When there is still ice on the north pole in 5 years - what then?
There will be ice in Greenland in 5 years. There is a phenomenal amount of ice up there, in Antarctica and in various glaciers around the world, and it is highly unlikely that it will all melt in 5 years. That is what makes it such a tricky problem. "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." Well, that is nonsense--I think at least that we can agree on that. They don't matter until they matter. And at some point they will matter a lot. Likewise with CO2 and the climate. I would MUCH prefer to spend money on education, health care, and infrastructure needs (not to mention developing world projects) than changing the way we get energy. What a waste! It is so convenient to just dig up all that fossil fuel that was created over millions of years from dead plants and other living things hundreds of millions years ago, and use it. Convenient, at least, now that we have all those sunk costs already invested in the infrastructure for exploration, recovery, refining, and distribution. Unhappily, I think that the people who say that CO2 doesn't cause warming, that it "follows" warming, are fos--they don't understand how feedbacks work.
We went over the problem with nuclear on the Center thread months ago. The articles I posted there claimed that the plants simply can't be constructed quickly enough, there are all sorts of bottlenecks, and they aren't economical. Really, I don't want to get into that discussion again. It is just a waste of our time to get into it.
You seem rational and tolerant of my sometimes strong statements. I only ask you to consider all of the aspects of what you think should be a major world concern.
I at least try to consider all perspectives. When you posted an article months ago on coal sequestration from a source I thought was credible (I think it was some MIT study, but am not sure), I read it, and several others as well, all of which were depressing to me because they did indeed show that clean coal is an oxymoron for now and for at least a couple of decades barring some major breakthrough that no one is holding their breath for. |
