Being an engineer myself... I say “deal with it” when it comes to climate change. The amount of energy I would need to actually change the climate of this planet is so massive that humans are simply not capable of producing the amount of energy required.
We can’t control the sun. We can’t control volcanoes and earthquakes. We can, however, control our response to them. So the earth warms up a few degrees over 100 years. PLANT A SHADE TREE IN YOUR YARD!!! Install an air conditioner. If the planet cools a few degrees turn the heat up. Buy shorts. Crops can be easily replanted in different zones. We will never run out of water if the political will was there to install desalinizing plants all along the coast.
BUT, nope. Liberal solutions require massive government, taxes, control, and misery.
Excellent!
I am actually less skeptical than most here about AGW. But in the end, the final truth is that _if_ its real, it is extremely unlikely that we will ever be able to do anything about it. Like Lomborg, I think we'll just have to deal with it.
Nice post. I’m going to save it.
Bjorn Lomburg, author of the “Skeptical Environmentalist”, has an excellent TED talk about cost versus priorities. For the 100 billion or so of mitigating CO2 a fraction, we could vaccinate everyone, cure worms and give out vitamins to massively improve health and end night blindness plus start on building water and sewer and water infrastructure for a lot of people. Lower the disease and health burden and the poorest areas of the world become much richer, faster.
Or we could make rich countries poorer, keep poor areas poor, all for dubious benefit.
And richer countries are better able to adapt to climate change plus all other disasters.
It's political will that's keeping desalination plants from being built. If there were a free market in water, we would have all the water we needed at a price we could afford.