I'm starting to warm up to your suggestions. While being cautious about
anything initiated by the government, I have no problem with their
encouraging education, especially about the economic and waste-reduction
benefits of improving home/business heating insulation, or their encouraging
the design and building of newer improved technologies, like better wind
farms. As long as you make one good suggestion at a time, there's never
a threat of odium or totalitarianism.

This approach, rather than by making sweeping unpopular enforced changes,
such as making only electric or hybrid cars legal by fiat rather than over time
through competition, or ending oil exploration in the arctic preserves, is
far more palatable, even to those of us who don't see a short-range problem.

As primarily a mathematician, I have to put the political implications ahead
of the possibly alarmist warnings of the science weather community, in
light of what I've read and heard before entering your discussion. We
could discuss the science, which would take me weeks to get up to speed
on, but the conclusion of impending doom, even if it's 100 years from now,
strikes me as extremely overzealous. We have time to plan. Though I
admit that one good suggestion at a time works for me, and might actually
come to be effective in solving any possible global warming problem.

Here's another:

Cement manufacturing, believe it or not, accounts for about 5% of manmade CO[sub]2[/sub] emissions worldwide ([URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cement#CO2_emissions[/URL]). It's energy-intensive, because the materials have to be heated to high temperatures, but also the standard manufacturing process chemically results in carbon dioxide along with the cement. There are new ideas for the process that actually take carbon dioxide out of the air instead of adding it to the air.

(All my references to energy use in this context refer to the majority of current energy-generating methods which produce CO[sub]2[/sub]. Renewable energy substitution for those would help.)

[QUOTE=davar55;243657]As long as you make one good suggestion at a time, there's never a threat of odium or totalitarianism.[/QUOTE]Why just one good suggestion at a time? Why not a whole bunch of good suggestions? The ones I'm listing are just ones I can recall now without doing any lookup. There are hundreds and thousands of other such technological ways to help solve the problem. Some may sound silly at first glance, but would actually make a significant difference: paint house roofs white, to reduce air conditioning demand during the summer. Encourage putting plant cover on roofs (yes, it can be done, but perhaps needs to be planned-for before construction), for the same reason plus slowing/reducing water runoff and reducing heating demand during winter.

There's lots and lots of 'em. (But the GOP either won't mention them or will make fun of them without showing an honest evaluation.)

It's also been shown that government-created incentive prizes can speed technological innovation. E.g., the X Prize for reusable commercial spacecraft, or the DARPA prize for autonomous vehicles that can travel a hundred miles on ordinary roads without any driver. In these cases, the government expenditure of a few million dollars (X Prize was $5mil IIRC) can jump-start innovative private enterprise worth billions of dollars yearly.

[quote]This approach, rather than by making sweeping unpopular enforced changes, such as making only electric or hybrid cars legal by fiat rather than over time through competition, or ending oil exploration in the arctic preserves, is far more palatable, even to those of us who don't see a short-range problem.[/quote]Of course it is! But when one's mindset is focused on denying that GW exists, or one has decided that only totalitarian solutions exist, then it's very difficult for one's imagination to conceive of other solutions.

One of [I]Scientific American's[/I] special September issues several years ago was all about "our carbon future", or something like that. Anyway, it first calculated how much CO[sub]2[/sub] emission reduction would be necessary to stabilize the atmospheric level by, say, 2100. Then it divided this number by eighteen (in this case) to form 18 "wedges" of solutions needed to accomplish the reduction. Then it listed eighteen different practical, technologically-achievable ways in which each single wedge of reduction could be done. None was totalitarian, yet the sum could achieve a stabilization at a CO[sub]2[/sub] level that would avoid the most catastrophic predictions.

Of course, actually putting that sort of plan into effect would require that no substantial political sector block it on the grounds that AGW was a fraud.

[quote]We could discuss the science, which would take me weeks to get up to speed on,[/quote]Just go to one of the links for beginners that I listed above. It wouldn't take weeks.

[quote]but the conclusion of impending doom, even if it's 100 years from now, strikes me as extremely overzealous.[/quote]But that depends on which particular sector of the predicted effects one looks at.

The rise in ocean levels is going on [I]now[/I]. There are several places around the world where, because the land slopes so gently away from the ocean, even a foot of rise will cause the sea to encroach on large areas. Bangladesh is a prime example. Even if the sea doesn't cover the land, there's also the groundwater that could be affected. In some places, ocean rise will cause saltwater to intrude on fresh groundwater supplies. Then that groundwater, which is currently adequate to support a population, will either be unusable by people, or at least require expensive and energy-intensive desalination (usually impractical).

Some anti-AGWer will pooh-pooh this, saying that ocean rises in the past didn't cause catastrophe. But in the past, all folks had to do was move the hut a bit further inland, and there wasn't anyone already living there. Now, we have skyscapers built right next to some coasts, and the land inland from them is already occupied by folks who may not want to share.

That's a general failing of many anti-AGW arguments: that when climate changes occurred in the past there was no catastrophe, but forgetting or omitting that modern conditions are unlike any in the past in regard to what we as humans are accustomed to based only on conditions during our lifetimes or our most recent ancestors. In the past, animals could migrate at a moderate pace in response to climate changes, but nowadays we've confined them to preserves that can't be migrated, or else put many manmade obstacles in their paths, such as cleared farm areas and cities.

Many natural adaptation methods that were easy in the past are no longer possible. Thus, a change that was non-catastrophic in the past might be catastrophic in modern conditions. Of course, these are still relatively slow-moving catastrophes. But consider what it will take to move all those Miami beach hotels to higher ground, or how long and expensive it would be to erect a seawall (Ask New Orleans or Venice.)

Now, if we'd always done our planning with consideration of adapting to sea level rise or temperature rise or precipitation change, things would be easier ... but we didn't. We almost never plan to avoid problems we've never yet seen happen.

Also, this depends on one's definition of "catastrophe". Does the need to erect a 100-billion-dollar sea wall around Manhattan constitute a catastrophe, or not? Is the inundation of a Pacific island currently supporting a population of 2,000 a catastrophe, or not? Is it a catastrophe if it were to happen suddenly, such as by nuclear attack, but not a catastrophe if it takes 30 years to destroy a human habitat?

[quote]We have time to plan.[/quote]"We"? That depends on where you are. The Bangladeshis and certain Pacific islanders have very little time. South Florida's Everglades have already been undergoing slow-motion destruction for 50 years, and billions of dollars have been spent on restoration -- without any consideration of sea level change. Do we spend many times that much to preserve it, or do we abandon preservation efforts?

But, disregarding them -- if we had started pushing these solutions in 1990, just after James Hansen's testimony in Congressional hearing that explained the problem, by now we'd be twenty years farther down the path. We'd have both prevented immense amounts of CO[sub]2[/sub] emissions by now, and be importing less oil, helping our balance-of-payments problem and giving us less incentive to militarily intervene in the Middle East. But that twenty-year opportunity is gone now, just as is the 8-year opportunity that followed the US 2000 election.

[quote]Though I admit that one good suggestion at a time works for me, and might actually come to be effective in solving any possible global warming problem.[/quote]... and there's nothing that prevents putting multiple solutions into effect simultaneously, peacefully, and through the free market with only some government incentive plans and education ... except political resistance to doing so.

---offtopic---

cheesehead, what's your academic background?

[QUOTE=em99010pepe;243702]---offtopic---

cheesehead, what's your academic background?[/QUOTE]
Lots and lots of reading.

Tulsa public schools, graduating in 1967.

Two-plus undergraduate years at Caltech, math major, ended by PTSD effects.

One-plus year at U. of Tulsa, computer science major, ended by severe clinical depression.

2-3 years of night courses at U. of Minnesota, computer science major, ended in order to support wife in completing her education there.

Lots and lots of reading, thinking and discussing in-between and since.

Cold Is Tied to Weaker Arctic ‘Fence’
 

[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/science/earth/25cold.html?_r=1&ref=world]Cold Is Tied to Weaker Arctic ‘Fence’[/url]: [i]Europe and the United States have had two consecutive severe winters, but it is freakishly warm 2,000 miles to the north.[/i]
[quote]For two winters running, an Arctic chill has descended on Europe, burying that continent in snow and ice. Last year in the United States, historic blizzards afflicted the mid-Atlantic region. This winter the deep South has endured unusual snowstorms and severe cold, and a frigid Northeast is bracing for what could shape into another major snowstorm this week.

Yet while people in Atlanta learn to shovel snow, the weather 2,000 miles to the north has been freakishly warm the past two winters. Throughout northeastern Canada and Greenland, temperatures in December ran as much as 15 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. Bays and lakes have been slow to freeze; ice fishing, hunting and trade routes have been disrupted.

Iqaluit, the capital of the remote Canadian territory of Nunavut, had to cancel its New Year’s snowmobile parade. David Ell, the deputy mayor, said that people in the region had been looking with envy at snowbound American and European cities. “People are saying, ‘That’s where all our snow is going!’ ” he said.

The immediate cause of the topsy-turvy weather is clear enough. A pattern of atmospheric circulation that tends to keep frigid air penned in the Arctic has weakened during the last two winters, allowing big tongues of cold air to descend far to the south, while masses of warmer air have moved north.

The deeper issue is whether this pattern is linked to the rapid changes that global warming is causing in the Arctic, particularly the drastic loss of sea ice. At least two prominent climate scientists have offered theories suggesting that it is. But many others are doubtful, saying the recent events are unexceptional, or that more evidence over a longer period would be needed to establish a link.

Since satellites began tracking it in 1979, the ice on the Arctic Ocean’s surface in the bellwether month of September has declined by more than 30 percent. It is the most striking change in the terrain of the planet in recent decades, and a major question is whether it is starting to have an effect on broad weather patterns.

Ice reflects sunlight, and scientists say the loss of ice is causing the Arctic Ocean to absorb more heat in the summer. A handful of scientists point to that extra heat as a possible culprit in the recent harsh winters in Europe and the United States.

Their theories involve a fast-moving river of air called the jet stream that circles the Northern Hemisphere. Many winters, a strong pressure difference between the polar region and the middle latitudes channels the jet stream into a tight circle, or vortex, around the North Pole, effectively containing the frigid air at the top of the world.

“It’s like a fence,” said Michelle L’Heureux, a researcher in Camp Springs, Md., with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

When that pressure difference diminishes, however, the jet stream weakens and meanders southward, bringing warm air into the Arctic and cold air into the midlatitudes — exactly what has happened the last couple of winters. The effect is sometimes compared to leaving a refrigerator door open, with cold air flooding the kitchen even as warm air enters the refrigerator.

This has happened intermittently for many decades. Still, it is unusual for the polar vortex to weaken as much as it has lately. Last winter, one index related to the vortex hit its lowest wintertime value since record-keeping began in 1865, and it was quite low again in December.
...
The uncertainty about what is causing the strange winters highlights a core difficulty of climate science. While mainstream researchers are sure that greenhouse gases released by humans are warming the Earth, they acknowledge being on shakier ground in trying to predict the regional effects of that change. It is entirely possible, they say, that some regions will cool temporarily, because of disruption of the atmospheric and oceanic circulation, even as the Earth warms over all.

Bloggers who specialize in raising doubts about climate science have gleefully pointed to the recent winters in the United States and Europe as evidence that climatologists must be mistaken about a warming trend. These commentators have not been as eager to write about the strange warmth in parts of the Arctic, a region that scientists have long predicted will warm more rapidly than the planet as a whole.

Without doubt, the winter weather that began and ended 2010 was remarkable. Two of the 10 largest snowstorms in New York City history occurred last year, including the one that disrupted travel right after Christmas. The two snowstorms that fell on Washington and surrounding areas within a week in February had no known precedent in their overall impact on the region, with total accumulations of 40 inches in some places.

But the winters were not the whole story. Even without them, 2010 would have gone down as one of the strangest years in the annals of climatology, thanks in part to a weather condition known as El Niño, which dumped heat from the Pacific Ocean into the atmosphere early in the year. Later, the ocean surface cooled, a condition known as La Niña, contributing to heavy rainfall in many places.

Despite cooling from La Niña, newly compiled figures show that 2010 was among the two warmest years in the historical record. It featured a blistering heat wave in Russia, all-time high temperatures in at least 17 countries, the hottest summer in New York City history, and devastating floods in Pakistan, China, Australia, the United States and other countries.

“It was a wild year,” said Christopher C. Burt, a weather historian for Weather Underground, an Internet site.

Still, however erratic the weather may have become, it is not obvious to most people how global warming could lead to frigid winters. Many scientists are hesitant to back such assertions, at least until they gain a better understanding of what is going on in the Arctic.

In interviews, several scientists recalled that in the decade ending in the mid-1990s, the polar vortex seemed to be strengthening, not weakening, producing mild winters in the eastern United States and western Europe.

At the time, some climate scientists wrote papers attributing that change to global warming. Newspapers, including this one, printed laments for winter lost. But soon after, the apparent trend went away, an experience that has made many researchers more cautious.

John M. Wallace, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, wrote some of the earlier papers. This time around, he said, it will take a lot of evidence to convince him that a few harsh winters in London or Washington have anything to do with global warming.

“Just when you publish something and it looks like you’re seeing a connection,” Dr. Wallace said, “nature has a way of humbling us.”[/quote]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;249057][URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/science/earth/25cold.html?_r=1&ref=world"]Cold Is Tied to Weaker Arctic ‘Fence’[/URL]: [I]Europe and the United States have had two consecutive severe winters, but it is freakishly warm 2,000 miles to the north.[/I][/QUOTE]"RealClimate: Cold winter in a world of warming?" at [URL]http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/12/cold-winter-in-a-world-of-warming/[/URL] mentions "non-linear" five times (counting replies on first page of comments) -- you might like it, if you haven't already gone there. :-)

[QUOTE=cheesehead;243642]
The idea that any and all solutions must be odious or totalitarian is simply false.
[/QUOTE]
Try telling that to this guy:
[URL]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7537521/James-Lovelock-humans-are-too-stupid-to-prevent-climate-change-says-maverick-scientist.html[/URL]
"I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. [B]It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.[/B]"

Whoops! An article I just found points out something I had been overlooking about the GHG effect of natural gas: the part that methane leakage plays.

Natural gas is primarily methane (CH[sub]4[/sub]). Coal is an assortment of long-chain hydrocarbons, such as C[sub]50[/sub]H[sub]102[/sub]. When looking only at these two from the standpoint of their exhaust after burning as fuels, natural gas's higher hydrogen-to-carbon ratio means that burnt natural gas produces less CO[sub]2[/sub] per unit of heat than burnt coal. From that POV, natural gas contributes less to global warming than coal, per unit of heat.

But the process of moving natural gas from an underground reservoir to the point at which it's burned is not perfect. There are several opportunities for leaks, which put [I]unburned methane[/I] into the air, where it has far greater GHG effect than the CO[sub]2[/sub] that would have been produced if it had been burned.

Leaks can start when the underground reservoir is first breached. Hydraulic fracturing produces cracks through which methane flows more readily than through the rock pores of the undisturbed reservoir. When this just leads the methane to the pipe, that's okay. But sometimes the cracks also lead to other cracks, and eventually aboveground.

Even when the methane is channeled to the pipes, there are many joints in the pipes that lead it to the boiler, kitchen range, or whatever where it is to be burned, and some of those joints leak, starting at the well itself.

"Climate Benefits of Natural Gas May Be Overstated"

[URL]http://www.propublica.org/article/natural-gas-and-coal-pollution-gap-in-doubt[/URL]

[quote]The United States is poised to bet its energy future on natural gas as a clean, plentiful fuel that can supplant coal and oil. But new research by the Environmental Protection Agency—and a growing understanding of the pollution associated with the full “life cycle” of gas production—is casting doubt on the assumption that gas offers a quick and easy solution to climate change.

. . .

The EPA’s new analysis doubles its previous estimates for the amount of methane gas that leaks from loose pipe fittings and is vented from gas wells, drastically changing the picture of the nation’s emissions that the agency painted as recently as April. Calculations for some gas-field emissions jumped by several hundred percent. Methane levels from the hydraulic fracturing of shale gas were 9,000 times higher than previously reported.

. . .[/quote]

Last summer I pointed out that Joe Bastardi, chief hurricane and long-range forecaster at AccuWeather.com (and an anti-AGWer), had publicly made a falsifiable prediction:
[QUOTE=cheesehead;222907]An example of an anti-AGWer's public falsifiable prediction (I want to see more of these):

"Hurricanes, Global Warming or Cooling: The Weather Year of a Lifetime"

[URL]http://www.statecollege.com/news/columns/hurricanes-global-warming-or-cooling-the-weather-year-of-a-lifetime-458526/[/URL]

[/QUOTE]In that article, he stated the following:

[quote=Joe Bastardi]This past winter, now this summer and this hurricane season... well, I will never get a chance at hitting such major extreme weather events in the U.S. again.[/quote]

As I said then, "Got that? He's predicting that never again in his lifetime will there be such major extreme weather events (U.S.) as there were in the past year (starting with winter 2009-2010)."

Guess what?

Mr. Bastardi just resigned
( [URL]http://www.theweatherspace.com/news/TWS-2_21_2011_bastardi.html[/URL] ).

Climate Progress, an AGW blog, comments on his resignation at
[URL]http://climateprogress.org/2011/02/21/accuweather-joe-bastardi-resigns/[/URL]

after having pointed out his recent professional blunders, not only last month at
[URL]http://climateprogress.org/2011/01/18/joe-bastardi-in-accuweather-chief-long-range-forecaster-s/[/URL]

but also 11 months ago at
[URL]http://climateprogress.org/2010/03/24/accuweather-joe-bastardi-anti-science-meteorologist-sea-ice/[/URL]

[QUOTE=cheesehead;253444]Guess what?

Mr. Bastardi just resigned[/QUOTE]
He'll probably move his climate-science Bastardi-zation circus to Faux News...

Remember all those Republican promises, last fall after the election, to hold congressional hearings in February to investigate "climate fraud"?

February has come and gone.

GOP leaders managed to convince Tea Party freshmen that exposing their climatological ignorance in hearings was a bad idea.

"GOP Warriors On Climate Science Try Not To Shoot Own Feet"

[URL]http://zandarvts.blogspot.com/2011/02/gop-warriors-on-climate-science-try-not.html[/URL]

[quote]House Republicans vow to crush the international conspiracy on climate science...[URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/science/earth/23virginia.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss"]if they were smart enough to understand it, that is[/URL]. Our old friend Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli is getting the attention of Capitol Hill for all the wrong reasons.[/quote]Zandar then quotes from the NYT article (see below), and ends with:

[quote]So Republicans have a problem. They [I]want[/I] a witch hunt against science and all its pesky consequences that would hurt the bottom lines of energy companies that donate millions to Republicans, but they don't know how to make it [I]not look like[/I] a witch hunt against science. Granted, it's difficult trying to avoid looking like an uninformed moron in front of the cameras when you're actively choosing to be ignorant of the situation, and even Republicans have figured out that they are in over their heads here.

"Because I say so" isn't going to cut it in a congressional hearing and they know it. Cuccinelli is on his own. [/quote]The New York Times article was:

"Kenneth Cuccinelli of Virginia Wages War on Climate Science[FONT=monospace]
[/FONT][FONT=monospace]
[/FONT]A Climate Skeptic With a Bully Pulpit in Virginia Finds an Ear in Congress"

[URL]http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/science/earth/23virginia.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss[/URL]

[quote]For nearly a year, [URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/us/politics/25virginia.html"]Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II[/URL], Virginia’s crusading Republican attorney general, has waged a one-man war on the theory of man-made [URL="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier"]global warming[/URL].

. . .

But party leaders, treading warily, have cast their arguments against regulation largely in terms of economic consequences, playing down the prospect of major hearings to examine the scientific basis of human-caused warming.

Even dedicated opponents of climate action concede that hauling climate scientists before Congress and challenging their findings could easily backfire, as many representatives lack a sophisticated grasp of climatology and run the risk of making embarrassing errors.

“It’s a trap for a lot of members,” said [URL="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/marc_morano/index.html?inline=nyt-per"]Marc Morano[/URL], a former Republican staff member on the Senate Environment and Public Works committee and publisher of [URL="http://www.climatedepot.com/"]Climate Depot[/URL], a Web site that advances the arguments of climate skeptics. “They’re apt to make mistakes.”[/quote]Note: Morano was the author of Senator Inhofe's lists of hundreds of scientists who deny AGW, complete with quotations [I]including scientific errors that invalidate their arguments even as they're quoted by Inhofe/Morano[/I].

[quote]Meanwhile, a planned investigation by Representative [URL="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/i/darrell_issa/index.html?inline=nyt-per"]Darrell Issa[/URL] of California into alleged instances of manipulation and fraud by climate scientists — broadly similar to those cited by Mr. Cuccinelli in his legal complaints — has been indefinitely postponed.
[/quote]Those postponements/cancellations are a real shame. They could have exposed the antiAGWer's ignorance on a grand scale. Oh, well -- one can't win them all.