Dr House wrote:Let me tell you something about the cost of energy. It's related to EROEI, Ultimately pollution is waste, which is expensive.
Only if you're held accountable for said waste, ensuring the cost is paid by the polluter. Otherwise the cost is transferred onto the world at large.
Geothermal energy is not expensive, but it is only available in limited locations. Solar energy requires the use of energy-intensive rare earth minerals, as do (for example) electric cars. Those may not burn CO2 at the front end, but they burn tons of it at the back end, during manufacturing. In fact, an electric car saves roughly... $35 worth of CO2 emissions through its working life, and costs thousands of dollars more.
All of which is why government R&D invests in it, to find ways to make it more efficient, until rare earth metals can be procured using clean energy themselves. Geothermal is less ideal because it does also emit CO2, though it's a vastly cleaner source than fossil fuels. Solar is ideal but costly.
I agree that electric cars are mostly an example of greenwashing, so does most of the left. They're a step in the right direction, far from a cure if the electricity is still ultimately procured from fossil fuels, coal, or other climate-destructive energy sources.
However, the other thing advancing technology and innovation does that you haven't thought of, is make processes energy-efficient. CO2 emissions from cars and planes have declined so much that cows are about tied with cars as the leading greenhouse gas emitter.
We haven't seen the observable impact of this, evidently they're not doing enough. Might want to have big bad gubbermint marshal some resources.
By the way, what problems?
Oh cool, a denier website. Totally more trustworthy than NASA, the NOAA, the UN, and the vast bulk of the scientific community. Are you just going to pump out whatever source agrees with your prefabricated position, or what?
But this is a popular claim, so let me give it the attention it's due. Satellite measurements do not measure surface temperature. Likewise, these measurements were taken with satellites funded by Exxon and owned by deniers John Christy and Roy Spencer. Our surface temperature data comes from sources like the NOAA and NASA, and they show accelerating warming.
And to answer your question: the ones already mentioned. Ice cap fluctuations. Phytoplankton shrinkage. These have impacts on how everyone lives, day to day, and ultimately human survival.
Why would I be? The IPCC estimates the long-term impact of AGW to be a equivalent to a rounding error,
The PDF does not say this. So I'm curious about whether you made that up, or the denier source you got that claim and a link you didn't read from did.
and technology is advancing sufficiently fast that it isn't even that.
Again, you've given no proof of this.
The only thing I'm serious about is the very concrete economic damage that environmental alarmism has caused.
And I'm serious about the very concrete damage to life that will happen as a result of climate change. Including, by the way, economic damage with increased natural disasters and formerly habitable places becoming not. The Inland Empire here in California is a big investment that'll go up in smoke.
There's also the economic capacity lost to strict environmental rules (70s emissions controls basically set back manufacturing and engine technology in general two decades. The power-to-emissions ratio took until about the late 90s to catch up).
Boohoo, the pace of growth will have to slow slightly. I'm so angry that we have to actually be careful and show foresight in our development. We might have to have the iBed and the Google Shoes two decades after we otherwise would.