Outside the Box Thinking

For years a number of scientists have been running around announcing "the end is nigh!" with their warnings about global warming. Their prodding has moved various political entities down the road to "fixing" the problem through ham-handed solutions like Kyoto.

Here in British Columbia, the government has implemented a "carbon tax" that will add 7.2 cents/litre (roughly 30 cents/gallon) by 2012 (and has initially boosted gasoline prices by 2.4 cents/gallon. With this has pushed gasoline to over $1.40/litre (over $5.50/gallon). It has added insult to injury to the household budgets during an already worrisome economic climate.

My complaint about the global warming crowd is that they strike me as gloomsters & doomsters that I've seen too many times in the past. Sure, there is an element of truth in what they say. That's what makes the credible enough to get attention. But what really bothers me is that rather than demand a serious scientific effort to develop the fundamental science and test what we know, this crowd is a moralistic bunch that proudly "has the answers" and wants to bang us about the head until we give in to their demands. They are too much of a "hair shirt" crowd for my taste. They want to administer their medicine of puritanical "tighten the belt" and do without. It seems they take glee in passing out their castor oil prescription. But I notice that they can still justify their jet set lifestyle of flying around the world to attend conferences at which they dourly pontificate about our wasteful ways and "our" need (not them) to cut back on greenhouse emissions.

I admit the potential of greenhouse gases to cause global warming. I want to see governments mobilize science and technology to examine the science and develop the full panoply of technological alternatives before we are driven down some costly path that ends up based on half-baked ideas by scientists wearing hair shirts.

So... when I run across a report like the following about an open source technology initiative I think "why don't we explore this before we commit to Kyoto or something worse?" To me the following is evidence that all the viable alternatives to Kyoto and carbon taxes and other heavy-handed "solutions" have not been fully explored:

Scientists say they have found a workable way of reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere by adding lime to seawater. And they think it has the potential to dramatically reverse CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere, reports Cath O'Driscoll in SCI's Chemistry & Industry magazine published today.

Here is the Cquestrate web site.