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<div>Paul et. al.</div>
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<div>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.
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<div>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.
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<div>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.
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<div>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.
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<div>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.
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<div>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!
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<div>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.
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<div>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.
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<div>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.
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<div>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.
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<div>Web site on the huge oil shale potential in Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah:</div>
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<div><a href="http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/reserves/publications/Pubs-NPR/40010-373.pdf">http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/reserves/publications/Pubs-NPR/40010-373.pdf</a></div>
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<div>Ted Moffett</div>
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<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff">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.
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<div> Paul<br><br>Ted Moffett wrote: </div>
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<blockquote cite="http://midd03f69e0707051455x1946569ftd6154979ff7489e2@mail.gmail.com" type="cite">
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<div>All:</div>
<div><br>That subject line is a joke, but I'm not laughing.</div>
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<div>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."
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<div>For the human induced global warming skeptics on Vision2020, surveying this info might be interesting. Maybe they are right?! </div>
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<div>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!
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<div>This website will reveal what biased politically tainted money corrupted scientific idiots all those scientists warning of human induced global warming really are:</div>
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<div><a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://www.heartland.org/PolicyBotTopic.cfm?artTopic=704" target="_blank">http://www.heartland.org/PolicyBotTopic.cfm?artTopic=704</a></div>
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<div>Ted Moffett</div><span>
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