When You’re Hot

I am a climate change skeptic. I do not dispute the science, because I am not qualified to do so. I started my undergraduate career as an engineer, but a brief encounter with calculus convinced me that I was better with words than numbers. I can do numbers, but not my wheelhouse. I managed an advanced physics course, but have never gotten my mind around quantum mechanics.

My skepticism relates to the public policy hype. My understanding of the scientific method is that a proposed hypothesis is tested for validity. Once confirmed, many further tests are undertaken to invalidate the hypothesis, which process may refine it, strengthen it, or invalidate it. Not what I see going on. Saying 97% (or whatever other baseless number is cited) of scientists agree ain’t the scientific method. I don’t see any grant money going to test a hypothesis of global cooling, even though our planet has been covered with ice for much of its existence.

I am also suspicious because the policy prescriptions that emerge from the discussion seem magically to dovetail completely with the current progressive agenda. And they involve steps which threaten to derail economic growth. Great for those who already got theirs, but the 2 billion people on earth today living at subsistence level deserve better.

For all the righteous talk about us skeptics being “deniers” and unscientific, I would like to propose a few steps that would convince me that global warming advocates are prepared to be genuinely rational and scientific. If some of these suggestions were adopted, I could be converted.

1. Take the skepticism seriously. Fund some skeptic research. Debate in a public forum. Fund some research into the economic consequences of your policy prescriptions. Open debate strengthens your case if you are right, and may modify your thinking in a useful fashion. De-carbonizing the economy is a major step. It deserves serious consideration, not a foregone conclusion.
2. Stop opposing fracking. Natural gas has a much lower carbon footprint than coal or oil. We have already lowered carbon output significantly because a lot of electricity production has switched to gas. Until alternate energy sources are ready for prime time, it is a great interim step. We should be finding all the gas we can and exporting it all over the world. Even the oil that is fracked has advantages. The internal combustion engine is not going away overnight. Better to run it on domestically produced oil than importing it from Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela in a tanker.
3. Push nuclear power. It is carbon free. It is a great source of uninterrupted power. With some research into cost effective production, and some limited immunity from the trial bar, we could get a lot of power for electric cars from the quantum mechanics that elude me.
4. Open the nuclear waste dump in Nevada. Lack of disposal constrains the development of new plants. We have inviting terrorist targets sitting in cooling ponds all over the country in service of some casino owners in Vegas, who now force anyone running for president to hustle from New Hampshire to Nevada to take the pledge against Yucca Mountain. Billions have been spent to render it safe. And it’s a hell of a lot safer than those ponds.
5. Push hydro power. There are objections to the ecological impact of dams (although earthquakes, rain and wind, and tectonic shifting have been moving the landscape around continuously for 4.5 billion years). There is a case to be made that dams have adverse impact. But run of the river technology exists that can harvest electricity from falling waters (just another form of solar power) with little or no damage to river beds, fish runs, etc.
6. Push carbon capture research. If 400 parts per million is a problem, we might find a way to lower that number with technology.
7. Finally, push storage technology. Solar and wind won’t get the job done unless we can find a way to have constant availability. A modern economy cannot run solely when the sun shines or the wind blows. The grid has to be expanded (to the sunny and windy spots), integrated (to allow power to be shifted around) and virtualized (to allow the process to be coordinated). But mostly, we have to find a way to store electricity. Until we can do that at scale, alternate energy will not be a serious alternative (in my view).