<p>WHy do you want so badly to believe nothing is going on? Why? Does it make you feel better to think everything is just peachy? Does it make you feel better thinking you don’t have to do anything?</p>
<p>“mini, he does beleive, but if he came out as you suggest, he would be seen as even more radical, and even is very moderate steps are seen as “out there”…”</p>
<p>And that’s why I think FundingFather is correct (until he got to the nukes and research part). Gore offers a pretty well documented research brief that requires radical changes in 10 years or less, and then offer a bunch of namby-pamby feel-good “solutions” that don’t address the very needs he so well documented. And when he does this, he actually makes the situation worse.</p>
<p>So either he really doesn’t believe his own thesis, or when he comes to solutions, he’s a hypocrite. But then he’s a Democrat, so I don’t really expect better. At least he reads the science, even if he acts like he doesn’t believe it.</p>
<p>
Yes, I notice the same effect when CGM posts.</p>
<p>I love the fact that CGM has no facts and resorts to asking meaninless rhetorical questions. Keep up the good work friend!</p>
<p>CGM, you keep going back to oil companies and criticizing their lack of research funding. Were the oil companies to completely absorb the field of renewable energy, would you not criticizing them for seeking … additional profits and (ab)using monopolistic powers? </p>
<p>What is it that you exactly want or hope for? The US government borrowing a page from Chavez or his Marxist friend in Bolivia? Imposing windfall taxes? Good luck! We need to balance our demand to the supply, as it is the imbalance that costs us dearly. As long as we do not reduce our consumption, we will have to accept to pay an EVER growing price for harder to find supplies. </p>
<p>Would you invest your life savings in an exploration project in Bolivia today? Before answering, please consider that there are many, many retired citizens who count on their dividends from ExxonMobil to pay for their food and housing. So, should THEY support investing in risky projects? </p>
<p>Not so simple, he!</p>
<p>“The US government borrowing a page from Chavez or his Marxist friend in Bolivia? Imposing windfall taxes?”</p>
<p>YES! Two thumbs UP! ;)</p>
<p>“As long as we do not reduce our consumption, we will have to accept to pay an EVER growing price for harder to find supplies.” </p>
<p>THREE thumbs for that one!</p>
<p>“Before answering, please consider that there are many, many retired citizens who count on their dividends from ExxonMobil to pay for their food and housing.”</p>
<p>Chavez has an answer for that one. 
To be honest, though, Morales, rather than Chavez, has a better answer. Coca leaves. People in poverty can go without sufficient food for long periods of time by chewing the coca. It makes them more productive, and they find it easier to fight the urge to consume.</p>
<p>Mini, your points are well taken, and that is WHY Al Gore was the worst choice to deliver his own message. But, the message was not as important to him as the messenger was. He does “get” the part of the science he need to understand: all excuses for more hollow politicking, including global warming. His focus groups probably pointed out that the public reacts pretty well to the Michael Moore and other “social ecologists.” </p>
<p>Les tonneaux vides font le plus de bruit. :)</p>
<p>
It isn’t relevant what makes me feel better or worse. We solve problems with facts, reason, and logic. It doesn’t help to rely on easy fixes that make us feel good but might actually do more harm than good.</p>
<p>"Nuclear energy? That same one that is supposed to be too cheap to meter, but has bankrupted companies and left us with bottomless and unaccounted for expenses of decomissionning and waste disposal? "</p>
<p>Yes, the same one that provides 70 percent of France’s electricity. The waste disposal issue is essentially a bunch of NIMBY fear mongering. I agree that there are no silver bullets to the energy issue, but to take a proven technology like nuclear off the table is effectively saying that we really don’t have a real problem.</p>
<p>"His focus groups probably pointed out that the public reacts pretty well to the Michael Moore and other “social ecologists.” </p>
<p>Hey - I used to be Murray Bookchin’s publisher. Now THAT was social ecology. The Al Gore variety is like the debate of two frogs as they sit in pot of water as it heats up.</p>
<p>FF, the fact that EDF operates 58 reactors is well documented and well known. However, how much do we know about EDF’s “success” in exporting their know-how to other countries? How many reactors have been built in the world in the past 20 years, a period when demand for energy has grown unabated? How long have they worked to convince the Chinese to expand on their 1300 MW? Does not seem much compared to the thirty-four 900 MW reactors, the twenty 1,300 MW reactors, and the four 1,450 MW reactors owned by EDF.</p>
<p>If the cost of nuclear is indeed so competitive, why haven’t private companies jumped on such promising wagon with glee and abandon? Could the answer be that this industry needs the full support of public finances … or access to cloak and dagger type of accounting methods? </p>
<p>WHOOPS!</p>
<p>“He does “get” the part of the science he need to understand: all excuses for more hollow politicking, including global warming.”</p>
<p>I think his choice of title was very telling - “Inconvenient Truth”, as if the solution is to “inconvenience” ourselves a little more over the next 10 years (that’s all the time we have left! ;)), and things will turn out okay. </p>
<p>I’m glad he did the film, but I think we’d all be better off if he went back, put himself in a locked box, and reinvented the Internet.</p>
<p>I love the haughty view of those who absolutely know that global warming is true, man is causing it and one of its results is catastrophic hurricanes. Anyone who denies it is a knuckle-dragging creationist (to be taken in its most perjorative meaning) and is anti-science.</p>
<p>Yet look at what these open-minded, scientifically oriented people do with scientists that disagree with their position:
</p>
<p>I guess to them science is great as long as it supports your political views; if it doesn’t, you lose your job.</p>
<p>
This is just a guess, but I think Electricite de France successfully sent nuclear technology and know-how to Iran …</p>
<p>By the way, Xiggi, your comments here are helpful and interesting.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>well, the answer in this country is twofold: 1) mis-directed “environmentalists” 2) cheap oil/gas</p>
<p>The cheap oil/gas is no longer available and the environmetalists will have to make a choice between reduced CO2 emissions and the supposed evil of nuclear power.</p>
<p>There are lots of other choices, but they are less “convenient”.</p>
<p>
I would add that we should also promote more oil and gas exploration but I’m open to lots of energy choices (nuclear, solar, wind, hydropower) as long as we do something. I fear we may choose “none of the above.”</p>
<p>Global warming is NOT the same as running out of energy. Oil and gas exploration (in the context of the former, and the 10-year timeline) is part of the problem, not the solution. Substantial new nuclear plants in 10 years? Ridiculous. Solar and wind REPLACING oil and gas in the next 10 years (not providing additions, but actually resulting in lowered use of oil and gas?) A manifest absurdity. Running out of energy is actually a reasonable solution to global warming - but we won’t.</p>
<p>Global warming is consumption, not production, driven. (And yes, on that front, Coca leaves makes less absurd sense than nuclear, solar, or wind.)</p>
<p>Mini,</p>
<p>Regarding nuclear power, I submit we clearly could build lots of nuclear plants in the next 10 years but we may choose not to. We could also significantly supplement our energy resources with wind power as is being done in some parts of the country. Ten years is a long time and I think we will see many changes in the next decade due to energy innovation.</p>
<p>I agree that further oil and gas exploration might adversely affect the development of alternative energy sources but this is the real world and we need short-term as well as long-term fixes. I have faith that ingenuity and market forces could propel us to good energy solutions, even if it might get a little bumpy along the way, provided our government doesn’t try to engineer an artificial result.</p>
<p>By the way, I’m fairly certain from reading your posts that you are an interesting combination of libertarian and liberal socialist and that you would probably disagree with some of my statements. I’m not quibbling with your politics or philosophy but I would like to know if I correctly understand the point of your comment.</p>
<p>If I accept Al Gore’s ten-year timeframe, any alternative production simply diverts oil and gas consumption to growing demand elsewhere, resulting in MORE global warming rather than less. This is because pollution controls in places where oil and gas are diverted to are much less strict than they are here, or even non-existent (China is a great example.) In other words, even if alternative energy production resulted in lowered demand in the U.S. for fossil fuels in the next 10 years (which I think is an absurdity), the result would be more rather than less in the way of global warming. Assuming a fixed amount of fossil fuels, the energy would be consumed in places where it was more likely to increase global warming. Assuming the amount is not fixed and can, in fact, increase, attempts to deal within the 10-year timeframe come to a screeching halt.</p>
<p>“Inconvenience” won’t do it. If you want to deal with global warming, you have to start on the consumption end. And that means substantial cuts in the shipping of raw materials, goods, and services from abroad, in defense expenditures (which protect shipping lanes and those ports-of-call), massive government-backed increases in energy prices, major restrictions on automobile use and on meat consumption (because of its impact on Third World forestry), and support of bioregional enterprise. Oh, and yes, BIG, really big, super big, confiscatory big, windfall profit taxes. “How big’” you ask? Big enough that oil and gas companies would actually lower production.</p>
<p>Do I think alternative energy sources are a “good thing”? Of course. But they don’t fit Al Gore’s prognostications.</p>
<p>“I agree that further oil and gas exploration might adversely affect the development of alternative energy sources but this is the real world and we need short-term as well as long-term fixes.”</p>
<p>So you really don’t accept Al Gore’s prognostication as “real world”, do you? ;)</p>