Energy Crisis vs. Global Warming - what is more important to you?

Question

Energy Crisis: caused by depleting energy sources (especially OIL - petroleum). Oil is getting more difficult to get out (causing supply shortage), while more countries are consuming more, especially India and China (demand increase).

Side effects: Higher energy prices, inflation, and possible economic collapse (because people can't afford to spend money on other things besides energy and food).

Global Warming: caused by greenhouse gases from fossil fuels and other naturally occuring sources (forest fires, volcanoes, swamps), and non-natural sources (landfills, etc.).

My question is, what is worse? Energy Crisis or Global Warming?

Side effects: rising sea levels, change in weather patterns, increase in diseases, droughts, and possible extinction of species.

Oh, by the way, the Energy Crisis could happen before Global Warming creates significant damage to civilization. Besides, there isn't enough alternative energy to supply the shortage in oil-powered utilities and transportation.

Imagine this scenerio for an Energy Crisis: Lots of black-outs and brown-outs in the city, massive layoffs and lots of unemployed and homeless people on the streets, Long lines at the pumps, long lines at the super-markets, empty shelves for food, rioting for gasoline and food on the streets, people fighting each-other to get food, water, and energy. Public drinking water not being available or not enough because the water-treatment plants don't have enough power to run 24/7. No Airconditioning, No heating. No subways or buses. Imagine this going on for 5 years or more.

Answer 1

I think that they are interwined.

Our country is too dependent on fossil fuels. Our own supply is now too expensive to extract and we are held in thrall to imports. Dependence on imported resources threatens any economy.

We faced the same point in the 1970s.Money flowed to the development of alternative energy sources until Reagan passed favorable tax treatment for oil. Suddenly the price dropped, and 30 years later, we are back in the same position we were then WITHOUT the possibility of a new Alaskan Pipeline.

We need new energy sources. With the right kind of legislation, the US can do its part to solve both problems. They ARE solvable, just as the energy crisis in the 1970s was.

But we still have a long way to go with China, Brazil, Indonesia, etc,

Answer 2

I believe that both scenarios are not likely to happen. Climate change IS happening, but change is the default state of the climate. It always changes. Alway has and always will. Only people suffering from king Canute delisional Syndrome believe that mankind can come together and control the climate.

Humanity's long term effect on the climate has NOT been scientifically settled, despite what the IPCC and their well paid scientists tell you. Believe me, that is some of the worst science money can buy.Their models are incomplete and do not take into account lots of ways in which the sun may behave. As the world's leading specialist scientists who are studying the sun claim, we know almost nothing about the sun, so how can these climate models accurately model the sun's role in our climate?

What is our climate anyway? Well, it is the tiny inter-connecting layer where the gazzillions of therms of energy (radioactive, thermal, magnetic and electrical) interacts with the trillions of gallons of storage of the world's oceans. In simple terms it is the layer where a huge amount of energy output interacts with a huge enegry store.

Any tiny fluctuation in one, or the other, will have an effect in the interactive layer. Mankind has no impact on one (oceans) and zero impact on the other (sun) and this interactive layer may not have been affected at all by mankind. IF it has, it is by a tiny amount if at all.

Download google earth and zoom in at any place at random. chances are you will hit a big patch of nothing. most likely you will hit the oceans. If you do hit land, it will be empty. the amount of energy exchanged between the sun and the oceans in our climate is huge, MASSIVE and mankind may have an effect, but it is a tiny effect and that effect can be easily outweighed by any fluctuation in the ocean or the sun, or even the earth's fluctuating orbit around the sun.

Do not loose sight of who is pushing the man-made global warming scam. people who exclusively desire a single one world government. People like Al Gore, The Rothschilds, the Rockerfellers etc...

I read an interesting article by a global warming hysteria nut. It rightly claimed that increasing levels of CO2 would be good for poison ivy. They were claiming that man made global warming would create world full of pain and musery and itchiness. What went unsaid was the fact that increased CO2 would be good for plant growth. that means it would be easier to feed the poor of the world. This is something that the Rockefellers and Rothschilds do NOT want. it goes against their plans to de-populate the world. to eradicate a few billion "useless eaters".

Man made global warming is a scam.

As for an oil - energy crisis, again, these global oil firms are part of the oligarchy and my not be telling the truth. They make much more money from an artificial restriction in supplies, than in abundance.

Answer 3

It's a political problem of co-dependence: if global warming is NOT caused by excess CO2, then there is no energy crisis. Yes, petroleum is realistically limited in the short term, but coal is not. We have more than enough coal to power us until technology catches up with alternative energy research, leading to a truly viable, and sustainable alternative.

Even if we find out that carbon dioxide is the root cause of global warming, it may not be wise to "slow down" economies and subsequent research into the development of new alternatives. Consider that limiting this energy could lead to a kind of Dark Ages where people put more value on simply SURVIVING instead of THRIVING; such an atmosphere could actually push a workable solution out of reach. Instead, we might devote a considerable amount of energy towards developing alternatives, even if it meant INCREASING CO2 output in the short term. In economics, it can be thought of as an opportunity cost.

Think of this: You are walking along the train tracks and through a tunnel. You are 3/4 of the way through when you hear the oncoming train. Do you take the counterintuitive action and run TOWARDS the ongoing train, or do you take the seemingly safe action, running away from the train?

There is nothing that fuels progress/innovation like freedom. Unfortunately, most of the "solutions" require that we sacrifice some of this freedom. Are we taking the "safe" choice by trying to run away from this problem?

Answer 4

Trust me, the energy crisis will be a non-issue in the very near future. Global warming is actually climate change and is natural--mankind has little to do with it----that line of thinking is more Establishment propaganda. The Golden Age is right around the corner, and all will look a whole lot better than it does now. Remember, it is always darkest before the dawn.

Answer 5

They are both bad and interwined.

I think that, in way or in another, we will be forced to adopt a very different model of society: no more centralised, no more money based, local and agricultural. We will plant and farm the remaining species, those which will reveal themselves the more resistant to heat, cold, poison and viruses.

And notwithstanding our efforts, the homo sapiens could follow a sudden and incredibly fast extintion path.

"And when we go, nature will start over. With the bees, probably."(Stephen Falken in Wargames,1983)

Answer 6

The issues are similar. As global warming makes the weather more turbulent around the world the weather uses more of the water, so the wet places get even more rain which keeps the water from running into the dry areas. it's important for we people and other animals to have fresh water available.

Answer 7

Global warming. We can solve the energy crisi with alternative methods but the people who are getting the money, like getting the money. The government and large business constantly try to keep the power from shifting hands (no pun intended).

But on a simpilar note, I can live (uncomfortably) without power. I can't live without oxygen, water, food, etc. Global warming hands down.

And for all the its a myth people, so what if it was, we would clean up our air and water and have less cancer outbreaks. Ooo sounds horrible.

Answer 8

If we go nuclear, solar, geothermo, solar, and whole host of engery sources I think that would take care of the engery crisis.

Thus require us to burn less fossile fuels and cut back on the green house gases.

Answer 9

Without energy there will be a complete break down of modern society we need to find a new way of generating power asap. I watched the disclosure project I feel chaos will be good we need to get rid of the old order they have ruined things for to long. Sometimes things need to be destroyed to rebuild and global warming is just a sign we live on a planet that wasn`t created natural events that proves the Earth is as much ours as it was the dinosaurs

Answer 10

Global warming. The potential consequences if it's not addressed are infinitely more serious than running out of oil.

There are alternatives to oil which we could develop given the impetus to do so. Such an impetus doesn't exist because there's not really that much of an oil crises. We have about 30 years of known reserves left to tap, add to this an unknown quantity of as yet undiscoverd reserves (20+ years worth, could be 100 years worth) then add in all the oil we know about but have so far ignored because it's harder to extract (tar and sand oil for example) and it gives us upwards of 100 years worth of reserves to go at.

Worst case scenario in 100 years time - oil is expensive because we're having to extract it from contaminated oil fields. With global warming, $4.2 trillion a year economic loss (Sir Nicholas Stern, former Chief Economist World Bank), one million deaths each year (World Health Organisation), 1 billion people displaced (United Nations)... you get the picture.