I am thinking of setting up a Global Warming thread here to discuss mitigation stuff – if I try to keep up with the frantic comment pace over at RealClimate I’m going to run out of … hot air.

Energy issues relate to political and economic matters as well: that’s one reason I alluded to Thoreau. Though it might be infeasible for some, fuel self-sufficiency (i.e. home-based ethanol production, small-scale co-ops, etc.) could be one way, at least in theory, to deal with petrol. problems, and that removes the corporate aspects: no need to have Exxon involved. Biff and Bunny cooking up corn-mash for fuel after a hard day at the office may not be too sexy, but has a certain integrity to it. There are other solutions: light-rail, or van pools, cycling, etc. Van pooling in LA has reduced quite a bit of traffic. Of course Ted Kazcynski had other ways to expedite Freedom day.

Lots more detail on this in future installments of the review. First we have to get into the horror of the Saudis.

One could go a bit neo-Thoreau and build an ethanol still for cooking mash from potatoes, corn, sugar, etc. (tho’ fuel grade–like 95%+– takes some refining), and do some distilling on weekends, but I doubt many wifeys in the CA ‘burbs would be very interested in something like that.

Zubrin thinks we can do it within a decade. I trust his figures- he’s a sharp guy. He might be a tad optimistic on the timeframe, but in principal I think he’s on to something. I highly recommend the book.

If I was wiser I’d stop beating the “moderate mitigation” AGW drum. I get to win that battle regardless of right or wrong because people simply won’t do what is needed for massive mitigation no matter what any of us say. Better to try to help focus the debate on the many perils of our oil based economy. With a few notable exceptions everybody agrees that we *must* eventually transition away from oil to different energy sources. The issue is how fast and how. This has almost incalculable geopolitical benefits as well as pollution/climate benefits.

At New Worlds I am reviewing a book by Robert Zubrin; Energy victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil which should be of considerable interest to anyone concerned about global warming and the effect energy policy may have upon it.

I intend to review it chapter by chapter and my first post is on the preface. When I’m done I’ll try to sum it up and leave a note here.

Just a little teaser for Joe and Horatio; he has some serious issues with Al Gore.

This is true, but you cannot prove *anything* to be incorrect. Of the existing hypotheses AnthroGW is the best fit with the existing climate record. However even IPCC’s “90% certain” number would indicate we should keep advancing and shooting down alternative hypotheses rather than proceeding as if the 90% was 100% total certainty, which it “most certainly” is not. Science is not certainty, it is probability.

Max this is all I need to be convinced about to fully support massive mitigation at the personal and the national and international level.

However – I don’t think this is true even though it sounds great – it is only true at the lower levels of spending to get less CO2. Also, there’s a big problem with the hyporcrisy we are all guilty of when we reduce problem to what “other people must do”.

Think about our daily lives right now. Clearly you appear to do more than we do to mitigate since you have a hybrid car and I presume pay attention to low carbon footprints more than I do, but why not do EVEN MORE and use no car – just public transport and a bike? And why don’t you keep your house temp at 50 degrees in winter and use zero A/C in summer? I’m not accusing here as I do all this too, and so do our neighbors and their neighbors and even Horatiox! If we simply outlawed all fossil fuel consumption (or taxed it at enormous rates), we could mitigate the crap out of CO2. *Nobody* will advocate that. Why? The answer is that we all know it’s not nearly as bad as it is getting described, even by some sicen

The reason is that we all are in favor of making the tradeoffs that hurt the environment but give us conveniences. I run into only a handful of people over many years who do pretty much every conceivable thing to reduce their impact, and they always seem to be more obsessive than innovative.

I would agree (as I always have) that if we can find cheap, efficient ways to reduce C02 we should do it. However between that and “doing every conceivable mitigation” leaves a huge amount of AGWarmingWiggleRoom (AGWWR).