If the science is settled why isn't anything substantial being done about global warming? Restating positions with charts and graphs does little to address the problem. It seems to me that everyone is waiting for
someone else to do something about it. So with everyone sitting on their hands the science becomes irrelevant, doesn't it?
Because the world's economy depends on getting work accomplished at the lowest cost for the manpower put in.
Think of it this way. You need to haul a load of bricks to build a house with your pickup truck. You get paid by the hour.
Now convert that pickup truck to Solar power with panels or wind power with a sail. See how your productivity decreases when you move away from gasoline power? Suddenly my house costs 5 times as much to build.
Fossil fuels provide the greatest amount of work done at the least amount of effort. It's true that the US
could convert all current housing to run on passive solar heating and wood burning stoves. So the US
could reduce it's use of fossil fuels. By doing that. But emerging countries where most of humanity lives, are just now looking forward to having heated homes, cars, and ipads and lawn mowers.
The best options for reducing GH gasses is for the US to give up it's cars, and the rest of the world to put central heating dreams, cars, and electricity desires on hold. The US is not likely to do it, nor can we ask other countries to give up their desire to have the dream lifestyle that we are not likely to give up anyway.
- Then there is another factor. We could do all that and it might not work. One possibility is that the climate has been started on a cycle of it's own.
If fact, it's quit likely. Whether or not greenhouse gasses kicked a warmup, it may be a standard global cycle that must run it's course. So we could send the entire globe into a depression for no good reason. And keep in mind, we already eliminated all use of fossil fuel and there is no active economy in the world. Now we need to deal with moving people to better climates and out of flood zones....where most of the population lives.
And build new housing and transportation for everyone that is zero emmission. And build it without using fuel.
I have a theory we already have.
Just talking about reducing greenhouse gases has given us our current global recession because most economic models have concluded that "Confidence" is the greatest factor in the world economy. You can't have efficient production of anything without investment upfront. And if you predict the end of fossil fuel use.....nobody invests in the future. Would you invest in a factory that takes 5 years to build if the cost of everything will double?
- Then there is another possibility. That greenhouse gasses trail the change in temperature rather than lead it. That the earth is warming and co2 normally increases when that happens.
- That leads to another possibility. That the normal cycle of temperature swings for the planet is returning to it's normally chaotic state. I think this last one is the most accurate.
I'm not interested in a world wide recession just to test out the other possibilities.
