Bridging the Carbon Gap: Fossil Fuel Use for the 21st Century

Coal gasification as a transition plan to build lead time to develop sustainable, climate-friendly energy technologies.

Editor's Note

Several of the sources for this article and accompanying sidebars are referenced numerous times. While the note numbers are roughly sequential, they may occasionally appear out of order because an earlier source is again referred to-with its original number.

In past writings I have questioned the overly alarmist projections of some experts concerning the impact on global climate resulting from the emission of so-called "greenhouse gases" due to human activities. Such greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitric oxide, and halogenated carbon compounds, but for our purposes CO₂ remains the key concern.^{1, 2, 3, 4}

I still challenge those dubious projections. Yet I also believe it would be prudent to limit emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities-that is, to limit emissions to levels that the more objective climatologists consider as acceptable. Such levels are higher, perhaps, than some would favor. However, I contend that this "middle way" would restrain global warming to manageable levels, improving on "business-as-usual," and thus allow for the necessary lead time to bridge the "Carbon Gap"-the century-long transition to commercially sustainable and climate-friendly energy technologies, by year 2100.