# What can be done (climate change debate)? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 10, 2014, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384 "2014-03-10T21:18:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/181 "2014-03-21T01:59:55Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > The point is that the real alarmist position comes from the ones that claim that the costs will be so huge as to stop progress, not the case. > > Indeed the answer of how much will costs us is mentioned, somehow I think you don’t like that answer means that it will not be as catastrophic as your sources are telling you. Like I said WTF was that? It looks like a script for an infomercial on global warming by global warming folks. Its 60 pages, so why don’t you break it down for me. My electricity currently costs me 10 cents per kilowatt hour. There is no direct government subsidy of my electrical bill that I know of. So tell me what your alternatives would cost me? Right now my gasoline costs me $3.50/gallon. There is no direct government subsidy of my gasoline that I know of (except for the ethanol part of it). So tell me how much your alternatives cost? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/182 "2014-03-21T02:34:57Z")
That WTF BTW 🙂 is the annotated script for the video Powering the Planet: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/EY8GNSi4MsU/maxresdefault.jpg "Powering the Planet (Full program)") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY8GNSi4MsU) It depends on choices that we will have to make. The point here is that though it is possible to change with a cost that will not lead to the end of the economies (there is still the reality that not doing anything will mean even more expenses for adaptation, who will pay for that?) the solution will vary from nation to nation. There are several examples of nations and communities that are already changing. West Texas and Denmark are good examples, with patience and perseverance it can be done. **Samso** > **[100 Percent Renewable? One Danish Island Experiments with Clean Power \[Slide...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/samso-attempts-100-percent-renewable-power/)** > > One small island in Denmark is technically 100 percent powered by sustainable sources of energy. Could the experiment succeed anywhere else? > [@](#): > > Some people see wind turbines as eyesores or complain about the sound of their whirring blades, but Soren Hermansen, chief proselytizer for the island’s renewable energy experiment and director of the Samso Energy Academy, disagrees. “If you own a share in a wind turbine it looks better, it sounds better,” he says. “It sounds like money in the bank.” > > The land-based turbines are 50 meters tall with blades that stretch some 27 meters from end to end. The sea-based turbines are even more massive—63 meters high (not including the spike pounded into the seafloor beneath the waves) with 40-meter blades. A single such turbine can generate roughly eight million kilowatt-hours of electricity a year at a cost of $3 million per turbine (the onshore variety are cheaper, at just over $1 million). > > Drawing on a Danish co-operative tradition that stretches back 150 years to raise the cash needed to build and run slaughterhouses and other community facilities, around one in 10 “Samsingers” owns at least a share in one of the turbines, which generates an annual check based on its output and the price of electricity. The turbines also have allowed all 4,000 residents to produce more energy from renewable resources than they consume, thereby eliminating, on balance, their emissions of carbon dioxide. > > View Slide Show of Samso, the Renewable Energy Island > > After all, a massive three-megawatt wind turbine “pays back” the carbon dioxide emitted in its making—mining iron, smelting steel, trucking blades, among other things—in roughly seven months of operation by displacing emissions from fossil fuel–fired power plants, according to Michael Zarin, director of government relations at the Denmark-based wind turbine–maker Vestas Wind Systems. Wind power is now responsible for 100 percent of Samso’s electricity needs, 20 percent of all of Denmark’s, and has become the largest single type of new electricity generation installed in the U.S. “There’s nothing alternative about wind anymore,” Zarin notes. **West Texas** (From the PDF) > [@](#): > > ROSCOE HAD NO OIL AND FACED HARD TIMES IN THE EARLY 90’S, BUT IT DID HAVE WIND. > > Cliff: > When this land was acquired there was absolutely no value to the wind. Fact is, it > was a severe detriment, because of the evaporation of the moisture. > Dawn at a Roscoe diner: Cliff and neighbors gather for coffee: > CLIFF, LIKE SOREN, HAD TO WORK WITH HIS NEIGHBORS TO GET THEM READY TO > ACCEPT WIND TURBINES. > Cliff speaks voice over the somewhat skeptical faces of the coffee drinkers: > The first thing farmers want to know is, “Well, how much is it going to cost me?” > It costs them nothing. > > Cliff: > “What’s it going to hurt?” Three to five percent of your farmland is all it’s going to > take up. You can do what you want to with the rest of it. > Then it came down to, “Well, how much money is this going to make me?” > > CLIFF DID HIS RESEARCH AND CHECKED HIS NUMBERS WITH WIND EXPERTS AND > THE FARM BUREAU. > > Cliff: > Then I was able to go to our Landowners’ Association and show them, where they > had been receiving 35 to 40 dollars an acre, then the landowners could expect > somewhere in the neighborhood of three times that… > > IN FACT, FARMERS STAND TO MAKE 10 TO 15 THOUSAND DOLLARS A YEAR, PER > TURBINE, JUST FROM LEASING THE WIND RIGHTS. > > There was no guarantees in it from the very beginning, but sure enough we’ve > got, I think, in the neighborhood of 95 or more percent of our area that accepted > the wind farm. > > IN BOTH SAMSO AND WEST TEXAS, INDIVIDUALS SAW ECONOMIC BENEFITS. > > BUT THE WHOLE COMMUNITY, BEYOND THE INVESTORS AND LANDOWNERS, > BENEFITED TOO. > > Cliff: > Because of the wind farm, now, and the people working in the wind industry, now > we’ve got jobs available and opportunities for young people to come back from > college or from technical school or from whatever. It’s just been a Godsend. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/183 "2014-03-21T03:13:12Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > The snark in the last paragraph is unfair and not supported by anything I’ve ever said. …\ > > My objection to your invoking Emanuel is that you use it to support statements like these: > > \*(1) Kerry Emanuel thinks we should act because we do not know the consequences. > > (2) For example, a Katrina or Sandy doesn’t cut it for hurricanes when we have a season like we just had in the Atlantic. One area of the globe burning up doesn’t cut it when we just finished freezing our ass off for 4 months with a Great Lakes ice cover not seen in decades.\* > > If (1) is true then one wonders what Emanuel teaches in his climate science courses at MIT, …\ > > And “Great Lakes ice cover” is quite irrelevant since Great Lakes ice is annually extremely variable and simply a function of each year’s winter temperature, just like Great Lakes water levels can have big annual variations. A more realistic climate metric is to look at the long-term trend in [Arctic ice cover](http://skepticalscience.com//pics/Tamino2013SeaIce) or, better still, [its overall mass](http://neven1.typepad.com/.a/6a0133f03a1e37970b015435379118970c-pi). > > The point here being that it’s hard to get away from the conclusions that the sorts of “facts” you’ve thrown out seem to be intended to induce an unjustified sense of complacency about the impacts of climate change. I don’t point out the Arctic ice information because it happens to agree with “my” point of view, but because it’s actually meaningful over the long term, whereas seasonal Great Lakes ice this particular year doesn’t mean anything and is just an argumentative misdirection. What were you just saying about a “carefully managed message”? 😛 More from Emanuel Kerry’s book “What We Know About Climate Change” (from the end of Chapter 6: ) _“We are by no means sure of what changes are in store, and we must be wary of climate surprises. Even if we were to believe that the projected climate changes would be most beneficial, we might be inclined to make sacrifices as an insurance policy against potentially harmful surprises.”_ Again, I understand you don’t personally think this is the right message. But I’m just quoting the guy, from his book (unlike GIGOb, who keeps quoting other people, such as the authors of the Afterword, in a desperate hope to rescue the actual wording in Emanuel’s book. My own position is that some of us might be inclined to make sacrifices as an an insurance policy, but given the uncertainty of what will actually happen, I don’t think most of the public will. Again, what would be needed to move them are a series of obvious, warm-direction, well-predicted catastrophes. Period. And that’s the problem with the Great Lakes freezing over to a greater degree than in decades and the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season making a no-show. Sure; any AGW Alarmist is going to ridicule a Denier for confusing weather variation with ACC. I submit that from a messaging standpoint, that just won’t cut it for moving people to action. The average guy understands weather variation and the fact that the center around which the variation occurs has a trending curve. But when the variation is so great that the throwback is decades back, the inference taken is that whatever trend we are in the middle of is so weak that weather variations can negate decades of a general trend. This in turn pushes out the problem so far it’s off Joe Publics Action radar. Worse, Alarmist are the first to grab headlines when a Sandy or Katrina shows up. All of a sudden that’s not a weather variation; it’s an I Told You So harbinger. Its “likely” all of a sudden that AGW caused that extreme event, even though “weather variation” caused the lame hurricane season. Live by the sword; die by the sword. If Sandy is a harbinger then last year’s season suggests ACC hurricane effects are overblown. You can’t have it both ways if you want to persuade the public to act. And worse still is the effort to grab cold events and bring them into the ACC prediction fold with post-event analysis of how AGW causes “extremes.” Joe Public is not going to buy that kind of bullshit. Emanual’s honesty and integrity in writing it may make him an exception, but I think it is that sort of honesty that will be required for Alarmists to hold the bully pulpit. Otherwise it’s just Jonathan Edwards all over again, preaching hell to the sinners and hoping they don’t figure out he has no actual mechanism of knowing what God is actually going to do even though we may be certain God hates sinning. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/184 "2014-03-21T03:17:39Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Emanual’s honesty and integrity in writing it may make him an exception, but I think it is that sort of honesty that will be required for Alarmists to hold the bully pulpit. Otherwise it’s just Jonathan Edwards all over again, preaching hell to the sinners and hoping they don’t figure out he has no actual mechanism of knowing what God is actually going to do even though we may be certain God hates sinning. Again, he is talking about the surprises, you are not mentioning what is more likely as his book and following interviews and articles are telling us, you are once again ignoring the big picture and misrepresenting what he said, it is clear that he is not teaching what you are claiming here. Uncertainty is not your friend. And there is plenty of evidence to show that religion is actually used by the ones pushing for inaction. > **[Watch a Supercut of Politicians Saying Climate Change Isn’t Real—Because God](https://slate.com/technology/2013/12/creationists-and-climate-change-political-union-of-science-critics.html)** > > All across the country—most recently, in the state of Texas—local battles over the teaching of evolution are taking on a new complexion. More and more,... > [@](#): > > All across the country—most recently, in the state of Texas—local battles over the teaching of evolution are taking on a new complexion. More and more, it isn’t just evolution under attack, it’s also the teaching of climate science. The National Center for Science Education, the leading group defending the teaching of evolution across the country, has even broadened its portfolio: Now it protects climate education too. > > How did these issues get wrapped up together? On its face, there isn’t a clear reason—other than a marriage of convenience—why attacks on evolution and attacks on climate change ought to travel side by side. After all, we know why people deny evolution: Religion, especially the fundamentalist kind. And we know why people deny global warming: Free market ideology and libertarianism. These are not, last I checked, the same thing. (If anything, libertarians may be the most religiously skeptical group on the political right.) ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/185 "2014-03-21T03:36:42Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Worse, Alarmist are the first to grab headlines when a Sandy or Katrina shows up. All of a sudden that’s not a weather variation; it’s an I Told You So harbinger. Its “likely” all of a sudden that AGW caused that extreme event, even though “weather variation” caused the lame hurricane season. Live by the sword; die by the sword. If Sandy is a harbinger then last year’s season suggests ACC hurricane effects are overblown. You can’t have it both ways if you want to persuade the public to act. Oh, you mean alarmists like Kerry Emanuel? > **[Perfect Storm: Climate Change and Hurricanes](https://www.livescience.com/28489-sandy-after-six-months.html)** > > Six months after Sandy hit the East Coast, researchers are growing confident that climate changes are fueling severe storms. > [@](#): > > The big killers in hurricanes are wind, storm surge and rain. Storm surge, for example, caused most of the flooding during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 in New Orleans, resulting in the breaching of the levees. As storm intensity increases, so do those dangers. > > “We should not be worried about the frequency of hurricanes; we should be worried about the frequency of intense hurricanes,” said Kerry Emanuel, professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Climate change is causing a greater number of intense storms. The total number of storms has remained constant, but the proportion of high-intensity events has gone steadily upward in most parts of the world. Scientific models and real-world observations both suggest that the frequency of intense storms is going up.” > [@](#): > > How does climate change affect the intensity of hurricanes? The evaporation of seawater fuels hurricanes. The power of a hurricane depends on how rapidly water can evaporate from the ocean. Evaporation transfers heat from the ocean to the atmosphere, which converts the transfer of heat into wind energy. Thus, water evaporation ultimately drives the winds in a hurricane. As the temperature of the water rises, the rate of evaporation increases, driving stronger winds. > > Climate change is heating up the oceans: Scientists expect a 2-degree Celsius (3.6-degree Fahrenheit) rise in ocean temperature in the next century ― which “translates into a very large increase in the destructive potential of hurricanes,” Emanuel said. “It is a whopping big increase.” In short, the warmer the ocean, the faster water can evaporate from it, prompting the formation of powerful hurricanes. > > Heavy rainfall from hurricanes is another likely byproduct of the warming climate. Since warm air holds more water than cold air, moisture-laden air potentially can produce significant rain during a hurricane, even in low-intensity storms. Heavy rainfall raises the probability of dangerous flooding, as seen with Hurricane Irene in 2011. In 1998, flooding from Hurricane Mitch killed more than 11,000 people in Central America. > > “The consensus throughout my field is that global warming will lead to appreciable increases in rain falling from all categories of hurricanes,” Emanuel said. > > Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished senior scientist in the climate-analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), agrees. “In 30 years, the oceans will be warmer, and there will be more water vapor and heavier rains,” he said. > > Trenberth, who was among the first to attribute seasonal U.S. weather changes to El Niño (a warming water pattern in the equatorial Pacific) and La Niña (a cooling water pattern in the equatorial Pacific), estimated that between 5 percent and 10 percent of Katrina’s precipitation was due to climate change. "That’s probably conservative,” he said. > > “It has been estimated that heavy rains in tropical storms, including Katrina, have increased by 6 percent to 8 percent as a result of higher sea-surface temperatures and more water vapor in the atmosphere,” Trenberth said, adding that, at the time of Katrina, the ocean temperatures were the highest ever recorded in the Atlantic. > > Similarly, in August 2011, Hurricane Irene barreled up the East Coast, dumping a record rainfall that caused more than $15 billion in damages due to flooding. > > “Irene formed over unusually warm waters and picked up a lot of moisture,” said Michael Mann, professor and director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State. “Because of those record ocean temperatures, Irene was working with a much higher amount of water vapor in the atmosphere than we normally would have. That’s why we saw the record flooding in New England, Vermont and Massachusetts.” Lets face it, scientists are not alarmists, the are reporting it like it is, and we need to act thanks to that information. “The middle of the road” is not your friend either. And neither is Kerry Emanuel. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/186 "2014-03-21T04:17:06Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > That WTF BTW 🙂 is the annotated script for the video Powering the Planet: > > [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY8GNSi4MsU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY8GNSi4MsU) I wish you would have linked the youtube video to begin with. So it IS a propaganda piece. > [@](#): > > It depends on choices that we will have to make. The point here is that though it is possible to change with a cost that will not lead to the end of the economies (there is still the reality that not doing anything will mean even more expenses for adaptation, who will pay for that?) the solution will vary from nation to nation. There are several examples of nations and communities that are already changing. West Texas and Denmark are good examples, with patience and perseverance it can be done. Noone is saying it absolutely can’t be done. I am asking what is the cost. You previously said that it would cost about 1% of global GDP to stop the increase in greenhouse gas. Thats about $750 billion/year. That is a significant percentage of our global GDP growth every year. You are cutting our global economic growth rate in about half at a time when we can’t really afford it. > [@](#): > > **Samso** > [100 Percent Renewable? One Danish Island Experiments with Clean Power [Slide Show] | Scientific American](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/samso-attempts-100-percent-renewable-power/) > > **West Texas** (From the PDF) So tell me, how much does my electricity cost without subsidies under this scenario? I pay about $0.10 per KwH right now. What sort of rate can I expect? And didn’t someone mention that ethanol provides 1.4 units of energy for every unit of energy used in production (sugar is much better IIRC). You are asking us to pay a lot of money to push a rope that is moving along on its own. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/187 "2014-03-21T04:33:39Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > I wish you would have linked the youtube video to begin with. So it IS a propaganda piece. That is what people that do not want to learn would say. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Noone is saying it absolutely can’t be done. I am asking what is the cost. > > You previously said that it would cost about 1% of global GDP to stop the increase in greenhouse gas. Thats about $750 billion/year. That is a significant percentage of our global GDP growth every year. You are cutting our global economic growth rate in about half at a time when we can’t really afford it. The point stands, more will be wasted by not doing the work now. You are proposing to be penny smart, pound foolish. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > So tell me, how much does my electricity cost without subsidies under this scenario? I pay about $0.10 per KwH right now. What sort of rate can I expect? > > And didn’t someone mention that ethanol provides 1.4 units of energy for every unit of energy used in production (sugar is much better IIRC). > > You are asking us to pay a lot of money to push a rope that is moving along on its own. As the examples show, it will not be just individuals but corporations that will make this even an investment that can (and is for the examples) profitable for the ones making the change. Indeed no solution will be same but in the case of the examples they are even seeing a **profit**. Hard to see why one would complain about the rates in that case. ---
**Author:** ![ralfy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ralfy/32/600_2.png) [@ralfy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralfy)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 8:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/188 "2014-03-21T08:25:53Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > It all depends on how much that preparation costs us. There is this show called Doomsday Preppers about these crazy people who are preparing for armageddon. They are stocked up on years worth of food and ammunition. They have basically sacrificed everything they cold enjoy in this world for the sake of weathering an apocaplypse that might or might not happen. > > How much is all this preparation going to cost us? If the world population wants “business as usual,” then it will need the equivalent of one Saudi Arabia every seven years to maintain economic growth: “World Energy Outlook 2010” [https://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/name,27324,en.html](https://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/name,27324,en.html) But that assumes that oil producers will go for maximum depletion rates, something that is very unlikely: “Total Production by the Top Five Oil Majors Has Fallen by a Quarter Since 2004” [http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9946](http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9946) which means we will have to hope that unconventional oil will rise at unprecedented rates, something that is also highly unlikely due to very low energy returns and steep decline curves: “IEA chief: Only a decade left in US shale oil boom” > **[IEA chief: Only a decade left in US shale oil boom](https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2014/0228/IEA-chief-Only-a-decade-left-in-US-shale-oil-boom)** > > A surge in US oil and natural gas production has lifted hopes about North American energy security, but that growth will plateau and will be difficult to replicate elsewhere, says Maria van der Hoeven, chief executive of the International Energy... Given that, the question should no longer refer to the cost of preparing but if the world is still capable of preparing, given a continued and probably even accelerated increase in energy and resource demand from a growing global middle class: “The rise of the global middle class” > **[The rise of the global middle class](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-22956470)** > > Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty but can the middle class continue to grow? fueled by incredible levels of credit that have to be backed by more production and consumption of goods: “Top Derivatives Expert Estimates Size of the Global Derivatives Market at $1,200 Trillion Dollars … 20 Times Larger than the Global Economy” [http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/05/top-derivatives-expert-finally-gives-a-credible-estimate-of-the-size-of-the-global-derivatives-market.html](http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/05/top-derivatives-expert-finally-gives-a-credible-estimate-of-the-size-of-the-global-derivatives-market.html) but production of goods and services that need to be met by conventional oil production that has flat lined and replaced by unconventional oil that won’t be able to replace the former easily and that leads to more pollution (see the IEA report mentioned earlier), leading to a transition that will entail a lag time and more oil needed: “It Will Take 131 Years To Replace Oil, And We’ve Only Got 10” > **[It Will Take 131 Years To Replace Oil, And We've Only Got 10](https://www.businessinsider.com/131-years-to-replace-oil-2010-11)** plus factors contributing to global warming that have to be reversed in the short term: “World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns” > **[World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/nov/09/fossil-fuel-infrastructure-climate-change)** > > If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will 'lose for ever' the chance to avoid dangerous climate change In short, the world will not have a choice of whether or not to prepare simply because there won’t be enough oil after several years to maintain economic growth. Unfortunately, the preparation period will take place longer than the period before oil production can no longer meet demand and when the effects of global warming can no longer be reversed. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/189 "2014-03-21T12:30:52Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > … you are once again ignoring the big picture and misrepresenting what he said, it is clear that he is not teaching what you are claiming here. Uncertainty is not your friend. I have quoted Emanuel’s comments about the uncertainty of our climate predictions. I have told you he feels strongly that we need to act to avoid the predicted consequences of ACC. Can you be more specific about what misrepresentation I have made? ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/190 "2014-03-21T13:00:34Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Oh, you mean alarmists like Kerry Emanuel? > > [Perfect Storm: Climate Change and Hurricanes | Live Science](http://www.livescience.com/28489-sandy-after-six-months.html) > > Lets face it, scientists are not alarmists, the are reporting it like it is, and we need to act thanks to that information. “The middle of the road” is not your friend either. And neither is Kerry Emanuel. I’m not looking for friends. I’m interested in a dispassionate view of what we know, and don’t know; what we should or should not do; what we are likely or unlikely to actually do. And I have a side hobby of observing human nature. In the case at hand, human nature wrt to Great Causes. You may recall that Dr Emanuel was brought into the discussion when I referenced a [Mother Jones article](http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/07/hurricanes-global-warming-kerry-emanuel)from summer 2013 talking about how the bad news from ACC proponents was that Dr Emanuel’s new modeling data analysis showed that hurricanes would not only increase in intensity but frequency as well, since cleaning up particulate pollution might diminish the cooling effect of dirty air. I made the point that the 2013 season following this article was so quiescent that it was unlikely to move the public to action, particularly juxtaposed with predictions such as Dr. Emanuel’s. Other scientists have not been hasty to agree with Emanuel’s frequency prediction: [Georgia Tech climatologist Judith Curry,](http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2013/07/08/climate-change-global-warming-hurricanes/2498611/) who was not part of the study, warns, \*“The conclusions from this study rely on a large number of assumptions, many of which only have limited support from theory and observations and hence are associated with substantial uncertainties. Personally, I take studies that project future tropical cyclone activity from climate models with a grain of salt.” \* Roger Pielke, Jr., (same cite) a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, who was also not part of the PNAS study, says, _“Kerry Emanuel is a smart scientist; I’ll trust that he has done good work here.” However, Pielke says his own research — along with Emanuel’s other work — suggests that the ability to detect any signal of human-caused climate change on the impacts of hurricanes on society will take many decades, and maybe centuries. He says the increases predicted in Emanuel’s study are projected over a century into the future. However, “over the past century, no such increase in frequency or intensity has been observed (in the U.S. or globally) and in fact, the U.S. is currently in the midst of the longest stretch with no Category 3+ hurricane landfall since at least 1900.”_ I’m less interested in whether or not you bristle at the term “Alarmist,” (by which I mean, an individual who finds the situation alarming and wishes to raise a general alarm in order to drive changes in our approach) than I am interested in what the data is, and what our certainty level is for prediction. Our certainty level for hurricanes is low, and no pattern [in the North Atlantic, at least](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atlantic_ace_timeseries_1850-2007.jpg) has emerged to date. Emanual may be right. He may be wrong. We are uncertain, and that “we” is considerably broader than the pack of Denialists. To the extent that seasons like 2013 are juxtaposed with seasons where a given storm created a great deal of damage, the confidence in any certainty diminishes. To the extent that Alarmists hopped on Sandy to trumpet it as a harbinger, they are damaged by the non-event of the following season. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/191 "2014-03-21T14:22:14Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > The allegory of Phaeton is coming from Emanuel warming us that the warming, besides the damage that will cause \*, the bits that we are not good yet at predicting (More storms, even more accelerated ice loss with more droughts, worse crop failures, clouds actually causing more warming, etc) could be worse than expected. According to the quotes from Emanuel on this very page, seems like it could be “not as bad as expected”, too. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/192 "2014-03-21T14:52:50Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > I have quoted Emanuel’s comments about the uncertainty of our climate predictions. > I have told you he feels strongly that we need to act to avoid the predicted consequences of ACC. > > Can you be more specific about what misrepresentation I have made? Post #172 and #175. In reality you have not demonstrated that Emanuel is not agreeing with all other scientists, again you are confusing his concern with the pieces that we are not so sure with the pieces that Emanuel himself is telling you we are sure, as they are happening already only wishful thinking (and the religion of many contrarians) is telling us to assume that what we are detecting already will not follow physics and increase the longer we continue to release greenhouse gases. There are \*\*other \*\* increasing levels of damage that are very likely if we follow the current path with no emission controls. But this is still a hijack, you need to deal with what we have to do, **what can be done**. Otherwise you indeed demonstrate to all that you have no good ideas and the only resort is to discuss reheated misrepresentations. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/193 "2014-03-21T15:37:25Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > But this is still a hijack, you need to deal with what we have to do, **what can be done**. Otherwise you indeed demonstrate to all that you have no good ideas and the only resort is to discuss reheated misrepresentations. The OP wants to know what can be done. I’ve said multiple times that I don’t think much can be done that will be very effective in changing global CO2 output beyond what the natural economic climate dictates. (i.e. CO2 output will parallel the global economy and be resistant to forcing by anything else) The energy grid cannot and will not be swapped out in time. Current huge initiatives, such as Germany’s very costly and very determined effort from a very wealthy country, have not been very promising as index success cases scalable to the world. Greens can’t agree about nuclear (see Emanuel’s comment in his book, for example). We have such a burgeoning population pushing to live better that we will simply consume all energy from all sources, rather than replace existing fossil fuel with new renewable sources. And to top it all off, we have a large amount of uncertainty about exactly what will happen, and when, diminishing the ability to get the masses to sacrifice now. Hope that helps. It may not be the message you think I am supposed to have if I care about this earth, but it is nevertheless what I think. And I do care about this earth. I’m just not a pollyanna about what kind of sacrificial response we are going to make collectively to a putative threat for which we do not have a high confidence level that catastrophic events will occur within our caring horizon. I think Panels, Conferences, Plans, Goals, Treaties, Agreements and isolated Success Stories will continue, if that helps. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/194 "2014-03-21T16:01:42Z")
> [@ralfy](#): > > In short, the world will not have a choice of whether or not to prepare simply because there won’t be enough oil after several years to maintain economic growth. Unfortunately, the preparation period will take place longer than the period before oil production can no longer meet demand and when the effects of global warming can no longer be reversed. We haven’t done a better job of predicting the end of oil than we have with any other predictions. We’re just horrible at getting predictions correct. I think it’s a safe bet that we’ll use all the energy we create from all the sources we find, fossil or renewable. My own prediction is that absent a worldwide financial catastrophe, [this graph](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_primary_energy_consumption_in_quadrillion_Btu_by_region.svg)will continue to trend in the same direction, year after year. As to fossils versus renewables, [this trend](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_energy_consumption.svg)will continue. Renewables will rise–and perhaps rise increasingly rapidly. But they won’t replace fossils; they will just add to the total energy pool and all energy consumption from all sources will just continue to soar. It is for this reason that renewables won’t reduce the CO2 trend. It’s not a zero sum game where each renewable btu replaces a fossil btu. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/195 "2014-03-21T16:12:38Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > The OP wants to know what can be done. > > I’ve said multiple times that I don’t think much can be done that will be very effective in changing global CO2 output beyond what the natural economic climate dictates. > (i.e. CO2 output will parallel the global economy and be resistant to forcing by anything else) > The energy grid cannot and will not be swapped out in time. Again, that is describing the problem not the solution. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Current huge initiatives, such as Germany’s very costly and very determined effort from a very wealthy country, have not been very promising as index success cases scalable to the world. > Greens can’t agree about nuclear (see Emanuel’s comment in his book, for example). > We have such a burgeoning population pushing to live better that we will simply consume all energy from all sources, rather than replace existing fossil fuel with new renewable sources. Not my problem as I described before, I support the use of the local nuclear plant over here and support the development of more. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > And to top it all off, we have a large amount of uncertainty about exactly what will happen, and when, diminishing the ability to get the masses to sacrifice now. Again with the hijack, and again: you are omitting what Emanuel himself reports are the most likely things to happen. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Hope that helps. It may not be the message you think I am supposed to have if I care about this earth, but it is nevertheless what I think. And I do care about this earth. So far it is clear that you only care to depend on very optimistic scenarios **that are just as likely as the real bad ones**. The middle of the road is worrisome enough. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/196 "2014-03-21T22:37:32Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > I’m not looking for friends. > I’m interested in a dispassionate view of what we know, and don’t know; what we should or should not do; what we are likely or unlikely to actually do. So are we all, I think. And so are agencies like the IEA, the IPCC, and the National Academy of Sciences, which bring a great deal more expertise to bear on the subject than either of us. We should be listening to them. Some of us aren’t. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Georgia Tech climatologist Judith Curry, who was not part of the study, warns … > > Roger Pielke, Jr., (same cite) a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, who was also not part of the PNAS study, says… And speaking of which, dismissing the work of agencies like the IPCC on the subject of either climate change, its consequences, or our possible actions – as some here have done – while (perhaps unintentionally) quoting complete crackpots like Judith Curry and Roger Pielke Jr (not to be confused with his father, Roger Pielke Sr who is an actual if somewhat contrarian climate scientist). Taking these lunatics seriously seems indicative of a strong confirmation bias that is extremely unhelpful in achieving the kind of objective perspective that you claim to hold. And clearly, the pinhead who wrote that article for USA Today has engaged in the usual popular press strategy of fake “balance” – that is, given a paper by someone like Kerry Emanuel, find a couple of idiots to try to make a case for “the other side”. I’m sure he’s not even aware of the comical nature of the characters he’s introduced for that purpose. Judith Curry is, quite simply, a mendacious shrew who AFAIK hasn’t published a new paper in years, and seems to spend all her time running a thoroughly discreditable blog that attracts some of the most absurd conspiracy-theory nutbars that have ever opined their drivel on the Internet. She is the darling of WUWT and Watts’ gang of denialists; she’s teamed up with blatant denialists like Steve McIntyre, Pat Michaels, and many others; she’s been courted and quoted by aides to the lunatic senator Inhofe; she’s been quoted and interviewed on denialist sites like Friends of Science and SPPI, the latter I believe slaveringly quoting from an interview with her published in a fine scientific journal called “[Oilprice.com](http://Oilprice.com)”, in which she asserts, among other things, that the IPCC is useless and that any possible attribution of climate change to CO2 is unknown, assertions with which the fine scientific journal [Oilprice.com](http://Oilprice.com) enthusiastically agreed. Besides “useless”, Curry has also called the IPCC “alarmist”, despite all the evidence to the contrary, as mentioned previously, for example. Curry has at various different times (at least five, IIRC) declared global warming to have “stopped”, only to have to re-declare it all over again when it turned out that it didn’t. Curry has several times – almost habitually, it seems – dredged out the phrase “hide the decline” as a sort of denialist rallying call and a reference to a supposed evil plot to “hide” temperature decline, even though (a) it has absolutely nothing to do with temperatures at all, but was originally a phrase denoting a decline in post-1960’s tree ring proxy indicators, and (b) that proxy decline was widely and openly discussed in scientific papers and clearly explained in the IPCC assessments. One of Curry’s favorite games is to make false and misleading statements using her scientific “credentials” as authority, often about matters that she knows little about or papers that she hasn’t even read, and when challenged on them, basically ignore the challenges from people who actually know what they’re talking about and move on to a new deception. Here are a few links to illustrate some of those points – the last one is Sourcewatch: [http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2010/11/11/207018/judith-curry-climate-science/](http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2010/11/11/207018/judith-curry-climate-science/) > **[Judith Curry Opens Mouth, Inserts Foot](https://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/10/30/judith-curry-opens-mouth-inserts-foot/)** > > NOTE: See the UPDATE at the end of this post. I didn’t expect Judith Curry to embarrass herself more than she did with her fawning over Murry Salby’s folly. But she’s topped (perh… [http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2010/02/24/205554/my-response-to-dr-judith-currys-unconstructive-essay/](http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2010/02/24/205554/my-response-to-dr-judith-currys-unconstructive-essay/) > **[Judith Curry Was For Me Before She Was Against Me](https://www.desmog.com/2012/04/02/judith-curry-was-me-she-was-against-me/)** > > I first got to know Judith Curry—the Georgia Tech researcher who blogs at “Climate, Etc.,” and has been drawn into controversy for, in her words, “challenging many aspects of the IPCC consensus”–when I was working on my second book, Storm World.... [http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Judith\_Curry](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Judith_Curry) Same with Roger Pielke Jr, who is sometimes confused with his father and thought to be a climate scientist; he is no such thing. His degrees are in math and political science, his nominal profession is teaching political science with an environmental spin, and his real position is (to quote the late Stephen Schneider, an actual climate scientist) “…[a trickster and a careerist](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-kessler/a-few-numbers-for-nate-si_b_5001532.html) - -which is how I personally see him – and so do most of my colleagues these days.” There may or may not be issues with the Emanuel paper – it’s certainly very preliminary. But to consider either of those crackpots to be legitimate commentators is reprehensible. Their scientific contribution is worse than trying to foretell the future by reading the entrails of a goat, because that’s just randomly invalid, whereas these clowns have a specific message and a specific mission to discredit the truth. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/197 "2014-03-21T23:23:21Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > For all we know, there will be an energy breakthrough next year and a decade from now we’ll be laughing just as hard at these predictions as we laughed about the predictions in 1900 that major cities would soon be inundated with horse manure… > > … One thing all disaster scenarios have in common is that they can only extrapolate current trends into the future. “If this goes on…” is a common science fiction trope, and it’s basically the only tool we have for predicting the future, because by definition the unknown unknowns are, well, unknown. But the history of economic and social development shows us that changes don’t come smoothly - they’re driven by inflection points and sudden shocks. It’s in interesting essay and I disagree with most of it. I just quoted two paragraphs more or less at random for reference as to what post I’m responding to. Briefly, there are at least three major factual flaws in that thinking. Major flaw #1 is the “if this goes on…” assumption. No, **it has already happened**. At 400 ppm CO2 is already 120ppm above pre-industrial levels and at least 100 ppm above the highest inter-glacial level since geologically modern glaciation began, long before the dawn of man. The latency of climate equilibrium isn’t even approached for hundreds of years. We are **already committed** to somewhere in the mid-point of [most of these consequences](http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/figure-spm-2.html) even if your hypothesized “major new energy breakthrough” happened tomorrow. That graph illustrates your major flaw #2. Take a good look at it. Not all of those things may happen in quite the way envisioned; some may not be as bad as foreseen, but many may be worse. What is reasonably clear from the evidence is that most of them will happen to some degree, and almost all of them are very bad and largely irreversible on human timescales. Given the overall probabilities of these events and what we know about how the climate and the ecosystem behaves in general terms, the claims of optimism on the grounds of uncertainty simply have no basis in fact. Major flaw #3 is the “major energy breakthrough” meme. First of all, how wise is it to plan the future of civilization based on a pure fantasy for which there is no factual basis whatsoever? Do you plan your retirement finances based on winning the lottery? But that’s almost beside the point. If you look at the top sources of emissions – typically power plants and vehicles – we are a very long way from solving either of those problems even though the technologies pretty much exist. Nuclear power may not be perfect but it’s certainly good enough for implementation, though things like thorium reactors and even fusion would be better. Electric cars have already been shown to be pretty much feasible, though hydrogen fuel cells would be the ultimate solution. So the real problem with major flaw #3 is the even with the use of existing technology, there would a huge latency between the onset of any political will to truly address climate change and any effective large-scale deployment. And there’s little sign that there’s any political will at all, but lots of denialism in Congress and state legislatures – some coastal states (VA and NC) have “solved” the problem through the mind-boggling strategy of actually trying to ban legitimate scientific dialog altogether. Meanwhile, as per major flaw #1, we are already at a dangerous commit point with levels of CO2 that we’ve already created. We need lots of time to implement and we don’t have it. So we need to start NOW and rely on adaptation to deal with the inevitable as best we can. And even if the fantasy happens – let’s say perfect nuclear power and fantastic car batteries – the testing and deployment of new nuclear technology and necessary electricity grid upgrades will take decades. If hydrogen fuel cells are the answer, an entire hydrogen production and distribution infrastructure will have to be created. We can’t sit around and wait for your fantasy to occur. That is an absolute FAIL as an excuse for inaction. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2014, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/198 "2014-03-22T03:28:33Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > So far it is clear that you only care to depend on very optimistic scenarios **that are just as likely as the real bad ones**. The middle of the road is worrisome enough. Just out of curiosity, what in the world makes you think I “depend on optimistic scenarios”? I have no idea what’s going to happen, and I don’t think anyone else does. I’m neither optimistic nor pessimistic, and I think we’ll sort of bumble along as best we can. But regardless, what happens is not going to change. We won’t be able to swap out the energy grid in time, and all available energy will be consumed by our burgeoning population living better as fast as they can. I sometimes wonder if Alarmists really stop to consider that. It’s sort of like preaching hell without being too sure about how to attain salvation. But I guess it’s fun proselytizing and participating in the Great Cause. When you tell me how we are going to get that grid swapped out in time, and how much fossil fuel expansion has been diminished by the renewables we’ve brought online, I guess I’ll become optimistic about amelioration of AGW. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2014, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/199 "2014-03-22T03:40:32Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > We are **already committed** to somewhere in the mid-point of [most of these consequences](http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/figure-spm-2.html) even if your hypothesized “major new energy breakthrough” happened tomorrow. You have got to be kidding me if you think that graph is anything but a bunch of WAGs, right? I mean this kind of thing is where the Great Cause mentality just gets holds of people and starts keeping them from thinking straight. Ah well…I suggest preparing for it because CO2 is certainly not going to stop rising. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2014, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/200 "2014-03-22T03:58:11Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Just out of curiosity, what in the world makes you think I “depend on optimistic scenarios”? The fact that your posts are so consistent about uncertainty to imply in the end that we should not do a thing. The clear minimizing of what Emanuel and others report also implies that the optimistic scenarios to be taken into account. Otherwise it makes no sense, you are basing your opposition to change on just an unfounded guess, so it is best to assume that you are just going for the best scenarios that the few skeptical scientists (that as \*\*wolfpup \*\*noticed are getting into more crackpot territory the longer they humor the deniers) are claiming we are going to get. But we are dealing now with economics by taking into account the most likely things to happen. Nordhous has based his calculations in the most likely scenarios. Most of the unknowns are not much of a part of the calculation he did, the point here is that they could get worse, in this context it means that by not making the change sooner even more of the economy will have to go to adapting. When we could reduce that cost now. We are bound to waste a lot more than 1% or our GDP in the future if we are not willing to start changing now. > **[William Nordhaus: Smoking can teach us about climate change](https://www.salon.com/2013/10/30/william_nordhaus_smoking_can_teach_us_about_climate_change/)** > > A Yale economist explains why we need to put a price on carbon > [@](#): > > We’re uncertain about the effects of climate change the way we’re uncertain that smoking causes cancer, says economist William Nordhaus. “Uncertainty,” in other words, really isn’t a good reason for us not to do everything possible to stem carbon emissions. > > In the latest of his series of books on climate change, “The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty and Economics for a Warming World,” Nordhaus, the Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University, delivers a primer of sorts on the social, political and economic factors at play in the climate debate. It’s not whether climate change is happening, he suggests, but what we can and should do about it, that’s the true question for our time. > > Nordhaus spoke with Salon about his case for a putting a price on carbon, and what we’d have to do to afford and embrace what he says is the only way we have to slow global warming. > [@](#): > > _You wrote a takedown of climate deniers in the New York Review of Books, in which you said, “Yes, there are many uncertainties, but that does not imply that action should be delayed.” How do you get people to overcome that uncertainty?_ > > We face lots of uncertainties, and it’s hard to think about what to do when life is uncertain. If I can come back to the case of smoking and cancer, it’s uncertain if a particular person will get cancer when they smoke. Some people do and some people don’t. But you know that the odds are against you, the odds are heavily in favor of the fact that you’re going to get sicker earlier and in a more serious way. > > I think that’s the way I think about climate change. Of course we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen or when it’s going to happen. We can’t see all the ramifications, but they don’t look favorable on the whole. I mean, there are some pretty frightening ones. So I think the uncertainties would make us say, “Well, let’s pay a little insurance premium to slow things down.” > [@](#): > > _Do you have any idea how much of an investment there needs to be in renewables, if there were a carbon tax and we were starting to phase out coal?_ > > There are lots of estimates of that — that’s probably one of the places where the economic models are strongest. We have estimates that, depending on how it’s done, the cost would be in the range of 1 percent of our income over the next five decades or so. So it’s not zero – I mean, if you add that up, that’s a lot of dollars — but it’s not going to bankrupt us. > > Part of it is that it would require that we do it efficiently and effectively: If you do it through a cap and trade, or a carbon tax, you can keep the numbers that low. If you start using very inefficient regulations and subsidies, then it can be much more expensive. > \* > Is there anything else that you want to make sure your readers understand about climate change?\* > > I think for young people, it’s a really interesting set of problems. You can learn a lot about our world — and not just the natural world, but also the social/economic/political world — by studying it. I’ve found, by studying it for many years now, that it’s really a laboratory where everything comes up — from taxes to international law, international trade, treaties and the natural sciences as well. I teach a course on it whenever I have a chance. So, I think that’s one of the messages — this is, aside from being important, also just really an interesting area to read about and study, and I would really encourage people just to take some time to enjoy the wonderful science in this area. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > I have no idea what’s going to happen, and I don’t think anyone else does. I’m neither optimistic nor pessimistic, and I think we’ll sort of bumble along as best we can. > > But regardless, it’s not going to change. We won’t be able to swap out the energy grid in time, and all available energy will be consumed by our burgeoning population living better as fast as they can. > > I sometimes wonder if Alarmists really stop to consider that. It’s sort of like preaching hell without being too sure about how to attain salvation. > > But I guess it’s fun proselytizing and participating in the Great Cause. When you tell me how we are going to get that grid swapped out in time, and how much fossil fuel expansion has been diminished by the renewables we’ve brought online, I guess I’ll become optimistic about amelioration of AGW. Denying what was demonstrated that can be done in places like Texas and Denmark will not do. Neither your “I have no idea what’s going to happen, and I don’t think anyone else does.” Yours are only arguments from ignorance. [The risk is increasing and the sooner we put the brakes on our emissions the better we will be](http://whatweknow.aaas.org/). As I said, you are like the deniers in congress that are telling their people to even prevent the EPA from imposing new regulations. \*\*The proselytizing (the real religion here as shown with evidence already) for their reprehensible cause continues. \*\* [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384.md?page=11)