The engineering version of your point is more concrete than the op-ed had room for. Infrastructure is designed to codes built from historical records, for service lives of fifty to a hundred years. A culvert, a transmission line, a substation specified today will spend most of its life in a climate with no historical analog.
Thirty-four years as a research engineer, no climate science anywhere in my education, and the last few years spent teaching it to myself because I found I needed it.
Professor Dessler-Thank you for speaking out about these very unfortunate decisions to hide the science of our rapidly warming planet and the consequences that we have already seen. Diana Weihs
While working on water studies a good ten years ago I found and cited a book that referred to climate refugees. The author correctly predicted the pattern of migration to avoid the heat but incorrectly identified likely places to settle in based on water rights. Water rights do not automatically mean available water. Still, I am amazed that this book was written in the 1960’s, long before climate change was acknowledged to be real. You are so right about the need to understand how climate change affects our resources and changes we can make to (hopefully) minimize or cool things off. Thankyou.
This was a great article. Even though I'm a world away in the Northeast of southern New England, I can't imagine the state of Texas entering the coming decades without teaching it's current and future generations the costs associated with climate change. I've always looked at Texas a&m as a forward-thinking school. This would be more backwards than anything I could ever imagine
We have already solar and wind systems which along with batteries are cheaper than adding to the fossil infrastructure. With the fact in mind that carbon put in atmosphere now will remain for a hundred years and more, what we can do now lowers the hurdle. Those two technologies have vastly improved over twenty years. They will continue to evolve along with new discoveries.
Agriculture is developing less carbon intensive methods. If the land now devoted to corn for ethanol added to gasoline were devoted to solar and wind we could provide as much clean energy as we need. Sodium batteries now being made in China don’t need rare earths… main ingredient can come from sea salt.
Books are available to further answer your question but the most impractical solution is to continue to delay as we cross tipping points that will make a climate runaway to civilizational collapse. That is not exaggeration.
"Climate change is real, and Texans will have to deal with it"
Dealing with a warming planet is quite different than trying to stop it with ideas and policies that can never work. Adapting is real but improving infrastructures requires using fossil fuels, especially for transportation to continue the transition to renewables and EVs and feed eight billion people...not just Texans.
Ken you make a great point and it’s the elephant in the room. Below is an excellent article regarding the realities of an energy transition that’s in progress in real time. It deals with New Zealand’s current problems but the principles discussed apply pretty much everywhere. NZ is running out of natural gas which they have relied heavily on for decades. Their transition from it to renewables is not going smoothly even with the large amount of hydropower they have. It’s just not as easy as building more and more wind and solar. It would be good to incorporate this into any climate change class curriculum to prepare students for these issues they certainly will encounter. There’s theory, conjecture and reality and we can learn a lot from the latter.
only solutions are not ones people will accept. there is no practical and realistic way of preventing the extinction of mankind within a couple of decades
You have been reading too many faulty model forecasts. In the geological past atmospheric CO2 was more than double what it is now and the climate was warm with plant life on land being lush while the carbonate plankton diversity flourished.
Nature 461, 1110-1113 (22 October 2009)
Atmospheric carbon dioxide through the Eocene–Oligocene climate transition
Paul N. Pearson, Gavin L. Foster, Bridget S. Wade
Geological and geochemical evidence indicates that the Antarctic ice sheet formed during the Eocene–Oligocene transition 33.5–34.0 million years ago. Modelling studies suggest that such ice-sheet formation might have been triggered when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels fell below a critical threshold of ~750 p.p.m.v. During maximum ice-sheet growth, pCO2 was between 450 and 1,500 p.p.m.v., with a central estimate of 760 p.p.m.v.
The engineering version of your point is more concrete than the op-ed had room for. Infrastructure is designed to codes built from historical records, for service lives of fifty to a hundred years. A culvert, a transmission line, a substation specified today will spend most of its life in a climate with no historical analog.
Thirty-four years as a research engineer, no climate science anywhere in my education, and the last few years spent teaching it to myself because I found I needed it.
Professor Dessler-Thank you for speaking out about these very unfortunate decisions to hide the science of our rapidly warming planet and the consequences that we have already seen. Diana Weihs
While working on water studies a good ten years ago I found and cited a book that referred to climate refugees. The author correctly predicted the pattern of migration to avoid the heat but incorrectly identified likely places to settle in based on water rights. Water rights do not automatically mean available water. Still, I am amazed that this book was written in the 1960’s, long before climate change was acknowledged to be real. You are so right about the need to understand how climate change affects our resources and changes we can make to (hopefully) minimize or cool things off. Thankyou.
This was a great article. Even though I'm a world away in the Northeast of southern New England, I can't imagine the state of Texas entering the coming decades without teaching it's current and future generations the costs associated with climate change. I've always looked at Texas a&m as a forward-thinking school. This would be more backwards than anything I could ever imagine
Well argued and well written. Who knows, maybe it will change a few minds or make some people curious about what’s being withheld from them.
Moral bankruptcy hasn't fixed much in the history of so called civilization.
It may be even worse at Texas Tech.
We have already solar and wind systems which along with batteries are cheaper than adding to the fossil infrastructure. With the fact in mind that carbon put in atmosphere now will remain for a hundred years and more, what we can do now lowers the hurdle. Those two technologies have vastly improved over twenty years. They will continue to evolve along with new discoveries.
Agriculture is developing less carbon intensive methods. If the land now devoted to corn for ethanol added to gasoline were devoted to solar and wind we could provide as much clean energy as we need. Sodium batteries now being made in China don’t need rare earths… main ingredient can come from sea salt.
Books are available to further answer your question but the most impractical solution is to continue to delay as we cross tipping points that will make a climate runaway to civilizational collapse. That is not exaggeration.
"Climate change is real, and Texans will have to deal with it"
Dealing with a warming planet is quite different than trying to stop it with ideas and policies that can never work. Adapting is real but improving infrastructures requires using fossil fuels, especially for transportation to continue the transition to renewables and EVs and feed eight billion people...not just Texans.
And…one of those kids might know the answer. If they just knew the problem.
You think there is an answer?
Ken you make a great point and it’s the elephant in the room. Below is an excellent article regarding the realities of an energy transition that’s in progress in real time. It deals with New Zealand’s current problems but the principles discussed apply pretty much everywhere. NZ is running out of natural gas which they have relied heavily on for decades. Their transition from it to renewables is not going smoothly even with the large amount of hydropower they have. It’s just not as easy as building more and more wind and solar. It would be good to incorporate this into any climate change class curriculum to prepare students for these issues they certainly will encounter. There’s theory, conjecture and reality and we can learn a lot from the latter.
https://newzealandenergy.substack.com/p/the-energy-beneath-the-economy?r=59lao&utm_medium=ios
I live in BC, Canada, a mountainous province that’s 100% on hydro power for electricity. Many dams, which have their own problems of course.
Like the Boston Tea Party there should be a Texa "T" Party..dumping all the petroleum safely back into the ground. The False Ill fools are coming!
Le crime d'ignorance.
".....educational central planners who are now telling students that climate change is simply too dangerous for them to learn about."
Exaggerate much?
You say to the end of the century. If you learn something about climate change, E.G. James Hansen. You will find we have only decades left. If that.
So.. what do you recommend we do about it. Something practical and realistic. Hansen's plan was neither.
only solutions are not ones people will accept. there is no practical and realistic way of preventing the extinction of mankind within a couple of decades
You have been reading too many faulty model forecasts. In the geological past atmospheric CO2 was more than double what it is now and the climate was warm with plant life on land being lush while the carbonate plankton diversity flourished.
Nature 461, 1110-1113 (22 October 2009)
Atmospheric carbon dioxide through the Eocene–Oligocene climate transition
Paul N. Pearson, Gavin L. Foster, Bridget S. Wade
Geological and geochemical evidence indicates that the Antarctic ice sheet formed during the Eocene–Oligocene transition 33.5–34.0 million years ago. Modelling studies suggest that such ice-sheet formation might have been triggered when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels fell below a critical threshold of ~750 p.p.m.v. During maximum ice-sheet growth, pCO2 was between 450 and 1,500 p.p.m.v., with a central estimate of 760 p.p.m.v.