I trust that you are also happy to see new geothermal power generation as well. I’d add a little bit of biomass to the mix as well, since that can provide extra generation to cover dry years or plant outages.

Trevor.

The pebbles quickly turn into small cakes and Alice swallows one, suddenly causing her to shrink again to her earlier size. Back down to size Alice makes her way out of the house to find a small crowd of assorted animals, who in turn make a rush toward Alice when they see her. Quickly retreating into the nearby thick wood she finds herself confronted by an enormous puppy (note that Alice is merely a few inches tall at this time) and plays fetch with the puppy, tiring him into sleep. She rests for a moment herself, looking around and spotting a mushroom growing near her, she examines all angles of the mushroom and decides to have a peek at what might be on top of it. As she stands tiptoe and looks, her eyes meet with the ones of a blue Caterpillar, who is sitting arms folded quietly smoking a hookah.

First: The IPCC is the most conservative research we have in terms of what is going to happen. If someone had disproved the CO2 having an effect it would certainly have quit being important pretty damned quick.

Egg on Face syndrome is common enough in science. We survive it.

Without going into detailed answers to everything in your list and there are answers (some better than others) to each of these in the science:

* We know as much as we know and not a single bit more.
* We have to decide what to do based on what we know (not deciding is deciding)
* Our ability to determine what will happen is imperfect.
* We have a very good idea of what CO2 in the atmosphere does.
* All the doubtful thoughts you have ARE examined. Not necessarily through the IPCC. We don’t have any evidence that any of them are significant to the outcome… yet.

The KEY facts here are:

The atmospheric CO2 is increasing some 50 times faster than it has ever increased in any paleoclimate we know of and we know that this has an effect on the ability of the planet to dump heat. Those things are known.

The planet is getting warmer.

Everything we can and have measured has indicated that the theory matches the reality. That’s what the IPCC is about.

To conclude that because we can’t legally prove the CO2 is a/the problem we can ignore it is a massive error in logic. It is theoretically a problem and the measurements of heat transfer we see all match the theoretical predictions relatively well. It has not been disproven. Moreover, the assumption that somehow some external driver such as cosmic radiation has somehow caused this at exactly the same time as the “irrelevant” CO2 is being released and is the actual driver… that tends to stretch my credulity.

To go further to say in essence

‘We should continue this massive experiment with the climate of the only planet that is able to support human life because it is better to make everyone as rich as possible now than to worry about the future”.

THAT is criminally irresponsible, palpably immoral and suicidally stupid.

Greens are telling everyone that the experiment is a BAD idea.
Science is telling everyone that the experiment is a BAD idea.

That means that we Greens are not the humans trying to play “god”, we are trying to conciliate Momma Nature before she and Poppa Physics whack us upside the head with a 4×2 for our misbehaviour.

Where is the humility in asserting that this is what we should do in the FACE of contrary data? SOMEBODY has an overblown idea of their own importance and their rights with respect to everyone else on the planet… but to lumber the Greens with this is risible.

I can imagine a half dozen scenarios where the changes we’ve been making in the climate could trigger anything from the next ice-age to a 95% extinction to a world so warm that only parts of Greenland and Antarctica and Invercargill are even habitable for humans. They’re ALL possible and they all come from this stupid experiment, and the IPCC doesn’t cover any of them, it just says what is almost certain to be a BEST case scenario of a destabilized climate.

I don’t think Hansen or Lovelock see the IPCC as infallible, nor I think, will you find many Greens who think it is the full story, but it IS the best tested science we have and the things it omits are, by and large, things that would make the picture look WORSE.

If there is any lack of humility here it is shown by the “antigreens” who reckon themselves infallible and the IPCC scientists ignorant of any of the truth.

respectfully
BJ

PS: If you want me to go through the explanations on these “not-includeds” say so. It may take a while though.

- no modelling of water vapour, precipitation, and the associated feedbacks (Courtney, 2006)
- no modelling of cloud formation, changes in albedo thereby (Shaviv, 2006)
- no modelling of the ocean’s deep water circulation patterns (Gray, 2006)
- reliance on land temperature measurements now discovered to be suspect (Watts, Pielke Sr, surfacestations.org)
- no cognisance of solar magnetic and galactic cosmic ray effects (Svensmark, 2006)

And climate science, far from being settled, has gaps: it is best compared to geology pre-Wegener or physics pre-Copenhagen interpretation.

- core physics involved in cloud formation (hence, water vapour, albedo) are uncertain: bacteria? aerosols? ionisation via GCR’s?
- solar and galactic involvment: the sun is a variable star, in all senses, and our galaxy moves through areas of greater and lesser deep-galactic ray intensity
- the part played by precipitation in altering climate sensitivity: Spencer likens this to a global air conditioner, with strong negative feedbacks
- the role of the oceans as heat sinks, and the effect of deep ocean water circulation patterns, is the ‘elephant in the room’ - the effects are large but unquantified

In short, we are very far from a Grand Unified Theory of Climate.

This argues for a certain humility, rather than the observed reliance on the Doctrine of Infallibility, and the continued recital of the IPCC catechism.

I don’t that the result is wholly inevitable, though if we’ve pushed past a tipping point it may well be. It is quite clear that if we have not done that bit of nastiness to ourselves that we WILL have to change… either through voluntary reductions to avoid trouble with warming or peak-oil or through involuntary reductions as a result of them. We’ve been vociferous in demanding that the society change voluntarily., which tends to make it easier to control the process and the resulting problems.

Since people who have a lot MORE power than any of us, are unwilling to do the voluntary reductions, the reductions will be forced on us with far more coercion and pain than any the species has ever before endured.

Which will achieve change, whether we wish or not, we’ve said all along, change is necessary. It is.

We don’t actually care whether it is peak oil forcing changes in 5 years or a state initiative that forces changes now and defers the pain for a few more years, or sea level rise and drought that forces the changes in 25 years. The point is that something will be done. If we wait for the invisible hand to burn itself the reflexive withdrawal could be disastrous for a lot more people.

Oh yes !

Thanks

BJ

Mouldwarp Says:
Perhaps you doom-mongers on this thread could agree either to panic about CO2 from fossil fuels, or to panic about the imminent depletion of said fossil fuels, BUT NOT BOTH. Thank you.

But that’s the whole point… the result of both of those scenarios is that we need to transfer our energy demands to different sources. Toute suite.