Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science ...

is there any evidence of man, anywhere in recorded history, coming together in great enough numbers to do the right thing and seeing it through to the end?

 

The Winston Churchill quote is along the lines of 'Americans will always do the right thing, after exhausting all other options'

 

It will become more and more obvious.
Unfortunately the longer we wait, the longer and more expensive repairing the damage or adapting to the results will be.

 

Montreal Protocols for CFC control should be considered a success story. Putting scubbers on coal plants has really reversed the acid rain problems. On of my main focuses is fishery preservation. That's an ongoing battle, just vastly less political than AGW battles, but could easily be very dramatic if we lose too many ocean fisheries.

 

i agree with tochat and zythryn, too little, too late? bob, i agree men can do great things, but this is an issue where most of the world must come together. call me the resident skeptic.

 

...to me, there are 2 different ideas in the speech, which is good to hedge. Sustainability to me means slowing down use of precious resources so our future generations have some resources. Mind you, we have not really made a lot of progress there yet either, but I think it might be possible. Preventing AGW is harder yet, suggesting sustainability -- simply slowing down use -- is not good enough to save planet. I am hopeful sustainability is good enough target.

 

The primary difference between those two was that Baghdad Bob knew he was a tool, unlike bible thumping Ryan who's hero was Ayn Ryand, an Athiest, pro abortion, anti Vietnam War, anti draft person.

 

I think that 'deny' should be split into two. First, that burning fossil-CO2 has increase the atmospheric load, that this gas absorbs IR, and that these dominate recent decadal T increases. All of that continues to be denied by some, but it becomes a harder position to hold. Year by year.

Second, some deny that staying on the current CO2 path will lead us quickly to climate (etc.) conditions that that we do not want and we may not be easily able to pay for reversing. I regard this denial as tenable, because the models are ... as they are, and the oceans seem to have their own short-term thermal plans. But this leads us directly to the problem: Shall we bet it all, and hope for a good 50-yr outcome, or shall we decide (all together) to substantially slow that CO2 increase sooner? We could always decide later to return to the big burn ... that fossil C won't disappear. It will await our decision.

Economics, physics, chemistry and biology should all have a say in that decision (says I), so our best shot is making all those fields provide their best thoughts. Then the politicians will decide, as they always do.

 

There is plenty of room in 'PC Environmental' to talk about what may have been great accomplishments driven by environmental whistle blowers in the past. A few of them are in this thread already. Some here (smallpox, polio?) might fall outside the definition. Most have their enthusiastic supporters and equally enthusiastic deniers. If y'all lead, I'll follow, as time permits.

But the trouble is that things on the table now may not be exactly like things before. False equivalence offers its toothy trap to all those who would not look down to their ankles.

 

The Euro Environ Agency offers its own list

Late lessons from early warnings: science, precaution, innovation (flyer) — European Environment Agency (EEA)

of issues; not quite the same as mine. But whatever.

 

That isn't what sustainability mean to me. I like Merriam-Webster:
1 : capable of being sustained [my addendum 'indefinitely'].
2 a : of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damage.

Thus, slowing down the destruction of resources doesn't cut it. We must give our descendants the same resources as we had. Or at very least similar capabilities (e.g. making solar panels from oil might qualify).

 

...heard somewhere, trying to check, that global coal use is increasing and will surpass oil as No. 1 energy source by about 2018-2020....so that's the trajectory we are on now (pending check of data).

But I don't know if everyone else agrees with IEA.

Here are "Daly rules" of sustainability (better than Webster I think):

1. Renewable resources such as fish, soil, and groundwater must be used no faster than the rate at which they regenerate.
2. Nonrenewable resources such as minerals and fossil fuels must be used no faster than renewable substitutes for them can be put into place.
3. Pollution and wastes must be emitted no faster than natural systems can absorb them, recycle them, or render them harmless.

Now if you say re: Rule 3 - CO2 is extremely harmful pollutant, then Rule 2 - becomes minerals can be used but fossil fuels must be left in ground and not used.

 

I don't see much against the idea that increasing ghg will increase temperature. M&M, Curry, Spencer, Watts, all seem to agree with that. There are some politicians that say it won't and some ignorant folks, but there really aren't many educated people that take this position. Normally politicians pretend that this is what is being denied.

What all those folks have said is that the human generated ghg don't dominate the climate. I guess its a matter of degrees. Pardon the bad pun. These folks are saying natural causes greatly outpace human ghg climate change. More evidence is showing year after year that the ghg have a fairly large impact. One problem is things like the relabeling of the mideaval warming period to MCA and pretending it wasn't world wide despite the evidence by folks like Mann makes me cringe also. There is a great deal of nature in climate change that should also not be denied. Trying to do this by some of those pretending climate science should be restricted to a small club is part of why they some climate scientists have lost credibility also.

I am highly sceptical that the European cap and trade will do anything to reduce damage from climate change. Der Spiegel quoted someone, I can't remember who, in an article about Germanies climate change costs and suggested building dikes would be a lot more productive. In order to all decide together, the Chinese and Indians need to be involved.

That does not mean we should do nothing. I don't think we can look at the Jan 1st, sneaking in tax credit for electric scooters as anything but pork.
Alley has suggested we do what is not very expensive and worth while anyway. More bike paths, plug in cars, more efficient cars, switch from coal to natural gas and wind, switch from electric heat to natural gas and/or geothermal and/or passive solar are all on my list. We can also understand what climate change means, and build a sea wall to protect NYC, change farming habits for new like rain fall, raise the price of federal flood insurance to stop encouraging people to build in harms way.

It seems that climate science has been so heavily politicized that it can no longer do much work. We will have to wait another decade until some of the current personalities fade and we can get back to science. I found it quite ironic that one of the leading climate politicians sold his failing tv network for a huge profit to an oil monarchy to spread their version of the news. That is quite a win for OPEC, proving how some of those that talk the worst about big oil, will happily take oil money and make sure OPEC's voice is heard. Is it any wonder people don't trust politicized science.

 

I for one couldn't care less. If natural causes are raising the temperature, I want man made causes to be reducing the temperature not raising it. If humans want to avoid any blame but are willing to do what it takes to maintain our collective life generating environment, I am fine with that. What I find is mostly those that want to avoid blame are also those that don't want to stop causing more problems.

 

I know coal grew at 5.5%/per year from 2000-2010, much faster than oil. I would expect during the next decade oil use to decrease because of price, as coal continues to rise.

The question then is who is going to tell the coal miners, auto workers, oil drillers, they all need to be fired and go on welfare because they are breaking the sustainability rules.

We can transition to less, but wars will be fought if someone is going to try to force china, or even america to stop using fossil fuel.