 | Dr James Hansen: Can We Still Avoid Dangerous Human-Made Climate Change? | The Oil Drum: Europe | The architecture of UK offshore oil production in relation to future production models |  |
173 comments on How to Address Contrarian Arguments - part I
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
173 comments on How to Address Contrarian Arguments - part I
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
User login
Personnel
Editors
Contributors
Peak Oil Primers
Archives
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
Vital Trivia
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
This I think is the #1 or #2 problem. Even with intelligent people this is not going to happen. "Don't bother me with all that negativity" they think. Technology will save us.
People have a "comfortably" delusional life - at least for now.
DelusionaL ;/
Of course, this is only tenable if you believe that there really is nothing to be done. I don't believe that, and I hope to give Slashdot a glimpse of the alternative.
the best return on investment is to do stuff that helps you and your family rather then trying to save the world as we know it.
The problem I see with trying to save your family (and the devil take everyone else) is that the social upheaval which would come with a collapse of the current social order (as opposed to one of its current power elements) would place everyone and everything at risk. You might have detailed plans to ride out the crisis and grow your own food afterward, but it only takes one angry or hungry mob to throw them all in the crapper.
I'm not going to bother making plans which probably won't be useful beyond the second event of a crisis, or even the first. Steering a path around the crisis is the way to go. And there's at least one reason to take this path, no matter what your leanings:
It doesn't matter which one motivates you, the solution is the same.
Someone who is worried about energy entirely from a geopolitical standpoint will want to maximise coal use, particularly in the US case.
From a global warming point of view (without carbon capture and storage) that is the worst thing you can do.
The coal industry, and some of the power plant industry, and to some extent the aviation and auto industry, are playing a game of chicken: keep denying global warming, keep putting obstacles in the path of doing something about it, and hope that they are right (and we are wrong) about the consequences.
Conversely the most positive step taken (inadvertently) against global warming was the 'dash for gas' by electric utilities in the US and UK, following deregulation of those industries. Big savings in CO2 emission by displacing coal with gas (the main reason why the UK has a chance of meeting its Kyoto targets).
From a Peak Oil/ energy autonomy perspective, that tied our economies into a declining energy supply, coming from politically unstable countries.