Atmospheric carbon dioxide and base-load electricity

It should be remembered that CO₂ is a vital ingredient in our survival, without CO₂ as an input to photosynthesis there is no O₂ and therefore no life as we know it. Photosynthesis, where CO₂, water and solar energy are converted into glucose and free oxygen allows us to live. Free oxygen is unusual in the Universe due to its chemical reactivity as can be seen in bushfires. The combustion in bushfires is release of solar energy that had been stored in plant matter but without O₂ there is no combustion. Photosynthesis: 6CO₂ +6H₂O+solar---àC₆ H₁₂O₆+6O₂. Without O₂ we all die. CO₂ as input to photosynthesis is a life-giver, not so much a disaster for humanity so long as we eliminate large scale emissions.

If the weather is changing we should look for more causes other than just CO₂ and CH₄. There may be causes over which we have no control and haven't yet identified. For example, the Little Ice Age (say 1600 to 1850), an abrupt cooling change in climate geologically speaking, resulted from natural causes, certainly not anthropogenic. This clearly discounts the assertion that natural change in climate only occurs over millennia. We will have to adapt to the changing conditions on the planet as we have always done but also should avoid making negative impacts on the planet that nurtures us.

Conclusions

The burning of fossil fuels is releasing so much CO₂ that its partial accumulation in the atmosphere is causing the surface of the planet to get warmer. Atmospheric CO₂ has approximately doubled since the Industrial Revolution and most of this increase has accumulated since 1950 as the world industrialized. More than half of the emissions caused by humans today is absorbed by land and sea.

The heat of combustion from fossil fuels to form CO₂ is making only a small contribution, but the heat contribution from combustion will keep increasing unless emission are reduced. The main cause of planetary surface heating relating to CO₂ is its strong absorption finger of longwave radiation around 15µm, as is directly observed in the Earth's outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) from Space, retaining heat in the atmosphere.

The world relies on cheap, reliable and essentially base-load electricity generation. Without fossil fuels the only general source of cheap and reliable base-load electricity is nuclear, which has its own dangers. Intermittent renewables are subject to the vagaries of the weather and there is no large-scale economic electricity storage technology available at present. Such technology would be a game changer but there is no certainty about when, if ever, it will be available. What is generally not realized is that coal, nuclear and hydro have 'built in' electrical storage in the form of control over electricity output by control of combustion, reaction rate or flow.

The lack of cheap and reliable energy replacement for energy derived from fossil fuels is a major problem for humanity. In the meantime nuclear can provide a solution, though with its own dangers that are manageable. Australia has no strategy in place, other than hope, (given it has made nuclear illegal), to replace the base-load electricity from ageing coal-fired generators given that some 75% of electricity generation in Australia today is from coal. We do not have the infrastructure in place for life after coal. Windfarms and solar arrays cannot provide reliable baseload power. Given our trajectory, domestic power prices can only remain static or fall with the aid of government subsidies and our standard of living will suffer.