There is only one goddess Gaia and Al Gore is her only prophet...

[kandrathe]

Where'd the freedom argument go? Isn't this exactly what I'm saying? You have to *regulate* these things (ie: reduce freedom) if you want the problem solved.

There is a difference between saying, "Don't damage the environment." and "Don't use coal." or "I'm going to put a 300% tax on your use of coal." Take the freedom of driving for example. There is a difference between saying, "You must be >17 and pass a test." and "You can only drive on Saturday." and "I'm going to bill you 2$ per mile driven." I hope you understand the nuance between regulating for the public good, curtailing freedom arbitrarily, and justifying a new way to separate people from their money.

I don't think that's "warped". If you use a large vehicle because you have large loads to haul, and there is no more efficient way to haul those loads, then you're using energy efficiently. If you use a large vehicle because you really want to, for trips that could be performed in a vehicle of twice the fuel efficiency, then that's wasteful. Now, there is a calculus here about how often a vehicle is used and for what purpose, but the vast majority of Suburban SUV drivers could get by easily on a car half its size, and rent for the rare occasion when a gigantic vehicle is needed.

Here is where our nanny saviors, will come to save us from our own stupidity. You don't need a 4 wheel drive vehicle for a few dozen snowy days. You only haul stuff on weekends, so you shouldn't have an SUV to do both car/truck things. Wear seat belts. Child booster seats for anyone under 4' tall, or under 80 lbs. Helmets for motorcyclists. Mandatory air bags. We'd all just be safer in rubber rooms you know.

"Covered" in what sense? Obviously, these acts are not being used to meaningfully reduce CO2 pollution, because CO2 pollution is not going down. So, what exactly are these acts doing, relative to this crucial measure of pollution?

Covered in the sense that we already have the mechanism in place to reduce CO2 emissions.

If regulation doesn't stop people from doing the things you don't want them to, then it's not doing anything at all. That's the whole idea of regulation. Without raising the price on emitting carbon, people are not going to emit less carbon - unless you simply ban polluting activities outright, which is needlessly draconian.

Far less draconian to drive the price of energy much higher, and thus transportation, and food, and manufactured goods. Not regressive at all... Nope.

In the end, if what we're trying to change is the *consumption* of emissions-producing fuel, then the only way to really do that is raise the cost to *consumers*, because they're the ones making the decisions to consume. How else, except for an outright ban, can you reduce emissions?

There is a middle ground between whining and totalitarianism. It's called leadership. People in the US aren't so mechanical that they would only do the best economic thing. They will follow leadership, when there are tangible realistic goals.

Obviously not, considering Hansen's landmark 1988 predictions are now way out of date. They don't look too shabby, considering the state of the science at the time, but they have since been superseded by much better studies. Any of the IPCC reports would give a much stronger picture of the current state of predictions. However, that link only gives Hansen's "worst case" scenario, without mentioning that he actually gave a range of predictions for different scenarios:

Well, what good are predictions if they inaccurately project the wrong answer into the future. How do we know that the 2009 predictions for 2025 are any better?

Hansen gave three scenarios, with the worst case scenario being that we did nothing, and we've done nothing. But, the climate has actually been cooler than his best case scenario, where drastic cuts in CO2 emission were made between 1990 and 2000. In fact, the rate of CO2 has risen faster than Hansen thought it would due to the economic emergence of China, India, and other non-OECD nations. http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/emissions.html

The observed temperatures are within the bounds of Hansen's original paper, although near the lower bound.

I beg to differ.

I absolutely don't subscribe to this. The environment is not karma. There is no God in the sky tallying up our rights and our wrongs, as if they balance out. Each type of pollution has distinct causes and effects, and the ecology of the earth responds in different ways. There may be some kinds of pollution that are unpleasant to live with, but not ultimately dangerous to our survival. CO2 is the opposite - it has almost no short-term negative effects, but in the long run, it could cause some very serious problems.

It's easy. You cut down a tree, then you plant a tree. If you make a mess, then you need to clean it up. Zero sum works for me, when I used to farm, and where I live now.

Of course it isn't. Methane is also important. Deforestation is a huge issue, as are other land use changes. But the largest forcing that's in our hands is CO2. We should work to fix all the pollution problems we can - Methane especially would be a good second target, and probably more cost efficient than carbon. Other factors may be relevant, or they may not be, but they're out of our control. We don't control the solar cycle, we don't control the vagarities of our orbit, etc, etc... So unless we get good science showing that these things completely overwhelm all signal from greenhouse gas emissions, I don't think it's wise to shrug this problem off.

Consider that it took over 200 years, to solve an n-body gravity problem where n>3. Just resolved in 1991 by Qiu-Dong Wang. Trying to build an accurate model of the Earth's atmosphere is really, really, really hard. I look at it this way... A person can tolerate and eliminate a certain level of toxins, but if you reach a threshold then suddenly bad things happen. I think this is how the Earth behaves with CO2. Once you pass a threshold for sequestration, then you only have so much time while it builds in the atmosphere before something bad might happen. That something might be excessive plant growth, or it might be crazy weather.

I just think we should do a better job "leaving no footprints" on the world. Back to my Yin-Yang model.