Private communication
How do humans change the climate W. H. Smith and John Shanahan May 31, 2022 The question was: How does mankind change climate? It could be of interest to genuine environmentalists and nature lovers. The climate science and nature technical points are clear. But the clincher to convince the public (Jedermann in German) is a reference to a wonderful book in French: L'homme qui plantait des arbres by Jean Giono. It is a beautiful story of planting one acorn at a time to recover rain patterns for a region that were destroyed by mankind. It takes place in southern France around WWII. John A. Shanahan Civil Engineer Founder, website: allaboutenergy.net Denver, Colorado, USA —-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Statement from an email by W. H. Smith: "The ONLY human energy system which is demonstrably capable of altering climate is the wind farm."
Response by John Shanahan
I am a civil engineer with a 25 year career (1970 - 1995) in nuclear power and environmental cleanup of Department of Energy facilities.
From (1996 - 2022, present) I dedicated myself to public education about why fossil fuels and nuclear power are essential for the modern world now and in the future. This includes 15 years of study about climate and climate change. I've looked at all these topics from multiple points of view.
I've learned that all man-made alterations to the landscape - forests, prairies, countryside, suburban, and urban areas change the local climate (surface and air temperature, range of max and minimum daily temperatures, humidity, clouds, hydrology, and vegetation).
Here is a video with excellent examples and discussions of how humans change the climate.
Wherever mankind changes the existing natural ecology, mankind will change the local climate.
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One thing that mankind does not significantly cause is supposed catastrophic, anthropogenic, planet-wide global warming. The sun is by far the main source of warming planet Earth, not infrared excited CO2 molecules at tiny concentrations. After electromagnetic energy from the sun warms the land and oceans, infrared radiation emitted from land and oceans travels back to space and along the way strikes carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This excites those molecules but not enough to significantly heat the rest of the atmosphere, land, and oceans to any measurable amount.
A similar process happens when you warm up a cup of coffee in the microwave oven and bring it to your office where it sits and gets cold. The cup of coffee adds heat to the room but your office temperature does not increase a noticeable amount.
The details for these statements are contained in about 1000 articles, reports and presentations on the website: allaboutenergy.net, Section ENVIRONMENT.
There is a wonderful French story about how one man changed the local climate: L'homme qui plantait des arbres by Jean Giono. I read it in the 1980s. The story has been around much longer. It is available in English.
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