"Climate Change Tourists" Go Home!
All the useless dialog on global warming makes me want to yank my hair out in frustration. The Las Vegas Review-Journal published my letter on this issue today..
reviewjournal.com
Let's get realistic about global warming
Partisans on both sides need to take rational approach
To the editor:
All the back and forth finger-pointing on global warming is just so much "he said, she said," missing the crux of the issue while remaining blind to real, practical solutions. In this instance, it is possible to have your cake and eat it too, with the proper course of action.
What the apocalyptic doomsayers and Kumbaya singers of the Al Gore persuasion always fail to mention are the real-world consequences of their global warming "solutions." Idiotic carbon dioxide emission mandates and lawsuits against car companies, such as the ones recently initiated in California, are so much touchy-feely nonsense, accomplishing nothing and costing plenty, including jobs (except for the trial lawyers, of course). You won't catch China engaging in such stupidity.
Time for a politically incorrect reality check: The vast majority of the world's energy comes from fossil fuels, and that will be the case for the near and intermediate future. Why? Because they work much better and cheaper than any current alternative, in spite of recent price hikes. And there are luckily enough off-shore and North Slope crude oil, coal, shale and tar sand deposits here in North America to supply our future needs for many decades, if political impediments to their development can ever be removed.
Indeed, there are no magical, practical alternatives available, either now or ready to appear overnight, on anywhere near the scale needed to replace carbon-based energy sources for some time to come. The "inconvenient" truth of the matter is that until that future alternative energy date does arrive, to realistically attempt to reduce carbon usage and emissions to the point needed to return atmospheric CO2 to pre-industrial levels would utterly destroy economies, worldwide. Literally, lights out and widespread starvation would result.
On the other hand, those who would close their eyes to the fact that CO2 levels are increasing and global temperatures are rising are dismissing empirical confirming evidence. The extent to which the former is responsible for the latter is indeed unknown, but ignoring the reality that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions could conceivably create negative ramifications for the climate down the road is playing an unnecessary crapshoot with possible environmental consequences that future generations might be quite displeased to inherit.
Fortunately, real solutions can be found, although they get little or no mention in the midst of all the heated (pun intended) rhetoric being spewed on this issue. Focusing on significantly reducing atmospheric CO2 creation is barking up the wrong tree. Such emissions will inevitably increase as the world continues to develop, in spite of silly non-solutions such as the Kyoto Treaty. It's the virtually ignored, but promising and exciting carbon capture and sequestration technologies -- ones that can realistically lower CO2 levels -- that need top priority for quick implementation. A lot can be accomplished at a reasonable cost.
Devices such as the artificial tree designed by Klaus Lackner, a scientist with The Earth Institute at Columbia University, will be able to actually reduce greenhouse gas levels as they extract huge amounts of CO2 directly from the air as it flows over chemical absorbents. The captured CO2 can then be safely sequestered using several possible methods. Air capture of CO2 would enable the current and economically necessary fossil fuel-based energy infrastructure to continue while also reducing atmospheric CO2 concentration, providing ample time for the eventual development of new practical energy sources.
It's time to wake up and pursue realistic solutions to reducing greenhouse gas levels, ones that address the issue without destroying economies and standards of living. Carbon capture and sequestration technologies already exist that are doable today and will become cheaper and more effective in the future, if attention and resources are directed toward them. I'd be willing to cough up a little more at the gas pump and pay a higher monthly power bill to see such technologies deployed. Actually, the money currently wasted on ethanol subsidy boondoggles could probably get much accomplished along these lines.
There's no reason for growth and prosperity to be sacrificed on the alter of global warming hyperbole. Pull the excess CO2 out of the air and let mother nature then do as she will with the climate.
James Bowers |
