re: #1 Cato the Elder

I’ve seen this before, and I’m relatively certain it was here at LGF, though not as a post. It’s a good argument.

Now, if someone could tell me what “immediate action” involves, and maybe send me a list of ten things to do immediately that don’t involve money I don’t have, I’d be grateful.

It’s not that good an argument. The defect is that if this argument automatically wins, all the guy arguing for whatever measures needs to do is paint the alternative to his favorite action as over the top bad.

There isn’t anything to do that comes without cost. Many of the things being advocated cost a lot and achieve nothing much. What we can do is think through the steps that if taken would make a difference, and then look at the costs of those. Some steps have quite modest costs. Suppose, just for example, that we can advance the science of solar energy to the point that it just beats coal. At that point, the problem of AGW is solved because nobody wants to burn coal anyhow.

If we can come fairly close, then we can abstain from coal without its costing us badly. In this scenario, our second best energy source, costwise, isn’t all that much more expensive.

Another point is that there are costs associated with putting a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere that aren’t in doubt. Extra CO2 acidifies the ocean. Period. Even a modest increase in temperatures causes sea levels to rise some. Again, the cost of that is calculable. We should put that against the cost of burning coal. Burning coal requires mining it, and that is costing a lot of lives. The pollution that comes with the burning costs more lives.

So we don’t have to come to even-steven, solar vs. coal, to make it economical to go with solar from the point of view of overall benefit.