I read a letter to the editor in the latest Newsweek from someone claiming that some measurement of the atmosphere has been 200 something or other (I don’t remember the details) for the last few million years and it’s now over 300 in the last 50 years or so. I wonder what instruments were used a million years ago to collect these “guaranteed” measurements. These are the kind of idiots we don’t need.

However, just blaming the environmentalists is a much easier solution than re-evaluating one’s lifestyle. Whenever I am visiting North Amercia, I am stunned to see AC machines running all-day-round while windows are made from poorly insulating single-pane designs which don’t really close properly (or aren’t even fully closed). This is a terrible waste of valuable energy.

I agree the environmental extremist is a problem, but you have your extremists in every field and it is just a fact of life. What is encouraging is the growth in the number of people that I would call thoughtful environmentalists, they will be the ones that make the difference and get everyone else on board.

In any case, here’s an example of a rebuttal against Coleman’s article: http://ideonexus.com/2008/06/16/john-coleman-global-warming-and-the-price-of-a-gallon-of-gas/ Be careful of trusting just one source on this issue; there are assertions made in there that have been debunked before. What particularly galls me is the argument for drilling in the US. The facts show that the reserves the US have are small and are unlikely to affect gas prices in the medium- or long-term.

Also, blaming Al Gore for this is really kind of disturbing. Global warming has been discussed extensively before Al Gore appeared on the stage. I’m kind of mystified as to why he always gets blamed for it. Not only that, significant folks on both sides of the political spectrum believe in it, including both US presidential candidates and most Western politicians on both side of the spectrum.

As for the textbook argument: actually, at least in the mid-80s, we (in the Northeast) didn’t have textbooks that stated those, although they certainly were in the news. There were theories put forth about oil availability, and in fact the peak oil argument suggests that, while we may not know the exact date, oil reserves on the planet are finite and will eventually diminish and become more expensive to extract. Technology has managed to find more oil (for now), but new oil discoveries have become increasingly rare as the years have gone on. In any case, of course scientists and/or environmentalists are going to be wrong at times. However, the global warming argument has not been broadly debunked, and I would strongly disagree with Coleman’s argument being a debunking.

As for nuclear power, that’s a different matter entirely, and there I agree with you. People are simply afraid of the notion, which is a huge shame; the technology has improved immensely. Situations like Chernobyl are virtually impossible today, because modern reactors don’t have a “positive void coefficient” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Possible_causes_of_the_disaster); instead of the reaction running away and causing an explosion, failures in modern reactors would cause the reaction to simply die. Folks with a proper scientific education know that nuclear power is safe and really ought to be deployed in greater numbers. Ironically, it is the gas-consuming public that fears nuclear power the most. The one significant challenge with it is nuclear waste disposal, but that’s a solvable engineering problem.

(BTW, random tidbit you may find interesting: Canada and Alberta in particular stand to benefit more than any other place in the world from higher oil and gas prices; the Athabasca Oil Sands are one of the world’s proven largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia and possibly larger than Venezuela’s, but are stored in a dense bitumen, and are expensive to extract. As oil prices go up, the potential of the Oil Sands increases immensely. If the current trends continue, Alberta will become an even bigger player in Canada’s economy.)

I think it is very sad that Al Gore and others are capitalizing on the fears of others and it is very shameful.

I agree that we need to take a serious look at nuclear power too. I know a few engineers in the field and it is the most regulated and closely watched field of engineering I know so I have complete trust in them keeping the systems safe. A couple of incidents in the past seem to have made everyone deathly afraid of nuclear power. Yet, look at the very liberal country of France and how much they depend on the clean nuclear power technology available today.

I think the environmental extremist house of cards will fall soon as people finally start seeing the lies they are perpetuating.