Hat tip to Gary over at Muck and Mystery for a link that pointed to another link to this story at the LA Times:
A focus on meeting, not setting, climate goals
The U.N. summit is preoccupied with targets for reducing carbon output, with little discussion on how it will be done.
Here's a recipe to head off the worst effects of global warming:
1. Start with 30 new nuclear power plants around the world.
2. Add 17,0000 wind turbines, 400 biomass power plants, two hydroelectric dams the size of China's Three Gorges Dam, and 42 coal or natural gas power plants equipped with still-experimental systems to sequester their carbon dioxide emissions underground.
3. Build everything in 2013. Repeat every year until 2030.
It's an intentionally implausible plan presented this week by the International Energy Agency to make a point: For all the talk about emissions reductions, the actual work is way beyond what the world can achieve.
As delegates from 190 countries gather here on the Indonesian island of Bali to negotiate a "road map" for the successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming, some experts are wondering whether the meeting has lost touch with the reality of tackling climate change.
In Texas, the participants would be referred to as "All Hat and No Cattle" -- setting goals, creating committees to study issues, setting limits to growth. It is all a lot of fun -- playing with OPM (other people's money) -- the participants are in paradise for a few more days and then they fly back to their huge homes on their private airplanes. If you have not read Bjorn Lomborg's book Cool It, you should do yourself the favor. He really dissects the science of AGW and shows that a lot more benefits could be done by spending the money elsewhere.
