The one sector which we could change most easily, without new taxes or any inconvenience to anyone is electricity generation. We should end the use of coal for the production of electricity, and limit the role natural gas to a backup for solar and wind power. Biodiesel could be used for electricity generation in remote areas and for all modes of transportation, (moped, car, bus, truck, train, ship and plane) especially if electricity and/or hydrogen are not yet practical or are too expensive. This biodiesel should be derived from algae or waste, rather than from food.
The peak oil people have been wrong time and again. We were supposed to be past the point of peak production some time ago, then the Bakken shale and fracking happened. Also the total amount extracted is higher than what was considered the total reserves in the ground 30 years ago. The total amount of reserves listed in the ground now will also end up being a fraction of the amount extracted.
The real issue is that there is a green agenda that involves people living according to their religious principles. You job is 18 miles away? Well you need to move to a small apartment closer to your job, this is more sustainable.
Individuals have to go beyond the traditional lifestyle changes we often hear about to resolve this problem. Simply walking to work is not a reasonable request to most American's who travel between 10-40 miles daily. Secondly, pollution caused by transportation is different than that produced by our homes, offices and places of employment. Consider the idea that your car runs maybe an hour a day verse a home which runs 24/7.
To fix the problem we need more private homeowners to invest in solar, wind and geothermal power sources. Consider the idea that going "off-grid" or removing ones self from the use of commercial electricity costs roughly $15,000.00 plus an additional $5,000.00 for storage capacity. This places the average household of four at $20,000.00 to completely remove their dependency on electric companies. If a homeowner financed this project he/she would expect to spend $208.00 (eight year finance without interest).
After the initial eight year investment the homeowner would then have no electric bill or financing bill...therefore he/she would only be responsible for upkeep costs which are quite low for this technology if properly maintained.
Government officials don't understand science well enough to know that 10 year projections are meaningless in most cases (let alone 100 year models). These things turn into political issues precisely because nobody in a position of great influence actually understands the science. Scare scenarios weigh heavily on the psyche of decision makers who are given newspaper style simplifications of the Bayesian threat modeling of statisticians (and I forget the name of the other currently vogue soothsaying technique).
All the politician (or the general public that he naturally represents) really understands are statistics from the scientists that are simplified to the form of "the cost of Action X is Y. The cost of Inaction X is Z. If Y is greater than Z act if not do nothing." The fill in the rest of the details with their imaginations. In an environment of generally high anxiety of an unknown source apocalyptic sentiments naturally arise and command attentnion.
Only scientists think of global warming in terms of gradual raising of sea levels. The general public (including the political establishment) only understands the problem in the most simplistic and dramatic sense of impending apocalypse. The mass media presentation cannot help with understanding even if it wants to... Most people aren't interested in details. They don't have the time to process the information. Also, if you state an opinion that goes against conventional wisdom you are labeled a propaganda outlet and people tune out.
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I agree, fossil fuels aren't renewable. Well technically they are forming all the time as they have for hundreds of millions of years but it is certainly being "extracted" at greater rates than it is being replaced. Iron isn't renewable. Aluminum isn't renewable. All resources have a finite number of molecules but in fact there are enough hydrocarbon molecules to last us hundreds of years.
If someone wants to experiment with new alternative fuels, I am all for it.
If someone wants to take money from hard working people and give to Solyndra or any other company because of political donations or whatever criteria a politician might choose, I have serious problems with that solution. If you want to walk to work, your best bet is to keep giving more power to a centralized government.
What is the debate about? Well, if you read the questions and answers given, it has very little to do with the science concerning the AGWT. Here is why the debate persists along other than science based lines, there are literally trillions of dollars of fossil fuels that can still be brought to market. The fossil fuel industries will not easily walk away from this money. They will spend millions, if not billions to to fuel the debates in order to kep bring these fossil fuels to market. even, as you said, they know these are ever increasing finite sources of energy.
The debate about global warming is ovwr. GW is real, ir is nere now and already causing problema
@99% of all the worlds scientists believe GW is real The controversy is with people who deny the reality that humans are to blame, so the present lame worthless arguments which can't prove that it is not caused by humans. They present misinformation, lies and totally irrelevant information to argue their point
http://skepticalscience.com has debunked 173 of these BS arguments
97% of climate scientists have agreed that humans are responsible
A majority of the world's climate organizations accept this as well
We need to act now or ASAP If we wait 30 years, then AGW will have enough steam to last beyond 2200. Acting soon can make GW have less of an impact in the future
I tell you what it buys them. A lot of votes for one thing. Al Gore getting to be a billionaire for another. George Soros funding is still another.
Quote by James Spann, American Meteorological Society-certified meteorologist: "Billions of dollars of grant money [over $50 billion] are flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon. No man-made global warming, the money dries up. This is big money, make no mistake about it. Always follow the money trail and it tells a story."
Quote by Tom McElmurry, meteorologist, former tornado forecaster in Severe Weather Service: “Governmental officials are currently casting trillions down huge rat hole to solve a problem which doesn’t exist....Packs of rats wait in that [rat] hole to reap trillions coming down it to fill advocates pockets....The money we are about to spend on drastically reducing carbon dioxide will line the pockets of the environmentalists....some politicians are standing in line to fill their pockets with kick back money for large grants to the environmental experts....In case you haven’t noticed, it is an expanding profit-making industry, growing in proportion to the horror warnings by government officials and former vice-presidents.”
Can you name another scam where the income was pure profit? They don't even have to manufacture snake oil.
Just because you know little about it does not mean the science of climate is "poorly understood" by climate scientists. Take a break from anti-science crackpot blogs or Fox News nitwits, and read a science book or two, or a few issues of Science magazine or an IPCC report, and then come back here to post some informed questions and get real answers.
And if you really believe there is a "debate" about the basic conclusions of climate science, ask yourself what is the "other side" of that debate?
Nearly every major science academy, major university science department, science textbook and the overwhelming majority of peer-reviewed climate science articles for over two decades, all agreeing with this consensus conclusion:
U.S. National Academy of Sciences, 2010:
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record...
“Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.”
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpine...
“Choices made now about carbon dioxide emissions reductions will affect climate change impacts experienced not just over the next few decades but also in coming centuries and millennia…Because CO2 in the atmosphere is long lived, it can effectively lock the Earth and future generations into a range of impacts, some of which could become very severe.”
http://www.physics.fsu.edu/awards/NAS/
“The Academy membership is composed of approximately 2,100 members and 380 foreign associates, of whom nearly 200 have won Nobel Prizes. Members and foreign associates of the Academy are elected in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research; election to the Academy is considered one of the highest honors that can be accorded a scientist or engineer.”
VERSUS
WHICH of the following circa 180 inconsistent "alternative explanations"?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument...
In three years here, I have yet to encounter a truly skeptical "skeptic," so you could start an interesting new trend! Look forward to more questions after you do a little homework using PRO-science sources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_...
http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/...
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/timel...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_o...
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc...
http://jcmooreonline.com/2013/01/31/engi...
If the subject up for discussion is “does climate change exist” then that particular debate is settled, in so far as anything is ever scientifically settled.
Climate science is exceptionally complicated and its nascence means that there is still an awful lot to learn. By no stretch of the imagination do we understand all the intricacies and we probably won’t for a long time yet; there are still some quite fundamental areas of climatology that we are yet to get to grips with.
As the discipline evolves we will learn a great deal more, undoubtedly we will have to revise our current understanding in several areas, many new aspects of the climates will come to light.
Unless there is some truly incredulous breakthrough, possibly at the quantum energy level, that we can’t even imagine at this point in time, then the basic mechanics of global warming aren’t going to need revising and the debate as to whether we’re causing it will remain settled.
Where there is scope for genuine research and debate concerns the potential future impacts, how best we mitigate against them, what adaptive techniques we adopt and what, if any, control measures we instigate in order to reduce emissions.
Concerning the question of fossil fuels and future usage, they are of course a finite resource and we don’t really know when they’ll be depleted. Fossil fuel companies are notoriously guarded when it comes to stating known and potential reserves so we can only ever use a best estimate.
We do know of course that we’re now having to revisit deposits that were once rejected as being evonomically unviable. Unless there are substantial discoveries in the near future of hitherto unknown and reasonably accessible reserves, then the costs of fossil fuels are bound to escalate as we resort to increasingly inaccessible and ever more contaminated reserves.
Even if we had 50 years of oil remaining, that’s not really all that long and so we have limited time to completely break our dependency on oil. For power generation there are alternatives but so far there’s no real viable alternative for transportation.
We’ve been tinkering with electric cars since before the internal combustion engine but it’s only in recent decades that we’ve paid much attention to them, sparked initially by the oil crisis of the 70’s and 80’s. By about 1990 companies such as GM, Honda and Ford were producing electric vehicles, 24 years later and we’ve not really made much progress. If we keep going at the current rate then the oil will run out long before we’ve got a realistic alternative.
Carbon nanotubes is one potential solution but that’s in the early stages of development at present. If it delivers all that the developers promise then we may have our answer and in future all modes of transport could be powered by nanotubes. Potentially it will do away with engines as they will be replaced with motors, vehicles will be considerably lighter, a lot more powerful and there would be no emissions.
However, as a viable power source it’s probably decades away rather than years. In the mean-time we may have to look towards hydrogen fuel cells and other alternative fuels.
Generating our electricity from sources other than fossil fuels does of course have the very real possibility of fusion power. We know it works and unlike fission there’s no radioactive waste product, just helium gas (which would be useful as the world is running out of helium). The hold-up is centred on the containment issue of how to control the equivalent power of 100 of the world’s largest lasers all targeting one single point. This could be as little as ten years hence, but more realistically I think it likely to be about 30 years.
Do we need to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels? I believe that we do and with a sense of some urgency. Energy dependence is never a good thing and Ukraine has already shown what happens when you are dependent on imports, in this instance Russia cut of all supplies to Ukraine and to the pipelines that cross Ukraine and supply numerous European countries.
Personally I would like to see resources being directed toward nanotubes and fusion with the aim being to get these up and running on a global scale in the shortest possible time. Between the two they have the potential to supply the whole world with far more power than we could ever need and at a tiny fraction of the cost of fossil fuels or alternatives such as wind, solar, hydro etc. And therein lies the problem, they’re extremely cheap and that means that the power companies will be big losers, and they don’t like that.
I guess I am not understanding the crux of this global warming debate.
Fossil fuels are not a renewable resources, therefore we should only be using fossil fuels as a temporary measure and should be looking to power our countries using renewable resources.
Generally speaking I would think that we would want to make the transition within the next say 30 years to avoid any problems.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2012/07/09/how-many-years-of-oil-do-we-have-left-to-run-our-industrial-civilization-keeping-in-mind-that-oil-is-a-resource-and-has-an-economical-end/
Note that they have problems occurring in 50 years assuming we are at our peak consumption, which I would think is an incorrect assumption.
I truly have no idea how many problems climate change will cause. Some beachfront location,s that I am too poor to own, gets flooded a bit??? Maybe. But I can say that if I have to walk instead of use my car, I am going to have some real issues getting to my job 18 miles away.
So what are we really debating about??? Whether or not we move from fossil fuels? Probably not. How quickly we do? Possibly. But I don't see anyone talking about how quickly cap and trade would move us to fossil fuel independence.
So why debate the poorly understood science (and don't try to act like modeling out 100 years is an exact science)? Why not discuss how to accomplish the goal of fossil fuel independence???
You want to scare someone. Don't tell them the sea is rising at 3 mm/year, tell them they will have to walk to work. Now you have their undivided attention.
It's politics not science, people are thinking about the next term in office, about taxes and control over the population, everyone knows carbon tax or cap and trade are not going to reduce emissions.
renewables will not cut it, if we had any foresight we would be going flat out developing nuclear
The big push and REAL agenda is world socialism.
Oh, and to get rich off the taxpayers too, I almost forgot that one.
Top climate scientists say there is no man-made Global Warming.
The Great Global Warming Swindle
-Hard to Say. But big Al Gore has made quite a Career off of it... So there must be SOME-thing to all the "Hoop-la..." ;)
