Hypothetical question: skeptics, if AGW was 100% unequivocably real, and it could be reversed, how should we?

Question

go about doing so? What should we do differently than advocates are doing right now?

Answer 1

See - here's where believers get it wrong.  No one advocates increasing pollution.  Everyone does their best to curb pollution, reuse, and recycle.  American industry does billions in business to reduce energy consumption and control pollution.

HOW DARE YOU assume just because we don't accept your dogma that we don't care about the environment.

The issue isn't controlling pollution, it's using the force of the gvmt that we object to.  We don't need a parental gvmt to tell us what we should do in our lives, as we do what's right on our own.

It's the believers who wait until the parental gvmt tells them that they should be saving more before they act who are the problem.

Take responsibility for your own actions.

Answer 2

We have global cooling at this point in the last 12 months.

Answer 3

Honestly, I'd say nothing.    We're 8 months into a strong La Nina that has to date offset a generation of warming, the warming that your side says was man-made:

By the time my children's children grow up, market forces will have forced us to alternative fuels anyway.    

This wouldn't have been my answer six months ago but this cooling has been just so dramatic and so strong, and clearly entirely natural.

It's nature's reminder that while, looking at it from a human-centric perspective, just focusing in on the tonnage of CO2 emitted, is like focusing on one guy with a bullhorn and saying "that's loud" - in your living room yes, but our CO2 relative to the atmosphere and global climate as a whole is more like that one guy with a bullhorn at an Indianapolis Colts home game - with or without crowd noise feedback.

http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/200...

http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/200...

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.c...

http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/200...

Answer 4

You're over reacting I think.  It will be a phase in from fossil fuel to renewables.   But we have to get moving faster than we are.  And I think your seeing the glass half empty.  Think of the rewards both in the environment and the economy.  Whole new industries with new jobs.  

I understand that most of our grid isn't oil, it's more gas and coal, but those are subsidized also. Nukes are also subsidized and also have hidden costs and potential danger.

  The sooner we start cleaning up the grid, the sooner we can phase in plug in hybrids and electric cars, and eventually have clean transportation as well.

What I think we should do is something like the plan that was just published in Scientific American.  It's a very good proposal to convert the U.S. electric grid to solar.

They say we could have 65% grid by 2050 and almost all solar by 2100.  

Scientific America Solar Grand Plan

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-so...

from the article:

"The greatest obstacle to implementing a renewable U.S. energy system is not technology or money, however. It is the lack of public awareness that solar power is a practical alternative—and one that can fuel transportation as well. Forward-looking thinkers should try to inspire U.S. citizens, and their political and scientific leaders, about solar power’s incredible potential. Once Americans realize that potential, we believe the desire for energy self-sufficiency and the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions will prompt them to adopt a national solar plan."

It's already begun in California.  Actually it started with pilot projects in the Mojave Desert in the 1980 and 90s.  We have 355 megawatts from these pilot plants.  A 175 megawatt plant is to be build near San Luis Obispo and two more in the Mojave desert at 400 and 500 megawatts.  They are a beginning.  All three power companies in California are talking to the companies that build them. there are two more proposed at up to 800 and 900 megawatts.

1000 megawatts = 1 gigawatt

Hoover Dam is 2 giawatts, as is a medium size nuclear plant.   You could power San Francisco with 1 gigawatt.  Or  778,000 homes.

This  plan is with technology we already have which can produce electricity at prices competitive with gas and coal. It involves concentrating solar thermal and concentrating solar PV power plants to be built in the southwest desert areas.

From the website of one of the companies involved.  I know of seven so far.

"Solar thermal power plants such as Ausra's generate electricity by driving steam turbines with sunshine. Ausra's solar concentrators boil water with focused sunlight, and produce electricity at prices directly competitive with gas- and coal-fired electric power."

" Solar is one the most land-efficient sources of clean power we have, using a fraction of the area needed by hydro or wind projects of comparable output. All of America's needs for electric power – the entire US grid, night and day – can be generated with Ausra's current technology using a square parcel of land 92 miles on a side. For comparison, this is less than 1% of America's deserts, less land than currently in use in the U.S. for coal mines."

  

1% of the Sahara could power the whole world.  

No fuel of any kind ever.  Nothing to transport or dispose of.   Once you have a clean electric grid, you can have all electric cars.  

And the cost of doing this isn't even high.  What's expensive, is continuing to use petroleum with it's huge subsidies to oil companies and hundreds of billions of other hidden costs every year.  We don't realize it's costing us because we don't see it at the pump.  If you added these hidden costs, it would be like adding up to $8 a gallon.  One estimate is for over $800 billion annually in hidden costs.

http://www.setamericafree.org/saf_hidden...

http://www.progress.org/2003/energy22.ht...

http://www.monitor.net/monitor/10-9-95/o...

Jello doesn't think we need any governmental control on pollution.   Wasn't that how we got into this?  Uncontrolled pollution?    What's that old saw about not being able to solve problems with the same kind of thinking that created them?

It was Einstein who said that.

Answer 5

If you truly believe that AGW is 100% unequivocally real, you'd move to Mexico and swear off A/C.  Now.

(No heat needed in the winter, no A/C in the summer, very low carbon footprint.)

Still here?  Yeah, I thought so.  Eco-liar.

Answer 6

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports we must reduce the world wide output of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas to less than one tenth of what that output is today.

That means we must have a world wide ban on the use of fossil fuels.

That means a world wide ban on the use of gasoline and diesel fuels.

A world wide ban on the use of heating oils.

A world wide ban on the use of fossil fuels for the generation of electricity.

A world wide ban on the use of coal and natural gas for any purpose.

there can be no exceptions to this ban, not even for developing countries.

If we are not willing to make and enforce this ban world wide, we have no hope of stopping the man made component of Global Warming.

Answer 7

I'm not a skeptic so I'm not eligible to answer your question (I think ;-) ). I just want to say that many of the answers you've received here is very interesting and kind of confirms my suspicions that one of the reasons for many to be skeptic is they really think we need to do MORE to slow down global warming than many "believers" do. Hence they don't dare to believe it - it seems impossible for them that this problem, if it's real, could be solved.

Yes, we have to change many things to prevent global warming from getting really serious. Someone mentioned that we have to reduce our CO2 emissions to one tenth of today. We have to remember though that this is not something we have to reach tomorrow but the time span for that is more than 40 years ahead. It's not easy of course, but if we just give enough strong incentives for the use of renewables and energy conservation e t c new inventions will spur. I'm still confident we can make it if everyone just agreed that we have to. But sitting here arguing and doing nothing (or very little) to push the development in the right direction will make our progresses very slow - most likely too slow unfortunately.

Answer 8

If AGW was real the only way to control it would be a one world government in control of the allowable emissions by all the various countries throughout the world.

Answer 9

Hypothetical answer: cease all planetary functions.

Answer 10

Solar Power Socialism a combination of immediate installation and switch of Oil based technology with socialism to stop the other contributer poverty.

The next step provide Government money to farmers to provide fresh food to local Supermarketts and to make such food free,available to anyone in need through Government money from even distribution of cash. This would reduce the amount of transport,land taken up by agriculutre,water use as well.

Answer 11

I don't think it could be reversed without producing  an equal amount of devastation that global warming is supposedly going to cause.

Answer 12

This solution is not even hypothetical.  Most skeptical organizations and many skeptics are for this motion regardless is AGW is real or not.

Open up more nuclear power plants.

Answer 13

I'll play, and I'm completely serious about these possible solutions to this fictitious problem:

Since proponents have pushed the usual list, here are three out of left field....

More research into viable ways to harness lightning as a supplemental power supply.  Fight weather with weather.

Vent and trap CO2 from active volcanoes and hot springs.  We know where they are, and most are relatively stable.  If CO2 emissions are the problem, we don't necessarily have to cut back OUR emissions so long as we prevent emissions from being released elsewhere.  

While we're at it with the CO2:  Devise a system to collect sea water, extract the trapped CO2 (simply by heating it), and return the stripped seawater to the ocean.  The whole process could be powered by solar power in one form or another, and turbines powered by the ocean's waves/currents.