Even if you don't believe in golbal warming:
We have to get off of oil and to a sustainable, clean fuel that doesn't pollute.

We have to stop dealing with oil cartels and oil companies who have but one desire, to make as much money as possible and to hell with the consequences.
If we don't do something, economically, we will be destroyed by not enough oil to go around.

WE NEED ANOTHER FUEL SOURCE BESIDES OIL!

Hydrogen, wind, solar, wave... the technology is here. Come January 20th, we will finally have an administration that will actually do something to foster energy independence here in the USA, as opposed to the do-nothing Bush administration...

Remember what Cheney said just before we started the Iraq war?
Remember that he said that if there is only a 1% chance that Iraq has WMDs, we should invade?

Well, what about if there is only a 1% chance that Global Warming is a reality. Shouldn't we do something?

So, in conclusion:

1. If you believe in global warming, we should get off oil because it makes sense for the environment.

2. If you DON'T believe in global warming, we should STILL get off oil because it makes economic sense to do so.

Either way, alternatives must become a reality, or we are cooked...

posted December 11, 2008

Here are my thoughts:

1. When one major volcano erupts, it expels more CFC's than all of mankind's cumulative existence to date.
2. The Sun's radiative activity fluctuates over long cycles (millions of years).
3. Our planet is over 5 BILLION years old. What arrogance to derive trends based on thousands of years of available climate evidence!
4. Whatever changes that will occur, we have a lot less influence than we think.

posted December 11, 2008

I saw a similar discussion somewhere here, at LinkedIn. Still, I just came back from Poznan after few days of discussing and observing the circus. Frankly, doomsayers and followers of Mr Pachauri are becoming the more unconvincing the more you are listening to them.

There is no doubt that climate change is a real phenomenon. A recurring one, driven by multitude of factors, solar activity not the least important, and human activity another one. But I would call hubris the belief that our race and business activity is particularly responsible for the climate change.

Given that, I am still in favor of RES and well-considered emission targets, because that is an important stimulus driving the technological progress. Just think about downsizing of car engines - apart of oil prices, it is general consideration about climate change that we benefit from.

Still, on the basis of my experience, most RES are still economically inviable as long as you don't offer certain fiscal stimuli to improve their competitiveness. But then, we are paying for them. During COP14 in Poznan the climate change issue attracted a lot of interest from the media in Poland, and guess, more than 60% of people want the Gov't to act in order to prevent climate change, but 84% would not accept higher energy prices.

What does it mean? That we need to push only these climate-friendly solutions that might become economically viable. I like the point made by Bjorn Lomborg - that implementation of Kyoto Protocol would result in slowing global warming by 0,015 degree C by 2010, and would cost 180 bln dollars per year during the first 5 years. Is it efficient? At the end of the day it is standard of our lives that counts - indeed, it is affected by climate change, but you begin to think about it only when your more basic needs are satisfied. China just started to think about climate change. India not, and it is not a surprise given the poverty among most of their citizens.

We should see climate change in such way as the Pascal's wager. We don't know what is humanity's impact on climate. But if we can do something in order to prevent that, let's do that - but not at the expense of the standard of life.

Governments should debate how to endorse R&D in the area of climate change and how to set viable targets, that could be accepted by developing countries. Making void pledges to cut emissions by 50% until 2050 is pointless and unlikely to attract these countries that soon will emit the most GHG - India, China, South-East Asian States, and - to some extent - Latin America and Africa.

I just discussed that with Yankees. Do you know that reducing global CO2 emissions by 1 bln t pa (4% of current global emissions) would mean building 130 nuclear power plants per 1GW, installing 1.7 mln acres of photovoltaic panels or 170000 wind turbines per 1.5MW each?

And we are still talking about CO2, and forgot about methane, 20 times more potent GHG, or nitrogen oxides...

The problem is that very few climatologists or IPCC members are able to grasp also economic aspect of the problem, not to say anything about ordinary tree-huggers.

With green regards,
Bartek

posted December 12, 2008

Skeptic or not, there is no denying that man has horribly polluted the air, land, and water (all of which we need to live). It’s very narrow-minded to think we can continue on our current course without repercussions of some kind.

Regardless of your views, we have got to change – and everyone has to pull their own weight - for long-term sustainability.

posted December 12, 2008

I am not at all convinced that the threat of global warming is the most important threat to humanity, if at all it is a threat.

First of all if it is a real issue than man can hardly do anything drastic to change the course of things our Natural forces are going to take. After all man (even 6 or 7 billion of us together) can not prevent something which this huge and ever-mystical universe around us is going to do.

There are more urgent and serious issues which require more attention and action than on handling global warming.

This quite a strange thing with humanity that it always talk about future threats and never try to solve current, in-hand problems like ignorance, greed, terrorism, economic exploitation, poor health, poor education etc..

The UN or other organisations never try to find ways to make people more happy, satisfied, loving, helping, healthy.

If people can not love each even after so much economic and technical development then this humanity is going to kill itself sooner or later because if we do not use our nuclear and other technologies positively these will be used negatively. This is sure to happen.

I conclude that me, you and everybody needs to look within ourselves as an individual to find ways how we can make ourselves happy, satisfied and helping. This is the only wayout otherwise our future will be more difficult than present despite all our talks, debates, conferences, research papers etc. etc...

posted December 17, 2008

Hi Valerie,

I imagine the scientific data can be interpreted in any number of ways, many of them, on both sides of the issue, being legitimate.

To the skeptics of global warming, I would thus ask: "How many of you care to take chances with the only planet we have?"

Josh.

posted December 12, 2008

There’s no question that the greenhouse effect is real. Without it, Earth would be a frozen planet with nothing capable of living on the surface. That can be proven by thermodynamic calculations. So the greenhouse effect is a good thing. But it’s also possible to have too much of a good thing.

We are fortunate that water vapor in the atmosphere increases with temperature and reflects solar radiation from the sun, or the increase in CO2 we’ve seen in the industrial age may have warmed the planet by 7 degrees F instead of 1 degree F. However, we don’t know if it is possible to push the planet into a new metastable state where the temperature takes on a new set point making it impossible for life as we know it to go on.

We will eventually need to find substitutes for fossil fuels anyway, why not do it now while they are still plentiful? After all, do we think it will become easier to find substitutes for them after they have become further depleted and more expensive?

What we have now is an experiment in progress. If one side is correct, increasing CO2 levels is a harmless experiment not worth worrying about. But if the other side is correct, the continuation of this experiment will end with a climate inhospitable for human life.

I think it’s a shame that the argument for the timing to replace fossil fuels has so polarized the general public and turned into a religion (for both sides of the argument).

One of the best explanations I’ve read on this topic is a book entitled ‘Out of Gas’ by David Goodstein, an engineering professor from Caltech. Unlike many screeds on the topic, it contains no hand wringing, no blaming, just good common sense backed up with principles of physics.

posted December 13, 2008

There are two things you may want to consider: A) it is not a leap of faith to agree that the levels of atmospheric CO2 are rising off the charts; if you got the results of a blood test that showed your blood CO2 levels were well outside the normal range, would you be concerned? B) the chapter on climate in Lomborg's The Environmental Skeptic; here Lomborg takes the cost-benefit position that the cost of doing something about climate change exceeds the damage costs of the climate change itself, so why do it? Note that he doesn't say that climate change is a fiction, only that according to his numbers it's not worth doing anything about. There are several problems with this reasoning: 1) he only carries his risk/cost analysis out to the year 2100, 2) discounting future costs to the present is a questionable decision making tool, why? because it all depends on what interest rate you choose and if you go far enough out into the future you could reach the conclusion that no risk is worth avoiding, 3) there is no liability for making the wrong decision; if someone wants to gamble with climate change they should be required to make a binding pledge to pay for losses if they are wrong, shouldn't they?

Links:

• http://politicalecology.xyvy.info/category/climate-change/science-cc/

posted December 16, 2008