John and Jojo,
It is apparent that the two of you are not going to agree on the path to take and therefore it would be advantageous for you to settle down and treat each other with due respect. I am hesitant to enter into the fray because the water is looking pretty deep and muddy. There are reasons to avoid spending the immense sums of capital in an effort to slow down the global warming that is perceived by most of the climatologists. This situation reminds me of a war in many ways. Much of the domestic production can be diverted toward items or systems that are redundant and end up being destroyed. I am sure that the hundreds of thousands of planes, trucks, tanks, and so forth replaced refrigerators, stoves, cars and other domestic consumption items that were not produced. Each of the domestic things would have made someone's life a bit easier, but were not built for obvious reasons. When something as expensive as wind turbines are produced to replace less expensive coal fired electricity production then that money is not available to use for productive purposes. People make a case for the jobs that are created to build these beasts, but those same folks could be producing cars. Usually, if it takes some form of incentive to make a desired thing happen, then that proves that the desired outcome has a cost associated with it. Production of items of this sort are no better than busy work for extra government spending projects. Of course on occasions this is just what the country needs to achieve reasonable employment numbers. John, you must admit that Jojo has a point about proving that a problem truly exists before excess expense and time is dedicated to solving it. I expect that you could dream up many possible scenarios of problems that might arise if you made an effort to do so. For instance, everyone is convinced that one day soon a major earthquake will hit the west coast of the US. If we applied the same logic to this possibility as to the global warming issue, then it is time to force everyone to move out of that area or rebuild every house that is not capable of withstanding a large earthquake. I doubt that it would cost more to fix the earthquake problem than what you propose for global warming. In the case of global warming fears time is on our side. The worse case expectation that might occur by the end of the century is a long way into the future. None of us will be around to worry about it I suspect, but we do need to worry about our grandchildren. We all brag about the new technology that is going to improve the Earth in the future, but some seem to have little real belief in what they predict. Why would anyone be so negative about what can be achieved during such a long time frame? Look at what has been developed within the last 50 years alone. Go back 100 years and the world looks very different than today. Electronics has come of age, space travel is real, radio is now everywhere and used by everyone. First, tubes were discovered and then replaced by solid state devices. Computers are prevalent now, but only in their dreams back then. The world is not even close to how it was 100 years ago, so why assume that it will not improve significantly during the next 100? New processes and technologies will be developed that we have no clue of at this point. Our best solutions to global warming now will most likely look ignorant in just a few decades. I suspect that the future generations will laugh at our stupidity if we shoulder ourselves with immense costs now when the cost might be insignificant later if a little time is allowed to pass and truly good solutions discovered. And of course, if there is really no problem to begin with as many think, then the future peoples will not be burdened by our quick. ignorant attempts at fixes today. People within this group should realize that LENR is just around the corner and will most likely eliminate the problem by itself with no necessary action toward carbon controls. Let me mention one example that demonstrates how fast technology can solve problems. Do you recall the human genome project and what transpired? In the beginning no one knew how to sequence genes quickly since it had not been done on a large scale. The first group under government control worked diligently for many years by using a process that was less than intelligent. This was unfortunately the only way that was understood at that time. They came up with an answer at great cost. Toward the end of the task a private group had a brilliant idea about breaking the material into small pieces and then assembling them into the whole. This stroke of genius worked orders of magnitude faster than the other approach. Now, the old technique is history as it should be. I believe that the future solutions to the assumed global warming crisis will be subject to the same technological improvements as the gene sequencing. If LENR does not solve the problem, then something else will come along. Have faith in our guys! Do not cry that the sky is falling in 100 years and do great harm to the poor people of the world, get to work figuring out how to support the sky and stop complaining. Does anyone in this list actually believe that humanity is not capable of inventing the way out of it's problems? If you are correct, then this will be the first time in human history that it has come true. I chuckle at the concept that there are no new technologies that are awaiting that serendipitous discovery that comes along every few years out of the blue. You and I do not know what it is at the moment, but it will come around like clockwork. I am almost afraid that carbon will become valuable as it is stripped from the air to build carbon based items for future generations. We may have to tax the use of the gas to ensure that plants do not go lacking. It is not too far of a stretch to think that building materials constructed of carbon fibers aka nano tubes will consume too much of the stuff and force us to mine more coal just to replace that fixed by industry. Dave
