Any regulation to stop something imaginary is too much.

Government involves rules, regulations, and the restraint of individual liberty. The alternative is anarchy, which the American Thinker doesn't like to think about. If you think that's a good choice, try Somalia.

What does the violation of property rights, the restraint of individual liberty regarding matters of self-preservation (i.e., jobs and wealth-creation), the weakening of every nation’s sovereignty in favor of increased “global governance,” and the expanded empowerment of thousands of bureaucrats, think-tankers, and advisors accountable to no one, have to do with global warming?

Clean energy will not have any of these effects.

If you are concerned about your freedom, I would be more concerned about nutcases like Maxx and Sagebrush, who want to jail honest scientists. If they get their way, you and I will be next.

The future will not involve any global government, that is simply coming from GW conspiracy nutbags. In order for the world to combat AGW and consequences like mass migration, this will require more intergovernmental cooperation.

i know you didn't write this yourself so you copied and pasted it without using quotation marks or crediting the source.



1. That is plagiarism

2. Whoever wrote it is an example of a conspiracy nutbag

Sovereignty will be an issue primarily for countries that can't feed their people or provide safe drinking water due to population increase and agricultural interruption due to AGW or internal problems such as tribal feuding over limited resources http://ffp.statesindex.org/rankings

I can think of three things that are needed to mitigate the worst effects of global warming.

First, we need to conserve in our personal lives when possible. I've heard several timeframes given for when the catastrophic effects of global warming like flooded cities and millions of refugees will kick in. Some say thirty years, some say one hundred, others say three hundred. If it's thirty years then we're hosed. If it's one hundred years then we should be fine for the next two reasons, but we should try to buy what time we can.

That said conservation is not the solution. The problem is nobody has sat down and done any detailed studies on what conservation would cost, but some quick estimates lead me to believe every person in the devloped world would have to cut consumption by AT LEAST one third. To give you an idea of what that means, it does not mean you would ride your bike to work. It would mean a sustained degredation in your quality of life. Everybody would be hurt from tenured professors to doctors to lawyers to janitors and we never distribute pain evenly. This explains why there's so little political will to solve the problem through conservation even though there's such need which is why we get Kyotos, which are agreements to do something unspecified to solve the problem followed by nobody doing it.

I see two more things on the horizon which will solve this problem in the next century - one mitigating, one solving.

The mitigating factor is the end of the population boom. Global population should peak in the second half of this century, but that's only mitigation.

The solution has to do with economics. It's difficult to figure out the short-term pattern, but clearly in the long-term hydrocarbon prices are rising and extraction is getting more costly (for example - fracking is expensive vis-a-vis traditional extraction methods and while those costs may go down as we achieve economies of scale it will never be cheaper). This rising price makes other forms of energy production more competitive, but here we get into the catch-22. The established private enterprises that have the ability to achieve economies of scale in new methods of energy production will not voluntarily invest heavily in unproven inefficient start-up companies until they prove themselves. Here's an example in the tech field: a few guys in a labratory invented the silicon chip, but production of it never became cheap enough to be popular with private enterprise until the DoD decided to heavily invest in it for their Minuteman ICBM's guidance systems. What we need is not gradual investment in solar or wind or subsidies; we need a groundbreaking competitve technology to slam hydrocarbons out the door. Here's where the DoD comes in again. The Department of Defense doesn't care about oil; it does care that it has to heavily patrol the Persian Gulf, protect energy shipping lanes, and that it can't count on the Germans to confront the Russians because the Germans get 50% of their natural gas from Russia. Therefore, I expect as the price of hydrocarbons continues to rise and the confrontation with the Russians continues, the DoD will look for alternatives. Therefore, if you want to see potential solutions look at what already exists conceptually (but is uncompetitive now) and the DoD is likely to invest in. Space-based solar power seems promising, but there's a range of other technologies which could be used. After the DoD puts down the down-payment to achieve economies of scale, private companies will take advantage of the new technology just like the they took advantage of the interstate highway system, the internet, or GPS.

Therefore, what we can do is mitigate the problem now, and the DoD should begin doing feasibility studies on different technologies which are in their infancy now; however, I expect them to do this regardless of whether we pressure them to or not simply because it's in their interest to get rid of the hydrocarbon economy.

The best one I can think of would be increased use of biochar soils ...also known as Terra Preta. Such soil techniques improve microbial activity, retain nutrients much longer and could dramatically increase crop production in poor soils and/or limit the need for deforestation as well as decreases the use of fertilizers, fuel, water, etc..for a given amount of land. They also capture and store carbon for centuries which would mitigate some global warming concerns. A win-win proposition that would be economically viable/self sustaining, scalable to meet needs and require few or no restrictive laws, regs and taxes or penalties.

Plot tests on Terra Preta soils suggest they can increase crop yields by some 300-800 percent over poorer native soils. More crop production per acre means less land needed to grow an equal amount of food or greater amounts can be grown for a growing population without resorting to deforestation methods to clear land for agriculture.

Some Biochar soil techniques benefits...

Fewer trees cut down = more trees available to absorb CO2.

Less energy required to produce a greater amount of food per acre or more food can be grown for a given amount of energy = less CO2 emitted.

Nutrients are retained longer = reduced need for chemical fertilizers which also reduces CO2 emissions to produce and distribute them.

Carbon is retained for centuries in a purely natural process as opposed to other carbon capture/storage schemes which require energy inputs and more emissions.

Related info on Biochar/Terra Preta soils...

"Some of the globe's richest soil -- known as terra preta, or Amazonian dark earths -- can transform poor soil into highly fertile ground. Because terra preta is loaded with so-called bio-char -- similar to charcoal -- it also can pull substantial amounts of carbon out of the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, helping to prevent global warming."

.............

"Whereas slash-and-burn methods use open fires to reduce biomass to ash, slash-and-char uses low-intensity smoldering fires covered with dirt and straw, for example, which partially exclude oxygen.

Slash-and-burn, which is commonly used in many parts of the world to prepare fields for crops, releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Slash-and-char, on the other hand, actually reduces greenhouse gases, Lehmann said, by sequestering huge amounts of carbon for thousands of years and substantially reducing methane and nitrous oxide emissions from soils.

"The result is that about 50 percent of the biomass carbon is retained," Lehmann said. "By sequestering huge amounts of carbon, this technique constitutes a much longer and significant sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide than most other sequestration options, making it a powerful tool for long-term mitigation of climate change. In fact we have calculated that up to 12 percent of the carbon emissions produced by human activity could be offset annually if slash-and-burn were replaced by slash-and-char."

In addition, many biofuel production methods, such as generating bioenergy from agricultural, fish and forestry waste, produce bio-char as a byproduct. "The global importance of a bio-char sequestration as a byproduct of the conversion of biomass to bio-fuels is difficult to predict but is potentially very large," he added.

Applying the knowledge of terra preta to contemporary soil management also can reduce environmental pollution by decreasing the amount of fertilizer needed, because the bio-char helps retain nitrogen in the soil as well as higher levels of plant-available phosphorus, calcium, sulfur and organic matter. The black soil also does not get depleted, as do other soils, after repeated use."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...

http://deltafarmpress.com/management/ter...