Extreme Temperature Diary-March 19th, 2019/ More Reasons To Switch To Renewables…Explosions, Fires, And Air Pollution

Tuesday March 19th… Dear Diary. The main purpose of this ongoing post will be to track United States extreme or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉

More Reasons To Switch To Renewables…Explosions, Fires, And Air Pollution

Let’s suppose that we live in a different universe in which carbon dioxide was not a greenhouse gas, which could not heat up the atmosphere, and other factors were keeping the climate stable. Let’s also suppose that the burning of fossil fuels would cause air pollution, and the storage of any fuels in great quantities would risk giant explosions and fires, which would be very difficult to put out. Now let’s also suppose in our pretend world that we had the same alternatives as in ours, namely solar and wind power with battery storage that with every new discovery increasingly gets more efficient. What choice would we obviously make in our pretend world even if there was no climate crisis?

Today’s subject is quite clear cut given choices, so for a change I will be brief. Air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels has been a health crisis for decades in China, as all know who are reading today’s post. This is one reason why China has rapidly become a world leader on renewables. In the United States from the 1970s through the present day automobile technology through the use of catalytic converters has brought down air pollution in such car friendly cities as Los Angeles, but we still get fumes spitting out of tailpipes, sickening many. All electric vehicles are for all intents and purposes clean.

Have you ever gotten a queasy feeling after filling up at a gas service station? That’s your body telling you that you are coming into contact with toxins, so stay away. I don’t need to link various articles here about sickness and cancer associated from being around coal fired plants. The fumes from being near oil refineries must be horrendous in association with local’s health, as well.

This leads me to what I tweeted out last night about Houston, the oil refinery capital of the United States:

Here is an article posted by Quartz just a couple of hours ago, dear diary, on the Houston refinery fire (Read to see some amazingly bad images.):

https://qz.com/1576246/pictures-of-refinery-fire-near-houston-that-will-burn-for-days/

Would you like to work in an industry prone to fires and explosions even though there are many safeguards? Of course not! Remember the Deepwater Horizon oil rid explosion and subsequent spill from 2010? Would you like to reside in a city in which explosions and fires (leading to more air pollution) are a risk? I doubt it. You don’t here about any explosions coming from wind turbines do you? There are none. I have not even touched yet on the slight possibility of oil tanker train and ship fires plus associated toxic oil spills.

Clearly we have problems from toxic fossil fuels all around the planet:

In the real world and not in an alternative universe we have the opportunity to proverbially kill two birds with one stone this century. As alluded to, one bad bird, the negative chemical and explosive nature of fossil fuels would be a good enough excuse not to use them. Of course we know what that second bird is, the climate. Let’s replace oil refinery facilities with huge battery storage areas. Clean solar and wind power infrastructure needs to be built ASAP. Think of all the health and safety benefits touched on today briefly here. The world is now hungry for food now available for all via renewable tech…a vast clean and healthy Green New Deal.

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Here is some more climate and weather news from Tuesday:

Here are some ET reports from Tuesday:


(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article.)

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Guy Walton- “The Climate Guy”

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