Quote:
Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
We know that carbon dioxide is driving climate change. It is never a good thing to ignore facts. The tobacco industry denied that nicotine was addictive, and that smoking causes cancer and many other harmful things. That denial of facts was very harmful to a lot of people, and a few people profited by ignoring that harm.
Same thing for leaded gasoline - it needed "more study" they said. Then we got MBTE, which is also quite harmful.
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But, along the corollary to the increase in CO2 has been the increase in human affects to the biosphere. Huge increases in city-scapes that change the albedo severely. Huge swaths of land changed over from grass and forest to farm or housing and roads. The minuscule addition of coal and other particulates to the albedo of the icecaps drastically changes the melt rate. The health of the oceans' abilities to absorb and buffer changes in CO2. These and other factors are poorly studied, but combined could affect global warming more strategically than CO2 alone. A more all encompassing climate model that can delineate from various factors is needed. Leaders are making a multi-trillion dollar bet that they have the solutions in hand by signing agreements which only restrict a portion of the worlds population ( the most wealthy ) to a single factor ( CO2 ) leaving the rest to function freely and erode many of the gains hoped for in the agreement.
And the use of tobacco as a parallel to climate change is a common but erroneous practice by climate change supporters. You cannot adequately disengage the other factors affecting climate change from those caused by CO2 alone. With tobacco, you can take millions of data points and create a vector path that is clear and concise. We have but one world data point. We have to get this right.
I am not against renewable energy, I just am a realist when it comes to the actual implementation of such diffuse power. I have a business that uses electricity and natural gas to machine and fabricate. I cannot use renewables as a sole source of power for such concentrated power needs. And I am a small business. Yes, I benefit from the low cost of the excess wind and solar generated electricity, but those are huge farms that you cannot get in other regions of the world.
Nuclear power is the obvious answer to the need for distributed and dense power. Economic pressures will change the views of the masses as all other energy sources will be unable to provide for a world population that is projected to grow another 40% in the course of the Paris Agreements. Nuclear, coupled with judicious use of renewables will allow the world population to stabilize and find an elevated standard of living.
I would much rather put my trillions of dollars into modular nuclear reactors and advanced climate models than tie myself to a poorly structured agreement that will hamper economies and the ability truly affect the climate effectively.