When the ecosystem collapses, I'm going to do what every intelligent, well-prepared person will do.

[NNadir]

25. We are using 170% as much coal as we were using in 2000.

Worldwide carbon budgets by fuel type

If we cut coal out tomorrow, more than 50% of the people who log on repeatedly to the internet to claim that Fukushima is the only environmental issue that matters would be sitting in the dark, never mind burning fossil fuels to post their ignorance on the internet.

In the meantime we are also using 144% as much gas as we used in 2000, and 117% as much oil.

Coal amounts to only 44% of current emissions.

Nobody is making any serious effort to eliminate coal, except maybe the Chinese, since Chinese account for 20% of the 7 million air pollution deaths per year. They are only marginally interested in climate change.

Worldwide, there are no reasonable and workable plans to do it. In this country half the people don't "believe" in climate change, and the other half propose ideas that haven't worked, aren't working and won't work.

On the left, many of us - not me - but the majority of us seem to think that daydreaming about a solar and wind wonderland with billions of tons of batteries will save the day. This is an exceedingly stupid and unsustainable idea.

The first step in "doing something about it" would involve lessening our contempt, right and left, for scientists and engineers. We do know what we're talking about, but no one in the general public is willing to listen.

That's not going to happen, most likely, but the feeling that it won't should not prevent anyone who can do something to do as much of it as is possible.