COVID 19 Lockdown: Good For The Environment?

Given that the COVID 19 pandemic has disrupted life around the world, does the resulting carbon dioxide emission drops spell good news for the environment?

By: Ringo Bones

The resulting lockdown of the COVID 19 pandemic was seen to have resulted in the largest drop in emissions in recent years and also probably the most fitting way to celebrate the 50^th Anniversary of the very first Earth Day. But sadly the disruption only results in a tiny drop of the overall concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because of how long the gas effectively lingers. The current carbon dioxide concentration in our atmosphere now stands at 418 parts per million and according to climate experts, this needs to stay at 350 parts per million to avoid a runaway global warming.

It was estimated that for the entire 2020, the carbon dioxide emissions could be down by 6-percent compared to previous years but according to experts, we need an annual reduction of 7.5-percent to reach the 350 parts per million targeted by 2050 in order for catastrophic climate change to be avoided. Still, according to energy and climate expert Constantine Samaras, the message is clear: Just because this devastating pandemic has only a small impact on today’s atmospheric carbon dioxide levels doesn’t mean the climate crisis is lost.

Solar Geoengineering: The Most Effective Way To Fight Climate Change?

Given that humans are pumping 60-times more carbon dioxide gas into the Earth’s atmosphere than all of the planet’s volcanoes combined, would solar geoengineering be a viable method to limit global warming rise to 2-degrees Celsius?

By: Ringo Bones

Even if we manage to halt all of our production of carbon dioxide tomorrow, it would take quite awhile for overall carbon dioxide gas concentrations in our atmosphere to return to pre-industrial levels. In an interview back in July 9, 2012, the 1984 Nobel Physics Prize laureate Carlo Rubbia stated that based on what we currently know on the behavior of gaseous carbon dioxide currently circulating in the Earth’s atmosphere, the average lifetime that the carbon dioxide generated by human activity – as in biomass and fossil fuel burning – stays in the atmosphere before being sequestered back into wood and dissolved into the world’s oceans and lithosphere, is 30,000 years. Therefore most of the carbon dioxide produced when Emperor Nero burned a section of Rome as he fiddled around 2,000 years ago is still in our atmosphere. Given the relatively long delay time of removing excess carbon dioxide from our atmosphere, are there other more effective ways to halt the average global temperature rise to within 2-degrees Celsius by the year 2100?

Professor of Physics and Public Policy at Harvard David Keith suggests a method which he calls solar geoengineering. Despite of the risks, due to our still limited understanding of the planet Earth’s overall climate system, there are aspects of solar geoengineering that is directly modeled after recent climatic events and how it can be implemented for our overall benefit. Professor Keith suggests mimicking how volcanic eruptions trigger a global cooling effect for a number of years after the event. We could manage to keep the inevitable temperature rise to within 2-degrees Celsius by the year 2100.

Remember when Mt. Pinatubo erupted back in June 1991? It manage to lower overall global temperature by 2-degrees Celsius and another unforeseen consequence of the volcanic eruption was the resulting increased farm and ecosystem productivity that happened two years after the event. And according to Professor Keith, solar geoengineering could mimic such natural phenomena by flying jet planes to the stratosphere at the near equatorial region and spraying sulfur dioxide gas to produce sulfuric acid ice crystal clouds in order to increase planet Earth’s albedo – i.e. the reflectivity – of the Earth’s atmosphere reflecting excess infrared energy our planet receives from the Sun back into space. The planet Venus’ naturally occurring sulfuric acid ice crystal clouds is the reason why it has a higher albedo in comparison to planet Earth and this its “brighter” appearance in comparison to its sister planet. Although there are unforeseen risks involved due to our still limited understanding on how our planet’s climate system works and the formidable logistics involved of using a fleet of our current jet aircraft to produce sulfuric acid crystal clouds of similar density of that created by the Mt. Pinatubo eruption around the Earth’s equator, it seems that it is the only scheme that could produce a plausibly desirable result when it comes to keeping overall global temperature rise to within 2-degrees Celsius by the year 2100.

March For Science: Science Versus Donald J. Trump?

Even though the Earth Day “March for Science” was primarily aimed at the Trump Administration’s suppression of scientific research results, has America’s political and religious persecution of science finally reached a tipping point? 

By: Ringo Bones 

If you asked me, I wish that this year’s March for Science that coincided with this year’s April 22 Earth Day festivities should have been started back in 1996 to mark the moment that America’s radical right-wing Evangelical Christians started interfering scientific results of the National Academy of Science – especially ones that concern women’s health, climate change and environmental pollution. Fat forward to the election of Donald J. Trump into the U.S. presidency thanks to his “rhetoric” proclaiming that climate change is a hoax invented by The People’s Republic of China to help make them sell wind turbines and photovoltaic solar panels, not to mention Trump signing an executive order to undo any Obama Administration era Clean Energy and Security programs, many observant Christians finally reached the point of “Holy Jesus Hitler Christ, enough is enough” to have decided on this year’s Earth Day to march into Washington as a show of unity that Donald J. Trump’s Alternative Facts is no solution to global warming and sea level rise brought about by climate change due to man-made greenhouse gas emissions from industrial activity. 

Similar marches also happened around the world largely inspired by the march on Washington D.C. At a demonstration in Washington D.C., Dr. Jonathan Foley, the executive director of the California Academy of Sciences, said that research was being irrationally questioned, adding that attacks from politicians – especially from the U.S. Republican Party – “amounted to oppression”. According to Dr. Foley, skeptical politicians in DC are specifically targeting science that protects our health – especially women’s health – our safety and the environment. “Science that protects the most vulnerable among us”, Foley said. In short, everyone the world over protested on this year’s Earth Day against what they consider to be an “alarming trend” among politicians for discrediting their research.

Will Climate Change Soon Make Airline Flight-Times Take Longer?

Though still dismissed by conservative Evangelical skeptics as a left-wing conspiracy, is there evidence that climate change will soon make airline flight-times longer?

By: Ringo Bones 

Ever since the neo-Conservatives successfully managed to seamlessly use both politics and organized religion to discredit the validity of the science behind climate change and global warming during the latter half of the 1990s, climate change concerns by the world’s poorest 99-percent were largely dismissed by right-wing Evangelical conservatives as nothing more than left-wing conspiracy to tax the world’s richest 1-percent. Sadly, it seems that the longer we ignore the signs of climate change and put off ways to mitigate and even reverse its worst effects on humanity, all of humanity will be doomed – just that the richest 1-percent will be the very last to feel its worst effects. But will the frequent-flying richest 1-percent be affected by the insidious effects of climate change in the form of longer flight times as they jet-set to their various dens of iniquities? 

Even though this will too affect the working-class frequent-flyers, flights from the U.K. to the U.S. could take longer due to changes in the climate, according to a new study. Global warming is likely to speed up the jet stream, say researchers and slow down airplanes travelling from the U.K. to the U.S. While eastbound flights from the U.S. to the U.K. will be quicker but overall roundtrip journeys will “significantly lengthen.” The University of Reading scientists believe the changes will increase carbon emissions and fuel consumption and potentially raise airline ticket prices. The study has been published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. 

High altitude jet streams in the northern and southern hemisphere are the powerful winds that help move weather systems around the globe. Air traffic normally tries to take advantage of these speedy flows of the Atlantic jet stream from west to east to reduce journey times on routes between Europe and North America. This is one of the world’s busiest air routes with around 600 flights every day. Previous studies have shown that climate change is likely to increase turbulence on these transatlantic flights. In this new study, researchers modelled how atmospheric winds would change given a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide. They fed the results into the same route algorithms that airlines routinely use to plan their transatlantic journeys. They found that winds in the New York to London route will become 15-percent faster on average. Flights from London to New York will become twice as likely to take over seven hours while the flights from New York to London will speed up and will become twice as likely to take under five hours and twenty minutes. While on average, flights will only gain and lose a few minutes each way, the cumulative impact is “significant” says the study. 

“If you look at the roundtrips, the eastbound flights are getting shorter by less than the westbound flights are getting longer.” Lead author Dr. Paul Williams from the University of Reading told BBC News. “So there is a robust increase in the roundtrip journey time, which means planes spending longer in the air, when you add that up for all transatlantic aircraft you get an extra 2,000 hours of planes in the air every year, with US$22-million extra in fuel costs and 70-million kilograms of carbon dioxide.” The researchers say the extra carbon dioxide generated is equivalent of the annual emissions of 7,000 British homes.

Osama Bin Laden Believes In Climate Change?

Despite of his “conservative” 13^th Century view on almost anything, would you believe that the late former head of Al Qaeda – Osama Bin Laden – believes in climate change?

By: Ringo Bones

Despite of the recent overwhelming scientific evidence supporting it, right-wing conservatives – most of them from America – doesn’t believe in climate change declaring via their conservative Evangelical Christian doctrine that humans and their recent industrial activity are not powerful enough to destabilize the Earth’s climate. And thus was born a catch-all caricature describing these wing-nuts called “Republican Jesus”. But inextricably, Republican Jesus’ counterpart - the Al Qaeda head Osama Bin Laden – genuinely believes in climate change and even wrote a bunch of treatises about the subject despite of his rather backward and barbaric 13^th Century view on Islam.

During the May 1, 2011 raid on his compound that eventually killed him, the US Navy SEAL Team VI uncovered a vast treasure trove of intelligent data – in both paper and electronic form – that, until recently, they only prioritize the terror-attack related plans. But as of late, intelligence personnel tasked with sorting out the piles of data recently uncovered the extent of the late Al Qaeda leader’s “research” into the “Christian West’s science on climate change”. And unlike the right-wing-nuts of the US Republican Party and Fox News, Osama Bin Laden genuinely came to the conclusion that climate change is real and an ongoing process, although, the U.S. spymasters tasked with trolling the “Bin Laden papers” has yet to divulge to the public in detail about which terror plans pertain to Al Qaeda’s “action to limit the impact of climate change.”

Besides his recently divulged views on the UN’s IPCC reports, Osama Bin Laden is also keeping up to date with the Christian West’s “leftist philosophies” because the US Navy SEAL Team VI also managed to uncover that Bin Laden is also an unabashed fan of Noam Chomsky. But I still wonder why it was his porn collection that the US Navy SEAL Team VI that got priority in divulging it to the general public.

Rockefeller Foundation Quitting Crude Oil Due To Climate Change?

Some might see it as a cheap publicity ploy taking advantage in the wake of the upcoming UN Climate Change Summit but do we all benefit from the Rockefeller Foundation quitting crude oil?

By: Ringo Bones

As someone who experienced the hardships that resulted from both Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm first hand, it seems that the Rockefeller Foundation suddenly deciding to quit their hedge-fund funding from crude oil and other non-renewable fossil fuels almost cold turkey 23 years after Operation Desert Storm seems like a cheap publicity ploy taking advantage of the upcoming UN Climate Change Summit this September 23, 2014 and in the wake of the very recent Climate Change action demonstrations in New York City back in Sunday, September 21, 2014 that also took place almost simultaneously in other 160 countries like the UK, Afghanistan to Australia over world governments’ lack of action on tackling the root cause of climate change – i.e. excessive fossil fuel usage. If the Rockefeller Foundation – a charitable foundation largely funded by the big crude oil boom of the 20^th Century – quits crude oil and other non-renewable fossil fuels and switch to greener renewable energy sources, will it benefit the rest of us, the lowly 99-percent?

Given that the United States is now the world’s leading producer of crude oil – and it has been since the middle of January 2013 – America’s Big Oil heir, the Rockefeller Foundation - suddenly quitting crude oil almost cold turkey could send anyone beholden to Capitol Hill’s “Crude Oil Lobby” in a suicidal panic. Fortunately, it hasn’t, but to those in the know and who have no control whatsoever on how their pension funds are invested are now doubtful of the future of their pension funds now that the Rockefeller Foundation has quit crude oil, coal and other fossil fuel based hedge-fund funding almost cold turkey.  

President Obama’s Latest Emissions Limiting Guidelines: Good for the Environment?

Will the proposed new guidelines by President Obama on slashing carbon dioxide emissions by up to 30 percent by the year 2030 finally mitigate the worst effects of climate change?

By: Ringo Bones 

Maybe it was probably the recently published NASA’s satellite images showing the West Antarctic ice shelf melting and crashing into the sea that will increase the possibility of a catastrophic sea level rise by the 22^nd Century that finally prompted the general public to take the issue of climate change much more seriously. Fortunately, the Obama administration finally bares a proposed coal fired power plant greenhouse gas emissions guidelines that finally pleased the majority of American environmentalists. Unfortunately, Washington’s coal lobby has been up in arms of the proposed emissions guidelines, warning of a catastrophic economic decline if it gets the green light at Capitol Hill. FOX News, The US Republican Party and Chris Hamilton – West Virginia Coal Association chair – all have critical views on what they call as President Obama’s “War on Coal”, but the good news is that if the latest proposed emissions limiting guidelines could cut up to 30 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from American coal fired power plants by the year 2030.   

Unlike the 8-year tenure of former US President George W. Bush, which had been a “paradise” for climate change deniers and those who profit from it, US president Barack Obama has recently consulted and negotiated with the US Environmental Protection Agency – with EPA administrator Gina McCarthy - back in Monday, June 2, 2014, on new guidelines to slash carbon dioxide and other industrial greenhouse gas emissions from coal fired power plants in order to limit the most catastrophic impact of climate change and sea level rise. Fortunately, the latest proposed emissions guidelines are based on the latest peer-reviewed climate research and not from coal mining and crude oil profit projections of the biggest American based fossil fuel extraction companies. Given that a typical coal fired power plant burns as much as 16-tons of coal a day, some of them will probably be shut down permanently and President Obama says departure form coal burning based power generation could open up new business opportunities for the American wind turbine and solar power generation energy sector. 

The latest carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions data shows that American coal fired power plants produce 40 percent of the country’s overall carbon dioxide emissions and on a per capita basis, every American has on average two times the carbon footprint of a typical Mainland Chinese citizen. But the proposed emissions curb guidelines have had the Washington DC coal lobby up in arms and warns that the entire state of West Virginia’s coal industry could collapse at the cost of millions of jobs. Political rhetoric aside, many American environmentalists had been very wary of the Washington DC’s fossil fuel extraction industry lobby since the mid 1990s for their notoriety of manipulating Evangelical Christianity’s religious dogma to benefit their own profitable ends.  

Are Wood-Burning Power Plants Truly Environmentally Friendly?

Given the logic that if one harvest biomass sourced fuels slower that the rate it grows back considered renewable and therefore environmentally friendly? 

By: Ringo Bones 

The European Union’s proposed to put on-line wood-burning electricity generating power plants that use fast growing sustainably grown and harvested woods from the United States had ignited a renewed discussion on the “green credentials” of wood and other biomass burning schemes as an alternative to fossil fuel burning. So are these proposed schemes truly Earth friendly in the sense that it doesn’t introduce more climate disrupting and global warming causing excess carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere? 

There was a BBC discussion back in May 28, 2013 by Gaynor Hartnell of the Renewable Energy Association and Andrew Pendleton of the Friends of the Earth on weather wood-burning electricity generating power plants are truly sustainable and climate friendly. According to Hartnell, if one harvests biomass – like wood – at a rate slower than the rate it grows back can be considered sustainable. But is there a flaw in Hartnell’s apparently logical perception on the concept of biomass renewability? 

In an interview back in July 9 2012, the 1984 Nobel Physics Prize laureate Carlo Rubbia stated that based on current research on the behavior of gaseous carbon dioxide currently circulating in the earth’s atmosphere, the average lifetime that carbon dioxide generated by human activity – as in biomass and fossil fuel burning – stays in the atmosphere before being sequestered back into wood, dissolved into the world’s oceans and lithosphere, is 30,000 years. Therefore, most of the carbon dioxide produced when Emperor Nero burned a section of Rome as he fiddled around 2,000 years ago is still in the atmosphere. So is the industrial burning of biomass at the same rate we go through fossil fuels truly climate friendly and sustainable? 

Even though Pendleton sides with the view of Nobel Physics laureate Rubbia that the rate of the carbon dioxide generated by burning wood or other forms of biomass is much slower than the rate that it can reabsorb it back and turn it into cellulose, it seems that this move is the most sensible one at present according to the EU where the powers-that-be at Brussels plans for a 22-percent target of its energy source to come from renewable – as in biomass based – schemes before the year 2020. But most environmental based groups in Europe are still mystified on its true sustainable green credentials given that the woods hat are sourced from the United States are shipped to Europe on transports that run on fossil fuels. So EU based environmentalists are now actively up in arms to ban the proposed scheme. 

Derb Carter, an environmentalist from the US state of Georgia says the increased harvesting of “low grade” swamp-wood harvested from environmentally sensitive swampy woodlands in Georgia that are grown on privately owned wood farms that border Federally protected old growth swamp woodlands to be processed into pellets to be shipped to Europe to fuel their wood-burning electricity generating power plants could have unforeseen dire environmental consequences on Georgia’s swampy woodlands. So, is the widespread adoption of wood-burning electricity generating power plants a misguided policy used to combat climate change? 

Is the Climate Change Issue Getting Too Political?

From cabinet ministers conducting official meetings in odd places to elected global warming deniers getting an ego boost from leaked e-mails purported to reveal global warming as a hoax, is the climate change issue becoming too political?


By: Ringo Bones


Maybe it was the news about The Maldives’ cabinet ministers conducting one of their official meetings 5 meters underwater in scuba gear to highlight the dangers of a sea level rise caused by global warming back in October 16, 2009. Or was it the iconic Nepalese cabinet ministers meeting in the Mount Everest base camp to highlight the dangers of global warming endangering the Himalayan freshwater supply by accelerated glacial melting that lasted just 5 minutes due to hypoxia concerns. Or was it the leaked e-mils purportedly to prove that climate change, global warming, and all that environmental claptrap are nothing more than Marxist-Leninist socialist propaganda out to destroy the White Anglo-Saxon Christian way of life. Whatever it is, it seems like politicians now have the loudest voice when it comes to the climate change issue and its subsequent resolution.

Probably the most damaging to the scientific validity of the overly politically driven climate change debate was those leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia. Where climate researchers Professor Phil Jones and Professor Kevin Tremberth managed to embroil themselves in a climate change scandal over the use of “value-added data. Not surprisingly, the issue of the leaked e-mails suggesting that climate change is a hoax was enthusiastically embraced by that famous climate change and global warming denier Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma. Boosting the ego of a known climate change denier is probably the last thing everyone on the planet earning less than 25,000 dollars a year of getting a fair deal out of the on-going UN-sponsored Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Given that the coal and crude oil lobbyists of America had managed to fund a “mercenary science” team to deny the existence of global warming for over 30 years due to their almost inexhaustible warchest. Making their demagoguery pass off as legitimate science in the hallowed halls of Capitol Hill. Thus making climate change deniers like the famed Republican Senator of Oklahoma manage to make the consensus of the final agreements reached in the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen tailored more to suit industry. Making the people who live on less than a dollar a day living in climate change prone regions victims of the political demagoguery of Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma and their ilk.

Even though the UN-IPCC still defends that the science done on climate change and global warming during the past 20 years still has a valid data. I just don’t think that is still enough to convince the politicians at Capitol Hill to formulate effective measures to tackle the problem of climate change by the world's leading producer of unnecessary greenhouse gases – the United States of America. Worse still, the crude oil and coal lobbyists of America even successfully achieved to make global warming denial a part of Evangelical Christian canon during the Bush Administration, making the global fight against climate change an uphill battle – both literally and figuratively.

Earth Hour: Symptoms of Our Bad Energy Policy?

Does a call to suspend our electrical energy use for one hour can mean a vote against the policy maker’s bad and environmentally unsustainable energy policies?

By: Ringo Bones


Saturday, March 28, 2009 has been earmarked as this year’s Earth Hour as the 80 or so countries around the world pledge to make a stand against global warming. Whatever time zone your country belongs to, when it hits 8:30 in the evening, you have the option to show your solidarity to protest against our policymaker’s bad and environmentally unsustainable energy generation policies. By switching off your domestic lighting – or other high-powered electrical appliance – by one hour, you can vote in favor of our environment and the adoption of alternative energy programs. But is this all in the end just an exercise in futility?

During the 2008 US Presidential Elections, the American people voted for Barack Obama and the Democratic Party due to their more environmentally friendly energy policies. Americans probably got fed-up with the strong-arm lobbying tactics of the coal and crude oil / petroleum industry in Capitol Hill that the voting results of the 2008 US Presidential Election’s showed a “green theme”. Politicians who promised environmentally sustainable energy policies won over those who favored profits and short-term gains. If this trend continues, then this year’s Earth Hour could be an overwhelming success.

Even though I have a 10,000 watt-capable solar photovoltaic / rechargeable lead-acid battery power generating system. It only serves as an energy bill saving measure. Since our local mains electricity is still unfortunately 100% coal-fired – or other forms of greenhouse gas generating fossil fuels. Even though it is – according to the utility company – clean coal technology, it doesn’t produce acid rain anymore (?). There are still concerns that it produces billions of tons of carbon dioxide annually that our local electricity consumption’s contribution to global warming and climate change can’t simply be overlooked.

As the energy conservation side of curbing our civilization’s greenhouse gas generation, Earth Hour could serve to remind us about the inconvenient truth behind our strives for an ever more convenient lifestyle using our current carbon dioxide emitting infrastructure is not doing our planet any good at all. Even the hype behind carbon capture and sequestration now looks suspect if we won’t take steps now in outgrowing our greenhouse gas emitting technological infrastructure.