Interesting article, and kudos to Trains for taking on the topic. Justin Franz did decent research. (Would have been interesting to hear more from each of the Class 1s about their climate change policies, although I wonder how forthcoming they were.) Near the end of the article, Franz speculated that hotter summers would cause more energy demand, which might in turn mean that railroads will haul more “energy-related commodities.” This might be construed to mean coal, but that will not happen. Fracked natural gas and renewables are now by far cheaper for new energy. Railroads will be essential to adapting to climate change due to their inherent efficiency. But their future is doomed by the marketplace to hold progressively less coal, even without the need to leave fossil fuels in the ground.
I’m a meteorology professor and I’ve been following this global warming / climate change stuff for about 25 years.
It’s a scam. And well hyped by the media for its shock value.
The premise is that as long as carbon dioxide emissions increase - and they’ve reached record levels for human history - then so should global temperatures. Yet temperatures have remained constant recently, even decreasing a bit, for 17 years. Thus the supposed sophisticated computer models are wrong. Something else is a bigger factor for climate than CO2.
We’re told the Arctic ice cap has the least coverage we’ve ever seen. How long ago is ever? 1979. That’s when polar orbiting satellites first began checking the coverage daily. The same fear spread in 1922 when an expedition found reduced ice and some predicted coastal cities would flood. Just a normal cycle the earth goes through.
That 97% of scientists believe in global warming is a blatant fabrication that has been repeatedly disproved. It’s more like less than 1% believe it’s mostly caused by humans and is dangerous, based on a word search of 11,000 current peer-reviewed journal articles on climate.
Separate studies have also shown there’s no more extreme weather now than in the past. People have short memories. Check 1954 or 1934 for truly wild weather worldwide.
Some scientists, particularly Russians, think that with our sun’s reduced solar flares, we’re headed to some sort of ice age. And not thousands of years in the future but just a few years from now.
Bad weather is normal, benign weather is not. Let’s prepare for the extremes and not call it global warming. Climate change takes hundreds and thousands of years and is not day-to-day weather.
One of the misperceptions of “climate change” is that warming from increased Green House Gas concentrations shows up as warmer summer days as opposed to warmer winter nights. Another misconception is that climate change is only driven by CO2, where the reality is that land use has a major contribution as well.
It does look like frac’ing sand will be a major traffic source for the railroads, but not sure if it will replace coal revenues.
During the boom times a few years ago, they were telling us the revenue from one unit frac sand train was equal to three coal trains. They let some coal contracts slip away to the competition about that time. It seemed like they didn’t care, they had a sand boom going on. Until it, like most booms, came to an end. There’s still some sand moving, but not like it was.
Jeff
Thank you, Mr. Harms, for the words from someone who has been connected with meterology for many years.
The first day of my college freshman chemistry course (more than sixty years ago), my professor described the scientific method of ascertaining the validity of an an idea: you begin with an observation of phenomena, and if further observation seems to support your original thought, who can posit a hypothesis. If further observation shows that your hypothesis is wrong, you abandon it, but if further observation supports your hypothesis, you can speak of it as a theory.
Only if further observation supports your theory should you proclaim it to the world as being true. The ideas of the people who have predicted great global warning have been proven to be their dreams and not reality. Such people refuse to accept the reality of past cycles of warming and cooling, but look only at recent phenomena. Sad to say, such people suck many into believing their unsupportable hypotheses.
It’s been my contention all along that climate change is a constant. I can neither prove, nor disprove humankind’s effect on the climate, and have no way of knowing what Mother Nature would have provided sans any significant input from man.
I generally note that Krakatoa lowered the earth’s temperature notably for several years. These days, those beating the drum for human-caused climate change would probably note the return to the temperatures of pre-eruption as “global warming.”
It’s been pointed out in various venues that if you want to find out where the “science” of global warming is coming from, all you need to do is “follow the Benjamins.”
Even if there’s doubts - trying to have cleaner energy, less pollution (land air and sea) is not a bad thing. Even if someone beleive that climate change is some huge, global conspiracy to make us all drive Priusses or Teslas (Priiii? Teslii?), I still don’t get why they think we should go back to burning all the dirty coal we want or being allowed to pollute, or stop recycling, or whatever. But maybe it’s just me. I don’t know.
Even common sense crap that makes sense fincancially (less packaging, more solar lights or panels) are bashed.
Zug, I don’t think anyone condones blatant polluting.
But the clean air, all natural, sky is falling zealots have burned me out. I no longer care and no longer put effort into being a good custodian. No I don’t dump used oil on the ground but I don’t bother to separate my recyclables from trash.
This is not a choice between embracing the manamade climate change agenda or going back to dirty coal and throwing trash out the car window. Instead, the choice is whether to end the truly toxic pollution from the use of fossil fuels and stop there - or - to embrace the relatively new premise that CO2 is as bad as the truly toxic pollution and therefore must be also elimiated from emissions.
It is a big difference because we can clean the truly toxic pollution out of coal combustion emissions, but there is no practical and reasonably cost effective way to eliminate the CO2 emissions. Therefore embracing the climate change ideology requires the elimination of fossil fuel use (including natural gas), and relying on renewable engergy sources. Since those are much more costly to produce, the net result will b
I would put a lot more weight in the research of climatologists than someone who teaches meteorology and oceanography introductory courses at his school’s associates (2-year college) program. His claims are lacking any citations, which is not the way academic ethics works.
It’s actually cheaper for my trash man to dump recyclables than trash. So I separate to help him out.
Prii. Teslae. [;)]
Conservation and ‘environmental awareness’ (even outright activism) are not the same thing as the organized climate scam. Part of the nominal argument about many ‘clean coal’ approaches has become that the net carbon-dioxide emissions are substantially greater (in some cases greater than 30% for some forms of sequestration) and there is a corresponding fuel consumption increase that raises things like electricity cost. Likewise, ‘regen’ of DPFs on light diesels increases effective fuel consumption, and hence CO2 emissions. In both cases you’re increasing the nominal air quality, but the Official Carbon Police want you to pay disproportionally for the privilege, and become official Huns and scapegoats in the process – that’s part of where the supposed follow-the-money conspiracy is trying to establish itself.
Amusingly, conservation in the United States has appeared to work so well that the patent rise in global warming forecast for … well, evident long before now in 2016, at projected rates of CO2 emissions increase in the late 1960s has not been observed. That doesn’t mean there may be effects of anthropogenic CO2 in the lower atmosphere, accelerated by H2O and possibly rapidly transitioning to a metastable state. Or that it’s improper to express concern, and do science, that looks for such effects or models them. On the other hand, crap science, manipulation of public opinion, and abuse of academic supposed ‘expert’ criteria do not and should not command our respect, whether or not the ‘s-word’ is u
If you don’t want to believe science then at least believe in commonsense. Dumping billions upon billions upon billions of tons of pollutants into the atmosphere over a relatively short period of time (150 years) has no measurable impact on the environment? I would find that very hard to believe. The atmosphere is only 300 miles thick, with 90% of it below 10 miles. Sure, there are natural cycles as well, but humans are having a measurable negative impact on the environment. The Earth, like your house, is of finite size… sooner or later the garbage will start to pile up, a conclusion that does not require a PhD in physics to appeciate.
Here’s another take on the rail/climate subject:
A key take-way is this quote from the EPA:
“The historical record shows that the climate system varies naturally over a wide range of time scales. In general, climate changes prior to the industrial revolution in the 1700s can be explained by natural causes,” which EPA lists as solar output, volcanic eruptions, and “natural changes in greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations.” (Source: EPA)
Again, it is not a question of dumping billions of tons of pollutants into the atmosphere. It is a question of whether CO2 has the same derogatory effect as those other pollutants. That is where the disagreement lies.
Nobody disagrees that the tradtional “pollutants” are bad, but the premise that CO2 is also bad is relatively new theory. The natural functions of the earth are continuously producing and consuming CO2, so the effect of man’s production of CO2 is not easy to determine even with common sense.
Man made climate change involves alot more than just CO2. We saw what O3 does to the atmosphere a couple of decades ago, and we’ve taken measures to curb man made ozone, although ozone is also produced naturally. Ozone, like CO2, is neither good or bad… it just is. The characteristics of CO2 and its ability to function as a greenhouse gas are not in dispute… the question becomes: Will higher temperatures due to higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere lead to castastrophic (for humans) climate change? Again not good or bad in and of itself…only bad if sea levels rise and you happen to live within a hundred miles of a coast. A warming planet may actually have some benefits as well, for other species that thrive in warmer climates. Great for some insect species and plant life for sure. Not so much for us though.
It does not work that way here.
CH4 (about 20% of the stable “greenhouse gases’” radiative effect) contributes a good deal to global warming and its atmospheric concentration levels have increased 150% since 1750.
Permafrost areas in Canada and Siberia contain huge amounts of accumulated frozen organic material which can release much CO2 and CH4 when sufficient warming melts layers. This is an area of research also.
A misleading quote to advance your agenda. Here is the rest of that section, including your quote:
"These factors have caused Earth’s climate to change many times.
Scientists have pieced together a record of Earth’s climate, dating back hundreds of thousands of years (and, in some cases, millions or hundreds of millions of years), by analyzing a number of indirect measures of climate such as ice cores, tree rings, glacier lengths, pollen remains, and ocean sediments, and by studying changes in Earth’s orbit around the sun.[2]
This record shows that the climate system varies naturally over a wide range of time scales. In general, climate changes prior to the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s can be explained by natural causes, such as changes in solar energy, volcanic eruptions, and natural changes in greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations.
Hopefully we can get past the debate so that we can begin to do something meaningful to protect mother Earth before its too late. We’re moving in the right direction, but not fast enough it seems.