[Industrialblog,
February 12, 2007]
Great piece on global warming
An experiment that hints that the sun is determining global warming.
UPDATE: There's a interesting take by Czech President Vaclav Klaus by way of Dean Esmay, and gulp, the Drudge Report, here.
UPDATE: There's a interesting take by Czech President Vaclav Klaus by way of Dean Esmay, and gulp, the Drudge Report, here.
Acknowledging that warming has taken place is the first step.
One some level, it will always be tough to rule out natural variation, but the melting in northern climates is unprecedented in recent history (like 1000s of years at least) from what I have read. Pretty soon we'll have to rename "Glacier National Park" to "Big Bare Mountains National Park" (the Grand Tetons already being taken). However, some global warming seems safer than an ice age, so it is tough to say on a long term scale that increasing temperatures a bit might not be advantageous.
Unlike some, I see us surviving in some form a full scale melt-down, but I can see that will cause immense dislocation and mass extinctions in some cases (if such a thing comes to pass).
We're going to be all about fuel conservation in the near future anyway. Much of the easy oil is already gone in the western hemisphere and much of it exists in unstable regions in the rest of the world. Consumption is going to grow with the world economy. So the long term trend in oil prices is going to be up and up. Look at the new cool Toyota hybrid sports car and it becomes kind of clear that the technology will spread out. Some people will be early users and some will come to the table later.
This should give hope to all, really, if you believe in human ingenuity and the market, then limitations on the supply of oil will ultimately lead us to likely more environmentally friendly energy sources. Though, coal is so abundant that is may be the black cloud on that bit of optimism.
Still, I say that we ignore science at our own risk. You don't get people from all across the world to agree on much outside a few feel good things like "children are cute," even scientists (much less bureaucrats). Reality tends have a scientific bias, so we might as well deal with it.
BTW, you may recall from this blog that I covered global warming extensively starting 20 years ago for a newspaper (about two years) and have been following the story (and occasionally writing about it -- several times in the late 90s, for example) ever since. There's no "first step" here. And you're not allowed to use the term "first step" against me, I'm an authentic 12-stepper ;)
I find Jonah Goldberg's take here and Rich Lowry's here as good summaries of some of the conservative arguments. Note the lack of denial (and there hasn't been, at least among most responsible conservative commentators).
The Lowry article was about Bush and troop deployments .. but that may have been a moving link.
I think Goldberg makes a bit of false choice - we about the to up CO2 emissions and so the increase in temperatures might easily accelerate. There is no evidence that we can't do both - work on new energy, curb our consumption, and still have our economy survive. Let's embrace it for profit.
Super G