As we speak, pilot projects are underway to digest cellulose (i.e. vegetative waste) into fuels using genetically engineered microorganisms. If this scales successfully, we will have achieved a virtually closed loop solution to the energy needs of the foreseeable future. It will add no more CO2 to the atmosphere than the vegetation was able to take out of the atmosphere when it grew. Agriculture countries will be the big energy producers and we can ostracize former oil countries.
Actually, there WAS some global warming in the 1990's. It was NOT, however, the result of any human activity, just as the likely coming cooling period will not be, either.
That big old yellow-face that rise every morning will determine what our climate will be. In the 90's there were an abundance of sunspots, and we were warmer. Those sunspots have diminished since the end of the 90's, and the planet has been cooling steadily. At this point, there hasn't been a single sunspot in almost two months. If we end up having a sunspot minimum, similar to the Dalton Minimum in the late 1700s through the early 1800s, continues we could very well be headed for another Little Ice Age like the world experienced then.
SirKit and I have proposed that if we do have a minimum, it should be named for Algore, and another freeper suggested Hansen, so we think it should be called the Hansen-Gore minimum, to cement for posterity the utter idiocy of those two men.
I just saw a tape on YouTube by George Carlin about Earth Day. He says it well! (Remember he WAS George Carlin, so there is some offensive language.)
As usual, he was spot-on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjfiIow-eW0