"Evidence that it is problematic ... is nonexistent."
Wow. What's amazing to me about this rant is how the debate has moved over the last 10 years from "it's not happening" to "it's not a big deal".
So, our massively complex ecosystem is changing in ways that our scientists don't fully understand and it's not a big deal? The ecosystem so complex that scientists have a hard time using the world's fastest supercomputers to try to model it. These real, verifiable changes to OUR ONLY ecosystem are not a big deal even though nobody knows the outcome?
Your position is that playing russian roulette with our grandkids future is worth it because the price of action is overwhelmingly expensive (or infinite). But that's wrong, it's not that expensive. The European economies that have reduced their emissions according to the Kyoto protocol have been doing fine. Reducing the world's carbon emissions is easy, cheap and prudent.
I suspect that reducing our emissions is actually not just cheap but cost negative. You invest in energy saving infrastructure, like insulation, solar hot water, public transport, more efficient appliances, lights, cars etc.
Increase the usage of renewable resources, like solar, hydro and wind.
And do R&D.
Just wait for the next down turn and instead of cutting interest rates have the plans ready to do the investment. We probably have 4 to 10 years to do some good planning.
At present, it depends on the strategy taken, ad of course it will depend on the technologies developed. There are actually many many technologies which, at present, will save you money in the long run (and the run doesn't even need to be that long.)
The main barriers to adoption are laziness, cost of capital, consumer behavior (not purchasing LED lights because they 'seem' too expensive), and most importantly, lack of education.
Page 4 of this paper has a great graph where they examine costs and cost abatement for a variety of 'green' strategies. Hybrid cars are the most expensive!
Exactly - I think the "enormous costs" argument is another fake argument. It's not as if these investments are just sunk, they are used to build infrastructure.
When was the last time our scientists fully understood anything as broad as climate change or "OUR ONLY ecosystem"?
When mankind started to change the world through agriculture, deforestation and industrialisation, that's when we started to play russian roulette if you find that analogy useful.
We didn't know what it would do to our ecosystems but we did it because life back then was horrible and because we could. One bad crop and people were starting to die from starvation. Life is better now so we were right to take that risk.
It makes no sense to be alarmist about this basic disposition of mankind to take risks it doesn't fully understand.
Wow. What's amazing to me about this rant is how the debate has moved over the last 10 years from "it's not happening" to "it's not a big deal".
So, our massively complex ecosystem is changing in ways that our scientists don't fully understand and it's not a big deal? The ecosystem so complex that scientists have a hard time using the world's fastest supercomputers to try to model it. These real, verifiable changes to OUR ONLY ecosystem are not a big deal even though nobody knows the outcome?
Your position is that playing russian roulette with our grandkids future is worth it because the price of action is overwhelmingly expensive (or infinite). But that's wrong, it's not that expensive. The European economies that have reduced their emissions according to the Kyoto protocol have been doing fine. Reducing the world's carbon emissions is easy, cheap and prudent.