@92. goy:

The net benefit to continued use of fossil fuels is inescapable: right now, the overwhelming majority of energy production uses it.

That’s not an argument, that’s an observation. Backwards thinking. You aren’t even addressing the costs of continued reliance on fossil fuels.

No alternative to fossil fuels has any chance whatsoever of filling the world’s energy needs within a practical timeframe.

Total nonsense. Pushing the shift away from fossil fuels into the future only makes the transition more expensive.

Thanks to the insanity of ‘central planning’, even nuclear energy – the most attractive alternative to oil and coal – is decades away from being able to fill this need.

Nuclear energy is not the long-term solution to energy independence. The drawbacks in terms of nuclear waste and terrorism risk are far too great, and the ultimate cost is higher than the alternatives.

So the compelling reason to persist in the use of fossil fuels is that it’s presently the only feasible way to keep you from freezing to death in the winter and power the multitude of computers and associated equipment and systems that provide you with the means to litter cyberspace with your adolescent nonsense.

That is a fine argument if you ignore reality. The long term consequences of relying on fossil fuels will make it more likely that people will freeze to death in the winter, and go without electrical power. Fossil fuels are not a secure source of energy in the long term, and the sooner we move away from these volatile and harmful sources of energy, the sooner our economy can move from the 20th century into the 21st.

Again, there is no reason to persist in our dependence on fossil fuels – the reliance on these fuels is a long term liability for the US economy and our security. Your argument would have applied equally well as an argument against electrification last century – after all, before rural electrification, wood stoves were the only feasible way to keep from freezing to death in winter, and cooking food to eat. This kind of argument is not compelling to anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together.

Peace.

DS