My apologies for the delayed response.

You are disagreeing because you are making a mistake as to what I mean by really solved...Truly solved would indicate we were not in danger of slipping over the line again and the climate is not being anthropogenically altered. That's a bigger agenda than just limiting output to the maximum tolerable.

I'm not sure what you're proposing, so it's hard to know whether to agree or not. It is possible to solve the climate issue without solving the peak oil problem, and vice versa. Until I have a better grasp of what you would propose, I'll refrain from commenting.

You and I disagree as to whether restrictions and alternative current energy sources actually solve the problem. I would say they do not.

How do you know we disagree on this? I haven't proposed anything concrete, at least not in this forum. And I agree that conservation and alternative energy sources will not, in and of themselves, resolve the issues.

No. The policies for the immediate first steps are clear. Beyond that, what is needed is yet to be invented, yet to be designed, yet to be industrialized, yet to be implemented.

This is a fundamental disagreement between us. I don't believe technology will save us. It's possible, I suppose, but unlikely in my view. Either way, I'm not going to bet my life on it (or the lives of my children).

If we reduce our standard of living, we can get back to living in a sustainable fashion. We know that already - why depend on something that doesn't exist yet?

Consequently, I believe we need more drastic changes than the IPCC and other experts are saying, and I don't think you implement what they say and we're all done.

Amen, sister! I think this is an argument in favor of an authority that can act quickly and decisively, not the other way around.

Furthermore, if that becomes more apparent as time goes on, the drive to continue along that path with increasingly draconian cuts in usage and increasingly lavish spending on current alternative technologies will spiral into a pretty bad place.

Well, what's your alternative? To cook the planet and allow mass starvation as the oil runs out? Draconian cuts in usage and lavish spending on currently available renewable sources of energy is the only hope. It might be true that it's too late, that it won't work, but there literally is no alternative.

What inhumanity could result from turning over control to experts...Our only bulwark against the nightmare is our principles. So no, no way I would dump them in favor of authoritarian experts even if we were all going to fry to a crisp. I prefer to try to remain human in the face of disaster.

Hmmm. I'm aware of the dangers of giving small groups of people or a single individual a lot of power. Power corrupts and all that. All other things equal, I want an egalitarian, libertarian (note the small l) society where everyone's voice is heard and has weight in the decision making process.

But neither do I want to fry to a crisp.

More to your point, what do you think will happen to society when the food starts to run out, either due to global warming induced droughts, or lack of fertilizer, or (most likely) a combination of both? Do you think we will be able to retain our humanity?

I think not. I'm more afraid of what happens when the vast majority of humanity wakes up and realizes that there is only enough food for every other person. People don't just starve quietly - they fight for survival. And our capacity for violence is enormous. There are several nations, not all of them on the best of terms, that have nukes, for God's sake.

If these problems are allowed to get bad enough, novel's like Cormac McCarthy's The Road may end up being prophecy instead of fiction.

Two things: First, if climate change is really solved, really dealt with, then peak oil disappears as a problem, inevitably.

I disagree. While certainly the issues are strongly linked, peak oil is in some dimensions a separate problem. Without oil, how would we get around? How would we feed everyone without petroleum fertilizers to maintain crop yields? Where will the energy come from to transform our economy from a carbon-based to a carbon-free economy?

I think it is crucial that we use the energy oil still has to provide wisely, and I don't trust people who have grown accostomed to commuting to work every day to make the right call when gasoline gets expensive. Just look at the reaction we got last summer - "drill, baby drill."

Second, there is way too little consensus on what to do about large parts of the problem in the long term to turn the whole thing over to a tribunal of experts. I realize that this may mean the problem doesn't get solved, and I realize that time is running out. But cutting ourselves off from new solutions in an effort to streamline the process and sideline the critics might put us all 'in the soup' too.

We'll have to disagree here too. I think the policies required are clear enough to make a go of it. Certainly the experts couldn't do any worse.

I certainly respect your position. I don't have a crystal ball which shows me the future. I just read the facts differently.