Continuing with your not resorting to a "sky is falling" scenarios, I wish those who resist the change towards clean energy will stop claiming that the transition to it will necessitate a diminishing of our standard of life and/or a collapsing of the economy. If the transition is done progressively, then we will only need to get used to the changes progressively rather then suddenly in the events that global warming is real and/or that the effects of peak oil real their ugly necks.

As stated before, the research and deployment of the eventual clean energy infrastructure WILL create jobs, new, high tech jobs at that. It will create opportunities for new, visionary investors and inventors to make millions or billions instead of the same old oil tycoons who have been sharing the bounty that is oil revenus mostly among a small elite.

Unlike oil which requires large scale infrastructures (oil fields, massive ports to accomodate supertankers, supertankers, refineries, pipelines, deep sea oil rigs,etc), alternative energy sources can be deployed much nearer to the end consumer. Small communities, businesses, even individuals can set up wind or solar farms at whatever size is necessary for their needs. The best part is that the electricity losses due high voltage power lines is almost eliminated by producing where the need exists.

Exactly, if the change is done gradually, there will not be a serious impact on our daily lives and quality of life (except maybe for the better). In the long term, wind, hydro, solar, and nuclear power should be cheaper than coal, since coal has to be mined at the great cost of extra energy. I put myself somewhere in the middle, I've talked to people who say 'oil is evil' and act like we should somehow magically stop using it tomorrow. This is a fallacy, we need to wean ourselves off of it before it runs out and work towards cleaner, cheaper, better energy sources. However, if we don't address our short term needs with energy sources we currently use, we do run the risk of greatly damaging world economies; this will make funds to develop alternatives very hard to find. A good, bustling economy is the perfect environment for innovation.

Oil, coal, etc are not evil by definition, they were a means to pull ourselves out of the proverbial dark ages and into the modern world by providing a new substance, energy. These sources were cheap, easy to obtain, and easy to turn into energy. Now that we have realized we can't use them forever due to pollution concerns and limited supply, it's time to move on to something better. We just need to begin to move beyond these old technologies gradually and stop the silly namecalling, bickering, fearmongering, etc that happens so often with this topic. Working together from a centrist type position is really the only way to solve the long term energy problem.

Those are my thoughts on the subject.

The question is... "What is progressive".

Considering that we have no mainstream alternatives today... forcing a change would just be a bad sign. We should wait until the right alternatives are in place.

The only thing we have right now is Ethanol... which ends up being worse for the enviroment because of all the oil related costs in making it... and it makes your miles per gallon rate worse in the short and long term.

That's the worst problem with Barak Obama. He's in the Ethanol lobbiest's pocket.

All we can do now is really focus on developing other tech.

For homes and business: a combination of solar and wind. To retrofit your house so it can be off-grid currently costs around 50 000$ and can last about 20 years I'd say with basic maintenance. With econimies of scale, advancements and such that could be brought down significantly so that it becomes a viable option economically for people who are not willing to pay a premium to be green and/or energy independant.

For transportation: a combination of plug-in (see where they are plugged into in the paragraph above) hybrids where the combustible will be cellulose ethanol (made from the waste products of food production such as the useless stems of corn, stems of soybeans) for commuter cars and purely cellulose ethanol engines for heavy vehicles. Cellulose ethanol is still in devellopment and holds none of the disadvantages for the food supply that ethanol does.

For industrial use a combination of all of the above that best suits the needs of that industry and site including the possibility of micro-hydro dams.

Heck, throw in Nuclear Fission (or fussion) when that has reached its maturity assuming the aforementionned modes of production are not enough.

This is what I'm freaking talking about, these idiots can't even get the forecast right 10 days out (I checked the weather channel's 10 day forecast for my area, almost every day's forecasted temp and precipitation had changed since yesterday), yet they expect me to believe they can forecast the temperatures for 2050??? Give me a break. Enough with the drama already.

http://www.weather.com/multimedia/videoplayer.html?clip=11332&from=hp_video_5

This stuff will be great when it finally hits the mainstream market and becomes affordable.

I want an air car! Check it out.

Weather forecasts are not the same as climate projections. Here is an analogy I believe to be valid: I can tell you with near absolute certainty that the Dow Jones Industrial average will be higher in 15-20 years then it is today. I could then say that I expect friday's trading session to close 150 points higher then thursday's closing bell (wouldn't it be cool if I got it right on the nose?). If I am wrong and the DJIA is down instead of up on friday's trading, does that invalidate my 15-20 year projection? No.

Yes, but we have data that covers the entire existance of the Dow Jones that backs up your statement. On the other hand, we have a very small sampling of temperature data compared to the length of time the earth has been around, and even our best computer models can't really take into account the rediculously large amount of variables in the earth's climate. We could very well be warmer, or we could spiral into an ice age by 2050. Both are possible depending on the cycles of our Sun. The fact that they predict this with such certainty due to ONE factor out of the countless factors that actually influence global temperatures is comical. I'm not saying they're 100% wrong, just that their certianty of their own brilliance is arrogant.

For example, this was not in their predictions, so they have chosen to ignore it. From Jan 07 to Jan 08, The globe experienced the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, but it was ignored completely by the mainstream media because it was a COOLING trend. Had this trend been warming, it would have been on every front page. Why?

You make good points and I'm not saying that the science is perfect, but my point was that one cannot attribute the short commings of meteorology with that of climatology.

It is easier for climatologists, if their science is acurate, to say what the global temperature increase will aproximately be then for a meteorologist to say on Monday "Timmah!, you and your family can go to the park in such a city between such and such times and have a picnic because the rain will only occur later in the afternoon." The meteorologist is expected to tell you exactly what the weather will be several days in advance when if there was to be a rainstorm on Saturday it would still be too early for certain warning signs to manifest themselves.

The climatologist's job is only to say that in year X, temperatures will average Y and situations of extreme weather will be Z. He will never try to say that in such a park, at such a date and time A years from now it will rain.

Agreed. But it's still an educated guess. My problem is with the people who say "IT'S A FACT LIKE GRAVITY AND IF YOU DONT BELEEV IT UR STUPID!". It's really just an educated guess no matter how you slice it, and by tweaking equations, climatologists can pretty much make the system say whatever they want. My problem is not so much with their point of view, but with their certainty that they cannot be wrong.

EDIT: You didn't say anything about the media ignoring a fact that is contrary to their belief of constant, man made global warming. You know as well as I that if that large 12 month temp swing had been upward, it would have been EVERYWHERE with forbodings of doom and gloom, instead it gets buried because it does not fit the tagline. Why would they do that if they did not have some kind of agenda??