Climate Scientist: Climate Engineering Might Be the Answer To Warming 343
Lasrick (2629253) writes "Tom Wigley is one of the world's top climate scientists, and in this interview he explains his outspoken support for both nuclear energy and research into climate engineering. Wigley was one of the first scientists to break the taboo on public discussion of climate engineering as a possible response to global warming; in a 2006 paper in the journal Science, he proposed a combined geoengineering-mitigation strategy that would address the problem of increasing ocean acidity, as well as the problem of climate change. In this interview, he argues that renewable energy alone will not be sufficient to address the climate challenge, because it cannot be scaled up quickly and cheaply enough, and that opposition to nuclear power 'threatens humanity's ability to avoid dangerous climate change.'"
Re:nuclear power means unintended geoengineering (Score:4, Informative)
Even wind, hydro and solar are more dangerous.
Re:nuclear power means unintended geoengineering (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.caithnesswindfarms.... [caithnesswindfarms.co.uk]
Re:The Chinese could pull this off (Score:5, Informative)
So does the US. The Constitution gives the government the power to coin money. The Fed gives the government zero cost borrowing. The Modigliani-Miller theorem of finance shows that how you finance a good idea doesn't matter. If climate engineering is a good idea, we can finance it.
Finance should never be used as an excuse not to carry out a good idea.
The fossil fuel "subsidies" are a lie. (Score:4, Informative)
First, what tax subsidies are you talking about? There is no way Coal is subsidized, nor is oil and gas..
The fossil fuel "subsidies" they speak of are nothing but specious reasoning. Seriously: all but an irrelevant fraction of the "subsidies" amount to "we don't believe fossil fuels are being taxed punitively enough, therefore the absence of those punitive taxes means they are receiving a subsidy".
It's a basic begging the question fallacy.
Look at this link: Global fossil fuel subsidies amount to $1.9 trillion – IMF [ewea.org]
Today, in advanced economies, fossil fuels do not get much the way of direct subsidies – although they do still exist, for example Germany spends 0.07% of its GDP supporting coal and the US spends 0.05% of its GDP on petroleum. But fossil fuels do continue to benefit from subsidies in those economies in the form of mispriced taxation levels.
In advanced economies, “subsidies often take the form of taxes that are too low to capture the true costs to society of energy use, including pollution and road congestion,” the IMF said. “Taxes imposed on energy are not high enough to account for all the adverse effects of excessive energy consumption, including on the environment,” says the David Lipton, First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF."
Even the Iraq war is literally a fossil fuel tax subsidy in their mind. Don't debate these people: either their logic is broken so there's no point in trying to use reason, or they are being deliberately disingenuous so there is no way to engage in an honest debate.
Either way, it's a good idea to know where their talking points are coming from.