Reply To: Injection of fuel and pulsing

[JimmyT]

In my humble opinion here’s why I think the question of man made global warming is important:

Whether it is a fact or not many of our responses should be the same. Development of DPF power is on the top of my list. There are all kinds of reasons to do this. Other environmental reasons not related to global warming; economic reasons; global security reasons; standard of living reasons; etc. etc.

Other responses probably would share this trait. We should probably continue to pursue solar and wind and geothermal and tidal power and fission options Just in case DPF doesn’t work. (I’ll let someone else fund those.)

But some responses are not the same. If man made global warming is not a fact, then we should be aggressively pursuing all the petroleum and other fossil fuels that we can. We should drill in ANWAR. We should drill off the continental shelf. We should continue research into methane hydrate deposits. All this to get us by until, hopefully, DPF comes on line. Because we really don’t know how long this is going to take. Even assuming it is going to work.

But if CO2 produced by human activities is contributing significantly to global warming. And we decide that this is undesirable. And we decide it’s impact is going to be significant enough in the near enough future to be worth the cost of avoiding its production. Then maybe we shouldn’t be pursuing the production of fossil fuels. At least maybe we should be pursuing some of the other options more aggressively.

The costs of this avoidance are very large. These high costs imply a high human toll. I don’t think the “just in case” argument works due to this factor. And there are some who take this “just in case ” position.