In all seriousness, I think that we should treat this as a threat to our health and try to combat our carbon emissions.
There are many, many problems with treating this so simplistically.
For example, water vapor is a far stronger 'greenhouse gas' than carbon dioxide. Many other factors, such as deforestation and urbanizing also play a role. To wage a war on carbon dioxide emissions is like trying to reduce car accidents by waging a war on vinyl.
One of the main problems with the "global warming" argument is the piss-poor record keeping that is used to support the warming trend. Poor standards exist for the record keeping stations, and what few do exist are not enforced. Temperature monitoring stations are placed next to jet taxiways, sandwiched amongst concrete buildings, placed next to heat exchangers - the sad list continues. Those that were in fairly reliable locations 10 years ago have often been overtaken by urban/suburban settlement and are now surrounded by concrete and asphalt. As if to illustrate how important this is - none of the stations located outside of urban environments and in compliance with guidelines show a strong warming trend.
It's very difficult to take the temperature data seriously when you actually put boots to ground and look at the sources of the data the climate scientists use to support the argument.
The "global warming crisis" that is "caused by carbon dioxide emissions" is nothing but a political game. There are huge amounts of money being played with in these "carbon credit" schemes and vast amounts of industrial/political/market control to be gained. Stiff regulations keep small business from operating and expanding into the newer markets - solidifying the dominance of multinational corporations.
It has little to do with any sense of environmental responsibility. There are far more obvious and critical environmental concerns the world over. There are harbors in countries like Russia and parts of the Middle East where there is, literally, a layer of human waste that floats on top of the water. There are nations all over the world that pump raw sewage (and industrial waste, in some cases) straight into the ocean.
You want to talk about ****ing shit up ... human feces will do it.
There's always improvement to be made... but America is a damned clean place to live. I have drinking water that comes out of the tap (a novelty I am still getting used to after being overseas). The beaches are, for the most part, clean to swim in spare for the cases where a recent natural disaster has mucked things up. Even some of our dirtiest city smog has nothing on the yellow clouds of toxin that come rolling across the China Sea.
So this idea that "We are guilty - we are the most horrible consumers on the planet" is just a guilt trip run by politicians and corporations vying for more control over the population. I will not drink the cool aid and buy an electric car that will never pay itself off when compared to a high-mpg sedan (and I for damned sure won't support laws that force me to). Not to mention the thing is completely impractical for travel in the midwest.
But, I will build my house largely underground. That will cut down on energy requirements immensely (because I won't be paying to heat the thing +35-60 degrees in the winter and cool the thing by 20+ in the summer) - plus bolster security and storm resilience. That would make a 100% solar home actually practical (though I'm not a huge fan of current photovoltaic technology - it's expensive, fragile, and requires deep-cycle batteries that are far too immature).
Most of the technologies out there are being forced on the market way too early. The battery technologies we have are laughably primitive (lithium ion batteries will degrade to half of their capacity within two to three years - regardless of how many times you charge and discharge them; lead-acids are good deep-cycle, but horrible capacity limitations compound with short lifetimes to make them quaint attempts) - and concepts like closed-loop fuel-cells have been struggling with the service life times of the catalyst membrane (as well as overall power output).
Nuclear power is one of the most sensible and practical power sources we have (and likely will have within the next 50-75 years). Yet there's a catch 22: People are afraid of them because of the impact of disasters at the site... but no one wants to seriously entertain the idea of taking the nuclear waste held on-site and storing it in a central location (such as Nevada). Then no one wants to have a secure storage site for nuclear waste.
Ignorance is the most difficult of obstacles to overcome in all of these issues. Too many people are ignorant in regards to nuclear power. Too many people are ignorant of the issues with current all-electric vehicles (much of the Lithium-Ion battery production and the neodymium magnets for the motors all come from china... so much for "end reliance on foreign nations"). Too many people think solar panels can solve the world's problems. The list goes on.
you would understand the concept
