The science does not back you up
It does.
. Simply reducing CO2 is insufficient
I didn't claim it was. Reread
Coal is both less expensive and more reliable.
Coal is more expensive.
It's why the full cost calculations make coal more cost-efficient.
They don't.
The cost of off-hour supply far exceeds the cost of the basic unit. The battery backup comes with an environmental impact comparable to the coal plant.
It can also be things like pump hydro. But, no, the environmental impact of the battery backup comes nowhere close to the coal plant.
Gas is far more eco-friendly.
Than what?
There is the word. The storage issue is an unsolved engineering problem.
It isn't.
Another non-trivial engineering problem.
We're going to be facing non-trivial engineering problems either way. The ones associated with de-carbonizing the grid are easier to tackle, though, than the monumental tasks of reworking our civilization for much higher global temperatures.
I give you nuclear as an option.
It's an ideal complement to intermittent supply, since it's compact, reliable, and can quickly be ramped up or down to meet load needs.
That would be you. You are claiming the same things that were thrown around at the turn of the century. They didn't work then either.
You're spouting the talking points you picked up 20 years ago, since you haven't kept up with the changing landscape.
If you had personal experience it would have more value than you simply repeating the lies you were told.
No. If I claimed personal experience, it would have exactly the same value as all the other claims of personal experience online.... which is to say: none at all. We can all just invent personal anecdotes. The only thing that has value are things that are verifiable.
You said, "We just have to greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions." So, exactly that.
So, did you spot your error?
It's not in the same ballpark.
It is.
Sure, there were people in the 1980s that said there was no hurry, that global warming was not urgent. They were right.
We've already had a hugely increased rate of extinction, which is an irreversible consequence of climate change. They thought we could drag our feet with no price for that, and it turns out they were disastrously incorrect in that gamble.
The ones who claim we need to reduce GHG emissions were wrong and their predictions were off before we reached 2000.
The actual scientists predicted, way back in the early 1990s, that we'd be seeing something on the order of 0.2 degrees of warming per decade, which is just what we've been seeing.
So, at this point the question is whether we listen to the experts, who have been eerily accurate all along, or do we instead listen to the gamblers who tell us there's no rush to do anything, when we know for a fact they've been wrong at every step of the way? Since I'm not insane, I favor listening to the experts.
They are all built around a core of fossil fuel power for the next two generations.
You misunderstood. The models have a bunch of different assumptions.
The big picture stuff would be something like an improved method for refrigeration. 1/3 of all electricity goes to cool something.
Great. We can work on that. But the problem is with the bad-faith champions of the status quo, who are forever urging us to wait for that Deus Ex Machina, rather than to go to work with what we know will help. Again, it's like the increasingly obese guy sitting on his couch eating bon bons all day, because he can't be bothered to eat better and exercise. He holds out hope that someone is going to invent a pill that fixes the problem effortlessly. Every year we sit around waiting for an improved method of refrigeration (or waiting on nuclear fusion, or perpetual motion), while not taking steps with the tools already at our disposal, represents further needless suffering and death.