Mr. Gore goes to Washington

Al Gore is testifying before joint committees of Congress today on Global Warming. According to statements made before hand, he is going to say that Global Warming can be reversed but we need to take drastic action. He is calling for a 90% across-the-board cut in greenhouse gas emissions  by 2050. For the calendar-challenged, that is less than 43 years from now. Gore is calling for more than a 2% cut per year in greenhouse as emissions.

Now, I could probably lie with the first year or two of that. Depending on how cold the winter and how warm the summer, this might even happen on its own. It might not even be noticeable in the general economy.

After that, the cuts would start to pile up. I seriously doubt that civilization as we know it can exist on 10% of today's carbon emissions.

To put it in perspective, around half of current energy use is private and the biggest portion of those go to heating and air conditioning. After that comes cooking and lighting. Computer use is in there somewhere but varies a lot per family.

So, in order to cut your personal use by 90% you would have to cut back on heat, forget air conditioning, forget TV, PCs, and game consoles. Radios will probably be ok. You can get radios powered by hand-cranked generators that will run for a few hours between cranking.

Lighting will be reduced to possibly one compact fluorescent bulb for a few hours per day.

It is sort of a march back to the 18th century except we cannot burn wood for heat or candles for light because they also emit CO2.

That's how personal cutbacks will be in 40 years. It's hard o see manufacturing doing any better. Solar, wind, hydro-electric, and nuclear power can provide some power but this will become more and more expensive. Nuclear power is the only one of these options that does not have severe built-in limits and it takes a lot of tie and money to build a nuclear plant.

It's hard to see how there will be enough energy for much beyond food production and transportation.

All of this brings us to the biggest question - even if we assume that Global Warming is for real and that the worst of the IPCC predictions will come to pass, is it worth it to mitigate Global Warming? Gore is still talking as though it will be easy to cut back. Just stop new coal-fired power plants, change the type of light bulb we use, establish cap-and-trade, and let the market do the rest. He is lying. 90% cutbacks will be wrenching, causing tens of thousands of deaths from lack of air conditioning and cold alone.

And that's assuming the worst happens if we do nothing.

None of this is part of the global debate but it should be front and center. What will mitigation cost and is it worth it?