[tmazanec1]

I recently keep hearing that we need to leave most of our coal, oil and gas underground to prevent global warming.
I submit that we will not do this, unless a non carbon source is developed, like nuclear fusion.
We will get everything we can out of the ground. The environmentalists who worry about global warming will mostly change their tune when the cutback in energy production starts to hurt. Some will put their great-grandchildren ahead of them, but they will be a minority.
And the Fourth Millennium will look like the Cretaceous without the dinos.

[Cottager]

It may sound like an heresy, but all this carbon excavation probably bad for humans, elephants, tigers and polar bears, but good for nature in general. Hundreds of millions of years nature was depositing carbon, leading to ice ages. Now humans will excavate part of it, allowing for good climate and further depositing for the next hundreds of millions of years. Bad for human civilization and polar bears - good for the future of the nature (avoiding snowball Earth?). Just my cynic two cents.

[StarvingLion]

"We": As in David Suzuki, Greer, Steve from Virginia, Gore, etc live in mansions while the idiots who believe their crap live in mud huts.

Here is an idea to help the environment: Turn the universities upside down and empty them.

[americandream]

"We": As in David Suzuki, Greer, Steve from Virginia, Gore, etc live in mansions while the idiots who believe their crap live in mud huts.

Here is an idea to help the environment: Turn the universities upside down and empty them.

So you basically do not believe in human induced climate change due to Suzuki et al living affluent lives? By that measure, I presume you do not agree with Bush Jr that Osama Bin Laden played a significant role in formenting terror by the fact that the Bush and Bin Laden families share business interests?

I would suggest holding up a mirror the next time you labelled someone an idiot.

[basil_hayden]

"We will not leave most available carbon underground"

I'm not sure if you think it's just the carbon or the other 80 or so elements available.

I think the only available thing headed deeper underground is probably some hot cores at Fukushima.

[joewp]

I agree tmaz. We'll burn the furniture if we get cold enough.

No carbon is safe with us around.

[Henriksson]

The US coal production peaked in 2013, China is estimated to peak in 2016. A lot of carbon will be left underground simply because they aren't very available. While it will harm energy production, this is indeed a blessing.

This is not to say climate change won't be serious; there's enough carbon emissions ahead that run-away climate change (clathrates, methane, etc.) will be kicked into gear. Earth won't turn into Venus, but I'm still not very positive about staying below three degrees...

[Pops]

It really isn't just treehuggers, pretty well everyone that has any respect for science agrees with the A in AGW when it sinks in that most scientific types think it is a valid model. Obviously there will never be 100% acceptance, too many incomes are involved, just as the OP says.

I agree with Joe that we'll want to burn it all but Heinrik has the reality, it doesn't really matter how much you want it if it costs outweigh benefits.

You can spend more energy and money getting it out than it returns for a while, but I imagine it's like flying a plane, you can only deal with negative lift for so long before you run out of sky.

lol

[tmazanec1]

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.ca/2 ... ortem.html
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.ca/2 ... odest.html

[dohboi]

Greer's a crypto-denialist, so not much to see hear. He can sound kinda clever sometimes, but it mostly boils down to bs. Reminds me a bit of some kind of new-age-y David Brooks.

[ennui2]

Running against the grain generates controversy and gets people coming back to his blog, which is really what he wants more than any sober debate about the issues.

Turning the knife inward and attacking activists who most would classify as on the side of rightness and good is one of his tried and true schticks.

It's like, I don't think McKibben's really accomplishing much, but I'm not going to burn through thousands of words of essay to excoriate the guy, because at least his heart is in the right place. Greer, though, would rather roast people like this than the Koch Brothers. A little twisted, and yet tailor-made for the hater era of the internet in which there are no sacred cows.

[dohboi]

Well put, en.

And really, either he accepts the reality and danger of GW--in which case, he should be one of the activists that he is excoriating...

Or he is a denialist (which he is, apparently), in which case: a) why should we take anything he says seriously, and b) why would he then care that activists have not been effective?

I think he's probably in the pay of the Koch's or some such...

[ennui2]

Well, it's about the blame game. Emphasis on game.

This is the very reason why I have spent so much of my time here countering Planty, because he literally gets off on laying blame for any and all things at Obama's feet. It's not really that I'm such a defender of Obama as much as I'm personally disgusted with those who feel the need to externalize and scapegoat to such an extent. Stub your toe? Must be Obama's fault! It rained today? Obama's fault! Seems innocuous when it's politicians, but taken to extremes, scapegoating like this is what shoved Jews in the gas chambers. So it really bothers me to see this kind of lazy way of blaming.

There are certain types of people who take perverse joy in finger-pointing to the extent that the issues lose their meaning. As long as you can somehow find fault in others, that becomes its own reward.

Greer's got that "know it all" attitude where he loves to sit at the top of the mountain and school the flock on how everyone else is doing it wrong. He really is a quasi-cult-leader based on the familiar names who have been bobbleheading in the comments under his blog for years and years. When he was pushing the whole Green Wizard thing I think he was accomplishing something constructive but most of what he's doing now is little more than promoting himself.

[Hawkcreek]

Greer's got that "know it all" attitude where he loves to sit at the top of the mountain and school the flock on how everyone else is doing it wrong. He really is a quasi-cult-leader based on the familiar names who have been bobbleheading in the comments under his blog for years and years. When he was pushing the whole Green Wizard thing I think he was accomplishing something constructive but most of what he's doing now is little more than promoting himself.

I like Greer's writing, but I kind of agree with you on the "know it all" attitude.
His fiction is pretty good though, in my opinion.

[regardingpo]

There's something off about Greer for sure, but I have a simpler explanation - he actually wants to see climate change happen. He wants this civilization to collapse to be exact, CC is just a means to an end. That's why he writes these articles with such joy.

I could be confusing him with Kunstler, though.

[dohboi]

I too used to like a lot of what Greer had to say. But since I saw that he was pretty much an open denialist at one conference he went to, I've been wary, and noticed that he usually gets subtle or not so subtle denialist memes into much of his writing. I used to like Kunstler too, but he gets tiresome after a while...the world economic system is always a month away from collapse. Don't get me wrong...I do think that we are teetering on the edge. I just tire of those who are constantly sure they know the day and hour of our demise, even after getting it wrong repeatedly.

[regardingpo]

^ Yeah, I totally get that. What you wrote about Kunstler is the reason I don't visit zerohedge anymore.

[ennui2]

Right, and remember that Kunstler probably made more money writing fiction like World Made By hand than promotion of new urbanism.

BTW, I decided to see what Sharon Astyk is up to lately since she used to seem like one of the saner doom bloggers out there. Well, she's selling her farm and "moving to urban Schenectady". Back to BAU it seems.

http://scienceblogs.com/casaubonsbook/2 ... uy-a-farm/

The reasons she gave last year don't mention "the world doesn't seem to be ending that quickly, so I guess I don't need a doomstead" because the target audience of her writings is soccer moms these days.

http://scienceblogs.com/casaubonsbook/2 ... -the-farm/

[KaiserJeep]

For the umteenth time, if you want to blame somebody (which is a useless exercise) then at least blame those responsible.

For all the oil that gets burned as fuel, blame everybody who owns a vehicle with a fuel tank, and those people that go to the grocery stores and buy food wrapped in plastic and grown with mechanized agriculture using pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers made from petroleum.

For all the coal burning, blame those that use the power grid, drink beer or soda (the electricity-intensive aluminum cans) and drive around on bicycles, cars, and trucks made from steel, aluminum alloys, and plastics.

YOU the consumer have all the choices. It has been true for at least a couple of decades that one can buy electricity made from renewables and nuclear power (i.e. minimal carbon emissions) and battery electric vehicles (fallen to 0.7% of the total vehicles purchased by consumers). You can also buy organic food and even grow your own, which is lots more healthy for you and doesn't consume any oil for growing or transport.

If you chose not to do these things, because it cost more, wasn't as cheap, or was less convenient, then YOU are the carbon-spewing flaming rectum who is killing the planet you inhabit. YOU made your lifestyle choices rather than more costly but less convenient green alternatives.

Keep working on it, and you will eventually understand these completely obvious things.