This is about how to secure the American economy and national security for the future and ensure we aren't held hostage to regions of the world that are nothing short of barbaric and would do anything to see the U.S. destroyed. Any Republican worth his salt would do everything in their power to become energy independent for those reasons alone. Solving global warming is a nice fringe benefit. If putting your priorities in that order makes you feel better, then do it. Ultimately, though, I believe that everyone will eventually realize that solving global warming should have been the entire world's first priority, but if everyone focuses on the very real short term priorities of economy and national security, then that should be good enough reasons to go green and get off the oil.
If our politicians, of any stripe, were worth a damn they'd secure our southern border. Climate models are quite complex yet if you run them for awhile they spin out of control with unrealistic results - leading you to believe some mitigation factors for moderating the temperature are not yet in the models. I posted links to a story regarding critical reviews of climate models in Science magazine that make that exact case for the unreliability of the models used today.
Regardless of the models the planets temperature is actually at a low point and it's reasonable to assume it will naturally go up with/without mankinds assistance. The case for man made global warming is still unclear, but natural warming is clear from the historical/geological record - without man's contribution so many times in the past.
As I've stated many times I think we should search for alternative fuels to free ourselves from funding nutball regimes around the world - but any real (read acceptable) solution is decades away. If you believe in the Peak Oil claims, we only have 20+ years of oil remaining so this problem of CO2 from burning oil will (without our choice) come to a fairly rapid end. By the way several oil companys are investing in solar, it appears they want to be energy providers no matter the form - so the conspiracy theories are sort of lame.
The only viable, large scale, alternative technology today is nuclear power to replace the oil we use. Do you think the country has the balls for that? Eventually we could turn to solar, but all indications are that's it's just not ready and has several undesirable attributes like large areas of land required and distances from consumer to collection and transmission. Co-locating solar arrays near growing cities and you eventually run into land use conflicts.
Another interesting point of data is the fact the poles and glaciers are melting all over the world, yet Al Gore claims that will cause 20 feet higher oceans. The IPCC's team claims 1 or 2 feet, yet the actual increase for the last hundred years has been a straight line of 1-4 inches - you would at least expect that one data point to align with the CO2 hockey stick, but it doesn't appear to be making a dent. Where has all the ice water gone and why has the ocean not risen over the last few decades.
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