National Academy of Sciences: Now We're Cookin'

matroid writes: "Today the National Academy of Sciences released their review of the IPCC's global warming diatribe finding that, except for the tremendously alarmist language in the document, the report is accurate. "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise." An article in the NYTimes is here. Maybe I shouldn't have bought that coal-based UPS after all ..."

Comments

Re:You want a policy?

[selectspec]

I agree with you on efficiency, hybrid cars, better technologies. Let me draw a line between conservation from efficeincy and conservation from restraint. I do not believe in the latter. I think we need to increase the available energy per/person as a society. However, if energy taxes, tax credits, and international treaties will make us use that energy more efficiently, I am for it.

The real problem is that we are incredibly dependant on fossil fuels. To claim, that conservation by restraint (or frankly even by efficeincy) will reverse the problem in the atmosphere is without basis (unless drastic, draconian measures were taken, i.e. 65-70% global reductions). Even with the Kyoto agreement, C02 levels would be expected to double the levels of 1995 between 2050-2070. Cars only produce 1/3 of the C02. Even if we could move all cars and trucks to electric-hybrids, the resulting CO2 levels would only be about 15%. That would still get us on track for a C02 doubling this century.

I agree with you that our leadership lacks the political balls to really address this issue. It would take a benevolant dictator I think to really address this issue. The first issue that needs to be addressed is the nuclear power issue. What is more dangerous? Radioactive Waste or a 10 foot sea level increase. Nuclear of course is no where close to a complete answer. It is expensive, and not appropriate for the third world. We need a massive (manhattan project + Apollo + WWII + Genome) international collition of scientists. Yank all of those engineers in Russia and the US working on the space program, all those engineers working on free software, all of the engineers working on whatever, and get them in a room to work this issue out. We spend 6% of the US government's budget on an orbiting vegitable garden (US international space station). The US gov spends less than 0.01% researching alternative energies. Time to let that bucket of useless crap fall into the ocean and put all of those people to work doing something productive (except for their budget managers who are fired).