I am reading the book Hell and High Water by Joseph Romm. It is not for the faint of heart. Romm runs quickly through the science behind the global warming issue - and there is plenty of science to mention.



One of the facts that struck me dumb was this: the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere today is about 30% higher than what it has been in the last 400,000 years.* And it has risen sharply (more than doubling) since 1900 - when the industrial revolution really got into full swing.

He starts out the book, however, with a solution to the problem - although he quickly points out that there is no political will to implement it. He suggests that over a 50 year period, we do the following:

1. Replicate California's performance-based energy efficiency programs. "From 1976-2005, electricity consumption per capita stayed flat in California, while it grew 60% in the rest of the nation." Per capita means per person, so while the rest of us have been gobbling more and more energy each year, the folks in California have figured out how to live the way we are for a fraction of the energy use!

2. Greatly increase the efficiency of industry and power generation, including doubling the use of co-generation (which combines heat and power to reduce energy lost as waste heat)

3. Build 1 million wind turbines or the equivalent in other renewables like solar (this would be 50 times the current capacity)

Now, I have some issues with the next two, but I will list them anyway.

4. Capture the CO2 associated with 800 proposed large coal plants and permanently store that CO2 underground. [Personally, I don't understand why we are planning to build that many new coal plants at this moment in history...]

5. Build 700 large nuclear reactors (double the current capacity)

6. Increase the average fuel economy for cars & light trucks to 60 miles per gallon.

7. Make all new cars hybrid so they run on battery power for short distances before switching to biodiesel. To produce enough biodiesel fuel, about 1/12 (one twelth) of the world's crop land would have to be devoted to growing high energy crops to convert to biodiesel.#

8. Stop all tropical deforestation and double the rate of new tree planting.

Romm believes that taking these steps - which seem unlikely, but not impossible - would stop the rise in atmospheric CO2, and maintain it at the current level of 550 parts per million.

*Scientists know this because of their analysis of ice core samples from Antarctica.
#Biodiesel is actually produced in limited quantities now. It burns clean (generating very little ground-level ozone - aka smog) and is fairly efficient to manufacture, unlike ethanol from corn. My dream car today would be a VW diesel stick-shift bug that can get up to 70 miles per gallon, but ONLY if biodiesel fuel were available locally - otherwise the regular diesel releases too much pollution that negates the benefits of using less gas!