Where the hell have you been? Climate is getting warmer both continently and in the seas, causing ecological shifts resulting in droughts like the one in the American southeast and the big one now occurring in the middle east. Extreme weather events are increasing. The glaciers are disappearing along with the great polar ice sheets. Sea level is rising and oceans are becoming more acidic. So talk about the other primary drivers if you think they are significant! All I have done is challenge your response. So back it up with something. CO2 is the primary human-caused factor and it is significant. Prove that wrong, if you can. The fact that other things besides CO2 drive the climate is irrelevant to the fact that AGW (something we can affect) is an increasingly significant factor. You clearly don't pay much attention to the media. There are thousands of papers and popular articles regarding the consequences of climate change. The media has been all over it. Google it and be surprised. The plan? Whose plan? Extreme AGW deniers want to do nothing, they will be dead before it gets really bad, so who cares. Extremist environmentalists want to stop all use of fossil fuels, exchanging an impending environmental crisis into an immediate and severe economic and social crisis. Pragmatists advocate three things: 1. Immediately do the obviously cheap and easy solutions that researchers and engineers are working on, like increasing the efficiency of power production, using better stack scrubbers, reforesting vast deforested areas, enhancing recycling, developing non-carbon power sources, encouraging energy conservation and in many cases mandating it. 2. Never do the impossible dreams, impractical ideas, and ecological fantasies of the dreamers. We can't go back to the 18th century. 3. Start addressing practical concerns with pragmatic solutions. Implement technical strategies with new greener research and development projects and advanced technologies like zero-point energy involving gravity and magnetics. Implement economic strategies like cap & trade, which worked like a charm to rid us of acid rain. It can work for carbon like it did for sulphur. It allows companies with new, efficient plants to sell tax credits to companies with older, polluting plants to give them more time to upgrade without stifling profits, which makes them more competitive and profitable in the long run, and reducing million of tons of carbon into the atmosphere at the same time.
@red55 is pretty dead on here. The extremists on both sides are fiddling while Rome burns. To do what the extreme Enviormental movement advocates would kill million maybe billions through starvation or doom them to poverty and a third world existence. To ignore the consequences of the increase of CO2 and other greenhouse gases will doom our children to the same. Little noticed in the discussion is the increasing acidification of the oceans due to CO2 and indications that warming is Having an effect on ocean currents. The oceans are as much or more of a canary in a coal mine. It will take our ingenuity and will to deal with it. I'm not sure of exactly how we it will happen but both radical change away from the existing and ignoring the need to make changes will doom us.
1st I have searched and there is no way to look back a extreme weather pre-1880 CO2 levels. Further data proving a hurricane was the risky of climate change is sketchy. 2nd there is good in climate change as well. Most all is assumed to be bad because it simply changes. When in fact factors like extreme resource draining, such as farmers, is far more harmful to many areas than CO2/climate change. Pollution by emerging markets, etc. 3rd I'm on my phone at the hospital so I can't post about other factors and confirm correctness. 4th yes I have seen the alarmist guides to the end of the earth regarding climate change. Here's the thing. If it is as serious as scientist claim, why aren't we placing sanctions on The rest of the world? Why do we "act" like it matters in the US but ignore china, India, etc??? They are of far more danger to climate change than US coal plants.
So tell me, if we are to doom our children, why do we not consider sanctions on China, India , etc?? Those polluters are FAR more dangerous than US coal etc. Look I do not deny the CO2 humans dump in the atmosphere. I do not even deny the cause it has on the green house effect. What I do contend is that science has jumped on CO2 has a root of evil when there are possibly far more damaging things affecting life on earth. I live in West Texas. I see how hoards of cattle and cotton farms have absolutely drained aquifers. We pull and pull water to keep cities alive in the middle of a desert.
Actually there is. Core ice studies show CO2 concentration for hundreds of thousands of years (my niece did her PhD) on that. Also we have tracked to increased concentration of lead in people's lives since Roman times. The data is there. To say there is good to climate change isn't totally wrong. It depends on two things though. First if we have the tools and time to adapt. Second is if none of the truly catastrophic events such as release of methane by melting permanent frost ot the like doesn't happen. That is taking too much risk in controlling the uncontrollable. You're also correct it isn't only on the US but also on China, India and the rest of the world. If we act and they don't it will be like pissing in the wind. However it will take leadership and negotiation to make it a collaborative effort. None of us can excuse lack of action on what the others do. As you said it isn't only about coal plants in the US. However if we don't lead no one will follow.
1: ice cores show CO2 levels yes but how do you correlate extreme weather patterns from ice cores? Link? How do you even measure hurricanes in 900 ad? 1100? 1200? Or tornados? Thunderstorms? Extreme wind? Hail? Hot spell? Cold spells? Not talking about average temps here. 2: tools are useless if used for the wrong purpose. 3: If this is serious, don't you think we have to force the change??
Ice cores are very accurate measurements of global temperature going back 800 millennia. We have historical records of extreme weather events going back 2 millennia. No argument there. The problem with AGW is the rate of change. Natural phenomenon change gradually and there is time for ecosystems to adjust. The human-made global warming is happening at a very quick pace, an unnatural pace that adaptation cannot keep up with. I think you are conflating issues. One issue is the acceptance that AGW is real and poses threats to the human future. I argue here about science denial and political rhetoric masquerading as logic. You seem to realize that AGW is real. If you can accept this scientific reality and stop denying its existence, then we can move on to the other issue. An entirely separate issue is what we and the world decide to do about AGW. Any response must eventually be global to be globally effective. But it must start with some leaders. The state of affairs on this planet is that China and India have populations six time our size with resources that are a fraction of ours and geographic and demographic trends that do not bode well for their future. It is difficult for Americans to imagine just how close to the edge these countries and many in the third world are. A major crisis will put them into severe economic and social disorder. They have to exploit everything they have to get by on a daily basis. They are so far behind America and The West that addressing long-term problems will never be a priority for them. They live in a short-term world, politically and economically. That does not mean that addressing AGW can't be a higher priority for The West. We must live in this world with the rest and we control enough of it to make a difference. We do not have to do all the heavy lifting and expect the third world to do nothing. But we must be practical and accept that just as in finance, military power, political acumen, and economics we will always be able to out-perform them in addressing long-term global issues. We have a Superpower, some Great Powers aligned with the Superpower, some independent Great Powers, and over a hundred third World Countries. As a Superpower we must be the leader in this as in all other things. We must do superior things. The Great Powers will do some great things and the Third World will get by the best they can. This is the way of international geopolitics. There will be a tiering of players, a tiering of accomplishments, and a tiering of resulting benefits in the effort to control AGW.
Pretty well said Red. One point is that while India, China and the developing world want to and really need to come up to our standard of living the fact that they are so much more populous means they will soon have a signicantly greater contribution to AGW. That means while we and the west should lead they must work as hard or harder to insure their growth is kinder to AGW.
How? Those countries are not going to stop polluting the atmosphere if it slows down their economic growth.
While I was on active duty in the Air Force and in my civilian job after I retired, I traveled to Thule AB in Greenland numerous times from 1982 - 2013. The differences I saw in the ice cap were noticeable to me. I'm far from being classified as a tree hugger but we are inflicting damage that I don't know can be reversed.