Elite: Dangerous PvE - Mobius

I.e., we've actually double-accelerated and compounded our heating by ...

A) Removing particulate matter (e.g., Nitrates, Sulfates, etc...), things that we did very much need to do**, but that reflects less heat from the sun, in the thinner air, so and more reaches the surface, along with ...

B) Putting down even more asphalt and concrete in more built-up, urban areas (especially before recent years when we learned to keep more coverage), which reflects but 'traps' it at the lower, more dense air

**NOTE: President Obama had his President Reagan-like "Trees Create Smog" moment when he blamed global warming-caused forest fires for his daughter's allergies getting worse. He is correct, forest fires create particulate matter, just Reagan was correct that trees create smog, especially as we plant more and more trees in cities. But particulate matter has been down in the US since the regulations and filtration in the '70s, even with the increased number of automobiles and other emissions (especially CO2), and it's been going down for nearly 5 decades. His daughter is far, far better off today, than in the '70s, even if the filtration we've forced has accelerated heating, just like more trees are better in cities, even though it accelerates smog.

... and that would launch the Shale extraction landslide in the US/Canada for 100 years. He said as long as it stayed US$2/US-gal (US$2.50/Imp-gal), it would continue -- and as we've seen as Saudia Arabia (who broke with OPEC and kept over-producing) finally 'gave up' by the end of 2015, it's going to be that way for the rest of the century.

Heck, it's nearly the entire reason the US cut CO2 emissions by nearly 10% (and particulates from power and related generation even more so) over a decade (2007-2016) ... natural gas is the major byproduct of shale extraction, even more for most Canadian deposits than the US. Which is why they are building not just pipelines, but terminals for shipping to both the EU and Asia, to cut Russian and other dependencies.

More local to us here in the US, our natural gas glut has come with various issues, like exploding rail cars when there is no pipeline infrastructure (as 47 dead people in Canada can attest to US rail, yes, some of our rail goes through Canada). We have a lot of lawyers and the US media doesn't like to talk about that if it doesn't go over pipleline, it goes over rail or, worst of all, truck. As the Canadian NTSB found in the Frazer study, pipeline is up to 50x safer per cubic meter per km, than rail -- the key is how much and how far it is shipped. The US NTSB has duplicated those findings in various studies, but they are 'politically untennable,' and ... again ... we have a lot of lawyers in the US.

But far more importantly was what he finally predicted ...

The new costs in the market would finally launch a green economy -- which couldn't happen overnight, unlike switching to natural gas -- but would be 30-50% by 2050. Especially as Europe and Asia would buy more US coal -- which would become 'too expensive' to use domestically in the US (but much easier to ship outside the US) in the natural gas glut of shale extraction (coal is currently 4x as costly as natural gas in the US) -- because they didn't North America's shale deposits, or South America's tropical, sugar energy option.

Hence why Europe and Asia would lead this more than the US and Canada, although both the US and Canada would follow with time. I mean, gasoline will go back to US$3/US-gal (and higher), and even US$2+ is launching a lot of wind investments** too.

**NOTE: Solar tends to be more of an endpoint generation (at the user), which everyone can do, without much impact (unlike wind, or a turbine/generator).

Pre-weather satellite ...
'20s -- peak of warm -- New Orleans** flooded
'40s -- peak of cold -- Hitler didn't know his Gulf Stream in '41
'60s -- peak of warm -- New Orleans** flooded, again

Post-weather satellite ...
'80s -- peak of cold -- Blizzard of '82
'00s -- peak of warm -- New Orleans** flooded yet again (despite repeat US Army Corps of Engineers warnings)
'20s -- peak of cold

As we say in Florida ... until we can predict -- very simply -- if the hurricane seasons will be good or bad, we honestly don't know sh-- in how the air-ocean currents work.

**DISCLAIMER: We Floridians generally make fun of Louisianians in how we v. they handle hurricanes. We evacuate for a Category 3+, they stay at home. We save our money in emergency funds, they do too ... but spend it at the same time. Etc...

Although don't think I'm heartless or insensitive.

My teams (I was lead engineer -- developed a single, tiny Linux box to replace a full 8U rack of Cisco equipment for mesh wireless networking -- extended battery life 10x too) provided the communication for everyone during Katerina (under the authority of the US Coast Guard, not FEMA or anyone else). The 407 numbers put up on TV where people could call and find out about their loved ones is an Orlando area code, they were our VoIP phones (yes, back in 2005). In fact, the only thing keeping my teams from getting @$$-raped by looting gangs (who would have definitely taken our satellite and other equipment) was the threat of the US Coast Guard telling the New Orleans police that they wouldn't mess with our private militia protecting us, unless they wanted a blackout and even more @$$-raping going on (possibly them too).

I.e., the US Coast Guard cannot operate on land, FEMA was useless, the National Guard doesn't deploy overnight, and the New Orleans city and Louisiana State Police were over-whelmed. So we brought our own, private militias to protect us ... starting from Day 1 after it hit. We already had trucks in the panhandle, when the US media was downplaying what would happen with Katerina. We had listened to the US Army Corps of Engineers, we knew the levies were going to break ... again.

We were there. Which is why most things you'll ever hear from me will be at total odds in what you hear in the US media, or regurgitated by foreign media, based on US media, conflict-driven (for advertising dollars) ignorance.