Readings: Environment, Technology & Society Sec. 82 (2009)—Due Week 2 Day4

Tim Flannery 2005, The Weather Makers. How man is changing the climate and what it means for life on earth. Grove Press, NY.

Cost, cost, cost...... 232

  1. Is there substantial agreement as to the cost of limiting global warming?
  2. What is the history of the relationship between estimated costs due to regulation and actual costs?
  3. Why are insurance bills going up so fast?
  4. What’s Munich Re’s estimate of the cost of global warming by 2050?
  5. How is the population growth of the US and Australia expected to affect their CO2 emissions?
  6. How do you feel (emotions, not reason) about the following terms: hot, warm, cool, cold?

People in greenhouses shouldn’t tell lies...... 239

  1. When did the big anti-global warming propaganda start?
  2. What CO2 concentration did Palmer push for? Are you happy with that idea? Why or why not?
  3. What has the present administration been doing to climate change reports?
  4. What’s smelting? (smelting definition on Google is a good way to find word meanings, and dictionary.com is good)
  5. Who was in the Global Climate Coalition (many have pulled out in the last few years) and what was their purpose?
  6. How does the (former) prediction of adding 50 cents to the cost of a 1989 gallon of gas sound to you now?
  7. What happened to the membership of the Global Climate Coalition?
  8. What did business leaders in Davos say was the biggest threat facing the world?
  9. Reading the material on pp. 244-245, are you surprised that people have been confused about climate change?
  10. Why might Saudi Arabia, the U.S. and China want to minimize the threat of climate change?
  11. What did BP do with its own CO2 emissions, and how much did it cost? What’s there big new product line?
  12. What do conservative Margaret Thatcher and liberal Tony Blair have in common, in terms of global climate change?
  13. How is Britain doing in meeting its Kyoto targets?

Engineering solutions?...... 249

  1. How do you feel about trying to counteract our planetary warming experiment with planetary engineering solutions?
  2. Does iron remove a useful amount of CO2 from the air?
  3. How will pumping CO2 into deep seawater affect the water’s acidity?
  4. Can CO2 be effectively captured from the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants?
  5. What limits the economic feasibility of geosequestration?
  6. Can the earth hold enough CO2 to have geosequestration play a major role in limiting climate change?
  7. Have you ever thought about coal in the ground as carbon storage before? How about wood furniture and houses?

Last steps on the stairway to heaven?...... 258

  1. What was formerly done with natural gas (mostly methane) coming out of oil wells, and why was that done?
  2. What advantages of natural gas offset the cheap cost of coal as fuel for power plants and furnaces?
  3. Why won’t natural gas solve our CO2 problems?
  4. Why do current hydrogen fuel cells not solve the CO2 problem?
  5. Why is hydrogen so costly to transport?

Editorial comment: a future hydrogen economy will depend on a lot of technological innovations, which we may not even be able to imagine yet.