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The full life-cycle GHG emissions of nuclear power is extremely low, comparable to wind and solar. Check this figure from the IPCC: http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/repor... Read the wikipedia write-up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... I wrote about this a while back using a WNA meta-study: http://www.dailykos.com/storie... There's this persistent myth among the anti-nuclear greens that nuclear power is a big CO2 emitter, but it's based on cherry-picking some discredited studies and ignoring anything that contradicts what you want to believe. This is really no better than the way the global warming denialists rely on minor figures like Singer and Seitz.

Back in 2006, then outgoing network news anchor Ted Koppel wrote a New York Times editorial stating the obvious: The Iraq war is about oil. And though the Bush Administration at the time had vociferously denied this fact, two years before that even former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil had said the same during a CBS interview.

So now Panetta's saying it will be a thirty year war. Prepare ourselves for lost treasure, spilled blood, and the tears of war over this nearly indefinite period that compares in length to England's old The War of Roses. All to control a declining resource that's causing serious global environmental harm to boot.

Who here notices that this 30 year timeline dovetails in nicely with the UN's IPCC's Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation

Scenarios generally indicate that growth in RE [Renewable Energy] will be widespread around the world. Although the precise
distribution of RE deployment among regions varies substantially across scenarios, the scenarios are largely consistent
in indicating widespread growth in RE deployment around the globe. In addition, the total RE deployment is higher over
the long term in the group of non-Annex I countries12 than in the group of Annex I countries in most scenarios (Figure
SPM.10).

[chart in document]

Scenarios generally indicate that growth in RE will be widespread around the world. Although the precise
distribution of RE deployment among regions varies substantially across scenarios, the scenarios are largely consistent
in indicating widespread growth in RE deployment around the globe. In addition, the total RE deployment is higher over
the long term in the group of non-Annex I countries12 than in the group of Annex I countries in most scenarios (Figure
SPM.10).

So a thirty year war to control world oil that ends at just about the same time global deployment of renewable systems are predicted to offset world energy needs. Huh.

China's per capita emissions are the same as Europe's. Read the linked IPCC WGIII report. http://www.ipcc-wg3.de/assessm... You have to read the actual report, not the Summary for Policy Makers. China wanted the facts about its emissions buried.

Non-Annex I countries (as listed in the Kyoto Protocol) are becoming the main contributors to cumulative emissions just as climate change has turned dangerous, that makes their emissions the cause of dangerous climate change.

Maybe it's just late, but can you to link directly to your source (pdf?) and maybe throw in a page reference for good measure

The larger tariffs could be used to assist with adaptation costs in countries with low per capita emissions where vulnerability to dangerous climate change is high.

China's per capita emissions are lower than Europe (as a whole and many individual countries) and much lower than the USA.
I don't think per capita is the measure you want to be using.

I'd suggest that there should be a ramped approach. First, we should acknowledge that dangerous climate change has come early and we are already suffering damages. The growth in Federal crop and flood insurance payouts is owing to the effects of climate change. Instead of increasing premiums, we should use climate damage tariffs to cover this increase. That amounts to a pretty small tariff, but it firmly establishes the liability connection. Non-Annex I countries (as listed in the Kyoto Protocol) are becoming the main contributors to cumulative emissions just as climate change has turned dangerous, that makes their emissions the cause of dangerous climate change. An accident of timing? Yes. But deliberately increasing emissions, as China is doing, eliminates safe harbor as well.

This small tariff could be used as a stepping stone to larger tariffs imposed cooperatively with other Annex I countries if China does not turn around. The larger tariffs could be used to assist with adaptation costs in countries with low per capita emissions where vulnerability to dangerous climate change is high. Lack of a clear funding mechanism for this sort of thing has been a sticking point at climate negotiations. This would essentially get funds from those who are causing the damage."

How about you detail some of these proposed measures?

Considering that this includes everything from economic measures to encourage conservation of carbon-based fuels to alternative sources of energy to CO2 recapture, you are asking for a book-length treatise. But you can readily find this kind of information on the web (a good starting point would be the IPCC Report on Mitigation of Climate Change. None of them involve large-scale release of greenhouse gasses other than CO2. Which particular measures do you imagine would worsen global warming.

Or, at least, admit that CO2 and methane are not the only possible causes of global warming, even if they're the only two currently-acting factors you are willing to recognize right now?

If you are talking about things that could theoretically affect climate, but that have been conclusively excluded as the cause of the current warming, that is also a long list. A good starting point is the IPCC Report on the Physical Basis of Climate Change

It's not just cars and power generation that release CO2, many industrial processes (which I keep mentioning and you keep ignoring) release CO2 and, in fact, the mere act of breathing releases a fair bit of it.

Some proposed strategies for mitigating CO2 emissions involve some form of fee for CO2 release, which would apply to industrial processes as well as fossil fuel burning. An advantage of this kind of approach (which has been proved successful for mitigating other pollutants) is that this creates an economic incentive for carbon conservation--the most critical (and valuable) uses of carbon will remain, while those that for which more economic substitutes are available will be replaced.

Breathing is not really a factor in the current increase in atmospheric CO2--the total amount of respiratory CO2 release on earth simply has not increased that much.

So we can switch to all nuclear/solar/wind/hydro power, each of which has its own, different, ecological impact that may, on the scale required to meet our current and future power demands, contribute to global warming just as much as the CO2 released from our current power production methods. To wit, the solar cell on your calculator does about as much for global warming as the CO2 in the breath I just exhaled; scale that solar cell up to what would be required to meet the world's power demands.

Sorry, but this is nonsense. These sources of energy contribute appreciably to global warming only to the extent that fossil fuels are involved in their production. If you are worried about waste heat, (a) this is negligible compared to the huge solar energy flux that CO2 affects, and (b) is equally a factor for fossil fuel energy plus the increased retention of solar energy due to CO2.

In fact, it's likely that many of these processes (such as smelting[*4] metals to create wind/hydro turbines and batteries used in electric cars[*5], refining uranium to generate nuclear power[*6], and refining silicon to a degree suitible for solar cell production) may not even have non-CO2-producing counterparts[*7]. So, do we just do away with those processes and the things they allow us to create[*8]?

You are getting silly again. Power to do things like smelting can be obtained from multiple sources, it need not require CO2 production. Anyway, nobody is proposing that every single source of CO2 emissions must be eliminated, just that emissions need to be substantially reduced, so this is a fairly idiotic straw man. In any case, the dominant source of CO2 emissions is power generation. There is no conceivable plausible scenario in which carbon-sparing manufacturing technologies could result in more carbon release.