pudge's Journal: Climate Change

On This Week this week, Katrina Van Den Heuvel, liberal par excellence of The Nation, was commenting on climate changed, and noted that the chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution called those who question climate change "climate loonies."

He added, "There are a group of people in various parts of the world ... who simply don't want to accept human activities can change climate and are changing the climate. I'd liken them to the people who denied that smoking causes lung cancer."

But he also said that climate change was "very likely" the cause of increased hurricane intensity and frequency, which most hurricane experts think is simply not true.

So he's obviously not infallible on the subject, though she tried to make him seem authoritative.

The fact is, there is global warming. The fact is, we do not know what causes it, and we do not know that it is not part of a normal environmental cycle. There is simply no proof, or even -- to me -- compelling evidence, that humans are causing global climate change.

However, that said, we do know that there are some very good theories explaining climate change, in part, in terms of human acitivity, and that if those theories are correct, and we do nothing, we're screwed. So we should take action, even while not knowing for sure if there is a problem that we're causing, or can correct.

Pournelle

[stoolpigeon]

I'm with Pournelle - we should be spending a lot more money on research so that we can get a better idea of what is going on and what would be best to do (if there is anything that we can do).

Re:Pournelle

[baldass_newbie]

A better idea would be to figure out how to protect ourselves from 'it' whatever 'it' is.

Reason I say this is, while it might be tied to greenhouse gases (and there are going to be effects, but we don't know all of them) the fastest growing industrial nations like say Russia, China and India are NOT going to curb their emissions. Also, this may well be one of those semi-millenial warmups that bring plague or bi-millenial (or whatever the frequency) shifts in the poles that brings we don't know what, flower

What action?

[jdavidb]

However, that said, we do know that there are some very good theories explaining climate change, in part, in terms of human acitivity, and that if those theories are correct, and we do nothing, we're screwed. So we should take action, even while not knowing for sure if there is a problem that we're causing, or can correct.

Okay, given that, what action should we take?

Re:What action?

[Presarian]

(A) wind power instead of fuels, and (B) battery electric vehicles instead of internal combustion.

If the U.S. converted to wind-powered battery electric vehicles, the economics of mass production would make it more lucerative for the third world to join in. As long as we drag our feet, though, the'll be burning more oil than we will. Until the cost of oil goes up enough to force us all to convert.

The countries such as Japan and Singapore which are encouraging battery electric vehicles early on are goi