Member of the silent majority checking in here…
Not to disparage the value of your taxicab confessions education, but he’s right. You don’t know what you’re talking about, ‘champ’.
For the record for those who aren’t familiar with him, David Suzuki is a science writer who is among the more militant of the anti-progress types. He is definitely not an unbiased source. He’s been doing this shtick since the 1970’s, and since then the list of things he’s been wrong about is long and distinguished.
And here’s another clue - in the climate study realm, a 1999 book that is not a primary source but rather quotes older, secondary sources is getting a little long in the tooth. Most of the research Suzuki will be referencing would probably be at least five or six years old now, or even older. Given the way Suzuki picks his sources, he’d be quoting Mayan astrologers if their work with bloody entrails supported his conclusions. I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know if the research quoted is still considered accurate, but it’s certainly worth considering.
For the record, here’s my opinion on global warming. It’s obviously happening (1 degree increase last century, roughly). At least a portion of that is probably due to the influence of man. However, how that translates into future warming is still unclear, because we don’t really know why the last century’s warming occured, and what mechanisms may arise naturally to slow or stop it. Our current atmospheric models don’t do any better at prediction than throwing darts at a dartboard.
Just the other day there was news of some research tying cosmic rays to upper-atmosphere heating. Clearly, the complex functioning of our atmosphere is still beyond our understanding.
But we do know this: In the past, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has fluctuated greatly, as has the temperature of the Earth. But the system is clearly highly stable, or we would never have had a chance to evolve and become who we are. So we are not headed for a runaway greenhouse or even drastic changes in temperature.
Current estimates for warming over the next 100 years center around a value of about 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit. If that’s all there is, then it’s possible that it will be a net economic gain for mankind as a whole, at least at the bottom of that range, as growing seasons get longer, winter heating costs go down, and the zone of agricultural land widens.
So we’re not headed for catastrophe - we’re headed for a change which will likely require re-adjustments to various economies but with little or no overall economic damage. The outside possibility is that the warming will be great enough that there is significant economic damage and dislocation over time.
However, the next question you need to ask is, “what can we do about it?” Outside of the wet dreams of hardcore environmentalists, we are not about to abandon our high energy lifestyles. And even optimists do not believe that solar and wind power can provide all our energy needs. We’ll still be cranking out lots of CO2, no matter what we do. So, how much reduction are we willing to withstand, and what will be the effect of that?
The Kyoto treaty gives us a bit of a clue as to what we are willing to do right now. Because not just the USA, but many countries are now balking at implementing it. It’s just too expensive. And yet, the total net effect of the Kyoto treaty over the next 100 years would be to reduce warming by about 7/10 of a degree. How many trillions of dollars are we willing to spend for that particular reduction?
The small amounts of change we’re talking about also mean we have some time. Time to develop better models, to take more measurements, and to hopefully come up with a much more accurate picture of the potential costs and benefits of a range of options. At that point, we can make intelligent policy decisions. Until then, we’re just chasing shadows.