Now for the consequences you have major economic and quality of life attacks with the suggestions taken, most don't realize how much food/travel/item reductions and changes are needed to meet the goal suggestions provided by GWers, couple that with a growing population.
This isn't even covering the logistics of getting other countries on board to make this happen, which GWers suggest paying the rest of the world to comply.
Essentially, the support really is sketchy but the consequences are extremely real. This is why even the more "progressive" countries are not all aboard the GW reduction suggestions.
Your logic is flawed. You have no excuse because I have pointed out the flaw here before.
As well as the likelihood of something happening and the amount of damage it will cause you also need to consider the cost of any suggested actions.
Your house insurance analogy fails every time if the monthly premium is 100 times the cost of replacing the house because it is cheaper to do nothing and just replace the house if it becomes necessary.
Even if we did "act" what would the effect be? Would the problem completely disappear or would it just reduce by 1% - or less, or more? Is there a chance that any action might make the situation worse? (My personal view is that geoengineering falls into that category.)
Still, you are in good company. You can get a good job without knowing any answers to the real problems. See this interview given by Jill Duggan, the European Commission Directorate General of Climate Action from a few years back.
If you still are not convinced consider this certain problem: I am going to die.
How much am I going to spend on that problem: Nothing.
Those left behind will just have to work round it. What is the rationale behind claiming that certainty means we have to "act" and why do you always assume than any "action" will be effective and not counter-productive?
http://johnosullivan.livejournal.com/328...
It's now virtually certain that our greenhouse gas emissions will cause additional energy to be trapped within the climate system. The models are methods of assessing how that additional energy will affect the climate.
Contrary to what skeptics would have us believe, the climate models are remarkably accurate. They correctly predict past climate events when fed initial data and are left to run. They correctly predict recent climatic events when CO2 and other greenhouse gases are factored in. Of course, the sceptics will point to short term deviations (such as 'the pause') but models don't have that sort of fidelity or resolution on that sort of timescale. That's because scientists aren't trying to model weather variations but climate. Hence the term climatologists.
Arguing that the models don't fit the data is one thing but actually what the sceptics mean is 'this model which was designed to predict long term changes doesn't work over the short term' ... em ... well ... duh!! If you want to argue that something doesn't do what it wasn't designed to do then fine. That's not a particularly useful argument.
All of the models, all of the science, and pretty much the entire scientific community are telling us we're facing a problem we need to do something about. Scientists are taxpayers too. They know the financial consequences. They know the issues of politics. They know how the world works. What they are basing their assessment on is the science - what we know now.
I think there is little doubt that we have to act if we want to prevent problems in the future. I think there is little real doubt by the majority of world governments, scientists, and financial institutions that the cost of doing nothing will be greater than the cost of solving the problem.
I think future generations will look back and wonder how we were so stupid, and why it took us so long to act when the data was staring us in the face. As for probabilities, if that is greater than 50% we should act. And based on the data collected I think the probability is much higher, probably around 90%, that the economic and human cost of global warming will be greater if we do nothing than something to curb our emissions.
Wrong Elizabeth. The models that you base your belief on don't work on the short term or longer term. I did flag Soum... answer for you.
Clearly the "pause" wasn't predicted by the models that you hang your belief on. Now you and your fellow alarmists suggest that the heat is missing in the ocean and that it defied thermodynamics by bypassing the atmosphere and going straight into the ocean. The contortions of logic that alarmists use are breathtaking.
First you have to identify a problem. Then you have to identify a solution and you have to reasonably determine if the solution will work and how much it will cost. Also you have to realize there will be unintended consequences.
Do we have a problem? Certainly nothing so far is a significant problem in spite of alarmists trying to blame every drought and storm on our CO2 emissions.
Will their solutions do any good. Of course not. Shooting ourselves in the foot by reducing our CO2 would be welcomed by other countries that would gladly take over the jobs that were lost and pollute way more than we would have. Doing something as a symbolic gesture may make some people feel good but it is a recipe for economic disaster.
I'm Canadian.
We've been living the very real impact of Global Warming in this country for years.
Nothing is stopping any global warming doubters from visiting Canada to experience it for themselves.
Like the old saying goes: Seeing Is Believing.
That being said, none ever have. I've yet to see or hear of any skeptic travelling here from someplace else to put their beliefs to the test of personal experience.
So I don't consider them skeptics at all, I instead classify them as being just stupid dumb@ss foreigners.
And the worst of that bunch of doubters are Americans since they live the closest to Canada and have the least difficulty in reach Canada by air, land or sea.
How anyone could stupidly think there's any question about taking action is a mystery to me.
Like another old saying goes: Better Safe Than Sorry.
Let's ask a few questions before I can answer:
First what is "act". Now if you mean doing economic things to reduce carbon, research, and development that is different from say having a hard cap and government mandates.
Next what effects are we talking about and be specific to those effecting my country US, because those are more important to me than say some island with a few people on it.
So the combination of the potential harm and the potential costs combine to make my decision.
Now for global warming I favor some actions but not others.
Firstly if you don't really know then you're just advocating hit and hope tactics and policy by accident is always a bad idea, and secondly, just what action are you suggesting because I've never heard a single warmist come up with any idea which could provably affect the climate to even a thousandth of a degree.
Things would just be a lot simpler if warmists could just lose the 'I wanna be God' complex and stop pretending to know how to control the planet's weather systems.
Here's the thing, that calculation is silly to argue. Take coal plants. They're a source of dirty power. Even if Global Warming wasn't a problem, I'd still advocate their replacement with other options, of which there are plenty.
Same with gasoline powered vehicles. Maybe you like giving money to middle-east autocrats, but I sure don't.
Ha! Ha! Flunky, you sure live up to your name on this one. Insurance is betting. Look it up. In olden days and I was in England and the Captain of a ship, before I would set sail, I would go to a man and bet him that I wouldn't make it to my destination with my cargo in tact. Now the agent in charge would assess my sea worthiness and fitness of the ship among other things and make odds based upon those facts. Then if it was agreeable the Captain would pay with his money a sum.
Now to correlate that with your thinking, you are betting our money on something that is as tangible as the bogyman. I don't get any say in the matter. I am betting on a horse that isn't even in the race. Wow! I guess that makes some sense to you. But among the sane people on this site, it amounts to a ripoff!
VERY sure. Unfortunately, Taxspayers worldwide have already been bilked to the tune of $$Trillion+ to solve a problem that has not been proven to exist. The really sad thing is that Science has been humiliated by the AGW Activist arm of climate science. Those Rentseekers will ultimately be exposed and stripped of their academic credentials (like Shoen), and perhaps thrown in jail, but probably not until they have gutted the treasuries of the Free World.
Skeptics (and "skeptics") often claim that the fact that we don't know how much warming there will be, and/or how much of a problem it will cause, means that we don't need to act on it.
Now, obviously, we shouldn't be taking very drastic action to deal with a highly unlikely problem, but equally obviously we shouldn't do nothing just because there's at least a chance that nothing bad will happen. The former would be like going bankrupt trying to protect your house from meteor strikes, and the latter would be like walking into a normally busy street without first checking to see if a car is coming.
So, in general, how likely does something have to be before you're willing to take a little action (relative to the potential harm) to avoid it? How likely does it have to be before you're willing to take a lot of action to avoid it?
And, specifically for global warming, what do you think would constitute a little action? What do you think would constitute a lot of action? And how likely do you think it is that anthropogenic global warming will cause enough damage to warrant either or both? Any other related thoughts?
It's now virtually certain that our greenhouse gas emissions will cause additional energy to be trapped within the climate system. The models are methods of assessing how that additional energy will affect the climate.
Contrary to what skeptics would have us believe, the climate models are remarkably accurate. They correctly predict past climate events when fed initial data and are left to run. They correctly predict recent climatic events when CO2 and other greenhouse gases are factored in. Of course, the sceptics will point to short term deviations (such as 'the pause') but models don't have that sort of fidelity or resolution on that sort of timescale. That's because scientists aren't trying to model weather variations but climate. Hence the term climatologists.
Arguing that the models don't fit the data is one thing but actually what the sceptics mean is 'this model which was designed to predict long term changes doesn't work over the short term' ... em ... well ... duh!! If you want to argue that something doesn't do what it wasn't designed to do then fine. That's not a particularly useful argument.
All of the models, all of the science, and pretty much the entire scientific community are telling us we're facing a problem we need to do something about. Scientists are taxpayers too. They know the financial consequences. They know the issues of politics. They know how the world works. What they are basing their assessment on is the science - what we know now.
I think there is little doubt that we have to act if we want to prevent problems in the future. I think there is little real doubt by the majority of world governments, scientists, and financial institutions that the cost of doing nothing will be greater than the cost of solving the problem.
I think future generations will look back and wonder how we were so stupid, and why it took us so long to act when the data was staring us in the face. As for probabilities, if that is greater than 50% we should act. And based on the data collected I think the probability is much higher, probably around 90%, that the economic and human cost of global warming will be greater if we do nothing than something to curb our emissions.
Incidentally, SOUMYAJIT is copying and reposting answers. Flag that account and block it, please!
We need to be sure that the solution is not worse than the problem.
In the case of global warming, the solution is to use the very energy sources that we will need to use anyways because we are currently using fossil fuels that have only a limited supply. And while there may be a sight financial cost to using clean energy, that is purely an economic cost, while AGW, if it is very bad, will cost human lives.
For me, basically, I treat it as a math equation.
A 10% chance of 10 units of harm is worth up to (though not greater than) 1 unit of harm to avoid. A 50% chance of 10 units of harm is worth up to 5 units of harm to avoid. And so on. This holds whether the units of harm are dollars spent, lives lost, acres of forest despoiled, or anything else quantifiable. And similar, though more approximate, balances can be used for things like quality of life, or for converting one sort of harm into another (eg spending money to avoid lost lives)
I think "a little action" would be, well, modest efforts to speed our switch to forms of energy other than fossil fuels, whether that is a modest carbon tax, subsidies for "green energy" projects, ramping up car fuel efficiency requirements, or the like. And I think the chances of at least that much harm, and probably a lot more, from unchecked AGW are easily in the 90% range.
Drastic action would be things more like entirely banning cars, closing fossil fuel power plants before their replacements are in place, instituting draconian carbon taxes (eg enough to increase the cost of gas, coal, etc by an order of magnitude or more) without a slow ramp-up period, or anything else that would derail the economy and/or cost significant human life. I think the chances are pretty slim that the problem is dire enough to warrant that level of action, as long as we start taking the modest level of action soon. But, if we keep dragging our feet long enough, it may get to the point where drastic action like that will cause less net harm than leaving AGW unchecked.
Incase your interested Global Warming ended 11/28/2012= A Fact confirmed by other Nations that ice started to accumulate in all ICED territories and none has melted yet. Mike
The GW is very hard to defend . The fact that this field lied and fixed the models to benefit what they were trying to bring to are attention can not be fixed , Now lying makes every other point put out met with great controversy . I was part of this field in the early years of it ,and the fraud I witnessed was and still is unacceptable , To not believe in this field of work does not mean you have no concerns for our environment , it more so leans to that you do not punish your neighbor for your own activity's .
Well, if it's WMD in Iraq, most of the deniers would act on it with completely bogus evidence.
If it's AGW, the ocean would need to be lapping at the front porch before they'll do anything.
Very sure. For any drastic action, a wise person gets multiple expert opinions and information to make a good decision. There are thing you should never do on a hunch. Especially when it will cause loss of life.
The actions they want to take is redistribution of wealth .
That wont affect the climate at all .
Some like Naomi Klein want to bring back communism because the old USSR was so clean .
Carbon has "only" increased its share of the atmosphere by 0.004% thru CO2 emissions since the industrial revolution began 350 years ago (280ppm/3 = 93 atoms of carbon per 1,000,000 molecules of air before industrial times started versus 400ppm/3 = 113 atoms of carbon per 1,000,000 molecules of air currently. A total change of atmospheric carbon of 40 atoms per 1,000,000 or 0.004%). Since carbon is the active molecule in the chemical formulation of CO2 that absorbs IR, then the rate of IR absorption can only increase by 0.004%.
The minimal addition of carbon into our atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution began 350 years ago is not and never has been a problem.
If you weighed exactly 100 pounds and added 0.004% to your body, then you would weigh 100.004 pounds.
2 oxygen atoms are only attached to a carbon molecule through combustion. It's the same oxygen that was already in the atmosphere, therefore the fallacy of humans adding CO2 to the atmosphere is a stretch. We are only adding the carbon which is and always has been part of the "life cycle" of most all growing and living things here on Earth.
Look before you leap, taking drastic actions, when unnessary is a recipe for disaster.
As Pegminer pointed with WMD in Iraq, one needs to be careful about what governments exclaim, they nearly always have some ulterior motive, and I expect global warming is one of them.
Your simile about walking across the street is not correct, no one says we should not keep our eyes open, and not monitor climate.
For all we know warming could be beneficial.
Most of the people aren't Zealots. They think with their wallets. If you & other individual are so scared of GW, take responsibility for designing an economically viable solution.
Graphicconception needn't look far for "flawed logic." There is more than enough in his answer. If he has no use for life insurance, and finds the existence of a life insurance industry to be irreparably "counter-productive," that is his business. Insisting that the global economy as a whole take zero precautions against damaging climate change is something quite different.
I would need to know that I had an action or two that would reduce the problem without making the situation worse.
Because we are in the test tube and do not have another planet to experiment on, I am siding with doing something like driving less and burning no coal. Just because, it does not hurt me any to do that.
#Run
The sand paper
I am not to sure it will happen I would rather worry about money
as sure as we are today.
the military works on a less certainty.
very sure
bomb iraq sure??
