When Chemistry Magazine publishes a Sociologist on Climate and Energy – Are you interested in that?

by Gregory J. Rummo

On April 25, 2022 Chemical and Engineering News article, Holly Jean Buck, a “developmental sociologist,” expresses some particular views on fossil fuels that extend beyond climate change. It was amazing to see them published in a journal not about sociology or politics but about chemistry and engineering.

For starters, Buck asserts, “reaching net zero emissions will not guarantee that the planet is protected from the environmental and health impacts of fossil fuel extraction and use.” fossil”.

Buck is a professor of environment and sustainability at the University of Buffalo. Her PhD is in developmental sociology. She is also a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is a helpful reminder that, contrary to popular perception, not only climate scientists but also many social scientists contribute to IPCC “scientific” reports.

“Climate change is not the only reason for phasing out fossil fuels, but” is associated with negative effects, including financial support by corrupt and repressive governments, she said. stress, air pollution and its health effects, and environmental injustice”.

Let’s look at each statement one by one.

First, Buck is right that zero emissions will not guarantee that the planet is protected from the environmental and health impacts of fossil fuel extraction, she writes as if everything about fossil fuels are all bad.

Like all other anti-fossil fuel activists, Buck simply doesn’t account for all of the direct benefits of fossil fuels — the enormous amount of energy that is indispensable to lifting and keeping entire societies alive. society out of poverty. She also ignores the fact that fossil fuels aren’t the only source of energy that requires a lot of extraction—wind and solar, too, require more earth to be unearthed per unit of generated energy. produced to produce the minerals needed for wind turbine construction. and solar panels. Fossil fuels require much less land per unit of generated energy.

Furthermore, she and others treat carbon dioxide as just a pollutant, as if the only thing it does in the atmosphere is warm the planet. Admittedly it has such an effect but our aim here is to reduce the argument to the extent that we can show that all trees depend on the presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. the atmosphere as a carbon source for photosynthesis, which in turn produces carbohydrates and oxygen. We humans depend on both – we eat those carbohydrates in the form of different grains, and we breathe the oxygen necessary for life. If all carbon dioxide could be removed from the atmosphere, life on Earth would come to an end.

The algae of the oceans and forests do an excellent job of buffering carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. As levels increased from both fossil fuel use and natural processes, there was greening of the Earth, resulting in increased grain production.

NASA reported on its website in 2016,”Carbon Dioxide Fertilizer Greening the Earth, Research Discovers. This is partly what the authors reported in the journal Natural climate change:

An international team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries led the effort, which involved the use of satellite data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer and other instruments. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s state-of-the-art very high-resolution radiometric measurements to help determine leaf area index, or leaf cover, over vegetative areas of the planet. Greening represents an increase in the number of leaves on trees and trees that are roughly the size of twice the continental United States. According to a new study published in this journal, between one-quarter and one-half of the vegetated land on Earth has shown significant greening over the past 35 years largely due to increased levels of vegetation. of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Natural climate change on April 25.

I’m not sure the theory that exploit Fossil fuels lead to proven subsurface warming with any degree of certainty. In “Fossil fuel extraction can contribute to climate change by heating the Earth from within“, Rizwan Nawaz and Adel Sharif state that “heat from within the earth can contribute to the rise in temperature…fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas in layers and crevices beneath the Earth’s surface Earth acts as an insulating blanket, trapping heat from within the planet. Once these deposits have been cleaned up by fossil fuel extraction, more of that heat can reach the surface.”

Two uses of the conditional verb maybe suggests that this statement is just speculation. The fact that the gaps created by fossil fuel extraction are rapidly being replaced by groundwater should be likely. The specific heat capacity of water is twice that of oil and gasoline. In other words, the insulating property of water is higher than that of crude oil and is expected to increase rather than decrease, the insulating property of the liquid filling any voids underground caused by fossil fuel extraction.

Second, Buck claims that fossil fuels help protect corrupt and oppressive governments.

There is some truth to this claim, which Senators Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) address in 2021. Time magazine article. In “A World Without Fossil Fuels That Fund Our Enemies Will Be A Safer World For America,” they wrote,

Oil and gas development is often associated with autocracy and corruption. Governments in countries like Russia and Iran have used oil and gas to intimidate their neighbors and fund terrorism. Corruption, autocracy, and terrorism are persistent threats to countries above the rule of law, and the United States has long been an example of the rule of law. A world where oil and gas money has less power is one that is likely to have less corruption, autocracy, and terrorism. That world will be a safer world for America.

However, the solution to this problem is not to stop using fossil fuels but to become energy independent, Like us in 2020, before the current administration decided to expand the oil and gas industry. And now we’re all paying for it at the gas pump.

Third, she says that fossil fuels are linked to air pollution and its effects on health.

However, according to the article Our World in Data “Air pollution(First published October 2017; last revised January 2021), by Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser, the death rate from air pollution from 1990 to 2019 has steadily decreased from 156.05 to 85.62 per 100,000. However, it happened in time increased use of fossil fuelslargely due to shipping, and when CO₂ emissions increased by 24%.

How is it possible? There is only one explanation: improved technology. Humans have steadily developed ways to use fossil fuels more efficiently. As countries’ economies improve largely due to the use of fossil fuels, their ability to achieve cleaner environments is made possible in part by advanced emissions control measures. on coal and natural gas-fired power plants and on gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles – increased. We all want to breathe cleaner air, and so do we.

Diesel Technology Forum report:

Recent long-term trends suggest that air quality and economic growth go hand in hand. While more energy is needed to fuel business expansion, the wealth created by growing economic opportunity means a greater uptake of clean and efficient technologies. That’s great news for air quality! When it comes to powering things that move and work, diesel technology is key. Over the decades, the diesel engine platform has undergone a significant transition to near zero emissions. The adoption of these clean diesel technologies has contributed to improved air quality.

Fourth, Buck says fossil fuels lead to environmental injustice.

As we’ve explained, the world’s levels of air pollution and health-related deaths have fallen while fossil fuel consumption has increased. And as technology continues to improve, this trend will also continue.

But if you really want to talk about environmental injustice, the industries involved in the production of solar panels and the lithium-cobalt batteries used in electric vehicles have quite a bit of blood.

In “Is it ethical to buy a Lithium EV battery car?? ” Ronald Stein, policy advisor to the Heartland Institute and co-author with Todd Royal of Harnessing clean energy: Helping citizens understand human abuse and the environment in favor of ‘clean energy’Written:

Virtually no transparency exists about the environmental degradation and human rights abuses occurring in developing countries among yellow, brown and black people. Both human rights violations and environmental degradation are directly linked to the extraction of exotic minerals and metals needed to produce wind turbines, solar panels, and EV batteries. … Existing fossil fuel infrastructure is less invasive than the mining of exotic minerals and metals needed to create the batteries needed to store ‘green energy’. In developing countries, these exploitative practices exploit child labor and are responsible for the most serious human rights violations against vulnerable minorities. These activities are also directly destroying the planet through environmental degradation.

“The net emissions target is not enough” and “we know we have to reduce fossil fuel production,” as Dr Buck says, are bare claims based on both science and reality. economy. But what should we expect from an IPCC report author with a PhD in developmental sociology? It is disappointing that her views are presented in a publication that is supposed to focus on chemistry and chemistry, not society, engineering.

Gregory J. Rummo is a Lecturer in Chemistry at the School of Arts and Sciences in Palm Beach Atlantic Universityformer CEO of New Chemic (US), Inc.The author of The view from the grass rootsand a Contributing Writer to Cornwall Alliance for Creative Management.