re: #78 Decatur Deb

The complexity of human modifications to our pre-existing surroundings is enormous, and I greatly doubt that there is any single “solution”.

We could spend all day here trying to just figure out what the cost of a single effect of AGW, say increased fall precipitation in the upper mid-west, accumulates to… much less trying find ways to mitigate that.

We will have to lie in the bed we make.

I mention to LVQ (to his chagrin) that I believe we need to be in triage mode at this point. I also believe (though can not prove beyond any doubt) that our social momentum, the inherent group decision making process we have created over the past millennium or so, is going to take us places we otherwise would not want to go.

There is no easy answer to the replacement of oil products for transportation. Modernity is now built upon electricity and it would take a generation (40 years) to replace the coal fueled electricity generating plants with nuclear.

So, in abating AGW, the choice before us is how messy of bed (in which we must lie) we are willing to accept.