Maurice,
The trouble is, as I've posted before (with a link) is that the climate has changed very rapidly in the past. The CO2 we are dumping into the atmosphere may be sufficient to push the climate-system into an new quasi-steady state, perhaps even a new ice-age. But we've rehearsed this before! I don't see why you think restoring the climate to that when coal was being laid down would be a good idea. We evolved after the coal was laid down, Co2 had been extracted, and oxygen had been excreted into the atmosphere.
A couple of links for you.
Recent CO2 changes: 2think.org . The author of the first graph, C. David Keeling, is being awarded with the US Medal of Science by Pres. Bush sometime this month. It seems the President and his advisors have come around to accept that Global change is happening, and that CO2 contributes to it;http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/environment/energy/bush_6-11.html. Although, as the President says, it is impossible to ascribe all recent changes to anthropogenic effects, he seems to agree that further increases in CO2 are not a good thing. He now wants to bicker about the costs, and who should bear them. This is substantial progress.
You say it would be simple to remove Co2 from the atmosphere. I agree with George Bush; it wouldn't be simple or cheap. I also agree that large scale reductions in Co2 emissions could be expensive, but imposing fuel standards would not be. I can see the arguments against such constraints, but when we add CO2 to the atmosphere we don't know how much we are imposing on the world. A carbon tax could take a stab at those costs.
Gotto go watch an annular eclipse. Hey, we're being short changed. Ten years or so ago, there was a TOTAL eclipse near here! Things ain't wot they used to be.
Ashley |
