This isn't germain to our discussion, but worth noting. One of the problems with solar power is storage. That is, getting power when the solar cells aren't functioning. As it turns out, carbon is the perfect storage mechanism. Coal, oil, natural gas, etc are nothing more than stored up solar energy.
But, back on point.
The changes you mention, IF they happen at all, would not occur catastrophically. They would happen over a period of time, probably decades or more. IF costal cities were to be inundated by the oceans, folks would have plenty of time to move to higher ground, it won't be some tsunami rolling in killing hundreds of thousands. The same for agriculture. IF Iowa gets too hot to grow corn, Manitoba can take up the slack. As previously mentioned, warmer air will mean more rain, and who knows, IF GW were to occur, maybe the Saraha would bloom again.
If greenhouse gasses really ARE important to climate change, why is there no effort to control the, by far, worst greenhouse gas, water vapor? From what I've read, water vapor is at least an order of magnitude worse than CO2 for the greenhouse effect, yet here we are, adding ethanol to our gasoline and trying to produce hydrogen fuel cells, both of which add huge amounts of water vapor to the atmosphere. "Humbug," sez I, "the proponents of climate change don't care about greenhouse gasses, they care about power, fear, and controlling economies."
The same people who are trying to pass a law forcing me (not asking any more, DEMANDING!) to change the light bulbs in my house, are the same ones who won't tell me how much chlorine gas, and CO2 come out of a typical volcano, or what the effects are of a typical 100,000 acre forest fire as compared to, say, passenger mile of my modern pickup or even of a newer, "clean" turbofan airliner. I suspect that the human input to climate is miniscule-to-negligable in comparison. Furthermore, I'd suspect that asphalt roads and parking lots, which are excellent solar collectors, contribute at least as much to unreradiated surface warming as all the nuclear power plants in the US. And all the while, the worst offender, water vapor, is ignored.
Anthropologic GW MIGHT have some impact on climate. And if we buy into the current religion, we may have some slight effect on future climate change. We can sure ruin our economies and the US standing in the world trying to stop something that may not even exist. That would be a sure thing; conversely, we could try to get some real science, not religion and politics, and find out if we really need to do anything at all.
I used to have some interest and even a slight concern about GW. Then along came Algore and his group of fanatical followers, shreeking of impending doom while getting rich. That's when I turned it all off and decided not to believe any of it unless it made sense. |
