1.Problem of Global Warming

Global warming may or not be the great environmental crisisof the 21st century, but—regardless of weather it is or isn't— we won't do muchabout it. We will argue over it and may even, as a nation, make some fairlysolemn-sounding commitments to avoid it. But the more dramatic and meaningful thesecommitments seem, the less likely they are to be observed.

Al Gore calls global warming an “inconvenient truth,”as if merely recognizing it could put in on a path to a solution. But the realtruth is that we don't know enough to believe global warming, and — withourmajor technological breakthroughs — we can't do much about it.

No government will adopt rigid restrictions oneconomic growth and personal freedom (limits on electricity usage, driving andtravel）that might cut back global warming. Still,politicians want to show they're “doing something”. Consider the KyotoProtocol. It allowed countries that joined to punish those that didn't. But ithasn't reduced carbon dioxide emissions (up about 25% since 1990), and many signatoriesdidn't adopt tough enough policies to hit their 2008 — 2012 targets.

The practical conclusion is that if global warming is apotentail disaster, the only solution is new technology. Only an aggressiveresearch and development program might find ways of breaking our dependence onfossil fuels or dealing with it.

The trouble with the global warming debate is that it hasbecome a moral problem when it's really engineering one. The inconvenient truthis that if we don't solve the engineering problem, we're helpless.