Wow! What a great expose of how incredibly far out of touch with reality the global warming movement is.

An 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020 would require that most of the people on earth give up their cars, quit working, quit heating their homes, quit eating, quit using electricity, and quit breathing.

In China, it is estimated that the number of cars will increase by 20X before the year 2020, and a new coal fired power plant is brought on line every week.

I did some geothermal energy work in the 1970s for the government. In only a few circumstances is it technologically feasible and almost never environmentally safe or economically justifiable. Remember that we get our drinking water out of the ground. The fact that there are large quantities of heat (and diamonds) deep within the earth does not mean that we can access either.

Drill bits don't do well in hot rocks.

Browns idea is great and I used to think along the same terms of Brown, untill of course, I thought of my "TUNNEL" idea. Once Brown heres of my "Tunnels" I am sure he will think of them as the best option thus far. Here is why.
In his plan I agree basically with 1 through 3 except for number 2.

My "Tunnels" eliminate the carbon dioxide emissions to greater than 90%. The 10% that is left over that is carbon based energy is needed for load and frequency control of the tramsission line grid system over the whole USA. This may be reduced to 100% if nuclear power is used for the same reason.

#4 Which Brown did not think about, are my "TUNNELS". They are the most efficient of all renewable energy sources since the Gulfstrean flows to North at around 5 MPH 24/7/365. Wind,Solar,Hydro can not compete with the "Tunnels" in this aspect unless of course the Earth stops spinning.

#5 By using the "Tunnels" to regulate cliamate the Earths forest cover will rebound nicely.

#6 I agree with Browns sense of urgency here except for the energy source should be the "TUNNELS" for the reasons I mentioned above.

#7 Some Geothermal energy is OK but not as much as Brown mentions. This takes away BTUs from the Earths surface and causes it to shrink and could cause Earthquakes and volcanos to go off due to raising of diffential pressures along fault lines causing them to slip.A good example of this occuring is the famous "Indonesia Mud Volcano".

#8 With the use of the "TUNNELS" there will be no carbon to TAX!

Nuff said or do you want to computer model my "TUNNELS" now? Proof is in the computer models!

It makes many Russians (particularly Putin) very happy to see that the press and policy makers in the US are suicidal.

Clinton, Hussein Obama, McCain - they are all equally clueless about what it is they are being set up for with this CO2 panic. Russia and China are chomping at the bit to take power.

For those of us old enough to remember past 1979 (the baseline for the AGWers), it is amusing that the infamous flap over nuclear winter (produced by the usual suspects that are pushing AGW) was started. After all the initial terror tactics, to "prove" their caring about the "globe", the data got sent to the Soviets, who in a remarkably similar manner pointed out that the theoretical effects of a nuclear winter were massively overstated. It seems that the UCS and other panic groups had forgotten to account for the fact that the earth is 3/4 water....

Heh, how much do you need AGWers?

1. The theory isn't following its predictions: Strike 1
2. The theory doesn't add up mathematically:
Strike 2
3. Historically the players have made scientific and mathematical errors in their theories. Repeatedly: Strike 3, and AGW is out, just like the rest of the your chikin stuff predictions.

Yes, yes, some of us have heard it for decades and it may still be funny, but it is also sad how gullible and ignorant so many still are.

I wonder how he got to the figure of 190 million per year? Considering that the governments of the world probably waste that much a month, it seems like a very small amount.

Reply: Sorry Darren and everyone, that figure is 190 billion, which makes much more sense. It has been corrected.

"as the real battle over climate change is now political,"

ROTFL

This is getting stranger by the second! Environmentalists such as Lester Brown tend to be very vocal with "motherhood" statements and very naive at the same time. Based on the sample included in the above article, Plan B, as he calls it, sounds more like a primary school "science" project wish list. The 8 points mentioned would "cost the world an additional $190 million per year." It is clear that any single one item of his points would cost 10-1000 times more than that! Reply: that figure is 190 billion. My screwup. Brett
Of course he closes with a revenue stream that never seems to relate directly to purpose! (other than name only). Tax carbon emissions and forget what productive use or goal it will provide; sounds a little too political for me!
Responsibility and accountability seems to have disappeared from this issue.
In the case of the UN, "taxation without representation" appears to be their ultimate goal!

My father-in-law had a geothermal heating/cooling system installed at his rural home in southern Ohio back in the early 90s. Basically, it was a heat exchange unit and did quite well at heating his home in the winter and cooling it in the summer. The initial cost was a bit high but he saved a bundle on energy costs over the 10-15 years he was in the house. From what I remember he only had to go down about 10 feet or so to install the piping.

Wind turbines taking toll on birds of prey

ALTAMONT PASS, Calif. - The big turbines that stretch for miles along these rolling, grassy hills have churned out clean, renewable electricity for two decades in one of the nation's first big wind-power projects.

But for just as long, massive fiberglass blades on the more than 4,000 windmills have been chopping up tens of thousands of birds that fly into them, including golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, burrowing owls and other raptors.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-01-04-windmills-usat_x.htm

That is wishful thinking at best! Reduce coal and eventually phase it out? Are you insane? Wind Turbines will be our only solution here primarily? Who will want that in their backyard? Certainly not Ted Kennedy! No nucleur power? So the wind turbines will power 40% of the Earths power(if thats accurate, where will the other 60% come from?

Basically he wants a global depression to happen. Thats the only way you reduce emissions by 80%. Conservation is a good idea in theory, but lets fact it here: Al Gore doesn't do it, and most people don't either. It is basically a utopian view when it comes to reducing carbon emissions. Going this far out on a limb tends to hurt your credibility, but time will tell.

It is noteworthy that Lester has never had a real job & has been is the university / NGO think tank world of spending money with no accountablity his whole life.
I'm sure he is smart etc but he would have some credilbility if he had actually had a real job & solved some real environmental problems ... with a real budget.
Reminds me of the proverb that those that can't do teach!!

Be good,
Rick.

Hi Guys

This guy is one of those eco-socialist of doom and gloom.

"The Washington-based Earth Policy Institute's Lester Brown, had said the surrounding Pacific waters have risen to dangerous levels due to global warming. "The leaders of Tuvalu have conceded defeat in their battle with the rising sea, announcing that they will abandon their homeland," Mr Brown said. "New Zealand has agreed to accept all 11,000 citizens of Tuvalu, with migration expected to start in 2002."

However, New Zealand officials have flatly denied the migration plans.

A 10-year scientific study has found no evidence of sea level rises around Tuvalu.

Tuvalu Deputy Secretary to Government Simeti Lopati, says no decision has been made. "We are not leaving Tuvalu just yet, and no decision has been taken on that," Mr Lopati said. "Some people might be exaggerating it a bit." (Australian Broadcasting Corp.) "

See these links for yourself
http://www.reason.com/news/show/34777.html
http://www.junkscience.com/apr99/wtadler.html
http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PlanB_pr.htm
http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=9246
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/1973/1/123/

He actually proposes his plan will cost $190 billion a year, not million. Reply: Thanks, I corrected it.

So... the man who blames "an economic system that rewards production without regard for environmental impact" believes US manufacturers should produce wind turbines with the same urgency as they did tanks and bombers during WWII. Perhaps Lester, in his omniscience, could efficiently plan the entire economy. On the other hand, his policies could do temporary wonders for the US manufacturing base.

How much would all of this cost? Brown estimates that the coast of his Plan B
would cost the world an additional $190 million per year.

REPLY: Is that all? Reply: sorry to dissapoint you Oz, it's 190 billion. .......Oh, well, that's ok, let's give it to Mr. Brown so he can put forth his agenda of bringing down the United States economy and level the playing field for the rest of the world. I am sure we can afford it.

He compares this to
the global military budget, which is more than $1.2 trillion.

REPLY: Yeah, Mr. Brown. You are the typical hater of the Military. The people who fight to keep you free to spew his marxist pap! Heaven forbid we spend money on defense against the REAL THREATS TO THE PLANET!

Brown feels that all we have to do is find the political and popular will to
implement the plan.

REPLY: Translation: Vote for a socialist for President like they do in Europe.

but that will be a tough sell, as the real battle over climate change is now political, not technological,

REPLY: It's always been political. From the days these looney tunes put forth the Ice Age scare! Yes, Mr. Brown. It will be a tough sell. Because the people are getting wise to Enviro-Zealots like you. And as long as we are around, you will have a tough sell. So go crawl back into your lefty political hand book, and come up with a new strategy. The old one is not working (thank God).

Save the planet from hot air. MUZZLE THE ENVRIO-ZEALOTS!!!!

If we are to talk about out of touch, it's the skeptic community, which who are fighting a desperate rearguard action in this blog. The weird bias of this community allows them to gang up on the majority, ignore the large majority of science, grab tidbits of information to distort, and ignore any evidence that does not agree with them.

Unfortunately, the desperate measures required to reverse this disastrous trend are indeed beyond the capacity of our self-indulgent society. We all want something for nothing.

Paul,

The scheme you are describing is sensible, but is not really geothermal. It is just using the thermal mass of the substrate as a buffer. There are many things which can be done to improve the energy efficiency of houses, and we should be doing as many of them as possible.

This is what the author is really talking about-

When natural cracks and pores will not allow for economic flow rates, the permeability can be "enhanced" or stimulated by pumping cold water or water with acids and chemicals through the ground.

When I hear about "enhanced permeability," I run for cover. That was the buzzword of Project Plowshare, Oil Shale and just about every other environmentally catastrophic energy idea I have dealt with.

The HDR project in Basel, Switzerland was suspended after causing an earthquake. On 8 December 2006, only 8 days after water injection started, a quake occurred measuring 3.4 on the Richter Scale with the epicentre at the bottom of the HDR borehole. The tremor prompted over 1000 calls to emergency services by local residents[1] [2], and caused minor structural damage to several buildings. Water injection was immediately stopped, but minor quakes continued. Further significant tremors were recorded on 6 January (measuring 3.1)[3] and 16 January 2007

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_dry_rock_geothermal_energy#_note-INEL

Patrick Cyclonebuster,

Can I get an extra "Tunnel" for free just for the cost of shipping and handling?

"Patrick Cyclonebuster's Perpetual Motion Machine, It slices, it dices, and it will solve all your problems . . .

All for the low low price of 99 million 99. A 2 billion dollar value, that's right for just 99 million 99. Act now! And if you do act now, we'll throw in bla bla bla"

Some salient points but overall it sounds like a Globalism Manifesto to me. Let's look at the highlights one at a time:

"Winding down our dependence on coal and eventually phase it out." Depends what the definition of "our" is. China is marching full steam ahead with coal as the driver of their economy. Good luck with getting them to abandon coal. It's also the cheapest and most abundant fossil fuel in the U.S.

"Reduce global carbon dioxide emissions 80% by 2020." Why? First, there is no definitive proof that AGW is harmful or even significant. How? Seriously, how would you do it? I don't see how it could be done without shutting down coal burning power plants. Any interference with the U.S. power grid is a threat to national security. Good luck with that one, too.

"Improve energy efficiency." All for it. As an example I spent $400 on extra attic insulation last winter and it's already paid for itself.

"Develop renewable sources of power." Why didn't I think of that? I'm going to start working on my hydrogen fuel cell this weekend. Right after I put the finishing touches on my Tesla device. "Develop" is hard enough, "Adopt and Implement" is even harder. See wind farm discussion below.

"Expand the Earth's forest cover." Excellent idea. Where? And at the expense of what? Crops?

"Build new wind turbines with the same urgency that the U.S. produced tanks and bombers during World War II and we could generate 3 million
megawatts of wind power by 2020, enough to meet 40% of the world's energy needs." Are you saying we're at war with the planet? I don't think we are. Wind power seems like such an attractive solution until you try to implement it. Take the case of Uber-environmentalist Ted Kennedy. He's all for wind power, just don't put a wind farm off the coast of Martha's Vinyard, Hyannisport or anywhere in his line of vision. Shocking. Even ultra liberal Rhode Islanders are balking at a wind farm off their southern coast line now that the power company wants to enter into negotiations with the state because of fears it will kill their tourism industry. When it comes time for action, these ideas get very little support.

"Utilize more geothermal energy, which according to Brown is 50,000 times more powerful than all of our oil or natural gas." Even with the difficulties involved in tapping into this energy it could be a dominant energy source at least for the western U.S. Very intriguing.

"Phase in a worldwide carbon tax at $20 per ton each year between 2008-2020, topping out at $240 per ton." Here is where he ventures out of his area of expertise and sounds like a globalist pipe dreamer. This is just plain nutty. And comparing the costs of adoption of these options against military budgets is truly wearing your politics on your sleeve.

It's too bad that environmentalists too often are assumed to be liberal whack jobs and AGW skeptics are assumed to be gun-toting, chaw-chewing, Bush-loving conservatives. I am a conservative professional engineer who is an AGW skeptic but am also an environmentalist, never voted for Bush, never held a gun in my hand and hope I live to see the day when we no longer have an economy so centrally focused on oil.

I am reluctant to enter this debate, because it is a policy debate, not a science debate, and therefore does not turn on such firm issues as the scientific debate. However, I'll make a few observations:

1. He's talking $190 billion per year. That's each and every year. That figure seems reasonable to me if you remember that it's a continuing cost, not a one-time cost. Even so, I do not accept his claim that we can achieve 80% reductions in carbon emissions by 2020. Much of the capital investment in energy infrastructure has longer lifetimes than 12 years, so we can't afford to replace it that quickly.

2. I would prefer a program emphasizing nuclear plants, not wind generation, although I think that there's plenty of room for increased utilization of wind. Just because of capital intensity issues, I wouldn't want to build more than 50 new nuclear plants per year (above and beyond replacing existing capacity).

3. I certainly share his distaste for coal, which is definitely an environmental disaster. Even so, I wouldn't tear down any existing coal plants, I'd just retire them as they wear out.

4. Our big problem here is determining the cost of NOT abating CO2 emissions. We know that cost is high -- certainly many trillions of dollars -- but we have no way of estimating costs relative to abatement costs. We're pretty much guessing here. That doesn't justify inaction, it just makes decision-making more difficult.

5. The decisive factor in my mind is the risk of the catastrophic scenario. At the high end of the range of plausible scenarios are some scenarios that truly are disastrous. For example, if we really do see a rise in sea level exceeding two meters, then most port cities would be rendered uninhabitable and the gigantic investments in that infrastructure -- easily amounting to hundreds of trillions or perhaps even quadrillions of dollars -- would be lost to humanity. While such scenarios are unlikely, they cannot be ruled out, and this consideration provides us with what is to my thinking the most powerful argument for taking initial steps towards CO2 abatement.

6. I am sure that the nut cases will play the standard straw man game, accusing me of wanting destroy the entire world economy in order to ward off a nonexistent threat. I will therefore re-iterate that I have no desire to take dramatic action in the immediate future nor do I believe that the worst case scenario is likely. I am arguing that the probability of the worst case scenario, while low, is not negligible, and a prudent planner would take it into consideration.

Oh boy... If "war" (i.e., emergency) is declared on global warming, first in California, then will other states follow?

"California utilities would control the temperature of new homes and commercial buildings in emergencies with a radio-controlled thermostat, under a proposed state update to building energy efficiency standards.

Customers could not override the thermostats during "emergency events," according to the proposal, part of a 236-page revision to building standards. The document is scheduled to be considered by the California Energy Commission, a state agency, on Jan. 30.

The description does not provide any exception for health or safety concerns. It also does not define what are "emergency events."

The document, available at http://tinyurl.com/225htc, outlines the mandatory use of Programmable Communicating Thermostats on page 64:

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/01/08/news/top_stories/1_02_261_7_08.txt

This mobilization against Globull Warming ties in with the Millenial Developement Goals being worked on by the UN.

Oleg,

You: It makes many Russians (particularly Putin) very happy to see that the press and policy makers in the US are suicidal.

Reply: No doubt. Speaking of Russia: Russia Makes 1st Nuke Shipment to Iran.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071217/D8TJ63NO0.html

Its only a matter of time before Iran gets bombed.

Speaking of Iran and Globull Warming: Worst snowstorm in 40 years hits Iran!

http://www.iranwpd.com/