[Vision2020] Human Induced Global Warming Skeptics Keep Up The Heat!

[Ted Moffett]

Paul et. al.

I'm a skeptic about most everything, but playing the odds is necessary in
life.  If I have a 50% chance of getting sick from eating contaminated fish,
I will avoid it, and would not let anyone I care about eat it, if I could
stop them, well, unless facing immediate starvation.  The current scientific
evidence that human induced global warming is a major crisis only getting
worse by the minute is closer to a 90% plus chance of truth.  Nothing to
play games with, given the massive global impact.

I won't labor on a response that attempts to significantly address what I
think are serious errors in the slant of your response, that I extract
below, to my post on "Human Induced Global Warming Skeptics."  I've already
given detailed documented responses on Vision2020 before, which you might
have read already, with references to numerous scientific studies that
answer your questions in detail.

I'll simply state that there is an overwhelming scientific consensus that
human induced global warming is a crisis which we are already facing with
measurable destructive climate change, that even if all human output of
green house gases stop now, these changes will continue to accelerate due to
the CO2 already released, with a life span of over 100 years it will remain
in the atmosphere, and that addressing the problem cannot happen too soon,
even for just economic reasons, given the economic costs of the problem as
it grows in magnitude.

We often hear that mitigating global warming is too damaging to the economy
and development, too disruptive of standards of living and lifestyle, but
this economic damage will only be greater in the long term if we delay.
Actually, there is a potential boom economy in transitioning to the Green
Revolution of alternative energy technologies, and waiting till D.C. is
under water seems rather fatalistic and absurd.  The fossil fuel companies
should reinvest in these technologies.  British Petroleum already has taken
the lead in this effort among all oil corporations.  Change to Green energy
technologies is going to happen, and businesses can adapt or go the way of
the horse and buggy.

I will say, however, that I am a skeptic that oil and other forms of fossil
fuel are going to deplete as soon as some warn.  I can probably drive that
Hummer well into the next century, possibly with modifications to burn
various kinds of fossil fuel, if we go after all the potential oil
sources and other forms of fossil fuel with improvements in technology,
etc.

Your other reasons to not drive the Hummer apart from the threat of global
warming are manageable problems, though driving the Hummer still has other
major negative environmental impacts.  You mention direct air pollution
harming peoples health, but this problem is less than it was in the 1960s!
I breathed the air in L. A. in the 1960s, as it also burned my eyes, and now
the air in L. A. is cleaner, even with more cars and trucks; pollution
control technology, no more leaded gas (can you imagine?).  Diesel engines
are burning cleaner fuel now, with improved pollution controls available.
 Even coal plants can now be built to emit much less pollution.  And the
Iraq mess was avoidable as a threat to access to Iraq's oil.   Saddam would
have continued to sell his oil to world markets.  He damn well wanted the
revenue, and his country was under strict watch for any further
expansionism.  Saddam was already doing the dirty work of keeping the
warring fanatic religious fundamentalist tribes under control, with brutal
horrible tactics, as we all know. The French and the Germans had oil
contracts with Saddam when we invaded, remember?  This is one reason often
cited for why the French and the Germans were so suspect, because they were
doing oil business with Saddam.  Doing business with the devil, as Donald
Rumsfeld did during the Iraq/Iran war!  I'm not saying the Middle East is
not a threat to cause an oil crisis hitting the world economy.  It is.  I'm
just saying the invasion of Iraq made the problem worse!

There is a lot of potentially recoverable oil that has not been discovered,
and methane hydrates are another potential source of fossil fuel that has
gigantic potential, amounting to more than double the stored carbon of all
conventional fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) combined.  I read an
analysis by a climate scientist who outlined that if the human race exploits
all possible fossil fuel sources on Earth, including methane hydrates,
atmospheric CO2 will rise to over 1000 ppm, inducing a climate and
biosphere unrecognizable compared to the world we live in.

Technology to extract CO2 directly out of the atmosphere is possible, but
potentially very costly, with a potential CO2 storage problem of massive
proportions.  We are talking about storing billions of tons of CO2 to remove
what the human race emits into the atmosphere.  The CO2 storage problem is
already being faced as a road block for the wide scale roll out of CO2
sequestration for coal power, which has been addressed before the US
Congress this year.  It might be cheaper and more practical to block solar
radiation to cool the climate, via injecting sulfur into the upper
atmosphere, or placing mirrors in orbit.  Also, iron dumped into the ocean
can induce the growth of algae that can remove huge amounts of atmospheric
CO2.  James Hansen from NASA suggests we build huge biofuel plants that also
use CO2 sequestration technology, creating CO2 extracting fuel, not just CO2
neutral.

But what I find interesting is that while the global warming skeptics place
a high degree of proof demands on the scientific evidence for human caused
warming, they sometimes lose their skepticism and level of proof demands
when tossing out what are posed as easy technology solutions to the problem
that allow us to continue the fossil fuel energy orgy. The most
easy and affordable solution may be dramatically lowering our CO2 output, as
we develop non CO2 emitting and/or non fossil fuel energy technology, which
eventually we must have anyway, no matter how long the Earth's fossil fuels
will last.

But back to fossil fuel depletion and my Hummer (I do like driving big rigs,
but I will never buy a Hummer), cars and trucks can run on other forms of
fossil fuels besides those from oil, like methane hydrates.  And if they
figure out how to economically extract and process the oil shales in
Wyoming, Utah and Colorado, if I have my facts correct, the USA will have
the largest oil reserves of any nation on the planet.  However, developing
the technology and processes to extract and use the oil shales and methane
hydrates as energy sources may never become economically practical.

Web site on the huge oil shale potential in Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah:

http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/reserves/publications/Pubs-NPR/40010-373.pdf

Ted Moffett


> However, I don't know that we know that it's all that bad.  It's a
> complicated topic, with too many variables to model easily.  Sure, the
> glaciers are melting.  How much of that has to do with the fact that we are
> coming out of an ice age?  How much effect does a few decades of higher CO2
> levels have?  How much does the extra moisture in the air affect things?
> How many processes do we have yet to discover that help or hinder global
> warming?  It could very well be as bad as they say, but it's a hard decision
> to make to radically change our quality of life when it may not be needed in
> the end.
>

   Paul

Ted Moffett wrote:

>   All:
>
> That subject line is a joke, but I'm not laughing.
>
> I saw a sponsored link to "The Heartland Institute," with a lot of global
> warming skeptic claims, on my gmail Google account, so I investigated.
> "Sponsored" means they are paying to have the link featured prominently, of
> course.  It appears they have a mountain of evidence that the thousands of
> scientists warning of serious human induced global warming are off in la, la
> land!  And what was really amazing was that they are a "free market"
> libertarian institute!  Well, OK, this is not so amazing.  This is just what
> you would expect.  As Eugene Linden, author of "The Winds of Change," said,
> "Human caused global warming is a libertarian nightmare."
>
> For the human induced global warming skeptics on Vision2020, surveying
> this info might be interesting.  Maybe they are right?!
>
> I'm buying a Hummer tomorrow and driving coast to coast as often as
> possible for the shear fun and joy of burning fossil fuels!  Yee-Haw!  Now
> where's my own personal Middle East oil well?  Let's free up those markets!
>
> This website will reveal what biased politically tainted money corrupted
> scientific idiots all those scientists warning of human induced global
> warming really are:
>
> http://www.heartland.org/PolicyBotTopic.cfm?artTopic=704
>
> ----
> Ted Moffett
>
>
>
>
>
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