I just think we should

1) recognize there are grave risks

2) be willing to pay the true costs of minimizing them

3) don’t let the people who profit from nukes be the ones who decide what to do about 1) and 2).

Auto’s are the second major contributor to CO2, right behind coal fired electricity. A few years ago Obama mutter something about more nuke plants but I haven’t seen anything to come to pass. I mean why not built more? We already generated waste, why not a little more?

If people are so concern about climate change they should be willing to take the risk associated with nukes.

I don’t recommend economic war either, but the Chinese will drive a hard bargain, and they should know we mean business and we are not going to be pussies about this.

But they are also good businessmen, and realists. They know they have as much to gain as we do, and as much to lose. And I suspect their economy is even more vulnerable to climate disruption than ours. They will deal, and the Indians will fall into line too once they se the Chinese are happy with their deal.

I am also pleased to see that you recognize our negotiations with them may have to start off with them having a head start. It is not unreasonable, they are still a developing country, as far as the vast bulk of their population is concerned. The size of that head start can be a good bargaining point for us, too.

Remember, all we have to do is buy time so that normal market forces can start to deal with the problem.

Here’s an article on China and emissions. This is an interview with a government guy, so keep the salt handy.

A couple of things that stood out:

“If China could replace coal with oil as a primary source of energy, emissions would drop by one third. If we could replace coal with natural gas, they would drop by two thirds.”

That’s a lot of natural gas, though.

There is work being done on oceanic methane hydrates, but it’s tricky.

At their peak, France’s per-capita emissions were 9 tonnes, while Germany’s approached 15 tonnes. We shouldn’t forget that. You can’t ask China to get to 7 tonnes and level off or fall. It goes against the basic laws of developmental economics. Japan and Australia have per-capita GDPs of US$40,000, but their emissions still haven’t peaked. China’s per-capita GDP is US$5-6,000. The curve is still going up.

China can peak at a lower level than the US and EU did historically. But even a per-capita peak of 10 tonnes means total emissions of 13 billion tonnes.

The Chinese and Indians will deal, they can’t afford that kind of economic war with us, even if they win it. Besides, they’ll know that in the long run it will also be in their benefit to come up with some compromise. They can’t afford NOT to meet us half-way, unless their businessmen have bought their governments too.

They’ll negotiate a tough deal, and we probably won’t get everything we want, or even deserve. But something will happen.

And something is better than nothing. It will buy us time.

Or we can just do nothing, sigh, make excuses about how its out of our hands now, and lobby for more tax cuts and less regulations.

And what would that BE exactly?

By the way, the answers relate to your first question.

And I think this discussion is being handled just fine.

You can no longer deny climate change, you can’t dispute its origin, and you can’t distract us about its consequences, tactics which you have been using consistently until quite recently. So now you decide to divert us instead by condemning those who follow your own example and refuse to do anything about it.

Methinks your sudden indignation is primarily designed to camouflage your own prior obstruction and sabotage of every effort to study and publicize this issue. What are you going to do next, accuse liberals of “not displaying any leadership”?

What hypocrisy. From what we can see from your posts over the last few years, it’s your side that seems desperately determined to prevent anything from being done about it, or even to admit there is a problem. And you’ve played right into the hands of the Chinese and the Indians, by selling them the rope. Why should they cooperate with us when the Americans show “no consensus on this issue”?

When you admit we have a problem, that it is a non-ideological one, and that we must act quickly to do something about it, THEN you can start talking about who is to blame for it, what they are doing or failing to do.

I’m not slick at all. There’s another alternative.

Until you actually start retaining information and integrating it into the total conversation, you aren’t going to be able to handle this kind of discussion.