re: #394 Korla Pundit

> So the solution to a worldwide problem should be free of cost, or else it’s not valid? Why not? Doesn’t everything cost money, much less fixing crises?

Whether or not the evidence points to AGW or not, the evidence that the proposed cap-and-trade disaster would actually solve anything is, to be polite, nonexistent.

Show me a real solution to something, even if I have my own doubts about the reality of the problem. If it makes sense, I would get behind it. But if it is something that would cause massive economic problems, on top of the ones we already have, and not even have a non-financial ecological manifestation (ie, actually cutting carbon emissions to any relevant degree), then we can talk. But just throwing money at alarmists doesn’t do squat.

First come up with the solution. Then find a way to pay for it. Don’t just propose taking my money, or costing me my job, without a concrete benefit to somebody other than the tax collector.

I propose

(1) More efficient buildings. Make them so the natural sunshine will fall through windows in winter, be shaded out in summer. Include thermal mass so they don’t heat up or cool rapidly. There are all sorts of tricks here.

(2) Build many nuclear power plants, all on the same proven design. Go ahead with the Nevada waste site, or just store waste on site and let the shorter-lived isotopes half-life to harmlessness. Nuclear power generates no CO2.

(3) Build more wind farms. Combine this with automatic right of way for the transmission lines.

(4) Solar power isn’t ready yet for the big tent. Fast track R&D. When it arrives, then build massive solar power farms in AZ and NM, as well as distributed solar wherever the user is remote from the grid.

(5) Spend some thought and then some money on mitigation. Expect more severe fire seasons in the west, for instance. Permit preemptive burns and clearing of brush from places that present the greatest fire risk. Forbid residential development in areas that are likely to burn and very hard to defend. If hurricanes are a worry [there is no evidence of this at the moment], take similar steps with respect to coastal development. If rising sea levels are expected, refrain from building very large and very permanent structures at elevations less than 6 meters above sea level—unless they would pay for themselves before the sea could rise that much.

(6) Encourage more efficient vehicles, home lighting, appliances, and so on. Efficiency makes sense whether AGW is a problem or not, after all.

(7) If for some reason [I don’t see a good one] you conclude to try to drive down consumption of coal, do it with a bit of respect for the free market. Put a tax on emissions of CO2. The tax falls on the user, who is free to pass it on to consumers if they will pay rather than switch to some non-fossil source. This way, we can at least retreat from fossil fuel use in a rational manner, abandoning first the uses of coal that give the least bang for the CO2 buck.