No science doesn't have sides, but we have wildly varying responses to the climate change issue.
Do you believe quadrupling the price of electricity in NA will have any effect on climate change?
that depends are talking about taxing electricity, or are you talking about taxing the waste product some forms to electrical generation produce?
The first discourages the excessive and inefficient usage of electricity but adds a lot to the costs of every product and service which requires electricity, and does so regardless of the source of its generation. While I wouldn't be completely opposed to a fractional tax on electrical usage if the tax was lock-boxed to R&D for efficiency in production and distribution. But I'm really not interested in taxing electricity or the products and services that require electricity in their production, all I want to see is the people choosing to generate electricity via a method that dumps previously sequestered carbon into the atmosphere, pay an appropriate price for the damages they are creating due to those choices. If that makes it unprofittable to do business in that manner, then my goal is accomplished.
What about cap and trade?
All I can give you are my personal considerations:
First and foremost, it is better and preferrable to "business as usual," but only marginally, and is incapable of ultimately achieving the necessary goals.
At best, it should be considered a temporary stop-gap method of gaining some handle on the problem, while a more precise and long-term set of processes and procedures (taxes, regulations, incentives, and bipartisan administration and evaluation) are established to actually and appropriately respond to the problems we face going into the future, both internally and in international cooperations and treaty. If enacted it should sunset no later than a decade (5 years at a time would be better). It is just too open to the potential for abuse and gaming while incapable of actually addressing the problem, to allow it to exist until those potentials are realized.
Restructuring the current way we produce electricity so that 80%, 90%, 95% comes from renewable sources?
100% is the goal, but if atmospheric composition could be brought back to pre-1945 levels, and we could maintain our emissions to stay in balance with the natural sink/sequestration rate, I have no problem with limited fossil fuel usage (probably something along the lines of 5-10% of current annual global usage).
Can any concrete decisions be made based on this long term weather report we call AGW?
Of course, this isn't a weather report, but even when you get a weather report telling you there is a 95%+ chance of thunderstorms the next day, it's rather foolish not to prepare for bad weather before you head out the next morning, especially if its already cloudy and the wind is gusting.
