A Conservative Solution to Climate Change

The conventional thinking on climate change is that we must reduce our fossil fuel usage to reduce our CO2 outputs. That is why they are pushing green energy such as solar and wind and geothermal solutions while using the EPA to regulate and reduce our coal and gas productions. As a conservative and a skeptic of man caused climate change theory, I am proposing a few alternative solutions.

- May 2017

Just to present a quick summary of the last 25 years. We were told by climate scientists that our burning of fossil fuel has pushed the CO2 levels in our atmosphere to an unprecedented level. This over time will accumulate and create a green house effect and warm our planet. A rise of a few degrees C will cause all kind of damages including floods and storms and extinction of various animals and plants species.

After 25 years of dire warnings by Al Gore, we are still here. The oceans have not swallow up Florida, and the glaciers have not disappeared. The weather pattern have changed across the globe. We are told by the UN and other agencies that it is coming in our future. We had better do something now to prevent disaster in the future for our kids and grandkids. We are told to reduce our carbon foot print by driving smaller cars, use public transportation, reduce the thermostat in the winter, eat less meat, switch to solar power or electric cars. The climate change activists has joined up with environmental extremists to attack big oil businesses and the auto industry. They see the threat of global warming as the number one threat even more so than ISIS and terrorism.

If I have made any error in my summary, please contact me and I will correct them.

I am a skeptic of the AGW theory. I have been following this development for over a decade. I have seen projections missed their mark and climate scientists caught in email scandals. Their manipulation of temperature data and the failure of their climate models are the main reason I am a skeptic.

I do believe our climate is warming but I just don't attribute most of it to human activities. There are various cycles including our sun which can cause our climate to vary from time to time.

My proposed solution are on several fronts. First, I propose we disassociate climate change with environment protection.

Second, I believe we need to stop government incentive programs into clean or green energy.

Third, we need to start a new science initiative to study climate over long cycles and work on a universal climate model. One that will incorporate all aspects of climate related drivers both artificial and natural.

Forth, we can develop mitigation techniques to offset the long term effects of global warming.

The reasons behind my proposals are outlined here.

Climate change and its effects are not part of our environment per se. The EPA is there to prevent our air and water from being polluted. It is also to prevent toxic dumping of chemicals by companies. It is not to regulate CO2 emissions. CO2 is a gas and it is not classified as a pollutant. In fact, CO2 is a necessity for all life on earth.

Our world depends on fossil fuel. It is a critical resource. The energy needed to power our industrial engine and improve our standards of living are only fullfilled by fossil fuel. Some renewable energy source such as solar and wind can only fill a small niche. The bulk of our energy needs are filled by oil, gas, and coal. The promise of green energy, though much improved, have not been fulfilled in any significant way. If not for the tax incentives, many of these energy sources would be too costly and inefficient.

We need to look for alternative solutions rather than reducing our carbon footprint.

The government incentive programs, though they were offered with good intentions, have not worked for the most part. In some cases, they have actuually harmed the environment. The incentives for solar powered homes, the electric or hybrid vehicles, and fluorescent lighting were all tax funds that were miss approprated in my opinion. What they did was to distort the normal technology trajectory of any new product proposal. When a product becomes competitive in the market place, they will be adopted by the consumer. No incentive is necessary. By offering the tax credits, they have tipped the balance and choose winners and losers. The big loser are the consumers and the oil and coal industry and the utilitiy companies.

The climate science community have also been politicized. Their research have been tilted by the source of research funding such as the NSF. If you examine the past few decades, almost all research grants in the earth and planetary sciences have been related to some form of climate change. Why? The answer is simple. If the money is limited for research, they are prioritized. Guess who will get the grants?

What is needed is a new effort by the climate science community to seek answers. The science is not settled, with due respect to Al Gore. There are still many unknowns. The whole climate is very complex. There are many interacting factors and natural cycles. What is needed is a joint effort by all groups to come up with a universal climate model. I wrote about this in a previous hub. Not 27 individual models that are incomplete and cannot make accurate predictions. This new universal model will take all drivers of climate into account including our sun and all natural cycles in addition to the man made driver of fossil fuel.

Finally, we need to come up with some long term mitigation techniques that are common sense and cost effective. Assume the basic science is correct and that increased CO2 will lead to global warming of a few degrees C. Given that scenario, how much time do we have before the effects are noticeable but also become destructive? Our mitigation methods should be in response to this time scale. If this time scale is on the order of centuries, we have time to rebuild and relocate our coastal cities. Some mitigation proposed by scientists includes building reflectors in space to deflect some incoming solar energy. Another is adding some impurities to our upper atmosphere, similar to volcanic erruptions, to reduce the amount of sun light and thereby lowering the temperature of the earth to counter the greenhouse effect. There may be many other methods yet to be discovered. The point being, we don't have just one option. We can do multiple things to affect our environment. We have the technology and the smarts to do it.

Climate change is a major problem. There are multiple solutions. It is not always one or the other. We are told by climate scientists and activists that the only way to deal with it is to reduce our human carbon foot prInt. Is that really the case? In fact, by some estimates, even if we do exactly what they say, it would only have a small effect on reducing the global temperature. Where is the bang for the bucks?

A conservative approach to solving this problem may be better.