(06-04-2017 09:53 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote: Because your assertion that the dialogue with global warming includes an actual solution that is to completely abandon oil, coal, and all fossil fuels, and that isn't the case.
Therefore, it seems like it must just be a messaging issue since you gleaned that as an actual part of the conversation. All of the serious proposals and federal initiatives target reducing our use and dependence on those for energy, and perhaps eventually abandoning them. But the abandonment is down the line when viable alternatives might actually be developed.
So it sounds like the side aiming to reduce fossil fuel use needs to do a better job explaining themselves.
But I think that's a more substantial issue than simply messaging. Maybe not every single voice in the AGW movement wants us off fossil fuels tomorrow, regardless of the availability of suitable alternatives, but I think there are a significant number who do. And even those who don't fall prey to that kind of thinking.
Take as an example the opposition to the XL and Dakota pipelines. If you take the position that we are going to be on oil for a good while longer, then building those pipelines is hugely sensible from an environmental/global warming perspective. The alternative is producing the oil and moving it by rail or truck, not shutting down the oil production. The pipeline has a vastly lower likelihood of spills, moves the oil for a much cheaper price, consumes less energy, and produces less greenhouse gas. But the opposition is almost universal among the AGW crowd, usually based on some argument like building the pipeline just increases the length of time we will be dependent on oil. What increases the length of time we will be dependent on oil is the lack of a suitable substitute. While we are dependent on oil, getting it in the least expensive and least environmentally damaging way seems only logical. But the AGW mantra is pretty consistently to oppose anything that makes oil cheaper or easier. I can see that if there were a viable alternative. But what sense does it make when there isn't? That's why both OO and I see it as way more anti-oil than pro-environment.
Consider another issue. There is this movement to buy local, to produce things closer to market, to reduce transportation cost and greenhouse gas emissions. What would help move production of many goods closer to the huge market represented by the US? Well, lowering the US corporate tax rate, for one thing. Bet you've never seen anyone advocate that as a way to reduce greenhouse gases.
Natural gas is currently the fair haired energy source. It burns clean and we've got lots of it. We have so many years of production in reserves. But here's the thing. We have that reserve life largely because, thanks to Jimmy Carter, gas has been hugely under-utilized. If we double consumption, then those years of reserves get cut in half. We might be able to stretch those reserves much further, and use a plentiful resource in a cleaner way, with coal gasification. The Germans did it in WWII, and also coal liquefaction, because they had coal but not oil. The process creates CO2 right now, but perhaps there is a way either to produce less CO2 or to manage the CO2 produced (which should be easier to manage coming from a point source). So shouldn't that be a research focus?
I would like to see someone say, look, we really don't have a viable alternative to oil. We are trying to develop one, and those efforts need to be redoubled. But until we have one, we need to be producing and using oil in ways that minimize environmental damage, cost, and political and military risk. Be proactive about future energy sources, not just anti-oil.
Yes, I do see a huge push to get off coal and oil simply to get off coal and oil, regardless of whether there is anything to go to instead, or even any net global warming benefit. Let's create the alternatives first, then go there.
