(Part I Aug. 2022)

This is the story of my own personal/professional journey. It is not intended to offend anyone.

In 2007, I was 21. I was a rising undergraduate senior and I had decided that I wanted to pursue a career in academia to try to help people become better educated, more empowered, and better suited to address the challenges facing modern civilization and the environment. But I needed to decide what general area to pursue for my PhD, knowing that I would likely spend my career (life!) studying and improving technology in this area. I knew one thing with certainty: I wanted to spend my career trying to help human civilization co-exist with the environment in a sustainable way. Tom Brady once said, “If you’re going to compete against me, you better be willing to give up your life because I’m giving up mine.” Regardless of how you feel about Tom Brady, that level of devotion is the way that I felt about addressing climate change. The same way that Tom Brady gave up his life for football, I was willing to give up my life to help the environment and society co-exist. But I needed to decide what specifically I would research…

I thought about wind turbines. But, as a mechanical engineer, it didn’t seem like that was a research topic for me. Material scientists were/are needed to create stronger, lighter blades. Electrical engineers were/are needed for the power electronics, controls, and efficient electricity generation. But, I also felt that there wasn’t a grand challenge for me to solve related to wind turbines. Wind turbines are great. Engineers will work to improve them. Policy makers will help with their deployment by passing enabling regulations and by explaining to the general public why they are needed. And all of those things will happen without any assistance from me. I felt the same way about photovoltaics. Things were progressing nicely and solar panels didn’t need any help from me to accelerate their progress. There was no grand challenge. Please make no mistake; I am a strong proponent of wind turbines and solar panels, but I felt they didn’t need my assistance.

So instead, I thought about electric cars. At that point (in 2007), the movie “Who killed the electric car?” had recently been released. People were talking about electric vehicles as the future of transportation even at that time, and I thought, “should I spend my career studying electric cars and helping them progress?”. So, I spent time reading, investigating, thinking, and ultimately asked myself to determine:

1. Is there a research topic for me, as a mechanical engineer and thermodynamicist, to study, or a problem for me to solve to ultimately help the environment?
2. Are electric vehicles, and electrification in general, going to replace engines in all of the applications that we use engines, or even 50% of the applications?

I did extensive homework. I encourage you to as well, and I ultimately concluded that…

(Parenthetical): I thought a lot about what I could write here, and I realized that there’s nothing that I can say that would get through… to anyone. This topic has become so politicized (like everything in 2022!) that everyone has already taken a side, and everyone already thinks they know the answers, which I find strange because I’m an expert in this field and I don’t know all of the answers. All I can do is wonder where everyone got their answers from? From extensive scientific research, or…? Did whoever propagated the message that people have accepted as the conventional thinking have a vested financial or political interest in you believing that message? Because, as you know, there are people whose intention is not necessarily what’s best for the environment and is instead to profit off society’s belief structure.

I can assure you that I am not making any money exploiting people’s beliefs. Instead, I am pursuing what I believe is right for the environment. I made that commitment to give my life to address climate change, even if that means that I have to work very hard (for much less pay than I would make in other professions) to try to educate people and, these days, convince them to do what’s right for our planet, rather than what’s right for the people who are profiting off of society believing a particular message.

If you’re still reading, thank you! As for my story, I concluded that electric vehicles are similar to wind turbines and solar panels. In other words, electric vehicles will advance and improve, and some consumers will adopt them. And all of that IS a good thing because there ARE applications where electric vehicles can reduce lifecycle carbon emissions. Similarly, the grid WILL continue to become more renewable and cleaner. And THAT’S a good thing, because electric vehicles are inherently tied to the grid, and whether we’re using that electricity to power our vehicles or in residential, commercial, or industrial settings, cleaner electricity is a good thing. Another major benefit of the investments in electric vehicles is that improved battery technology can be used in hybrid vehicles, which is a GREAT thing because hybrids are much more affordable than pure electric vehicles, they don’t have a limited range, and they don’t require any infrastructure changes – all of which ensure more rapid consumer adoption. Rapid deployment, consumer acceptance, and maximizing the bang-for-our-buck are the keys to immediately addressing climate change. Maybe I should have started with that.

In terms of maximizing bang-for-buck, if you calculate the lifecycle CO₂ reduction per incremental cost relative to a conventional vehicle, hybrids would be the clear winner. Similarly, if the materials in batteries are difficult and expensive to dig out of the Earth, then you could calculate a lifecycle CO₂ reduction per pound of battery materials, and again, hybrids would be the best option. Some have said that “the best use of a battery is in a hybrid” and that is incredibly well said and accurate! Hybrids are immediately implementable, have a higher consumer acceptance potential because they are cheaper and their range isn’t limited, and maximize bang-for-buck.

I concluded, in 2007, that, no, there was no research topic for me as a mechanical engineer and that there was no grand challenge related to electric vehicles. I also concluded that we will always have engines. Always. And because of that, I decided what I would pursue for my PhD. I knew I was going to spend my life trying to help the environment, and I knew engines would be around for my lifetime and beyond, so I knew I needed to find a way to make engines cleaner, more efficient, and more sustainable. That’s what I would spend my career studying. That was my grand challenge: make engines sustainable!

The exciting thing to me is: 15 years ago, I committed my life to solving this problem, and I believe, we (“we” being the transportation research community) have found a solution! We now have renewable fuels available in the marketplace. We can refill our engine-powered vehicles on renewable fuels instead of fossil fuels, TODAY! Those renewable fuels reduce lifecycle CO₂ emissions by a significant amount (30% or higher depending on the fuel), and if e-fuels and biofuels can be given the same level of attention and incentives that we’re giving other sustainable options, then we would have the resources to find ways to reduce the carbon intensity even further (eventually becoming completely net-carbon neutral)!

Now, in 2022, I think back on my conclusions from 2007 that led me here. And I realize, my conclusions from 2007 are even more true today. Electric vehicles will have some market share in the future. And that’s great, especially if the grid gets more renewable, which it will, which is great! But, we will ALWAYS have engines, and we need to make the use of engines more sustainable. Period.

Even though these conclusions are still true today, some people have not accepted them (or don’t want to admit it out loud; I’m not sure which). As a result, even though I am doing my best to help society and the environment co-exist, and even though I came to the right conclusions about how my skillset could best be used to address climate change, I feel as though I’m being punished for researching engines. I think that I’m reasonably smart, reasonably capable, I work incredibly hard, and I have devoted my life to help address climate change. But the same politicians that claim to want solutions to climate change have cut almost all funding for engine research, which has significantly neutered my ability to have a positive impact on the planet.

But I didn’t write all of this to be a martyr or for your pity. I didn’t write all of this to offend anyone or cause any controversy. 

The reasons I wrote this are:

1. To share my story, of someone who is devoted to doing what’s best for the environment, AND who is an engine researcher. In other words, engine researchers are spending their lives trying to address climate change. But we need your help and support so that we can stop the rhetoric, extremism, and hyper-politicization of (hopefully everything, but at least) sustainable transportation solutions. In fact, anyone over-politicizing the issue of sustainable transportation, anyone showing oversimplified graphics of an incredibly complicated problem to try to trick people into believing one way or the other, and anyone sharing skewed or misleading statistics is clearly selfishly profiting from the general public being mis-informed and their motivations are not aligned with what’s best for the planet. If you see these over-simplified graphics or skewed statistics, the best thing to do is ignore them, block them, or do whatever you have to do so that we can get to a point where we can have a productive conversation and discussion. So that we can work together to solve this problem! If your goal is to help address climate change in an economically viable way, then we’re on the same team and we should start acting like it!
2. To share with anyone who doesn’t know that we have renewable fuels in the marketplace already. 10% of the “gasoline” that we burn is ethanol, which is a renewable biofuel, and there are over 800 biodiesel fueling stations and over 4200 E85 fueling stations in the U.S. as of 2022. These renewable fuels represent a commercially viable solution to reduce lifecycle GHG emissions from transportation which don’t require consumers to change their habits – so much so that people didn’t even realize that we’ve been using them for decades. These renewable fuels can have a synergistic relationship with vehicle electrification either through their use in different applications where each one is better suited to address the specific use-case, or they can have a synergistic relationship in hybrids fueled by renewable fuels, which personally, I think is the most immediate and promising strategy that we can do to address climate change by creating an affordable transportation solution that significantly reduces lifecycle CO₂ emissions and that customers will adopt. The only thing holding back renewable fuels is that we don’t have the same awareness and advocacy as other technologies. But we can fix that!
3. To… I started by saying that I picked this career to help people become better educated, more empowered, and better suited to address the challenges facing modern civilization and the environment. Hopefully, sharing my story can help make progress toward that goal.

Thank you for reading my story. If you disagree with anything I said, I’m happy to have a constructive and open-minded conversation about it. If you agree with what I said, then PLEASE help me spread the word about renewable fuels and hybrids, and please help me have a productive discussion about sustainable transportation technologies without the over-politicization and extremism.

This was…

An Appeal for Rationalism:

My story and perspective on where we are and where we need to go                                         

by Ben Lawler

Part II – How to Problem-Solve Applied to Climate Change (Jan. 2023)

Introduction: Identifying the problem and defining boundaries

As an engineer, I was trained to identify problems, and find their solutions. In doing so, I learned the importance of first identifying the right problem to solve, and second, working to find its solution. Here’s a corny engineering joke (not originally mine):

During the French Revolution, the revolting citizens led a priest, a nobleman, and an engineer to the guillotine. They asked the priest if he wanted to face up or down when he met his fate. The priest said he would like to face up so he would be looking toward the heavens. They raised the guillotine blade and released it. It dropped,… and then suddenly… stopped,… inches from his neck. The revolting citizens took it as divine intervention and released the priest.

Next, the nobleman was brought to the guillotine and also decided to face up, hoping to have the same luck as the priest. They raised the blade and released it. It dropped, and then suddenly stopped. Again, the revolting citizens took it as divine intervention and released the nobleman.

Last was the engineer’s turn. He too decided to lie facing up. As they raised the blade, the engineer said, “Oh, I see what your problem is right there…”

The joke is, he solved the wrong problem… and… solving the wrong problem has consequences.

There is a formal problem-solving process with different steps that vary somewhat depending on who’s teaching the method. But in all cases, Step 1 is identifying and defining the problem. We can’t start proposing solutions until we have identified the problem to solve.

As an engineering educator, I think about how to distill the problem-solving process so that I can best communicate the process to my students. I realized that there are two key factors to consider when identifying and defining the problem: first, you need to draw a box around the system in space, and second, you need to draw a box around the system in time. The spatial box, as engineers, we sometimes call either the “control volume” or the “free body diagram”, depending on the engineering problem you’re solving, and they are used to define the boundary of the system that you’re considering. When I say, “draw a box around the system in time”, I mean, you need to define and identify the time-scale, or time duration, of the problem you’re solving. To illustrate these concepts, let me use an example of a joke from the Daily Show from years ago. One of the correspondents was ironically arguing that climate change was a hoax based on new data that showed that the temperature in New York City over the past five months had been dropping, and they showed a graph similar to the one below and on the right. He said we should be talking about global cooling, instead of global warming. 

Of course, John Stewart pointed out that the time-scale in the figure was not the right time-scale to consider (that was the joke). The temperature was only dropping due to the change of seasons. If we’re talking about global climate change, we need to look at year-over-year data, not the data throughout the year. You could argue that the data throughout the year is actually… completely… MEANINGLESS. It’s meaningless because the time-scale is not the right time-scale to consider. John Stewart went on to argue that not only is the time-scale mis-identified for this problem, but the control volume is also the wrong spatial boundary to consider when talking about global climate change (New York City). Global climate change is about global temperatures. The system boundary in space can ONLY be the globe. Any other system boundary will give the wrong impression.

Anytime that the time-scale or spatial boundaries have been mis-identified, you’re looking at the wrong data, which can be very misleading.

This concept of mis-identified control volumes is not new… and it’s not specific to engineering. In the old days, a magician was called an “illusionist” because they drew the audience’s attention to an intentionally narrow control volume, while, off-screen (so to speak), a sleight of hand was performed. And, voila! There was their illusion. If the audience knew to see the whole stage as the control volume,… and if they could see all of the details,… there would be no fooling them. There would be no illusion…

Hopefully that was helpful to illustrate the importance of drawing the right spatial and time-based boundaries when identifying, defining, and solving a problem.

Now, I want you to think about global climate change and I want to ask you if we have properly identified and defined the right problem to solve, and are we proposing solutions that would solve the right problem?

So here is my question:

Should we care about CO₂ emissions,… OR… should we care about the atmospheric CO₂ level?

It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one. CO₂ emissions and the atmospheric CO₂ level can be related, but they don’t have to be. CO₂ emissions MAY cause the atmospheric CO₂ level to increase, but they may not.

We’ll come back to that, but first, let’s define these terms. The term “CO₂ emissions” refers to objects or activities that release CO₂ into the atmosphere. They are the sources of CO₂. Some examples include:

1. The respiration of humans and animals (species that inhale oxygen, O₂, and exhale CO₂),
2. Combustion of any fuel containing carbon, which we as a society use for:
   • Electric power generation for the electric grid,
   • Industrial processes,
   • Residential and commercial heating,
   • Construction and mining, and
   • Air and ground transportation of people and goods, 
3. And,… there’s one more example I’ll give below.

Conversely, there are objects or activities that absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere – the sinks of CO₂. Mostly, I’m referring to photosynthesis by plant life, where plants “inhale” CO₂ (so to speak) and “exhale” O₂ (the inverse of human respiration!), but there are other examples of CO₂ sinks.

The “atmospheric CO₂ level” is the net effect of all of the sources and sinks of CO₂. When examining a control volume in engineering problem-solving, we look at what happens inside the control volume, yes, but we also look at all of the flows across the boundaries and sum up the positives and negatives to determine the net effect on the control volume. If we’re examining a free body diagram, we sum up the forces pushing to the right and subtract the forces pushing to the left to determine the net force and its direction, either right or left. It’s a form of accounting, which engineers often apply to summing forces or torques and to mass, energy, and momentum conservations. But, when most people hear the word “accounting”, they think of money in a bank account. Actually,… that’s not a bad analogy. The atmospheric CO₂ level can be thought of as a bank account, where there can be deposits and withdrawals, and you have a certain budget, but you can’t exceed your budget. My question is: should we care about the deposits of CO₂, or should we care about the level of CO₂ in our bank account?

“I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees for the trees have no tongues.” – Dr. Seuss

Deciding to care about CO₂ emissions somewhat implies that we should draw our control volume around the sources of CO₂. Deciding to care about the atmospheric CO₂ level implies the control volume is around the atmosphere.

Here’s a ridiculous example, intended to be a little silly, to point out the difference between CO₂ emissions and the atmospheric CO₂ level, and to give another example of the importance of defining the right time and spatial boundaries when problem-solving. If the answer to my question is that we decide to care about CO₂ emissions instead of the atmospheric CO₂ level, then we would look at all of the sources of CO₂ emissions around the globe, and we would find that, trees, at the end of the fall, drop their leaves and the leaves decompose and release a large amount of CO₂ emissions (this was my #3 from the list of CO₂ sources above). In fact, out of all of the sources of CO₂ emissions, trees dropping their leaves is the largest. If CO₂ emissions are what we decide to care about, we might draw our control volume around the tree and conclude that trees dropping their leaves is problematic. We might conclude that we need a way to stop trees from dropping their leaves… Since we can’t pass regulations that ban trees from dropping their leaves, we might conclude that we should cut down trees to prevent them from dropping their leaves. That would be our only recourse to stop those CO₂ emissions.

So, deciding to care about CO₂ emissions led us to draw our spatial boundary around a tree and if we only consider the time-scale of the fall (again, this time-scale was implied by deciding to care about CO₂ emissions), we eventually arrive at the wrong conclusion. It’s been said that coming to the wrong conclusion has consequences. In this case, if we base our actions on the wrong conclusion, then we would cut down trees, which would be bad for global climate change. As you’ve been told, a tree is a great way to store carbon… or is it?

If instead of deciding to care about CO₂ emissions, we decide to care about the atmospheric CO₂ level, and, if we are careful about defining the right space and time boundaries, then we would realize, yes, trees drop their leaves in the fall, but they grow back in the spring and re-absorb that CO₂. If we look at the cycle of a tree over the year, the dropping and regrowing of leaves, you could argue, is net-neutral – it cancels each other out. One process is simply the inverse of the other. But, the net effect of a single tree over the course of a year is that it stores carbon when the trunk thickens or when it grows new branches or roots.

So clearly, looking at the time-scale of only one season (the fall) was highly misleading, just like the Daily Show example. Then, what is the right time-scale to consider for a tree? In the previous paragraph, I wrote, “if we look at the cycle of a tree over the year”. That statement implied that a year is the right time-scale to consider for a tree, just like the Daily Show example where year-over-year data would be more meaningful than seasonal data. But be careful! A tree has a lifespan, just like humans and,… well,… every other living thing. Even in ideal conditions, a tree will die of old age eventually, and when it dies, it releases all of the carbon that it stored over its lifecycle back into the environment. So, yes, a tree can store carbon, but only temporarily. I would argue, no, a year is not the right time-scale to consider for a tree because it misled us to think that a tree stores carbon, when it really only stores carbon temporarily and eventually gives that carbon back to the environment at the end of its lifecycle. You’ve been told that a tree is a great way to store carbon, and that’s not true, at least not indefinitely. I should have also mentioned, as an educator, the biggest role that I feel I have these days is dispelling misinformation. If you really think about it, an educator and misinformation have opposite goals and intentions. So here is one piece of misinformation dispelled – No, a tree is not a great way to store carbon because it only stores carbon temporarily.

Ok, but did we mis-identify the control volume spatially? Rather than drawing our control volume around a single tree, what if we drew our box around the whole forest. Side note: one of the most common mistakes that I see when grading students’ work is that they draw their control volume too narrowly. Have we just committed the same mistake? (-10 points). Remember the audience at the magic show – by drawing our control volume too narrowly, we’re unintentionally fooling ourselves with an illusion. If we consider the whole forest instead of a single tree, now, when one tree dies of old age, it creates a hole in the canopy that lets sunlight reach the forest floor and allows new growth. Eventually, a new younger tree will fill the hole and re-absorb the carbon from the environment that the previous tree left behind. So, by drawing our box around the whole forest and considering a longer time-scale, we see that the death of an old tree and the growth of a new one, the dropping of leaves in the fall and the new growth in the spring, is all net-neutral and the forest DOES store a lot of carbon… INDEFINITELY… … … until we cut it down. The only way a forest will give up its stored carbon is if something causes the forest to shrink its footprint (think of, human deforestation), and the only way that we can use forests (forests! not trees!) to store carbon (carbon that they previously stored) is by allowing them, and maybe even helping them, to re-grow and re-take-back their footprint.

The Devil is in the Details

It may sound like a subtle, stupid distinction to say that, no, a tree is not a great mechanism to store carbon, but yes, a forest is a fantastic mechanism. You might think my distinction between CO₂ emissions and the atmospheric CO₂ level is subtle and stupid…. But I disagree. I don’t think these details are subtle, or stupid. I think these distinctions makes all the difference in the world (pun intended!).

Sometimes, you may be able to gloss over the details, but sometimes, you need to consider them. Again, that’s one of most common mistakes that I see by students – not considering the right level of detail for the problem. Sometimes students get bogged down in details that don’t matter, and sometimes they gloss over important details. I’m sorry to say that I don’t have any advice here. As far as I can tell, it’s a skill that comes with experience, but even experienced people need to be careful to ensure that they are considering the right level of detail for the problem at hand. Notice that the word “details” appeared earlier in this text when referring to the audience being fooled by the illusions of a magician. If the audience could see the details, there would be no illusion. If you aren’t considering the right level of details for the problem, then you’re fooling yourself.

Smart Phones, Bank Accounts, and Apples

We’re building to eventually applying the engineering problem-solving process to global climate change, but there is one more thing that I should be absolutely explicit about.

When asking, “should we care” about CO₂ emissions or the atmospheric CO₂ level, it is implied that we should care about whichever factor global climate change truly cares about. Meaning, which one is the driver behind climate change?

If you need an explanation about the greenhouse gas effect, please feel free to pause here and Google/Wikipedia until you feel comfortable proceeding. And please don’t feel embarrassed if you need to. Everyone has a different knowledge base and there’s no shame in knowing what you know and admitting what you don’t know. Alternatively, there SHOULD be a lot of shame when someone pretends to know something that they don’t know, and a lot of issues arise when that happens….

Ok,… thinking about the greenhouse gas effect, I hope you’ll agree that the atmospheric CO₂ level is the driver behind climate change and therefore is the issue that we should care about and work to solve.

Problem identified: the atmospheric CO₂ level is too high and increasing rapidly. We would like to lower the atmospheric CO₂ level, or at least stop it from continuing to increase.

If we want to solve the problem that the atmospheric CO₂ level is too high, what are the important details to consider? Currently, regulations look at the sources of CO₂ emissions, but earlier I said, “CO₂ emissions MAY cause the atmospheric CO₂ level to increase, but they may not.” What did that mean? Let’s explore by going back to the bank account analogy.

Let’s pretend that you withdraw $1000 from your bank account to buy a new smart phone. But, when you get to the store, you find a cheaper model for $800. So, you buy the cheaper phone and put the $200 back into your bank account. That’s great that you get to put $200 back into your account, BUT, it doesn’t mean your wealth (net worth) increased. You didn’t just get a raise – sorry. When you do your taxes at the end of the year, you won’t declare the $200 as income and pay taxes on it. Why not? Because, you simply withdrew the $200 from your account, and then put it back later. It was net-neutral. One process was the inverse of the other. But your wealth didn’t increase by $200.

For your wealth to increase, you need to track where the dollar came from. If it was a dollar that you already had, then it doesn’t increase your wealth. But if it was a dollar that came from an external source, then it counts as income and your wealth increases (but you have to pay taxes on it – again, sorry!).

In the case of the atmospheric CO₂ level, when we emit a CO₂ molecule, the atmospheric CO₂ level increases ONLY IF that carbon atom came from a stored source. However, if the carbon atom came originally from the atmosphere, then the atmospheric CO₂ level DOES NOT increase.

Here’s an example using #1 from the list of sources of CO₂ emissions above. When a person, take myself for example, exhales, I emit CO₂ emissions. Did I just increase the atmospheric CO₂ level?

The atmospheric CO₂ level will ONLY increase if the carbon atom came from a stored source. So where do the carbon atoms that I exhale come from? Well, I just ate an apple, and that apple had sugar in it. You could argue that the sugar was a stored source of carbon, but don’t forget about time-scales. The apple would have rotted if I didn’t eat it. So no, the apple doesn’t store carbon for long enough to matter. My body is converting the sugar in the apple to CO₂ molecules that I exhale (don’t ask me how – I’m not a biologist). The sugar in the apple was absorbed from the atmosphere when the tree grew the fruit (through photosynthesis). So, no, my exhaling does not increase the atmospheric CO₂ level because that carbon atom came from the atmosphere originally. I simply returned it to the atmosphere where it came from, just like the $200.

Ok, we talked about #1 on the list, which was human and animal respiration. We already talked about #3 on the list – trees dropping their leaves, which is net-neutral, but human deforestation takes all of the stored carbon in trees and releases it into the atmosphere. So what about #2 on the list of CO₂ emissions: combustion of any fuel containing carbon? Just like every source of CO₂ emissions, it depends on where the carbon atom came from. If it came from a stored source, then it will increase the atmospheric CO₂ level. If it came from the atmosphere, and you’re simply putting it back, then it won’t increase the atmospheric CO₂ level. To be clear, a “stored source” of fuel containing carbon is specifically referring to fossil fuels. But “combustion of a fuel containing carbon” is more general than “combustion of fossil fuels”. You can burn wood pellets, bio-ethanol, bio-diesel, etc. There is a term called the “fast-carbon cycle”, which refers to the carbon atom recycling at a time-scale that won’t negatively impact climate change, if you want to read more about it.

Summarizing together

We talked about a lot of different things: guillotines, magicians, trees, smart phones, and apples. I would love to keep discussing with you about the implications of these concepts on regulations related to climate change and the economy/market in the context of engineering problem-solving. But I worry that this is getting long (~3500 words up to this point – thanks for reading!), and I ran out of time. The semester started yesterday! So maybe it’s best to wrap up for now, and say “to be continued…”.

But before I leave you, let’s summarize what we discussed:

• The first step in problem-solving is identifying the problem. For climate change, the problem is that the atmospheric CO₂ level is too high and rapidly increasing.
• In problem-solving, the time-scale and the spatial boundaries are critical to define and consider. For global climate change, the spatial boundary can only be the global atmosphere. Any other boundary is fooling ourselves.
• CO₂ emissions from any one source are not the problem themselves – that’s analogous to trees dropping their leaves or humans exhaling. I’ll repeat: CO₂ emissions from any one source are not the problem. Any regulation that draws the box around the source of CO₂ emissions is solving the wrong problem, and just like the engineer in the opening joke, by doing so, they’ll meet their demise.
• CO₂ emissions only cause the atmospheric CO₂ level to increase if the carbon atom originally came from a stored source. Therefore, we need a form of carbon tracking to know if a particular source of CO₂ emissions is causing the atmospheric CO₂ level to increase or not, which we currently do not have.

Let’s pick up this discussion when we both have more time. Maybe over the summer. I’d love to continue discussing with you about the details that we didn’t have time to explore in this text. Because remember, the details matter. I also want to talk to you about the implications of these concepts on regulations. Some of the topics for the next conversation can be:

• If the only boundary that matters is a global boundary, then we would need a global regulatory agency to put regulations on actions that cause the atmospheric CO₂ level to increase. Or we would at least need a global agreement, which we currently don’t have. As a result, well-intentioned countries are forced to draw control volumes around actions that they do have jurisdiction over. But those control volumes are too narrow, meaning we’re regulating the wrong things. “Regulating the wrong things” wastes valuable resources (energy, money, time, etc.) and has absolutely ZERO impact on climate change. We’re fooling ourselves to think otherwise…
• Combustion of a fuel containing carbon only causes the atmospheric CO₂ level to increase if the fuel is a fossil fuel. But combustion of a renewable fuel, even if it contains carbon, does not cause the atmospheric CO₂ level to increase. Therefore, we should be regulating, and generally judging in the court of public opinion, “combustion of fossil fuels” and “combustion of renewable fuels” completely differently, which we are currently not doing.
• More details, considerations, and implications…

Scare Tactics versus Empowerment

Before ending, I have to clarify one thing. Twice I said “has consequences”, but please don’t misinterpret these as scare tactics. Please read them as me trying to be explicit about pitfalls and trying to encourage educational awareness. Just like misinformation, scare tactics have opposite intentions as an educator. Scare tactics use misinformation to inspire alarmism and hysteria so that people act in a manner that is not in their best interest. Scare tactics prey on people’s insecurities and fears about what might happen if we don’t take some extreme action. Conversely, an educator’s job is to instill knowledge, and, once you have the knowledge, to instill confidence to not be afraid, confidence that you are well-equipped to solve this problem, and confidence to not jump to conclusions that are not in our best interest. It’s about empowerment. This text is about education, instilling confidence, and empowerment. Empowerment of you! To take back control of solving this problem!

The goal of this text was to layout the facts and define the problem together so that we can start proposing solutions to solve the right problem. That way, we can use our resources (energy, money, time, etc.) to move forward together, in the right direction. Because, so far,… I’m not seeing that happen.

But this text isn’t intended to be alarmist and it isn’t about despair. If you’re looking for someone to scare you unnecessarily into making rash decisions or indoctrinate you into having extreme viewpoints that you never thought you’d have,… well…, you have the news and social media for that. Instead, this text is about hope and unity. Hope that we can unify behind reasonable and rational viewpoints. Hope that we will do the right thing for our planet and the species living on it, and for our economy, so that we can ensure that all of our resources are used most efficiently.