Climate Policy

[kandrathe]

Your second link starts with the phrase "We face a problem of anthropogenic climate change" and it deals with concerns regarding high CO2 emissions. This means you now think that human contribution to the global levels of CO2 is *not* minute in comparison to the entire global carbon cycle?

I believe that the human contribution to global warming is 0.28%, and if water vapor is taken into account then it is about 5.53%. But, as Pete pointed out, in a chaotic non-linear system, small changes in parameters might result in large changes in the system. My position is that humans need to take a "small footprint" approach to all human activity, and that includes how we build our houses, build our transportation systems, tend our farms, and manage our ecosystems. Whatever we do will have consequences in the future, and we tend not to consider those consequences. For example; over 100 years ago lumber barons mostly deforested my state resulting in permanent habitat alteration and destruction which eliminated many species from existence in my current ecosystem. I grieve that loss. I would like to see Elk, the aquatic mammals, raptors and other native species return to this ecosystem. So, I am one of those people who wish our great grandfathers would have had more foresight.

"Accordingly, a switch to public intervention in this area, where governments are well capable of directing public finance to stimulate research, development and deployment of innovations that work to reduce the costs of alternatives to fossil fuels, is prescribed."

When it comes to directing massive infrastructure change, the government is a good mechanism. If they had devoted 90% of the last stimulus bill towards building clean power plants, and power lines I would have been in full support (as long as they didn't abuse eminent domain to seize the land). Both papers advocate devoting much more funding toward research to resolve our problems. I think they recognize that we don't have all the answers, and that driving people off energy will only result in smaller GDP, and thus a poorer standard of living. I believe it is possible to have our cake, and eat it too. That is, we can work on replacing our infrastructure with cleaner, and more ecologically sensitive units while maintaining the status quo in the short term, and work on population reduction, and improved efficiencies for the longer term.