[std_throwaway]

There's lots of faulty reasoning going around society:

* There is no climate change.

* The temperature charts are rigged.

* Scientists conspire to get more funding.

* Dissenting opinions are suppressed by the mainstream.

* Taxing CO2 is a way to control the economy and stifle growth.

* CO2 is actually good for plants.

* CO2 does not cause climate change.

* If there is climate change, CO2 is only a minor contributor.

* Humans do not cause CO2, nature does that.

* Climate change is not caused by humans.

* Climate change is not bad.

* If it is bad, there is nothing we can do.

* It's only bad for other people.

* It will only hit us hard in the far future.

* We cannot make compromises in our lifestyle or risk our economy.

* We have invested much too much in fossil fuel technology to give it up.

* Renewable energy is not feasible. It's a joke. Don't even think about it.

* Solar cells cost more energy than they produce.

* Batteries produce lots of CO2 during production.

* Windmills will never harvest the energy that was needed to produce them.

* Our electric grid will fail if we add too much renewable energy.

* We cannot store enough electric energy.

* Renewables can never work because they cannot produce energy on demand.

* Even if renewables were feasible they would be too expensive.

* Why don't we just build more nuclear plants?

* Thorium will save us in time, so no hurry.

* Fusion is only 30 years away, so why invest in renewables?

... this is only what came into my mind spontaneously and some points are really hard to argue, especially with non-technical people who do not see scientific facts as something solid but something that can be negotiated.

[nielsole]

* a carbon tax is class warfare as it hits the poor hardest

* Fighting climate change is an ideological lifestyle

* Creating laws to prevent climate change is just people trying to impose their views onto others.

* we will just be able to scrub the atmosphere by 2050

* There's actually some papers that contradict the climate models

* As different models have different predictions, no one can really know how the climate is gonna change

* China is the worst polluter anyways, so it doesn't matter what we do

* Industrialized countries have benefited from carbon fuels the last 200 years. It is our right now, to economically catch up by burning them too

* Between doing nothing and hitting the 2°goal there must be a reasonable middle ground

[joelx]

I have heard the argument from my grandpa and other old people that there's a conspiracy of scientists and liberal media people to get more government funding by claiming climate change is real.

The madness behind this conspiracy theory is that the amount of money those scientists could get is minuscule in comparison to the enormous wealth generated by oil companies and oil producing nations. Wouldn't that be a much more reasonable conspiracy theory to believe in?

[krageon]

Asking for a reasonable point of view from a conspiracy theorist seems like an approach that is doomed to fail.

[DennisP]

With regard to climate, "why don't we just X" is wrong for pretty much any X, but a lot of climate scientists think we probably should build nuclear plants along with everything else we're doing.

[pojzon]

You forgot about:

"Oil industry is totally not lobbing against any movement that could bring us closer to the solution"

[std_throwaway]

Having control over the energy source gives you a lot of power. It doesn't make sense to give up all that power right now. We have to wait until holding on to this power is more expensive than letting it go and this can take a long long time.

[pdonis]

What you call the "oil" industry is really the energy industry, and they really don't care which way things go as far as climate policy is concerned. They're set up to make money either way. Who do you think all those government grants for "renewable energy" research go to?

[lozenge]

They absolutely care. If renewable energy catches on, the values of their oil reserves will plummet. That's why they continue to fight against any reduction of emissions.

[pdonis]

> If renewable energy catches on, the values of their oil reserves will plummet.

Not when everyone realizes all the other alternative uses for petroleum besides burning it, many of which are more valuable than burning it.

[AnthonyMouse]

The value of the uses has nothing to do with the value of the petroleum. If we stop burning it, demand falls off and the price drops. Dramatically, because if we stop burning it then we have way more than enough for all the other uses.

That's actually the primary reason we need a carbon tax -- if we make any real progress toward replacing oil in some other way then the partial progress causes the price of oil to fall and interfere with additional progress.

[julienb_sea]

I think the main issue is not arguing on scientific facts. It's about arguing on the impacts, outcomes and tradeoffs of policy decisions, which lie far outside the realm of fact and are reasonable to discuss. Many of the faulty reasoning you bring up here are legitimate tradeoffs to discuss.

In particular, the storage requirements, on-demand capacity requirements, and raw material requirements for renewables are real considerations. Abundance, low cost and relative cleanliness of natural gas compared to coal. These should not be hand-waved as against facts, or denigrated in the face of the coming apocalypse.

[std_throwaway]

You don't even need storage solutions if you keep sufficient gas/coal on standby. But somebody must pay for these because they don't get many hours of use.

[pdonis]

> There's lots of faulty reasoning going around society

Yes, indeed. But you forgot some key items:

* We have the ability to predict future climate change with enough accuracy to justify multi-trillion-dollar policy decisions.

* We have the ability to predict the economic and social consequences of future climate change with enough accuracy to justify multi-trillion-dollar policy decisions.

* "Renewable" energy does not include nuclear power.

* Renewable energy (not including nuclear power) can totally supply the required base load power for a first world standard of living for billions of people.

[perfunctory]

> "Renewable" energy does not include nuclear power.

Excuse my nitpicking, but renewable energy indeed excludes nuclear. By definition.

[pdonis]

> renewable energy indeed excludes nuclear. By definition.

It depends on whose definition. Breeder reactors count as renewable by some definitions. And I would argue that those definitions are more reasonable, particularly if whether something counts as "renewable" is used to determine government subsidies.

[extropy]

Carbon neutral energy is what we need.

Renewable energy defies physics.

[frankbreetz]

I guess people aren't worried about the sun burning out or us running out of wind. I think most people know we don't create energy from nothing