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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (7414)	4/22/2009 12:40:13 PM
From: Brumar89	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

If the odds were 50/50 that human caused warming was going to occur, the next step would be to estimate the positive and negative effects of the likely warming and the costs and benefits of doing something about it, if possible. I think Bjorn Lomborg's ideas are an example of that approach. He's an environmentalist who accepts that global warming caused by humans is going to occur (so he goes beyond the 50/50 odds you mentioned) but ... Lomborg campaigns for an unconventional position on climate change: he opposes the Kyoto Protocol and other measures to cut carbon emissions in the short-term, and argues that we should instead adapt to short-term temperature rises as they are inevitable, and spend money on research and development for longer-term environmental solutions, and on other important world problems such as AIDS, malaria and malnutrition. en.wikipedia.org This guy is a European (Danish) gay, vegetarian, environmentalist. The perfect liberal authority figure! How could you possibly argue with him?

To: koan who wrote (7414)	4/22/2009 1:05:53 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

The vast majority of the top atmospheric scientists in the world studying global warming believe man is causing global warming. Pretty rhetorical statement there. How do you define "top atmospheric scientist" and where's the list? Furthermore, what if global warming isn't just "atmospheric", but cosmological and astrophysical (solar/cosmic activity), as well as geological (tectonic)? Are you just going to ignore their opinions? But let us say the chances are only 50/50 they are right, what action should the world take if the chances are 50/50? Then you collect more data until you're relatively certain that we're not looking at global cooling, or merely status quo. We can also adopt economically viable and competitive renewable energy systems which don't impose inordinate costs on our society. It very well might turn out that pumping GG's into the air might be something that actually mitigates any advent of global cooling. But even if the earth does further warm, it will need to become even warmer in order to match the Medieval Maximum, where Vikings were farming in Greenland. But right now we've seen SHARP global cooling since 2008 and we need to see if that's either a peak, or a temporary hiatus. Either way, there are methods, via geo-engineering, by which CO2 can be reduced in the atmosphere. But methane and water vapor will be more difficult to reduce, IMO. What you DON'T DO is force the economy to absorb costs that do not add to overall productivity and impose regressive economic costs on those who can least afford it. Hawk