GREAT ARGUMENT

Blogger vs Boston Globe columnist on Global Warming. Blogger advocates for reality-based skepticism of techno solutions. Columnist advocates for hopeful technologies. Learn about new nuclear and spraying the sky with salt water. Its what makes blogging grand.

Is Al Gore Just As Wrong As ExxonMobil?
Mark Kleiman, January 16, 2007 (Huffington Post)

In her latest column for the Boston Globe, Cathy Young, a contributing editor at the libertarian magazine Reason, picks up on my post from the Reality-Based Community about why those most concerned about global warming as a problem are reluctant to look seriously at reflecting more sunlight back into space as part of the solution…
- Young and I don't agree nearly as much as the column suggests. In addition, I think her column misstates the relationship between the global warming issue and nuclear power generation…
- … the stubbornness of the right in denying the problem has robbed it of credibility when it comes to discussing solutions…
- She also attributes to me the thought that "those on the left who embrace environmentalism as their substitute religion don't want to hear about scientific and technological solutions to climate change ... that do not include stepping up regulation and curbing consumption." That's a considerable overstatement. Solar power, wind power, biofuels, hybrid automobile engines, "green" building techniques, and carbon sequestration are all basically technical rather than regulatory approaches; there's quite as much techno-optimism among environmental enthusiasts…

- Young lumps nuclear power in with the geoengineering solutions that were the focus of my post. That, it seems to me, is a mistake…nuclear power is on the table in the global warming discussion, albeit much to the dismay of the Nader-types. I think that's a good thing. But nuclear power resembles emission limitation in one crucial respect: it operates on a very long time-scale…
- If you really think that the Gulf Stream might stop running ten years from now, as Gore suggests in his movie (as I understand it, such a catastrophe isn't likely, but can't be ruled out), or that Antarctica is getting close to a tipping point that would lead to massive glacier loss and a big, quick rise in the sea level, nuclear energy holds out no hope whatever of making a sufficient difference in the requisite amount of time. Neither does the Kyoto Protocol.

- By contrast, albedo-increasing measures act quickly. If we increase the albedo of the planet by spraying seawater on ocean clouds to make them shinier and thus reflect more sunlight back into space, the temperature impact is as immediate as the spraying itself (and lasts only until the salt falls back into the ocean, which reduces the risk of oversteering)…
- I argued for a symmetry between environmentalist opposition to albedo-increasing efforts to fight global warming and religious opposition to using condoms to fight the global AIDS epidemic…Young argues that distortions of the truth by those concerned about global warming are symmetric with distortions of the truth by those who deny that it's a problem…Whether or not I made out my case, I don't think she made out hers…