Let's Say Global Warming Is Real....

I'm going to take my typical skepticism one step further. I am going to be skeptical of my skepticism, and do so specifically with regard to global warming. What I am going to do in this blog entry is throw out any skepticism about global warming I might have and accept the postulation that man-made global warming is a real, legitimate threat.  

A short synopsis of the issue is as such: humans have emitted an unprecedented amount of carbon and is being expelled into the atmosphere. The issue is that the atmosphere is unable to dispel of it as quickly as a gas such as methane. As a result, it gets trapped in the atmosphere for a considerable amount of time, thereby causing the earth to get warmer. If global warming is not addressed, we will have cataclysmic climate changes that will cause the sea levels to rise and all sorts of natural disasters that will wipe out thousands upon thousands of people.

Clearly, Mother Nature going ballistic is not desirable. So how do we avoid this climate catastrophe?   Reduce carbon emissions by 80% before 2050.

One obvious solution to this would to cut back on consumption. Currently, there are three main providers of energy, and all of these produce greenhouse gases. Petroleum is at 36%, natural gas is at 24%, and coal is at about 20%, which cumulatively provide about 83% of America's energy. Even if you cut back on some of the production of fossil fuels and implement cap-and-trade en masse to discourage carbon consumption, which is a bad idea to begin with, it will be insufficient. Also, consider the fact that world consumption of energy is projected to only go up.

Are you really going to tell Americans to drastically consumption up to the point where it's more than half? Good luck with that! Even though America produces about 20% of the carbon, it'll be a hard time to make the "less consumption" pitch to other nations without running into the free rider problem, especially when developing nations such as China, India, and Brazil are only looking to further increase their economic wealth, which means increased consumption.   

Although consumption cutbacks might have to be in order, this problem will not truly be solved until we tap into an alternative energy source. Usage of renewable energy sources is not that plentiful, only totaling up to 8%.  Wind and solar power currently make up less than 1%, and will not be making a huge contribution to aggregate energy demands because of inefficiencies. Biofuels make up 23% of the renewable energy because of our heavy corn subsidies to Big Agriculture. Even hydroelectric power has its natural limitations, being that you only have a limited amount of bodies of water where building a dam would be conducive.

I'm sure we will be seeing these alternative energy options increase in terms of contribution percentage as time passes. To say that they will be able to sustain long-term energy consumption for America, as well as the rest of the world, is highly improbable. There is only one remaining alternative to this problem, which is going to have to merit a future blog entry from me, and that is nuclear power.