Here is a simple exercise which will help the Global Warming crowd understand why there is such powerful skepticism to their almost-religious faith in the existence of anthropological global warming:
There is a 2-word solution to 100% of the issues related to global warming. What is it?
Nuclear Energy.
Now think of your reaction to that 2-word solution and you can understand why there is so much skepticism related to the concept of man-made Global Warming.
Why? Because nuclear energy reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 100%, will remove the dependence on foreign (and domestic) oil and gas by 100%, can be ramped up much more quickly than any of the “green” energy options, and will never “run out”.
As a side benefit, this would put out of business all the dictators and other thugs that stay in power due to their oil while the rest of the world democratizes. And the “developing” countries could benefit from all the new nuclear energy technologies improve the lot of their peoples instead of begging for those suspicious “carbon credit” transfer payments from less unsuccessful countries in the West.
So why is nuclear a dirty word?
I’ll tell you why. Because the same people that today are whining about global warming come from the exact same camp that killed the growth of the nuclear power industry in the ’70s. In fact, had the environmentalist left not giving nuclear power such a bad name we would have never even had a issue with global warming today for them to whine about. By today (nuclear) electricity would have been almost free and almost unlimited and we would all be driving electric cars and heating our homes, offices, water and food exclusively with electricity.
Sure, nuclear power has potential problems. Don’t you think technical or common sense solutions could have been found to these problems long ago? Dangers of meltdowns or terrorist attacks? Bury the reactor cores a few miles underground. Nuclear waste? Fence off a place in Kansas 100 miles wide by 100 miles long and bury the stuff a few miles down in a huge, water-proof hole in the middle. That would be enough space to store 100% of the world’s nuclear waste (and its garbage too) for decades.
Don’t think for a second that there are no environmental issues with solar and wind energy. What could be cleaner than hydro-electricity? But today dams are “bad” too because they destroy the natural environment behind the dam and interfere with fish migration. As soon as wind power takes off those same environmentalists that pushed it as “green” will be back to crush it because too many birds will be getting killed in the turbines. Just wait. How about those huge solar farms planned for the desert? The environmentalists are already starting to complain about desert habitats being destroyed.
Being adults means making choices. We can choose a logical path to permanent energy independence and deal with or find solutions to the consequences, or we can complain about the downside of every alternative and every problem created by not accepting those alternatives.
Remember — nuclear energy creates “local” problems dealing with the radioactivity. That is far better and easier to deal with than the whole world boiling, don’t you think?
So the next time you talk with a “warmer” try suggesting nuclear energy as the obvious solution. If you get a knee-jerk reaction of a religious fanatic you can explain that that kind of reaction is a big part of what drives the global warming skepticism in the rest of us.