Hey Paul,
I noticed that Nasif Nahle responded to your post over on that "Semantics..." thread on NQSci:
http://www.scienceagogo.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=27299#Post27299It would be much more "On Topic" over here on the Climate Change Forum. I'm hoping, if you want to respond, that you'll copy his response over to here (...or on NQ) starting a new Topic Thread.
(...and thanks again re: that old PM on "Semantics...")===
As for Al Gore, even my mother-in-law is down on his case; but she's easily swayed by the jingoistic journalism of CNN's Glen Beck:http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&orgId=574&topicId=100007219&docId=l:826999667&start=1
With the preface, "Right now in Tucson, Arizona, a Colombia University physicist named Klaus Lackner is working on an amazing device. It's a CO2 scrubber. It could remove one ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every single day."
"Yet, Al Gore is not happy about the CO2 scrubber. Environmental groups are opposed to the idea of a CO2 scrubber. Why is that? In fact, they oppose many of them, any technology that allows us to continue to live with fossil fuels. Hah. It`s almost like somebody on this program has been saying that for quite some time."
Glen's guest STERLING BURNETT, NATIONAL CENTER FOR POLICY ANALYSIS says:"Well, it's really out there for a month. It's been out there for months, they have been talking about it but as you say, nowhere on the front page.
The "New York Times" hasn't covered it. "Washington Post" isn't covering it. It's a -- you have to find it on YouTube. I will say "60 Minutes" did a story on it last month."
Oh yea, I saw that. He soaks up CO2 with sodium and calcium hydroxide. I think he'd only need ~30 million "house-sized" units. ...but I digress. ...after lamenting the lack of media coverage, Burnett continues...."But -- because, as you've already rightly identified, Glenn, the environmentalists, and they're the ones driving the global warming whip, they're not really concerned about CO2. They're concerned about people's lifestyles.
They want to control -- they have a vision of the world. And that vision, they continue to live in their pretty nicely appointed houses, and pay more for the cars that make them salve their conscience, and the poor people don't do that well because their vision is a simpler lifestyle for everyone but them.
In the '80s, there was a t-shirt, a group called "Earth First." Had a model called "Back to the Pleistocene" well, they don't go quite that far, but they really -- it's about, as you said, controlling how people live. I don't think it's not about money. It's about control."
Yikes! Do these people really talk like that, or is this just a bad transcript:*
* "Aired July 24, 2008 - 19:00: ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED."http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0807/24/gb.01.html.
.
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Yea, that's it, Paul! People like us and Al Gore don't want to save civilization, we just want to control people's lifestyles (...added sarcastically).
...btw, NATIONAL CENTER FOR POLICY ANALYSIS:
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=55ExxonSecrets Factsheet:
National Center for Policy Analysis: Founded in 1983, NCPA acts as an organizer for other conservative groups as well as conducting its own free-market oriented public policy analysis on issues such as health care, social security, fiscal policy, and the environment.
NCPA has an "E-Team" that analyzes environmental policy. The global warming "experts" on the team are climate skeptics who opposed the Kyoto Protocol and continue to oppose any regulation of greenhouse gasses. Global warming "experts" include Marlo Lewis and Christopher Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Kenneth Green from the Fraser Institute, Thomas Gale Moore from the Hoover Institution, and S. Fred Singer of the Science and Environmental Policy Project.
Gee, where have I seen that last name before? 
===
I do wish Al Gore would focus more on soaking up (sequestering) CO2 through enhancing our agricultural and forestry practices, rather than just the 'radically cutting emissions' part, much as James Hansen recommended: http://www.scienceagogo.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=27120#Post27120"...and adopting agricultural and forestry practices that sequester carbon."
-Hansen...and on top of that...!
Algae can produce up to 8000 gallons of biodiesel/acre. That's got to be better than a hydroxide-based scrubber, for soaking up CO2; don't you think?http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2008/01/28/story4.html?b=1201496400%5E1581925
"Most of the startup companies working on this are using the basic science on algae that NREL did many years ago," NREL spokesman George Douglas said. "Everybody's looking for the same thing -- How to grow and process the algae and harvest the oil and process the oil. You can grow algae on marginal lands, or in the ocean. It reproduces quickly, doesn't take up cropland or other spaces. And it absorbs carbon dioxide."
And algae is prolific when it comes to oil production.
Experts estimate the organisms can make 8,000 to 10,000 gallons of oil per year per acre, compared to 50 or 60 gallons per year using soybeans, 20 gallons using corn, and 150 gallons using canola or rapeseeds.
p.s. I've seen numbers more like 100-400 gallons for corn, and up to 2000 gallons for coppiced poplar or willow; but still that's no 8,000 to 10,000 gallons/acre!