What bummed me out yesterday was the realization that the carbon issue isn't as easy as I thought. That's the second thing I learned. You need to "oxidize" carbon in order to get all the energy out of it. When you do that, by definition, you create carbon dioxide.
The other thing is that human activity really is changing the atmosphere. The political controversy is about what significance that holds for the climate.
I still don't think it holds much significance, but over the long run, it may make some difference. We'll probably run out of fossil fuels before it does, I suspect.
How urgent then, is the problem? Again, you will run out of fossil fuels eventually, so there really is a problem in what comes after fossil fuels. My thinking is that if you really want to de-carbonize the energy industry, you'd better start supporting more research and development into alternatives.
Wind and solar aren't viable. That means some new energy source must be found; like fusion, molten-salt reactors, or even so called cold fusion.
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