Claris Law Legal Blogging Community

Name:

E-mail:

Phone Number:

Zip Code:

Your Question:

Editor: Rod Sullivan
Profession: Maritime Attorney

Category: General

I recently was asked to be a guest on a radio talk show. The topic was global warming and I was asked about those predictions that regardless of what we do, the temperature of the earth will rise 3.5 degrees over the next 50 years. What I said in response was far more polite than what I thought because what I was thinking was that people who say things like that ought to be taken out and, and,......given a stern talking to.

It was two scholars from the Cato Institute who have been making those statements. Their policy is

No known mechanism can stop global warming in the near term. International agreements, such as the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, would have no detectable effect on average temperature within any reasonable policy time frame of 50 years or so, even with full compliance.

I don't know if the Kyoto Protocol or UN Framework would stop global warming, but I do disagree that "no known mechanism can stop global warming."

There are two ways to reduce CO2 levels and hence reduce global warming: you either reduce the amount of CO2 produced, or you increase the amount of CO2 which is recycled into oxygen and carbon. It is a simple engineering problem to state, and really not that difficult an engineering problem to solve.

I often hear environmentalists say "there is no silver bullet" and "it is going to take a lot of small changes" to correct the problem. I say "bullshit". There is a silver bullet--it is nuclear energy. The dangers of global warming now far outweigh the dangers of nuclear power. The French get over 80% of their power from nuclear energy and no one thinks that they are casual about keeping their country safe. The biggest reason that Vermont produces so little CO2 is because of the nuclear reactor they are getting ready to shut down. We need to shut down coal, oil, and gas fired power plants and replace them with nuclear boilers, and we need to start now. We cannot afford to wait for the current boilers to become obosolescent.

Next, we need to develop a hybrid strain of aquatic plant (probably an algae) which will take up significant amounts of CO2 and digest it into oxygen and carbon. The earth is 4/5th oceans. Its time we started using the oceans as a CO2 sink.

Why not just plant more trees? Yeah, it could work, but only in the short term. Think about trees as tall sticks of carbon and water, because that is what they are---50% carbon and 50% water. It takes 3.44 acres of dense new growth forest to consume the CO2 produced by the average American family. We just don't have enough land. Even if we did. once that new growth becomes old growth forest, it stops consuming as much CO2. What do you do then? If cut down the trees and burn them you put the carbon back into the air. If you permit them to decompose it will take forever before you can replant the area. Oceans are the answer.

I'm not just talking about letting algae grow wild. I'm talking about intensive aquaculture of algae----use of it as animal feed, human food, and fertilizer for our favorite crops.

This is not an insoluable problem. It's an engineering problem, a horticultural problem, but not one that can't be solved.