Solving Global Warming

[Schneibster]

So, you're on board with teh plan to have all teh Chinese stand on their chairs and jump off all at the same time?

 

[Grimoire]

So, you're on board with teh plan to have all teh Chinese stand on their chairs and jump off all at the same time?

But that would destroy the planet! I want to save the planet through the application of my completely unscientific but well intentioned theories.

 

[lenny]

Lack of a moon may have played a tiny role -- I can't really be sure, since I don't know where you read this, and there may be a new calculation I don't know about.

anyone have an idea where this idea came from? (that a moon would play a nontrivial role)

 

[lenny]

There's no 'solving' to it. It's a bigger problem than we can 'fix'. What we need to focus on is how WE will adapt and manage the changes.

to discount a middle way seems irresponsible; there is no suggestion we can "manage the changes" much better than that we can "fix" the problem.

and there are lots of things "we" cannot fix that "we" have stopped making worse (or at least slowed):

X-ray machines in a shoe stores, wide spread use of DDT, contributions to acid rain and ozone loss...

What the hey, human society has been trying to outlaw war for centuries and all it's achieved is the UN.stays at the level.

but perhaps that is an improvement on the League of Nations, or having monarchs marry each others daughters...

 

[lenny]

Once you develop a causal link between our actions and climate changes, climate change becomes something we can control.

there is a big step between recognising a causal link and having a quantitative theory that can extrapolate reliably.

I completely disagree. The technology and understanding are within our grasp.

while we can hope that this is indeed the case, what evidence could one have that it is not wildly optimistic? i recall CapelDodger once proposed a solution to Fermi's paradox in this context...

 

[Schneibster]

anyone have an idea where this idea came from? (that a moon would play a nontrivial role)

They been speculatin' a long time about how the moon ripped off a bunch of our atmosphere.

I keep being amused by all the people avoiding the obvious point that Venus is closer to the Sun than Earth is. Given that much more insolation, is it any surprise it has reached a higher equilibrium?

 

[Schneibster]

there is a big step between recognising a causal link and having a quantitative theory that can extrapolate reliably.

Why do you have to have a complete quantitative theory before you can act?

while we can hope that this is indeed the case, what evidence could one have that it is not wildly optimistic?

Ummm, that we made enough carbon dioxide to make the problem in the first place?

 

[varwoche]

Well, I've decided to take things into my own hands. I've come up with a solution for global warming that I think is very easy to implement. I will be leaving my refrigerator open all night, every night. The extra cooling should be able to counteract global warming in a few months; a year at most. If everyone else on the JREF forum does the same, then we could have this thing fixed by the end of next week!

Next week, I'm going to solve world hunger. Stay tuned.

Exactly the type of wisdom(?) I would expect from someone who can't distinguish spouting celebrities from scientific studies:

Part of the problem is, at least with me, is that it is hard to know what is real science and what is just the spoutings of celebrity.

 

[Grimoire]

Exactly the type of wisdom(?) I would expect from someone who can't distinguish spouting celebrities from scientific studies:

Just you wait until you hear about my solution for hunger! I can't give away too much information, but it involves feeding corn to chickens and eating the eggs instead of just eating the corn, since there is more nutrition in eggs than there is in corn alone.

 

[lenny]

Why do you have to have a complete quantitative theory before you can act?

act, no. we certainly can act without a quantitative theory (and i did not mean to imply that we could not act; thanks Schneibster)

i was responding to AtaraX's statement that "climate change becomes something we can control. " for control (under novel conditions) i think we'd want a pretty trustworthy quantitative theory. it is not so easy to control nonlinear systems with hysteresis and huge inertia even with one; i do not feel "control" is a reasonable goal.

but that was not meant to imply we cannot influence, or should not act.

 

[Verde]

Once the coming turmoil is over the world will house many fewer people living in a very different way, with a whole new bunch of supremely documented history to learn from. Perhaps too well-documented.

I recently re-read Miller's classic, 'A Canticle for Leibowitz'. A different scenario, of course, but it does illustrate the dangers of documentation.

 

[Schneibster]

act, no. we certainly can act without a quantitative theory (and i did not mean to imply that we could not act; thanks Schneibster)

i was responding to AtaraX's statement that "climate change becomes something we can control. " for control (under novel conditions) i think we'd want a pretty trustworthy quantitative theory. it is not so easy to control nonlinear systems with hysteresis and huge inertia even with one; i do not feel "control" is a reasonable goal.

but that was not meant to imply we cannot influence, or should not act.

Good clarification; you understood my point precisely. I agree with you, then.

 

[Schneibster]

Once the coming turmoil is over the world will house many fewer people living in a very different way, with a whole new bunch of supremely documented history to learn from.

I dunno; people have been predicting that since, you know, waaaaaaay back. Every generation is the "last generation" for someone or other's belief system. Why should now be any different?

There are promising possibilities on the horizon; there are also threats. Did you hear that they set the Doomsday Clock forward two minutes to 11:55? Wonder what's going on in Georgia lately; of course, I suppose it's mostly India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran that have them worried; but I'm always watching the blind side. OTOH, we got Robert Bussard claiming he knows how to build a practical fusion reactor (and despite my advocacy on that thread, I still have some doubts whether it is as easy as he thinks), and two or three more waiting in the wings; and if all of them fail, there's always ITER (which I think will work, but which I also think is gonna be a day late and a dollar short). And for the first time, people are actually starting to believe that we might have a climate problem and might want to start doing something about it- which may also be a day late and a dollar short, but hey, it's better than nothing.

You're too pessimistic. Me, I think if the human race goes out, we'll go out with a bang.

Thanks for bringing this post of Capel's to my attention, Verde; personally, my favorite is "Not With a Bang But a Whimper," in which the last living fertile man on Earth walks into the men's room to pee and has an attack of paralysis, which he knows the last woman will not be there to do anything about because she's too shy to walk into the men's room despite the fact there aren't any more men around. After he spends most of the rest of the story trying to figure out how he's going to get in her pants and restart the human race. If you like "not with a bang but a whimper" scenarios.

 

[Andúril]

There was an article in the local newspaper saying that 50 pigs could produce enough biogas to fuel a car for 15,000 kilometers (~9,400 miles). Beware, oil sheiks of the Middle East! Kuffars are defeating your oil monopoly with an army of pigs!

Seriously speaking, I think we should build much more nuclear power at least until the most critical stage has been passed and the fusion reactor invented. Hydrgen cars wouldn't sound so bad either.

But I also believe that the greatest danger to the climate in the near future is not caused by Europe or USA. The people of the West are beginning to understand how their actions affect the world's climate. But China, India and Africa want to reach our level of welfare, and they care about environment much less than an average westerner.

 

[CapelDodger]

I recently re-read Miller's classic, 'A Canticle for Leibowitz'. A different scenario, of course, but it does illustrate the dangers of documentation.

I remember it well. (Have you read The Texts of Festival by Mick Farren?) Of course, that involved a post-Apocalytic world. I very much doubt we're heading for that .

Of course, we might get sucker-punched by something we haven't seen coming.

 

[Schneibster]

Seriously speaking, I think we should build much more nuclear power at least until the most critical stage has been passed and the fusion reactor invented. Hydrgen cars wouldn't sound so bad either.

By now everyone has been so thoroughly scared by "The China Syndrome" that rational discussion on the issue is nearly impossible without encountering someone waving a sign and chanting. And quite frankly, I share serious concerns with the sign-wavers and chanters about entrusting either the design and build, or the management, of a nuclear facility, of any kind at all, to a bureaucracy as riddled with incompetence, corruption, and just plain stupidity as the one here in the US seems to be. And the biggest problem, and don't you forget it, is the waste; and there you always have the tradeoff between how "hot" the waste is, and how long it stays "hot." This tradeoff is called "half-life." In other words, the longer it stays "hot," the less radiation it puts out.

Hydrogen is a solution, and not a really great one for a number of technical reasons, to the problem of making high-density power available for portable use. This is a problem that gasoline currently solves for us; however, both because the oil we make the gasoline from appears to be running out, and because burning that oil appears to be making pollution that causes a number of atmospheric problems, among which is global warming, that solution may shortly become impractical for any one of a number of different reasons. I personally look to battery technology to provide this answer, rather than hydrogen; but only time will tell, and hydrogen may well have it's place. Never forget, however, that hydrogen can only transport energy; with oil, we mine energy from the ground, which is an entirely different thing, because there's nowhere to mine hydrogen from that doesn't take more energy than you get from burning the hydrogen.

But I also believe that the greatest danger to the climate in the near future is not caused by Europe or USA. The people of the West are beginning to understand how their actions affect the world's climate. But China, India and Africa want to reach our level of welfare, and they care about environment much less than an average westerner.

I think that not only is there danger from both Asia, and Europe and North America, but also that it hardly makes sense to say that we need to stop the Asian economies when we are unwilling to stop our own. I also think that telling 2+ billion people who own nuclear weapons, "No," is intrinsically a bad idea. The Chinese government doesn't think telling 1.2 billion people "No" is a good idea, and they HAVE nuclear weapons.

I think the arts of negotiation and persuasion will meet their ultimate test over the next few decades, and I am not pleased to see either religious fanatics or idiots who seem incapable of understanding the need for, not to even mention the mechanics of, negotiation and persuasion, in my government. I'm doing everything I can to fix that, and it appears that a majority of my fellow citizens have finally decided that I was right. So hopefully we'll get somewhere. But the work is certainly not done.

 

[CapelDodger]

I dunno; people have been predicting that since, you know, waaaaaaay back. Every generation is the "last generation" for someone or other's belief system. Why should now be any different?

I'll get onto that.

You're too pessimistic.

I hope so. Doubt it, though.

Me, I think if the human race goes out, we'll go out with a bang.

I think we'll go out in a welter of litigation and bad debt.


You ask why these few generations should be considered unusual. Because of the pace of change we're experiencing, IMO. Too many parts of the system are following their own trajectories with too little time for adjustment. The system - economic, political, social even - is going to seize up with a very nasty grinding sound sometime soon. Cue dislocation, conflict, mass death, the usual. Followed by a new equilibrium where the population is relatively well-off in a less-crowded world, and free of many outdated notions and institutions.

It's happened before. After two centuries of growth and relative stability Europe went completely to pieces in the 14thCE. That shake-out was followed by the Renaissance.

See? I'm not all doom and gloom .

 

[CapelDodger]

Seriously speaking, I think we should build much more nuclear power at least until the most critical stage has been passed and the fusion reactor invented.

The problem there is that nuclear power capacity is very capital-intensive, and nobody will be keen to invest without a guaranteed lifetime (and guaranteed margins). The whole-life cost of nuclear power means it's not that cheap. If untried designs are involved as well, it's not an attractive investment for private capital. And what other kind of capital is there these days?

Hydrgen cars wouldn't sound so bad either.

The pointless exercise of transporting millions of tons of metal, plastic and rubber over even more millions of miles every day to end up back where they started is going to be a passing phase. Driving and things driven are going to give up the central role in society they currently perform. Peak Oil will see to that, if nothing else does.

Hydrogen blows, and blows up. And it's a slippery customer. If a hydrogen infrastructure is what the Great Car Culture requires, the GCC is over.

But I also believe that the greatest danger to the climate in the near future is not caused by Europe or USA. The people of the West are beginning to understand how their actions affect the world's climate.

They're still flying more, driving more (in bigger vehicles), installing bigger TV's, and increasing their CO2 production from a much higher base than China or India. "Beginning to understand" really doesn't cut it in a crisis.

But China, India and Africa want to reach our level of welfare, and they care about environment much less than an average westerner.

Well, that's foreigners for you. But there are signs that they're beginning to understand. China and India, for instance, conceded that AGW is real and a problem quite a while back. What is the latest US government position on that? I recall that Bush Minor was going to say something recently but I missed it.

 

[Reverend Chu]

Lord Monkton's Open Letter to Senators Snowe(R) & Rockefeller(D)

Recently, in a remarkable spirit of bipartisanship and concern for how the US is perceived by the world, the two Senators sent an open letter to Exxon/Mobil demanding that the company cease funding scientists who question the 'consensus' view regarding global warming. This letter caught the eye and pen of England's Lord Monkton who issued the following open letter. Apart from the text, written perhaps as no other than an Englishman might write, there are various references that one can google up if they so care.

To: The Honourable Senator Olympia Snowe (Republican, Maine) The Honourable Senator John D. Rockefeller (Democrat, West Virginia)

Madame, Sir,

Uphold Free Speech About Climate Change Or Resign

The US Constitution guarantees the right of free speech. It is inappropriate for elected Senators such as yourselves to suggest that any person should refrain from exercising that right, as you have done in your letter of October 27 to the CEO of ExxonMobil. That great corporation has exercised its right of free speech -- and with good reason -- in openly providing support for scientists and groups that dare to question how much the increased concentration of CO2 in the air may warm the world. You must honour the Constitution, withdraw your letter and apologize to ExxonMobil, or resign as Senators.

You defy every tenet of democracy when you invite ExxonMobil to deny itself the right to provide information to "senior elected and appointed government officials" who disagree with your opinion. You are elected officials yourselves. If you do not believe in the right of persons within the United States to exercise their fundamental right under the world's greatest Constitution to petition their elected representatives for the redress of their grievances, then you have no place on Capitol Hill. You must go.

Your letter says climate change is "a matter of urgency for all mankind". It is not. The UN's 2001 report estimates our greenhouse effect compared with 1750 AD as 2.43 watts per square metre. Its new report will cut that figure to 1.6 watts, little more than 1 per cent of the 150-watt natural greenhouse effect.

The UN will also reduce its high-end estimate of sea-level rise to 2100 from 3 feet to just 17 inches. Morner (2004), a lifelong student of sea level changes, says: "There is a total absence of any recent 'acceleration in sea level rise' as often claimed by IPCC and related groups. ... our best estimate of possible future sea-level changes is +10 +/- 10cm in a century, or, maybe, even +5 +/- 15cm." That is a maximum of 8 inches in 100 years. See also Morner (1995); INQUA (2000).

All other imagined consequences of climatic warming are more likely to be beneficial than harmful. Warmer is better than cooler. An unusual heatwave in France a couple of years ago killed 3,000 old people. As is now customary, global warming was blamed, though the real cause was a naturallyoccurring "blocking high". Last winter's cold snap in the UK killed 25,000. The former event attracted many times more publicity than the latter.

There is no evidence that further warming will cause malaria or yellow fever to spread. Climatic warmth is not an important habitat signifier for the anopheles or Aedes Aegypti mosquitoes. But when the US administration sought to appoint Paul Reiter, a world expert on the mosquito, to the UN's climate change panel, the panel vetoed his appointment because they knew he disagreed with the alarmist view that they were determined to purvey. It is easy to claim a "consensus" if scientists who disagree are excluded.

There is no evidence that global warming causes more frequent hurricanes. Neither the three previous UN
reports nor the forthcoming report argues for this. There are a few papers, hotly contested, that suggest a
slight increase in the intensity of some hurricanes, but that is all. New Orleans was a disaster waiting to
happen, not a climate-change victim. Yet last year Kevin Trenberth, a leading member of the UN’s
climate change panel, publicly participated in a press conference advocating a connection between
hurricanes and global warming. Hearing this, Chris Landsea, whom Trenberth had appointed to draft the
forthcoming UN report’s section on Atlantic hurricanes, resigned. He wrote: “I have come to view the
part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have
raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns.”

There is no evidence that today's temperatures are warmer than during the mediaeval warm period 1,000 years ago. Yet in 2005, the palaeoclimatologist David Deming wrote that after he had published a paper in Science [Deming, 1995] "I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. One of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said, 'We have to get rid of the Mediaeval Warm Period.'"

The UN's second assessment report, in 1996, had had a 1,000-year graph showing that temperature in the Middle Ages was warmer than today's. But the 2001 report contained a new graph showing no mediaeval warm period. It concluded that the 20th century was the warmest for 1,000 years. That graph, recently condemned by the US National Academy of Sciences as "having a validation skill not significantly different from zero" -- i.e. as being useless -- was repeated six times in the UN's 2001 report, each time in full colour. In the UN's forthcoming report, there will be no apology for the erroneous graph, from which data showing the existence of the mediaeval warm period had been excluded.

Why should ExxonMobil, or anyone, place the slightest credence in a body that, in the three examples cited above, has manipulated or ignored the truth, has suppressed the participation of dissenters, has failed to address scientists' legitimate concerns about the declared bias of its lead authors, and has failed to apologize even for its most blatant errors? Lord Lawson of Blaby, a distinguished former Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK, has called for the outright abolition of the UN's climate-change panel. I concur. We need honest science. Therefore we do not need the UN.

You suggest that ExxonMobil should "promote technological innovation" to address what you call the "global problem" of climate change. If you regard the increasing concentration of CO2 as a "problem", which it is not, the quickest way to get the world to address the problem is to disband the UN's lavishlyfunded climate change panel and get the science right. Sceptics and those who have the courage to support them are actually helpful in getting the science right. They do not, as you improperly suggest, "obfuscate" the issue: they assist in clarifying it by challenging weaknesses in the "consensus" argument, and they compel necessary corrections such as the impending and highly significant more-than-50% cut in the UN's high-end projection for the increase in sea level to 2100.

You commend Britain’s Royal Society, once a learned body and now a mere Left-leaning political pressure-group, for having clumsily attempted to interfere with ExxonMobil’s funding of groups that are sceptical of what you inaccurately call a “consensus” to the effect that climate change is a “global problem”. The Royal Society, by the intervention to which you refer, goes beyond its remit. The Society’s long-standing funding by taxpayers does not ensure any greater purity of motive or rigour of thought than industrial funding of scientists who dare to question whether “climate change” will do any harm.

You acknowledge the effectiveness of the climate sceptics. In so doing, you pay a compliment to the courage of those free-thinking scientists who continue to research climate change independently despite the likelihood of refusal of publication in journals that have taken preconceived positions; the hate mail and vilification from ignorant environmentalists; and the threat of loss of tenure in institutions of learning which no longer make any pretence to uphold or cherish academic freedom.

You say, "While deniers can easily post something calling into question the scientific consensus on climate change, not a single refereed article in more than a decade has sought to refute it." Far from it. In rebuttal I could cite hundreds of refereed articles, but need cite only one: the recent paper by Khilyuk and Chilingar (2006) On Global Forces of Nature Driving the Earth's Climate -- Are Humans Involved? The authors answer the title-question decisively in the negative. A brief summary of their paper is attached. Like hundreds of similar papers in the scientific journals, it casts doubt upon your assertion that there is "an insurmountable scientific consensus on both the problem and causation of climate change ... in almost every country of the globe". Given the major downward revisions of the UN's estimate of the human impact on the climate and of the future rise in sea levels between its 2001 and 2007 reports, the "consensus" that you pray in aid does not even agree with itself.

There is a consensus that there is more CO2 in the air than there was; that humankind may be to blame; and that some warming may result. That is all. There is no consensus on how fast the world will warm, or when or even whether any "disastrous" consequences will ensue. If, in any area of this debate, you hold that the peer-reviewed literature is unanimous in going beyond the limited extent which I have described, please notify me in your reply and, in each such area, I shall point you to peer-reviewed science that casts strong, reasonable, reasoned and well-founded doubt upon what you imagine is the "consensus".

In the circumstances, your comparison of Exxon's funding of sceptical scientists and groups with the former antics of the tobacco industry is unjustifiable and unworthy of any credible elected representatives. Either withdraw that monstrous comparison forthwith, or resign so as not to pollute the office you hold.

You invite ExxonMobil publicly to "acknowledge both the reality of climate change and the role of humans in causing or exacerbating it". Earlier this year, 61 leading climatologists and scientists in related fields, among them tenured professors, wrote to the Canadian Prime Minister as follows:

"'Climate Change Is Real' is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate change catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes occur all the time due to natural causes, and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from the natural 'noise'."

You demand that ExxonMobil should stop funding independent debate on climate change, which you excoriate - without citing evidence - as "pseudo-science". And you demand that Exxon should spend the money instead on "global remediation", which you describe as "especially important in the developing world, where the disastrous effects of global climate change are likely to have their most immediate and calamitous impacts." One of the UK's leading "consensus" scientists (Hulme, 2006) has this to say about exaggerated rhetoric of the sort which you use here:

"Over the last few years a new environmental phenomenon has been constructed - the phenomenon of 'catastrophic' climate change. It seems that mere 'climate change' was not going to be bad enough, and so now it must be 'catastrophic' to be worthy of attention. The increasing use of this pejorative term - and its bedfellow qualifiers 'chaotic', 'irreversible', 'rapid' - has altered the public discourse around climate change. This discourse is now characterized by phrases such as 'climate change is worse than we thought', that we are approaching 'irreversible tipping in the Earth's climate', and that we are 'at the point of no return'. I have found myself increasingly chastised by climate change campaigners when my public statements and lectures on climate change have not satisfied their thirst for environmental drama and exaggerated rhetoric. It seems that it is we, the professional climate scientists, who are now the (catastrophe) sceptics. How the wheel turns!"

You say you are ready to work with ExxonMobil, inter alia to "expand the use of clean, alternative and renewable fuels". The scientific consensus is that the only such fuel that could satisfy projected global energy demand in the absence of fossil fuels is uranium, of which proven supplies will last thousands of years. Anyone who believes in the supposed "consensus" on climate change and yet is not willing to countenance the immediate reintroduction and widespread development of nuclear energy as the most important and essential mitigative measure available to us cannot expect to be taken seriously. Windmills and waterfalls, on their own, are costly and environmentally damaging. They cannot come close to replacing fossil fuels. Only nuclear power can give us the energy we need.

Finally, you may wonder why it is that a member of the Upper House of the United Kingdom legislature, wholly unconnected with and unpaid by the corporation that is the victim of your lamentable letter, should take the unusual step of calling upon you as members of the Upper House of the United States legislature either to withdraw what you have written or resign your sinecures.

In the circumstances, your comparison of Exxon's funding of sceptical scientists and groups with the former antics of the tobacco industry is unjustifiable and unworthy of any credible elected representatives. Either withdraw that monstrous comparison forthwith, or resign so as not to pollute the office you hold.

Anyone who believes in the supposed "consensus" on climate change and yet is not willing to countenance the immediate reintroduction and widespread development of nuclear energy as the most important and essential mitigative measure available to us cannot expect to be taken seriously.

I challenge you to withdraw or resign because your letter is the latest in what appears to be an internationally-coordinated series of maladroit and malevolent attempts to silence the voices of scientists and others who have sound grounds, rooted firmly in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, to question what you would have us believe is the unanimous agreement of scientists worldwide that global warming will lead to what you excitedly but unjustifiably call "disastrous" and "calamitous" consequences. Let me give just two examples from this side of the Atlantic:

The Institute for Public Policy Research, a Leftist pressure-group, has stated that public bodies should act henceforth as though there is no debate among scientists and should assume that "disastrous" and "calamitous" climate change will be a fact.

The British "Foreign Secretary", one Beckett, responded to a recent newspaper article by me that questioned the science behind the soi-disant "consensus" on climate change by demanding – during an otherwise paralyzing speech on terrorism – that the news media should treat climate sceptics as though they were spokesmen for Islamic terrorism and should deny them column inches or air time. Al Gore, who was Vice-President when the Senate declared 97-0 that it would not ratify any treaty that did not bind fast-growing, heavily-polluting nations such as China, India, Indonesia and Brazil because without them no action by the West would make any difference, wrote a reply to my article saying that I should not be discussing these matters in the Press. He said I should rely on peer-reviewed research in journals such as Science, Nature and Geophysical Research Letters. Within 12 hours, I had published a 24-page refutation of his scientifically-inaccurate article, citing more than 60 references in learned journals. Twenty-five of the citations were from the three journals he mentioned.

You will rightly deduce from Beckett's sinister remark that after a decade of Socialist government freedom of speech does not figure in our constitution. But let me quote the First Amendment to yours:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the Press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

I call upon the pair of you to live by those great words, or to leave.

Yours truly,

MONCKTON OF BRENCHLEY cc: Mr. Rex W. Tillerson, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, ExxonMobil Corporation


References

DEMING, D. 1995. Climatic warming in North America: analysis of borehole temperatures. Science 268: 1576-1577.

DEMING, D. 2005: Global warming, the politicization of science, and Michael Crichton's 'State of Fear'. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 19: no.2.

HULME, M. 2006. Chaotic world of climate truth. BBC News Viewpoint, 4 November 2006.

INQUA. 2000. Sea Level Changes, News and Views, The Maldives Project. Homepage of the commission on sea level changes and coastal evolution,

KHILYUK, L.F., and G. V. Chilingar. 2006. On global forces of nature driving the Earth's climate. Are humans involved? Environmental Geology, 50, 899–910: DOI 10.1007/s00254-006-0261-x

MORNER, N.-A. 1995. Recorded sea level variability in the Holocene and expected future changes. In: Eisma, D. (Ed.), "Climate Change: Impact on Coastal Habitation", CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida, 17-28.

MORNER, N.-A. 2004. Estimating future sea level changes from past records. Global and Planetary Change 40: 49-54.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

Doesn't attempting to control climate change miss the point somewhat? If we plan on surviving on this planet for any significant length of time (in geological terms) we need to use less energy. If that was the goal then CO2 would take care of itself.

The problem with using less energy is it hurts our economy, which seems to be sustained by us amassing bigger and better gadgets. That to me is the real challenge, coming up with an economy that does not require consumption to increase for its stability.

As for global warming, I find it hard to believe we have the ability to model a system as complicated (chaotic?) as the earth’s climate accurately enough to make the kind of long term predictions that are being made. For example, in my job as an electronics engineer, I've done a little bit of work with adaptive filters. These are really simple systems compared to the earths climate, yet due to such things as noise and quantization effects, typically the only way to be sure they're stable is to try the exact implementation of them out.