Wake Up to Reality -- Low Tech Podcast, No. 59 

David, I think some of the conclusions you’ve come to are a little early, and I would encourage you to research further and ask more questions. On the issue of fossil fuels and their replacements. What sort of land area would it require to grow significant amounts of bio diesel? Are you still using machinery to grow the feedstock? What is the energy returned for amount invested? What sources of energy would be used to produce and transport these alternative fuels? And how would current machinery be retrofit or replaced to use these fuels? Are we using these new fuels to continue operating mining equipment? And to refine the things we are mining? How do all of these practices effect our environment and the natural systems that we rely on? Many of the challenges we are facing are so complex. There aren’t simple answers for us. Continue to keep an open mind, and to be flexible to changes that we will have to adapt to in our everyday lives.

@@wheelerryanr the solutions are actually embarrassingly simple. For example we can sequester all carbon since industrial revolution with grass based animal agriculture. Methanotropic soil life begin to populate grass lands and consume methane. The solutions do not come from private jet flying UN and WEF grandstanding elites. Small scale regenerative animal and plant intigrated agriculture is the best possible way for forward for humanity and environment. Instead democrat government industrial complex wants to talk about banning fossil fuels and extremely toxic and expensive electric battery powered cars. It's insane. It's as insane as trying to colonize Mars when we could regreen deserts with the same money.

Thanks Davide and @Ryan Wheeler for watching and commenting. Unfortunately, we've got pretty good CO2 records in ice and geologic cores going back millions of years which correlate with temperature changes. Solar changes are largely cyclical and don't correspond to the current jump we've seen. While solar cycles are really important, they've been swamped by other things, like CO2 and other gasses plus loss of albedo etc. It's so complex. I also wanted to ask about EROI for biofuels. And if we're burning that much biofuel, wouldn't we be losing out on the sequestration effects? I know that we burn thousands of years of accumulated ancient carbon each year as fuel, so I wonder how many years of sequestration it would take to resequester that carbon. I'd be glad to see some numbers and math on it! Thanks again for watching and I agree that jet-setting around the world to point the finger at others for climate change is not helpful. I also agree that small-scale answers like regenerative plant and animal agriculture are moving in the right direction.

Hey David, when you went to see Al Gore's movie, were you already skeptical about human activity playing a role in climate change, or did that come later? Was there a presentation or an article or a film that led you to your current thinking that only the sun drives climate? What stories have been important to you in developing your opinions and thoughts on climate? Thanks for listening!

Our atmosphere plays such an important role in our climate. If it didn't, and the sun alone was driving our climate, the moon would have a similar climate to ours. So what has changed in our atmosphere the past 10,000 years? The past 1,000? The past 100? The past 10? What has happened to the atmosphere as we have deforested the planet? Has that deforestation led to less CO2 being consumed and therefore more trapped in our atmosphere? Burning fuels produces a lot of CO2. So in essence we are killing off the organisms that 'eat' CO2 and we're putting a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere by burning things. At what point will the amount of CO2 we make and the CO2 that is being consumed be out of balance to the point that it is hard for human society to flourish?