needs to do what it believes it is good for Europe and for the world if the EU care about its global role. We should not wait until another nation does something to tackle climate change in order to follow. If we do zero carbon emissions, either we won’t get better nor get worse. The missing point here is the carbon molecule in methane that actually contributes directly to global warming because methane retains heat when exposed to sunlight unlike carbon-dioxide. Methane is being released in vast quantities as huge caches of the gas and flow into the atmosphere as that permafrost melts at unprecedented rates. IMHO, methane must be addressed to tackle climate change. We are the first generation to experience the effects of climate change and the last to be able to do anything about it. We need more research and development to tackle climate change because addressing climate change requires many solutions. Planting trees to absorb and store carbon is one practical ingredient but it is not the sole solution. There is sole solution to tackle climate change by controlling or decreasing methane level in the planet.

Let’s hope we will make good progress to tackle climate change in the near future. 

Vielen Danke für Ihre Aufmerksamkeit.

Gott schütze dich mit gutter gesundheit!

Aufrichtige Grüße,

Athinarayanan Sanjeevraja

Tamil Nadu

NOTE: It is an opinion Paper not a research paper.