re: #389 swamprat

You realize that bio-diversity increases in warmer climes?
Warmth means less fuel consumed. And claiming carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas is absurd; It is measured in parts per million and it hasn’t warmed mars much. We have to call call carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas because there is no other way to use this current fad to gain power. We are too good at reducing real pollutants, so the global bogeyman became carbon dioxide. You know, the stuff that we exhale. The stuff plants need to live. The stuff that is a very tiny fraction of the atmosphere. The stuff that other countries will not be required to use to hobble their industry.

If we buy into global warming, the way the dogma is written now, our industry moves further overseas and we are unemployed. Capishe?

I will completely disagree. If our energy generation moves to nuclear instead of coal as our baseline production, then wind and solar can make up the difference when it is needed (when the sun is shining and when the wind is blowing- i.e. when it is hot). Will this take an investment of beaucoup bucks in transmission systems? You bet!

But here is a basic fact:

Coal and oil are extractive tech. We have 200 years of coal available. Then what? We have maybe 300 years of oil available, and given that some of our most productive fields have production crashing (see Mexico) then what? These are finite resources and have uses well beyond electrical generation, as in fertilizers and plastics. These energy sources will become more and more expensive in the future. Why not make the shift now and retain these resources for future use? Isn’t that a win/win?