Transition to Renewables Minimizing Societal Cost
Charles Bayless is a retired utility executive having served as chief executive officer of Illinois Power and of Tucson Electric. He was also President of the West Virginia University Institute of Technology, and is a board member of several organizations including the Climate Institute.
"Disconnecting from change does not recapture the past, it loses the future." -Kathleen Norris, popular American novelist and newspaper columnist in the early twentieth century.
Every second we add over two million-four hundred thousand pounds of carbon dioxide to our atmosphere. The cumulative result of these emissions? The difference between the earth's incoming and outgoing radiation adds the equivalent of over five Hiroshima size nuclear weapons to our atmosphere.
There is no conceivable reason for this except for anthropogenic climate change. If you don't understand climate change, you should probably re-take freshman physics.
At the same time, our oceans are absorbing excess carbon dioxide producing carbonic acid. This robs them of calcium carbonate. It's is the building block of life for corals, krill and a host of other creatures. And those are the basis of the ocean food web.
If you don't understand ocean acidification, you don't even need college. High school chemistry will do.