Speaking of greening, Phil Bowermaster has a post on the potential reformation of the environmental movement.

I don't think ecoskeptics should become too wedded to the idea that global warming is bunk. Greenhouse gases do clearly have a major effect on the surface temperature of the Earth -- it's straightforward to compute the temperature the Earth would have if thermal radiation could be radiated unimpeded to space, and it's much lower -- so just ruling out the possibility that large changes in them will cause large changes in climate would seem to be unwise.

Perhaps a doubling of CO2 will not be as bad as some project. But fully burning accessible coal and other fossil fuels will do much more than double CO2. Are we prepared to assume that increasing CO2 by (say) a factor of ten will have no effect?

I am also reminded of what happened with CFCs. After the initial discovery of the possibility that free chlorine in the stratosphere could catalyze ozone destruction, there was additional work that showed that the chlorine could be trapped in inert form (ClNO3, for example) and so be less destructive than had been feared. But this didn't absolve CFCs, and eventually it was discovered that processes existed that removed nitrate from the stratosphere above Antarctic, and that catalyzed the conversion of chlorine back to active forms. Bans on CFCs followed.

Hydrogen fuel cells need platinum.

Earth lacks sufficient platinum.

Dennis Wingo tells us where to find more.

Green is good for space exploration.

Dude. ;-)

I don't think ecoskeptics should become too wedded to the idea that global warming is bunk. Greenhouse gases do clearly have a major effect on the surface temperature of the Earth -- it's straightforward to compute the temperature the Earth would have if thermal radiation could be radiated unimpeded to space, and it's much lower -- so just ruling out the possibility that large changes in them will cause large changes in climate would seem to be unwise.

What should we do? This is the problem with current environmental dogma. It demands we "do something" even if we don't understand the problem. And frankly, while I have more confidence in current climate models, I don't believe they are good enough to back policies that affect six billion people. Given that climate change is a slow thing, I see good reason to wait while we develope better climate models.

Research into anthropomorphic climate change is worthy and interesting. In this post I'm going to express no opinion about the magnitude of future climate changes -- and others should too because the data is not conclusive.

On the otherhand, I am going to express my opinion about the next, illogical step that the so-called greens jump to, namely "tax", "regulate", and "authoritate". These actions are simply not warranted.

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The world is a constantly changing place. People move from place to place in mass migrations for political, economic and other reasons. Animals, and plants adapt to new environments, or sometimes, they become extinct. The point of this is that the gradual climate changes that occur, whether they be natural or man-made are just one of the many changes that the actors on the world stage adapt to. We do not need massive gov't programs, restrictions, protocols, tax schemes to deal with the changes in the local or world environment.

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Canada gets a little nicer weather. Arizona gets hotter; better turn up the air conditioning. Tuvalu floods; OK, better move to America.

The argument is not "is the world changing?". The argument is "why should anyone listen to non-effective, freedom-reducing, communist ideas" as solutions to anything?

--Fred

Sorry for the multi posts. The annoying spam filter you use won't let me say

"s o c i a l i s t"

because is contains "c i a l i s"

So please substitute "swedish political leanings" for communists in my post above

I haven't taken a hard line on global warming. I do take a hard line on doom and gloom scenarios. I would be perfectly happy to see coal power plants replaced with nuclear ones, and if C02 is one reason we do it, so much the better.

The key thing for me is if environmentalism would move away from the extreme obstructionist movement it is now. I hope Brand is right - I've always considered myself an environmentalist, but most in the "movement" that I've talked with seem to think people like me are the enemy. I want to see the environment improved, and the only way I see to do that is by the application of technology and making people wealthy enough that they can afford to care about it.

Paul,
You're a learned guy bit even your response shows how unscientific the "accepted wisdom" about global warming is.
-- it's straightforward to compute the temperature the Earth would have if thermal radiation could be radiated unimpeded to space, and it's much lower -- so just ruling out the possibility that large changes in them will cause large changes in climate would seem to be unwise.
The issue is not whether or not CO2 traps heat but how much it traps. If you do the physics, the earth should heat up from the top down--ie the stratosphere should be getting warmer first. But the stratosphere is NOT getting warmer. In addition, the main input to the temp eqn (the 1340 w/m2 at 1AU you used to figure out equil. temp), has only been reliably tracked for 45 years. Anybody know what it was during the Maunder minimum? So the science is FAR from as solid as you think it is.

Tom: you are confused. Increases in CO2 should cause the stratosphere to get colder. This is because increased CO2 in the stratosphere will make the gas there a more effective radiator.

As I understand it, this effect may already have been observed, although not at a very large level (and very possibly obscured by other effects, such as ozone depletion, which reduces energy deposition in the stratosphere from UV radiation.)

Using wildfires as an example of a change of concensus shows he either is not aware of what's going on, or he's engaged in wishful thinking, or just making it up as he goes along.. I suspect a combination of all three.

We still spend millions supressing wildfires, even more then ever because they've gotten bigger and threaten suburban and even urban areas. The problem was not fire supression or logging, but the removal of management. when the enviros made clearcutting and logging in general into major sins in their religion, as those activities substituted for the clearing actions of fires. Without any clearing, the fuel buildup became explosive when fires did (and still do) occur.

I agree with the commenters about the obstructionist stance of the environmental movement today. The only certain thing in the near future is that they will oppose any policy that the Bush administration proposes. That could even include shutting off all electricity and going back to the woods to eat berries and huddle in caves.

So regardless of what climate model makes sense, we have to agree on what policy compromises are possible. If burning fossil fuels is bad, then what alternatives are acceptable? Certainly renewable energy looks palatable, but everyone correctly notes that it takes energy to make these technologies. What about nuclear? Is that still verboten? I suspect it is, unless the proposal is made by a democrat.

So where do we go from here? I am a conservative, but I actually plot my elec./gas usage and have made it go down every year that I have lived in my house. But that is still nowhere near what some enviro's demand that I accept.

So where does the reducing consumption curve intersect the alternative technology curve to allow us to move forward?

Raoul,

You are correct about fire management. In the Indians of North America history class that I took, they noted how buffalo were grazing all the way into the forests of the East coast due to sound management techniques. The Indians would set controlled fires every year to manage the underbrush and minimize fuel sources for wildfires.

In contrast, the Europeans settlers had sawmills where fuel would gather over many years. The result was a firestorm so powerful that it acted like an explosive material.

So it depends on whose conventional wisdom is being used.

...it's straightforward to compute the temperature the Earth would have if thermal radiation could be radiated unimpeded to space, and it's much lower...

"unimpeded"? Maybe that's not the right word, Paul.

What it would take for thermal radiation to be radiated unimpeded into space -- that would be, like, getting rid of the atmosphere entirely, wouldn't it?

McGehee: it would mean getting rid of the components of the atmosphere that significantly absorb far infrared radiation, so that the optical depth of the atmosphere at the peak wavelengths was much less than 1. If you do this (in thought experiment), you conclude that the Earth would be considerably colder than it is with the current atmosphere.

"...as far as I can gather, over the last hundred years the temperature on this planet has gone up 1.8 degrees. Am I the only one who finds that amazingly stable?..." - Dennis Miller.

1.8 represents a lot of heat, but we seem to have survived it. On the other hand, I'd hate to see us cross a tipping point.

Like someone else said, all the more reason to get some of our eggs out of this basket. It's too bad environmentalists tend to be so wacko (and politically powerful) because the environment is not exclusively their concern... we all happen to live in it.

A worst case scenario... "The process appears to have lasted for a period of 40,000 years, scientists say, warming Earth by more than five degrees Celsius."

Hmm... Doesn't sound like something worth screaming "Fire!" in a crowded room.

Sorry, this is the link...
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/template.cfm?name=BargeHo

Raoul, another factor is that suburbia has expanded into areas with higher fire risks. I imagine there's still some people in these areas with wood tiled roofs or who have undergrowth against the house, both factors that increase the damage inflicted by a neighborhood brushfire.

Mazoo, I'm uncomfortable with ascribing motives to ancient American natives that we simply can't know. It's likely that many understood the use of fire in clearing land, but I wonder if fires would be deliberately set much less "managed" in the way you suggest. Second, the European settlers had their own ways of controlling forest fires by clearing land. The explosive hazard around lumbermills is a local fire hazard unlike a large forest fire.

Anonymous, I loathe the word "tipping point" especially since it's routinely used as a justification for acting without evidence. Eg, "we should do X, because we may have already reached a tipping point in global warming". And the worry about methane hydrates? Earthquakes and landslides already occur in some regions with these deposits. We should have seen some effect after, for example, huge Alaskan earthquakes.