The Carbon Pulse and its Planetary and Atmospheric Implications.

This series is a brilliant dive into the archelogy of how oil evolved and how it became fundamental to this set of living arrangements & how this set of living arrangements can’t function without fossil fuels. There is no “Energy Transition” outside of “Collapse.”

As the kids at the Deep Green Bush School pointed out to me when I spoke to them: “Wind turbines and solar panels require mining too you know”. Those kids are a testament to well-founded alternative schooling when done right!

My readers who are into the “Peak Oil” predicament will find some spectacular slides showing how oil was created in the subsoil strata and how dangerous fracking is, earthquakes are one consequence but the potential for the fracking fluids entering aquifers & poisoning them!

Episode One:

The full script to the episode can be found at Professor Guy McPhersons Substack post where readers can directly engage with Guy: Rocks for Jocks, Part One: A Discussion About Deep Time

Episode two:
Another fascinating dive into the “Carbon Pulse” which hurtled us to total domination of the planet.

Neils slides on coal seams and extraction going back to 1712 reiterate my point that the IPCC using 1880 as a baseline ignores centuries of anthropogenic emissions. Why ignore the Bronze age and Iron age emissions?

M. King Hubbert didn’t get everything right about “Peak Oil” but like Professor Paul Ehrlich and the “Population Bomb” his hypothesis was broadly correct!

This is a really cool series of discussions that are only getting better.

I’ve added the video below to the comments section of my blog post on Peak Oil titled “Global Peak Oil Remains an Existential Threat”

Rocks for Jocks, Part Two: A Discussion About Deep Time

Episode Three:
Imagine burning Whales, Birds and Fish so we can read at night?

Yes, burning oily fish and birds as a lantern! WTAF? WTH worked that out?

In the days of square rigger ships, the navigators used the stench from Whaling stations in the Pacific to assist in navigation!

A yacht skipper I sailed with hit a whale in his steel yacht just off Great Barrier Island once. The impact killed the whale and sprayed blood & blubber on the yacht, he told me he could smell it months later, despite washing the boat continually!

Then came the “Carbon Pulse” of gasoline becoming an endemic fuel around the planet when it was originally a waste product!

In 2021 we produced 99 million barrels of oil per day, digest that for a second. There is no other addiction on that scale

Incredible to know there were over 600 electric car recharging stations in 1916 in Chicago, over a hundred years later, there’s only about 3500!

This article has some incredible data and slides showing how we got corralled into this mess!

Rocks for Jocks, Part Three: A Discussion About Deep Time

Episode Four:
Another deep dive into the Carbon Pulse, and it’s ecological and societal consequences, with some incredible slides on the refining processes that convert millions of years of sequestered sunshine into the fossil fuels, that have enabled this dystopian civilization to literally “Steam Roller” the entire ecosystem. To quote GMP “Industrial civilization is Grinding the Living Planet into Dust”.

The issue of the Aerosol Masking Effect, what Dr James E Hansen called “Our Faustian Bargain” was discussed and how the reduction of aerosols is having an effect on both Sea Surface Temperatures and the loss of Arctic and Antarctic Sea Ice.

There are a few great slides that show bunker fuel being burnt by shipping vessels and Methane being flared from Oil Rigs. Neal made the point that the flared CH4 is just a fraction of what is leaking from the whole process. They flare the gas because it’s cheaper that reticulating it, legalized dumping into the atmosphere, just like dumping the radioactive water from Fukushima Daiichi into the nearby Pacific Ocean, is the cheapest option they could find. It’s no coincidence they chose the cheapest option! Diplomatic relations between Japan and China, both Koreas, Vietnam and Cambodia have become ‘stressed’ over this environmental larceny.

On one of my 16 ocean passages on yachts, I saw a huge black ball of pollution form in the sky horizon, as the Oil Tanker progressed across my course, the cloud got bigger and longer. Those aerosols also form clouds, so the loss of aerosols leads to lower pollution and more warming due to more solar radiation hitting the oceans over the shipping lanes and downwind from them

I’ve written to a few Universities and government departments in Japan floating my hypothesis of pumping that radioactive waste into a depleted oil well, rather than my beloved Pacific Ocean. I’ve yet to hear from any of them but would appreciate anyone’s thoughts on using depleted wells to store that radioactive waste. I hate the idea of pumping that waste into Papatuanuku/Mother Earth, but it beats vomiting it into the Pacific Ocean.

Rocks for Jocks, Part Four: A Discussion About Deep Time

All of the above oil and consequences are the result of mining.
As I was doing my research I literally stumbled upon this harrowing link:
“Many hard rock mines across the western United States may require water treatment for hundreds to thousands of years, or “in perpetuity” as a result of acid mine drainage or metals leaching.”

It’s the same predicament as Solar Radiation Management it must be continued for hundreds of thousands of years, years we don’t have!
Acid Mine Drainage

Clearly as the low hanging fruit has already been plucked and or ransacked, we have wars for the last dregs:

About Kevin Hester

I'm an anti-imperialist, environmental activist and blue ocean sailor, who is passionate about the earth and all it's inhabitants without favour. Brace for imminent impact as we bare witness to the non-linear unraveling of the biosphere and habitability disappearing for most if not all complex life on the only habitable planet we know of. To quote President Niinistö in North Russia: ‘If We Lose the Arctic, We Lose the World’. Folks we have lost the Arctic.