WE DIDN'T LISTEN!!!!!

What?! Some people don't believe that Global Warming exists, oh how sad.

Thousands of scientists have gone over mountains of evidence spanning over several billion years and never has the change happened so fast nor have atmospheric carbon dioxide levels risen so fast in correlation. It is happening much faster than natural cycles ever have, and the steep rise's beginning perfectly aligns with the industrial revolution.

Yes, cycles happen, but we are causing much faster warming than has ever happened before and we can do something to stop it: regardless of human, natural or both causing it, by cutting carbon dioxide emissions we can mitigate a significant amount of projected warming. We should not argue about blame but instead know that by acting we can reduce serious problems in the future. 

Sit on your porch in a rocking chair with a shotgun, blast any global warming that approaches yer lawn *hyuk hyuk hyuk*

I was in grad school researching in this area and I can tell you this...

....The absolute best solution is solar power. There are other great ideas out there (geothermal, hydroelectric, biofuels, nuclear) but they all suffer from one very limiting thing, even if we exploited those technologies to their absolute fullest they would not be able to provide the amount of energy our world uses.

Solar, however can. There is enough potential solar energy that even with a low efficiency of about 10% we could provide over 100x the worlds current power consumption. The biggest problem with solar right now is cost. Until quite recently solar power cost about 10-15x that of energy produced from sources like coal and oil. However, the cost has come down a ton and will hopefully be economically viable in the next 5 years and thus able to go mainstream.

Solar power biggest limitation is, well, night. With a bit of luck hydrogen fuel cells will also become viable in the next 5 years. The most promising plans have solar power being used to perform hydrolysis to provide the hydrogen for a fuel cell. The system would be completely sell contained, pollutionless, and as a bonus would be off grid (a substantial amount of the worlds power is used up in transportation losses).

and that's all i have to say about that. xD

Oh man you followed my non-sensical reply with a serious answer, you made me look bad kitler53.. How could you?

Actually, there is something much better than this. Nuclear fusion is under active development with several demonstration reactors operating at a slight loss but are proof of concept - within 20 years commercial reactors are viable.

Nuclear fusion is:

- Emission-free

- Renewable: Deuterium and Tritium are practically limitless

- Free from long-term nuclear waste - the reactor shell may be irradiated but it need only be replaced once in 10 years and it is short-term radioactive.

- Even complete containment loss (very unlikely) would result in only the immediate area being damaged with weakly or not at all radioactive substances, rather than the regional or global effects of a nuclear fission disaster.

- Cheap as it can be done on any scale

- Can be done anywhere at any time with a constant output

- Does not depend on foreign countries for raw materials

- Provides practically unlimited power

Yes it is fact.

We are destroying the ozone layer therefore we have COLDER WINTERS and Warmer SUMMER.

The ozone layer is slowly recovering; the carbon dioxide concentration is getting much worse each year. Even complete ozone elimination wouldn't counteract 5% of the projected climate change warming, even though we would all be dead from UV exposure.

Well I agree that fusion would be a great solution and I agree with you about all the potential benefits.  I just haven't seen anything showing the technology is far along enough to become a viable energy source.  Can you point me in the direction of any of those studies?  I'd love to read up on them.

I will throw out one major drawback though...public perception.  It would take a major PR effort to connivence people  to build these on major scales.  My research was in organic solar cells and OLEDs and one of my favorite parts of the project is that because the topic contains the word "organic" the public assumes the materials are all happy, fun loving, and healthy.  They aren't the worst compounds in the world but god help you if you were to ingest any appreciable amounts.