Climate change “skeptics” have been saying that for the past 15-20 years, and it hasn’t happened. For instance, here’s the economist and popular pundit Julian Simon, writing in 1994:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established twenty years ago, in 1988, and scientists since then have been amassing more and more evidence in favor of the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis. That’s quite a while to keep waiting for a judgement of “Last Year’s Hysteria”.
Self-described “skeptics”, look back and consider: How many years have you been declaring that the global warming issue is just a passing fad? How many years are you prepared to keep saying it? How much scientific consensus would it take to convince you otherwise?
Like I said, real skepticism begins at home. People who place more confidence in their own instinctive “bullshit detection” abilities than in actual scientific research (which they are not even qualified to evaluate) are not very convincing in the role of self-proclaimed hard-headed skeptics.
Actually no, since my spouse does the grocery shopping. But I will accept that food has gotten more expensive recently.
However, I highly doubt it’s a result of CO2 emissions. Let’s assume for the sake of this point that CO2 is the main driver of global surface temparatures.
You don’t have to put these graphs to any sort of statistical analysis to see that there’s no (obvious) relationship.
So basically I call BS on your claim.
If Americans buckle down and reduce our carbon emissions by 10 or 15% (which is itself probably a fantasy), it will be a matter of months, and perhaps a year or so, before CO2 emissions growth in the rest of the world catches us up to where it would have been had the cut not been made. My intuition is that the effect on CO2 levels would not even be measurable, i.e. it would be well within the error range of our detection equipment.
I hate to bump this, but I think it’s within the reasonable time frame (it’s only on page 2 of the forum, at any rate), and I think this link I came across would do a lot to back up my OP (and is not substantial enough to warrant a new OP).
Honestly, I think you need to define what you mean by “tipping point” with some precision. To me, the phrase “tipping point” connotes runaway positive feedback. But I don’t think that’s what you mean here.
