My view is that the problem (climate change) will not be effectively addressed until one of two things happen. One is that the effects fo climate change get so bad they can't be dismissed any longer. Sandy may have been a first taste f that.
Second -- if we have time -- climate change will be dealt with by default. There are dozens of labs and companies striving to develop an effective, affordable energy storage system that can make cars, solar power, etc. fully practical. When that happens, it will complete the alternative technology puzzle -- and the world will change. an effective energy storage system combined with cars, solar energy, etc. has too many competitive advantages. The market will do the job environmentalists have been unable to do, because that's where the profits will be.
Does it give you pleasure to see people marginalized?
Edit: Wow, okay you may not enjoy it but I presume you find it necessary. Well I have two points. First, it appears your anger is at conservatives rather than skeptics or deniers of AGW given the arguments you are making.
Second, and more importantly, I agree with you on some of your core concerns. Specifically, the major market bubbles and the flow of wealth upwards. The part I don't understand is that climate change policy is setting up the next major market bubble which is the carbon market. And like the last bubbles, the small investor and the regular guy are going to pay and Goldman-Sachs executives and friends are going to gain.
And if and when carbon tax or cap and trade or whatever else the EPA has planned comes into effect, it the people who use power who are going to see their bills increase. So where do you think the money flows? If you're so concerned about the wealthiest getting wealthier , where do you think it comes from? How does it get there?
You may be happy to have a Democrat government, but they have just as many friends at Goldman-Sachs as the conservatives do and maybe more. Maybe they just have a few less friends in the energy sector. Think hard for a minute if CO2 reductions is really going to change anything (i.e. specifically the concerns you listed in Additional Details). Politicians are the same at the core. They just use different arguments to keep their following.
Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that AGW is actually solidly based. This still does not address my stock answer:
"If man-made global warming was taken seriously by its supporters they would advocate genuine solutions such as adding small amounts of iron to the oceans to cause the microscopic plants to multiply and absorb the carbon dioxide back into the biosphere whence it originally came.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertil...
A solution both practical and inexpensive.
Failing that, they would advocate replacing the base load electrical power generation with mass produced nuclear power plants as one of the quickest, cheapest and most effective means of reducing carbon emissions.
If its supporters don't take it seriously, why should anyone else?"
In other words: the carbon can likely be sequestered for less money than is being tossed at the problem currently. All without source reduction which will simply destroy the developed world's economies while achieving exactly nothing because the developing world will not so bind itself.
I must add: "that humans are causing it and that it will have a major impact is no longer in dispute" was asserted from the beginning of the debate decades ago. What you don't seem to be aware of is that you are claiming to know what the climate would be had fossil emissions never occurred. Since no one can visit alternate timelines, this is based on largely inferential methods on a remarkably small factual base.
I wish that enough people would see through their plant food for them to be completely marginalized. But I am sure that once sea levels rise by 1 metre, that denialists will be running from villagers who have torches and pitch forks. Until then, I do not have much hope, because denialists tell a large segment of society exactly what they want to hear.
Dookie
I thought that denialists were the missing link.
"How long to you think before climate change deniers are completely marginalized?"
After the evolution deniers are completely marginalised. The scientifically illiterate demographic provide lots of votes if you keep them scared, angry & very stupid
This looks like the missing link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/scienc...
The tipping point will come when it is politically incorrect to publicly insist on one of the great lies of human history. Like the lie that Jews were responsible for Germany's problems in the 1920s and 30s.
I would not expect that strident public denial of climate science would ever become a punishable offense in America, the way Holocaust denial is in some European countries. But some degree of 'marginalization' some day seems extremely likely. For about a decade, circa 1934-44, there were tens millions of enthusiastic and loyal disciples of the Fuehrer, and proud Nazi Party members in Europe. Then after 1945, there hardly any anti-Semitic Nazis to be found any more; just a whole lot of people who had been forced to follow orders. Some sort of flip like that is conceivable with anti-science denial of global warming. Deniers switching en masse from denying science to denying their past denial.
But we are not in "1945" with climate change denial. It is more like 1928, with each Nazi and Holocaust denial year = a multiple of climate change denial years.
The NY times is pure liberal rubbish its not a source .
Its still a hoax and a way to redistribute wealth .
Your link didn't work but I found it on Google using your quote.
Justin Gillis is obviously not a scientist.
Here is who he is
http://climatedepot.com/a/17791/NYT-repo...
A wakco leftist who pretends to be a scientist in the dinosaur media.
Nobody disputes there is a lot of ice that can melt and increase sea levels.
Raymo can look all she wants at fossil beaches. All it proves is that it was much warmer in the past due to natural causes.
It depends entirely on the paths these two trends take.
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8091/83914...
I really hope you don't kill yourself when you realize how wrong you have been about this.
Seriously. This is not a troll question or an academic exercise.
I think we can agree that there are no more true climate change skeptics, those who think they can prove it's not happening or that it doesn't matter. Sure there are unknowns but the fact that it is happening, that humans are causing it and that it will have a major impact is no longer in dispute.
Considering Mr. Obama's clear intent to push new policy, how long do you think it will be before we have a tipping point in public opinion? If you think we won't reach a tipping point soon or that it doesn't matter, how can any policy initiative succeed, let alone survive?
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/science/earth/seeking-clues-about-sea-level-from-fossil-
beaches.html?partner=EXCITE&ei=5043
“At every point, as our knowledge increases,” Dr. Raymo said, “we’ve always discovered that the climate system is more sensitive than we thought it could be, not less.”
How long did it take to convince the masses that the world was round, and not flat?
About that long.
longer than you think
We will out last your taunting.
Obozo says we gotta reduce carbon but not debt. The guys a geenyus.
Luckily we have scientific bodies like the UK Met who despite their involvement with the IPCC take global averages and reluctantly admit global warming stopped 16 years ago.
I'll leave it up to you whether you want to deny the Met's science credentials or just deny their data.
There's actually a cash prize offered somewhere for any real evidence that humans alter climate pls let me know how you spend it since you seem clear in your own mind that there's actual proof.
The skeptics like myself will always have this thing called REALITY. Reality will prevail in the end. It will take awhile but after years where the global temperatures are NOT increasing as predicted people will realize that CAGW was a load of horse manure.
