Getting Real With Global Warming

[Wilder]

Note to readers: this post is obviously not finished, but I am at a bit of a loggerheads as how to proceed. I was kind of hoping to have something more than a myth debunking section but right now I don't have the motivation to write a cogent article. Still though I wanted to put up a reasonable argument for the existence of anthropocentric global warming, so here it is, for now. fire away.

This thread is partially a response to the series of incredibly silly objections and qualifications regarding Anthropogenic Global Warming on this forum, but also because despite my searching I have yet to find a really good article on global warming that isn't a simple rehash of the basic mechanics behind it (which one should know, but given some the scientific illiteracy demonstrated here is obviously not the case).

OK, so before I begin a little about me. Say the word "environmentalist" and some stereotypes come to mind, usually involving unfortunate looking and smelling people, dreadlocks and sandals, and an overuse of the words "spirit", "Mother Earth", "aura" and any amount of new pseudoscience bull. I fully admit that these stereotypes do not come from nowhere, but I would like to assure you I am not one of them. Rather I am someone who has loved the natural world for a long time, and has spent a lot of time to genuinely learn about it on an intellectual level. Environmentalists are often (unfairly I think) associated with a sort of naivety when it comes to the natural world, the type of people who who will go on and on about the rain forests for days, but would not last a night out there. Whatever, it is not like it makes a difference, but as a matter of principle I would like to say I am not one of those people either. I have spent more time with glacier under my boots then most people here have spent with a backpack on. When It comes to the natural world, I am not a pushover.

I would also like to say that of all the subjects in high school, I was really good at one: physics. My physics teacher is by training a Geophysicist, more specifically a glaciologist, who would spend summers and breaks conducting research in alpine glacial environments, and was qualified to weigh in on a portion of the global warming debate. He was a firm supporter of the theory of anthropogenic global warming, and recruited me as a fellow supporter. I took his class for three years, and even went on a data finding expedition to Mt. Jefferson with him. I am passionate about global warming, but I, like all honest people must ultimately bend a knee to science.


For starters, lets have a quick review of the basic mechanics behind the theory of global warming:



For a slightly more concise and less precise version:



In summery the argument can be distilled into three basic points:

Fact 1: There is an extremely close correlation AND causation of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and the average global temperature.



A note on lag: contrary to many arguments using the lag between global temperature and atmospheric CO2 levels as evidence against global warming, the reality is that it is explained quite easily by climactic models that include anthropogenic global warming.

[anti global warming theorists have argued that] temperature increases have preceded CO2 increases and that this falsified the link between CO2 and climate change. This refers to the records of Antarctic climate and CO2 obtained from Antarctic ice cores covering the last 650,000 years. In these, the Earth can be seen to undergo natural changes from glacial conditions to warmer times like the present. When temperature is warm, the CO2 concentration is high, and when temperature is cold, the CO2 concentration is low. During the exit from glacial periods (for example the transition from the last cold period, between about 18000 and 11000 years ago), both temperature and CO2 increased slowly and in parallel. Close analysis of the relationship between the two curves shows that, within the uncertainties of matching their timescales, the temperature led by a few centuries. This is expected, since it was changes in the Earth’s orbital parameters (including the shape of its orbit around the Sun, and the tilt of Earth’s axis) that caused the small initial temperature rise. This then raised atmospheric CO2 levels, in part by outgassing from the oceans, causing the temperature to rise further. By amplifying each other’s response, this “positive feedback” can turn a small initial perturbation into a large climate change. There is therefore no surprise that the temperature and CO2 rose in parallel, with the temperature initially in advance. In the current case, the situation is different, because human actions are raising the CO2 level, and we are starting to observe the temperature response.

Fact 2: The rate of AGT growth over the past few decades is totally unprecedented.







Fact 3: The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased steadily, over the past few decades.






Anyone familiar with science and logic knows that the burden of proof rest upon those who are making claims, and as such the burden of proof rests with the folks who accept global warming. However I have demonstrighted evidence for global warming , so the ball now rests in the sceptics' court. Where are we wrong?

OK, for starters in terms of myth debunking here is the FAQ page for Wikipedia article on global warming. It cab be found here. I know reading excerpt from wiki articles is not fun, but If you are going to respond I would take it as a kindness that you read this, as much of what I hear could be rebutted by this. Also, it is worth adding that although Wikipedia articles are not always reliable, this is an exhaustively sourced one.

Is there really a scientific consensus on global warming?

• Yes. The IPCC findings of recent warming as a result of human influence are explicitly recognized as the "consensus" scientific view by the science academies of all the major industrialized countries. No scientific body of national or international standing presently rejects the basic findings of human influence on recent climate. See Scientific opinion on climate change.

Isn't global warming "just a theory"?

• As is often the case, the term "global warming" is used with more than one meaning. That the temperature is rising is a fact. The explanation for this warming is a scientific theory. This is different from the common use of the word "theory" to mean a guess or supposition. A scientific theory is a coherent set of explanations that is compatible with the known observations, that allows predictions to be made, and that has a number of other properties (see the above linked article). A theory that makes a number of verifiable predictions that turn out to be correct gains credibility. Strictly speaking, science does not prove anything. A theory is the best it can provide.

I don't believe that global warming is happening or that it is caused by human activity!

• If you have documented evidence from the peer-reviewed literature, or if you have other information that meets standards of verifiability, reliability, and no original research, consider adding it to the article. If you do not have such evidence, note that there are many forums which welcome general discussions of global warming, but the article talk page is not such a forum. Please limit your talk page comments to improving the article, not discussing the topic.

Water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas!

• See Greenhouse_gas#The_role_of_water_vapor and Greenhouse_effect#The_greenhouse_gases for details. Water vapour is indeed a major greenhouse gas, contributing about 36% to 70% of the total greenhouse effect. But water vapour has a very short atmospheric lifetime (about 10 days). As a result it is very nearly in a dynamic equilibrium in the atmosphere, which globally maintains a nearly constant relative humidity. Increased temperatures will increase the absolute amount of water vapour in the atmosphere, and hence the greenhouse effect. This is an example of a positive feedback effect. Thus, while water vapour does not act as a climate driver, it does amplify existing trends.

There are many scientists who disagree with the premise that global warming is dooming our planet

• This page is about the science of global warming. It doesn't talk about planetary doom or catastrophe.

Given that summer 2007 (or winter 2008, or some other period) is so cold in (region X)...

• It's called "global warming", not "(region X) warming". Even then, what rises is the average temperature over time -- that is, the temperature will fluctuate up and down within the overall rising trend. To give an idea of the relevant time scales, the standard averaging period specified by the World Meteorological Organisation is 30 years.

Scientists only support global warming to get more money

• Scientists participate in international organizations like the IPCC as part of their normal academic duties. They do not receive any extra compensation beyond possibly direct expenses.
• Scientific grants do not usually award any money to a scientist personally, but only towards the cost of his or her scientific work.
• In the U.S., global warming was seen as a politically sensitive topic under the Bush administration, and discouraged scientists from working on the topic.[1]
• It could also be argued that more money lies in examining the policy debate on global warming.[2][3]

It was obviously much warmer when the Norse settled Greenland













Greenland was not significantly warmer during the period of Norse settlement. While much of Greenland was and remains under a large ice shelf, the areas of Greenland that were settled by the Norse were coastal areas with fjords that, to this day, remain quite green. Please see the following images for reference:

• A map of the Eastern Settlement [1]
• A satellite image of that area today [2].
• A map of the Western Settlement [3];
• A satellite image of that area today [4].
• A zoom in on the general area where the Brattahlid and Gardar farms were located [5].
• A zoom in on the general area of the Sandnes farm [6].
• Ruins:
  
  • Photos of the Gardar ruins: [7][8]
  • The Brattahlid ruins [9][10]:
  • Hvalsey church: [11]

The IPCC reports are prepared by biased UN scientists

• The IPCC reports are not produced by "UN scientists". The IPCC does not employ the scientists who generate the reports, and has no control over them. The scientists are internationally recognized experts, most with a long history of successful research in the field. They are employed by a number of different organizations, including scientific research institutes, agencies like NASA and NOAA, and universities. They receive no extra pay for their participation in the IPCC process, which is considered a normal part of their academic duties. The latest IPCC AR4 report was prepared by over 850 authors and reviewed by more than 2500 expert reviewers from all over the world.

Mars (or Jupiter, or Pluto) is warming, too (so it's the sun!)


Further information: Climate of Mars



Further information: Extraterrestrial atmosphere

• A 2007 National Geographic article described the views of Khabibullo Abdusamatov, who claims that the sun is responsible for global warming on both Earth and Mars.[4] Abdussamatov's views have no support in the scientific community. Indeed, the second, apparently rarely read page of the National Geographic article makes this clear: "His views are completely at odds with the mainstream scientific opinion" said Colin Wilson, a planetary physicist at England's Oxford University. [...] Amato Evan, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, added that "the idea just isn't supported by the theory or by the observations."[5]

• There is no reliable source claiming that Jupiter is warming. However, observations of the Red Spot Jr. storm suggest Jupiter could be in a period of global climate change.[6][7] This is hypothesized to be part of an approximately 70 year global climate cycle, characterized by the relatively rapid forming and subsequent slow erosion and merging of cyclonic and anticyclonic vortices that help transfer heat between Jupiter's poles and equator. The cycle works like this: As the vortices erode, heat exchange is reduced; this makes the poles cool down and the equatorial region heat up; the resulting temperature difference destabilizes the atmosphere, leading to the creation of new vortices. [8][9]

• Pluto has an extremely elliptical orbit with a period of about 248 years. Data are sparse, but two data points from 1988 and 2002 indirectly suggest that Pluto warmed between those two dates. [10] Pluto's temperature is heavily influenced by its elliptical orbit - it was closest to the sun in 1989 and has slowly receded since. Because of thermal inertia, it is expected to warm for a while after it passes perihelion. No other mechanism has so far been seriously suggested. Here is a reasonable summary, and this paper discusses how the thermal inertia is provided by sublimation and evaporation of parts of Pluto's atmosphere. A more popular account is here and in Wikipedia's own article.

There was once a time when most scientists believed the earth was flat!

• No, there was not. Knowledge about the approximately spherical shape of the Earth was widespread among educated people long before the advent of modern science. Eratosthenes already gave a very good estimate for the diameter in 240 BC. Christopher Columbus was not laughed out of court because he believed the Earth was round, but because he assumed an unrealistically small diameter to make Asia reachable. See Flat Earth, which, among other goodies, has a sourced statement that "since the eighth century, no cosmographer worthy of note has called into question the sphericity of the Earth."

Can't the presently high levels of CO2 be an effect of warming rather than a cause, as they may have been in the past? Can't the CO2 be produced by volcanic eruptions or the oceans?

• While these claims are popular among global warming skeptics,[11][12][13] even some academically trained ones,[14][15] they are patently wrong. This is known from any of several perspectives:

• Current human emissions of CO2 are at least 100 times larger than volcanic emissions. Measurements of CO2 levels over the past 50 years do not show any significant rises after eruptions.[16] This is easily seen in a graph of CO2 concentrations over the past 50 years: the strongest eruption during the period, that of Mount Pinatubo in 1991, produced no increase in the trend. (In fact the rate of CO2 increase was noticeably lower for a year or two after the Pinatubo eruption. This is thought to be related to the scattering of sunlight by volcanic dust and aerosols, which made plants absorb CO2 more efficiently.[17])
• Isotopic analysis of atmospheric carbon dioxide shows that the observed change in the ratio of carbon isotopes reflects the isotopic ratios in fossil fuels.[18]
• Atmospheric oxygen content is decreasing at a rate that agrees with the amount of oxygen being used to burn fossil fuels.[19]
• If the oceans were giving up some of their carbon dioxide, we would expect their carbon dioxide concentration to decrease. But instead we are measuring an increase in the oceans' carbon dioxide concentration, resulting in the oceans becoming more acidic (or more accurately, less basic).[20]

Weren't they saying in 1970 that pollution was going to freeze the world over by 2000?

• No: see global cooling

What is the optimal temperature of the earth - and how do we know it's not 6 degrees warmer?

• There's no such thing as an "optimal" temperature of the earth. The nearest concept that is relevant is that there are ranges to which species and human society have adapted. Though it may not sound like much, a global temperature rise of 6 degrees is huge in climate terms. For example, the sea level rise it produced would flood coastal cities around the world.
• Earth climate has varied significantly over geological ages. The question of an "optimal temperature" makes no sense without a clear optimality criterion. Over geological time spans, ecosystems adapt to climate variations. But global climate variations during the development of human civilization (i.e., the past 12,000 years) have been remarkably small. Human civilization is highly adapted to the current stable climate. Agricultural production depends on the proper combination of soil, climate, methods, and seeds. Most large cities are located on the coast, and any significant change in sea level would strongly affect them. Migration of humans and ecosystems is limited by political borders and exisiting land use. In short, the main problem is not the absolute temperature, but the massive and unprecedentedly fast change in climate, and the second order-effects to human societies. The IPCC AR4 WG2 report has a detailed discussion of the effects of rapid climate change.[21]

Aren’t climate variations inevitable with or without humans?

• Yes. Climate varies both with and without humans. But the fact that natural variations occur doesn't mean that human-induced changes can't also occur and vice versa.

Since methane is a much more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2, why isn't it viewed as the culprit behind global warming?

• True, methane is more potent molecule for molecule. But there's far less of it in the atmosphere, so the total effect is smaller. The atmospheric lifetime of methane (about 10 years) is a lot shorter than that of CO2 (on the order of 100 years). So methane tracks current emissions, while CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere over long periods. For details see the greenhouse gas and global warming potential articles.
• See also: Clathrate gun hypothesis#Current_outlook and Arctic methane release

In a US Senate Environment and Public Works minority report, I just read that...

• Senate Environment and Public Works minority reports are non-peer-reviewed documents written primarily by Senator James Inhofe's staffers. They are reliable only in documenting Inhofe's personal opinions on climate change, and should not be considered authoritative, accurate, or reliable for any other purposes.

Global sea ice has stayed the same (or increased) over the last 30 years








See also: Arctic shrinkage

• No, it has not.[22] Claims that global sea ice has stayed the same or increased are a result of cherry picking two datapoints to compare, while ignoring the real (strongly statistically significant) downward trend in measurements of global sea ice.

More to come later...

[Lovejoy]

I don't think that wiki-article adds much of value. I have been known as a "global warming skeptic" - and I will continue to be skeptic until I see some solid evidence. People rely too much on these "climate computer models". Much of the evidence used to decide politics and future plans come from such models. The models has not IMHO been proven reliable.

Computer programmers used to say; if you cant explain a process in words, you can not program it. We don't know enough to program a good model.

And all this talk about a "scientific consensus" I find both foolish and unimportant.

[NLegari]

Does anyone here remember Y2K?

[Ummon]

There's a difference between a global tantrum about a little problem and a scientific prediction about a big one.

[Phier]

There's a difference between a global tantrum about a little problem and a scientific prediction about a big one.

I haven't decided if I'll get all funky with this thread or not, but lets not forget the past.

[eisenkopf]

[...]

I haven't decided if I'll get all funky with this thread or not, but lets not forget the past.

How come you don't show the same nonsense with scientific papers published in respectable journals? I'll tell you: Because you can't.

What are you trying to prove by showing the covers of a popular magazine which is not renowned for its journalistic merit? We all know that they jump on every bandwagon available to increase their copies sold.


+rep for original post. Although it's probably time wasted. People believe what they want to believe. If they want to believe that it's a commie conspiracy to inspire a guilt complex and suck away their wealth into the bottomless pit which is the "Third World", they will believe that, see the recent thread in the pit. They are going to believe that until they or their children starve or drown or fight refugees with their bare hands.

[Phier]

How come you don't show the same nonsense with scientific papers published in respectable journals? I'll tell you: Because you can't.

What are you trying to prove by showing the covers of a popular magazine which is not renowned for its journalistic merit? We all know that they jump on every bandwagon available to increase their copies sold.

I'm sorry if the post was too subtle for easy understanding. The point was trusting a scientific consensus. I am going to guess you are too young to recall the 70's but I am not. I remember the global cooling scare. It was suppose to cause world wide famine by the 1990's and make much of the northern US almost unlivable. The scientists complained that the government wasn't doing anything, bitterly. One of their solutions was to put soot over the ice caps to lower its reflectivity. SOMETHING had to be done to save the planet.

+rep for original post. Although it's probably time wasted. People believe what they want to believe. If they want to believe that it's a commie conspiracy to inspire a guilt complex and suck away their wealth into the bottomless pit which is the "Third World", they will believe that, see the recent thread in the pit. They are going to believe that until they or their children starve or drown or fight refugees with their bare hands.

I don't worry, my children will feast on liberal corpses as I will see to it they have guns despite any bans, living on a tropical island that was once a hill in central N.Y.

But thanks for being angry.

[eisenkopf]

I'm sorry if the post was too subtle for easy understanding. The point was trusting a scientific consensus. I am going to guess you are too young to recall the 70's but I am not. I remember the global cooling scare. It was suppose to cause world wife famine by the 1990's and make much of the northern US almost unlivable. The scientists complained that the government wasn't doing anything, bitterly. One of their solutions was to put soot over the ice caps to lower its reflectivity. SOMETHING had to be done to save the planet.

I don't worry, my children will feast on liberal corpses as I will see to it they have guns despite any bans, living on a tropical island that was once a hill in central N.Y.

But thanks for being angry.

No need to be sorry, your "subtlety" wasn't lost on me. While I was too young to experience any "global cooling scare", I was old enough to live through the "dying forests scare". Now I'm old enough to have experienced first-hand how scientific research is communicated by popular media and received by the public. I also happen to have a few years of research and publishing in the geosciences under my belt. I know on which outcome to bet. While your gun-toting children will be living a redneck life on an isolated island, mine will help to develop and rebuild human civilization.

EDIT:
A bit more on topic. The crazy idea of anthropogenic climate change has started as a hypothesis which has been backed up by so much data, that it is widely considered to be a theory on which we should base our future actions, in order to avoid dire consequences. Those who refute the theory do this on mostly three grounds:

1. The climate has always been changing, no need to get agitated.
2. Everyone says it. It's got to be wrong.
3. It's a commie/socialist/liberal/hippie/tree-hugger conspiracy to take away our moral superiority and our wealth.

My answers to this:

ad 1. There are strong indicators that CO2 emissions from human activity are the cause of the recent increase in temperature (see OP). The climate is not a linear system with a few variables, it's very complex. Nothing might happen. Very bad things might happen. Do you want to sit around idly and find out when it may be too late?
ad 2. Being sceptic about the opinion of the majority is a valuable asset in life and a requirement for good scientific research. However, in consideration of the mountain of data we have, this is not about being reasonably sceptic anymore. This is about denial, and being the oh-so-cool lone wolf who disagrees because of, well, it's so cool to be against the mainstream and have a "different" "opinion".
ad 3. Well, can't argue about that. Usual conservative paranoia.

[ThiudareiksGunthigg]

I'm sorry if the post was too subtle for easy understanding. The point was trusting a scientific consensus. I am going to guess you are too young to recall the 70's but I am not. I remember the global cooling scare. It was suppose to cause world wide famine by the 1990's and make much of the northern US almost unlivable. The scientists complained that the government wasn't doing anything, bitterly. One of their solutions was to put soot over the ice caps to lower its reflectivity. SOMETHING had to be done to save the planet.

What a load of absolute crap. I'm certainly not too young to remember the brief flurry in the popular media in the 1970s about an impending ice age. Because that's all it was. There were a few papers suggesting that aerosol pollution may not only counter the warming effect of CO2, but may even cause severe cooling. The media picked up the story and briefly ran with it (thus the Time cover story) the way the media often does with some popular interpretation of a few scientific papers. What the media didn't bother reporting was that the author of the main paper that triggered the media reaction, Stephen Schneider, a climate researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, reviewed his own data and concluded he had over-estimated things.

But Global Warming sceptics have been perpetuating this idiotic myth that there was once some kind of consensus on Global Cooling in the 70s and how all we're seeing now is the same thing all over again, blah blah blah. That's a lie. There was a grand total of SEVEN papers suggesting any kind of possible global cooling trend between 1965 and 1979. And several of their authors later revised and corrected their work, as Schneider did. Pretending this is anything like the genuine and vast consensus of research that we see today is blatant misrepresentation and the kind of lying nonsense we've come to expect from the sceptics.

And this nonsense still bounces around the right wing echo chamber, with the usual drones parroting it as though it's all true, usually with some world-weary "I guess you're too young to remember ..." bollocks tacked on the end. Garbage. I was around then and it was nothing more than a tiny media flash in the pan based on a handful of speculative papers.

So you might want to can this lie buddy. Nice try though. Next time, check your facts.

[Ummon]

http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/Gener...aos/Chaos.html

[Phier]

http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/Gener...aos/Chaos.html

http://www.ralph-abraham.org/article...e/climate2.pdf

[Ummon]

That article is saying that water is humid. Something others have said previously, as well. I am into models: I know their limitations. We don't need a quantitative prediction here.

The conclusions are also a bit ideological. More precisely, we have no way to assess the limits of the risks involved, but we have a trend to judge the future. The trend is not such as to promote optimism, whatever the leaps the average skeptic will perform.

Besides, in the best possible conditions, there will be a change in climate, water distribution, crop raising, such as to produce serious migrations.

Historical models also suggest that small changes in climate have severe sociopolitical effects.

I would also personally add that, one last thing is to be asked about this obsession with quantitative predictions, whereas in many cases, society functions very well based on qualitative ones. You cannot say how many chances there are that a depressed patient will suicide (although there are approximated methods for that as well) but the correct qualitative prediction at the right time will nonetheless help. Something humans do all the time, when dealing with the complexity of life. So the idea that because we are not sure that the trend is leading in that certain precise place, the trend we see is not risky, is, allow me to say it, a rare jewel in terms of fallaciousness.

[Phier]

Saying 'Chaos theory' as a reason, is sort of like praying

[Ummon]

Well, I considered that you would possibly understand that I was referring to what happens to a chaotic system when we raise the energy input above a certain threshold, which is besides mentioned in the page. Possibly.

[Viking Prince]

The problem is not with the science, but with the consequences of government policy.

I am a behavior scientist so I cannot truly comment on the science of global warming in a peer reviewed forum seriously. Fortunately this is not such a forum.

I do accept that various global temperature change models have merit. I have not yet seen a model that is sensitive enough to forecast next year's temperatures or even in decade increments.

This is only part of the problem when translating the science into government policies. There are real and immediate economic consequences to actions and yet there are no clear economic consequences to inaction. Most of the proposals are simply means to throttle down global growth which also mean people starving and suffering from disease. These are the consequences of slowing growth in a world where a few dollars a month per capita change can lift millions out of misery or place people back into such misery.

Look to the increased problems in Brazil with just the current financial problems. What if their growth fell back to only 0.1% a year for a decade? This is still growth, but with the population growing faster, peolpe woould be sinking into poverty from which they have no hope of escaping. Actually there is no need to ask because there would be a revolution or a kick the sobs out election in only a couple of years. And Remember I mentioned Brazil which is a better run country than many of the really poorest on this planet.

The poorest nations cannot grow if the developed nations take a voluntary step back to "fix" global CO2 output over the next decade.

The better solution is economic and technological growth with new patents and inventions. Artificial fixes such a capping CO2 levels will lower economic activity by simply raising prices. This is not a solution for the modern world.

You may now return back to your CO2 graphs and other tidbits from the "mountain" of data.

[eisenkopf]

The problem is not with the science, but with the consequences of government policy.

[...]

This is only part of the problem when translating the science into government policies. There are real and immediate economic consequences to actions and yet there are no clear economic consequences to inaction. Most of the proposals are simply means to throttle down global growth which also mean people starving and suffering from disease. These are the consequences of slowing growth in a world where a few dollars a month per capita change can lift millions out of misery or place people back into such misery.

[...]

The poorest nations cannot grow if the developed nations take a voluntary step back to "fix" global CO2 output over the next decade.

The better solution is economic and technological growth with new patents and inventions. Artificial fixes such a capping CO2 levels will lower economic activity by simply raising prices. This is not a solution for the modern world.

[...]

While I agree with you about the problems when translating scientific theory into policies, I do not agree with you about the consequences of possible actions.

I think your view on economic "growth" is too limited. What exactly makes you think that CO2-related policies will automatically stunt growth and lead to more poverty?

This may seem naive to you, and I don't have a solution in the drawer, but I am convinced that we need to stop measuring "growth" only quantitatively. Instead, "growth" has to become more connotated with an increase in quality of life, which is more than just consumption. Mind you, I'm not advocating a pre-industrial lifestyle here. I'm technology-friendly, to put it mildly, and have high hopes in technological innovations. The question is rather in which direction our efforts go. I know that the notion of "growth" as equaling "more" is deeply embedded in our society and norms. Nevertheless, this needs to change.

Additionally, what about the consequences of desertification, inundation, and severe weather events? Just because we cannot quantify them accurately should not mean that their potential impact on global economy and economic growth is to be ignored.

Now I'll be climbing back on top of my mountain of data and think about what to do...

[Wilder]

The problem is not with the science, but with the consequences of government policy.

I am a behavior scientist so I cannot truly comment on the science of global warming in a peer reviewed forum seriously. Fortunately this is not such a forum.

I do accept that various global temperature change models have merit. I have not yet seen a model that is sensitive enough to forecast next year's temperatures or even in decade increments.

This is only part of the problem when translating the science into government policies. There are real and immediate economic consequences to actions and yet there are no clear economic consequences to inaction. Most of the proposals are simply means to throttle down global growth which also mean people starving and suffering from disease. These are the consequences of slowing growth in a world where a few dollars a month per capita change can lift millions out of misery or place people back into such misery.

Look to the increased problems in Brazil with just the current financial problems. What if their growth fell back to only 0.1% a year for a decade? This is still growth, but with the population growing faster, peolpe woould be sinking into poverty from which they have no hope of escaping. Actually there is no need to ask because there would be a revolution or a kick the sobs out election in only a couple of years. And Remember I mentioned Brazil which is a better run country than many of the really poorest on this planet.

The poorest nations cannot grow if the developed nations take a voluntary step back to "fix" global CO2 output over the next decade.

The better solution is economic and technological growth with new patents and inventions. Artificial fixes such a capping CO2 levels will lower economic activity by simply raising prices. This is not a solution for the modern world.

You may now return back to your CO2 graphs and other tidbits from the "mountain" of data.

I don't have much time to respond right now, but I would like to address this quickly. It is often assumed that the solution to CO2 emissions is solely government regulation. This is false. I strongly recommend that you pick up "hot flat and crowded", by Tomas Friedman. In super summery, the chief ingredient in fighting global warming is efficiency, and currently the system is very inefficient (largely because of Government involvement by the way) so: efficiency + capitalism =

[Ummon]

Technological advance is always the problem and the solution. The assertion that CO2 capping is the only measure to be had, is somehow mysterious: a strawman, infact.

[Viking Prince]

The problem with growth is the people that have virtually no output in a cash economy. These people need global growth to create even a tiny bit of cash economy in their world. Look at all of the challanges in micro finance that attempt to get the smallest enterprises going. At this level quantitative is the only issue. Those with nothing want something. They do not crave a better quality of nothing. Do not confuse the world in which we can type onto this forum with wheere the real consequences of government growth policies reach. If the USA were to initiate a CO2 policy that simply raises the cost of pollution, the short term effect is to raise prices. This price level change means more hungry bellies in the third world. By the way, what policies would you advocate to deal with the problem. Not goals, but concrete and real policies?

btw -- I have my own world filled with mountains of data.

[eisenkopf]

[...] Those with nothing want something. They do not crave a better quality of nothing. Do not confuse the world in which we can type onto this forum with wheere the real consequences of government growth policies reach. If the USA were to initiate a CO2 policy that simply raises the cost of pollution, the short term effect is to raise prices. This price level change means more hungry bellies in the third world. By the way, what policies would you advocate to deal with the problem. Not goals, but concrete and real policies?[...]

I do not confuse my "first world" with the "third world". I know both from first-hand experience, and also know about the differences in issues at stake.

Is public service (transport, health care, education) "nothing"? That's what poor people care about (next to food, housing, and the security of a rule of law). Decent public services, not cash per se. Of course, since cash can buy all that, it is the goal of individual people, but only as a means to an end.

Why would a CO2 policy automatically raise prices? I think we both have already argued about this a while back in a thread about sustainability and renewable energies. I know that taxes and tariffs are introduced easily and are very difficult to get rid of. However, my proposition for concrete and real policies would be to base most taxes or fees on energy and resource consumption, and get rid of most other taxes. This way, we accomplish several things:
1. (Manual) labor gets cheaper and more competitive again, thus creating new jobs.
2. Innovation in efficient technology is encouraged, not by subsidies, but by the market.
3. Those who consume a lot of resources pay directly for it, the externalization of costs is reduced.

Since energy is the central component in such a reform, the conventional energy-producing industry may need to be nationalized. Before anyone cries "socialism" here, let me remind you that we don't have a free market in energy production and consumption, but an oligopol at best, and a cartel at worst.

These thoughts are simply an outline for what I think would be the way to a solution. It's not my job to devise such policies, and not a favourite past-time either. So someone more versed in this will find lots of opportunities to object, and probably even reasonably so. However, I do not see the traditional approaches of economic growth provide sensible answers to the challenges we face. I think we need to discuss the nitty-gritty details of such an energy- and resource-based policy, instead of rejecting it outright as being completely unrealistic or utopian.