Is ANYTHING being done? I've found several articles online that say that this group of people is working with this group to help stop global warming, but the the article never say WHAT they're doing, is anything being done at all? I know that private citizens are trying to do something about it be using less electricity, driving less, planting trees etc. But is anything being done on a large scale? The question isn't CAN something be done anymore,now it's WILL something be done?
Yes The most powerful component of the solar system and the place that provides almost all of the heat energy on earth is going quiet, and maybe into a grand solar minimum. The last time it did this we had what is commonly referred to as "the little ice age". Add in a volcano, and we could have another "year without a summer". "Global warming" is so last century, but has gained a political following, and investments, many of which will be fruitless.
If that's the case, then the heat forcing from climate change is even greater than we believe, since the planet is still warming even with the Sun putting out slightly less power. If you are correct then once the sun returns to normal output we will see much more rapid temperature rises, as AGW and sun output increases combine. An excellent argument for more aggressive AGW mitigations,
Yes. The price of oil has dropped 50% so sales of SUVs are surging - growing more than three times faster than other cars. Also Solarcity, etc. may go belly up, and sales of photovoltaic systems are no longer increasing. Not changes in the beneficial direction.
With oil prices coming down by 50% are the liberals going to sing the praises of big oil? When the prices go up, big oil is always at fault, with those greedy bastards making profits. Will liberals now give credit to big oil for the price drop, due to this being logically consistent, or do they instinctively maintain a blind bias, not based on logic? The interesting part of the drop in oil prices was this has occurred even with the democrats in power increasing the cost of oil through taxes and thousands of new regulations. The manmade global warming scare was part of the scam to raise the cost even more through carbon credits. Big oil found ways to deal with the intrusive government scam and helped increase supply, using private land, until the free market adjusted the price downward. Government was always the source of problem that cause the price to rise, while big oil became the solution. This is a good litmus test of liberal objectivity to se if their opinion is reliable.
Only IF: You consider global warming a "bad" thing Which is an opinion that I do not happen to share. Look at the global climate during mis 11 and mis 31, then consider the effects those climates had on our forbears. I came to climate studies from anthropology/archaeology, and invariably look at it from that perspective. And, from that perspective, I would welcome a warmer world with a forested arctic ocean shoreline, etc...etc---during which times, our ancestors seem to have been doing exceptionally well. ........ Alternately, the archaeologist in me would like to see another period of glaciation(which could, unfortunately, reduce our population to a small percentage of it's current numbers---starvation, famine, disease, and cannibalism). The upside, is that the continental shelves would be exposed, and that is where we will find the best stuff to determine early sapiens migration patterns.
It will be for some, it will be a good thing for others. Here in the US the loss of water, the loss of crops and the ecosystem damage will be quite expensive to mitigate. In Montreal it might be a good thing.
Of course! I turned off my heater a little while ago. It's warm with the sun out. ... in seriousness, though, of course nothing is being done, or will be. Here's a major reason why: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism
By "Here in the US" did you mean California? From what little evidence we have available about the Hoxnian and Eemian which were much warmer than the holocene, there seems to have been no significant change in flora or fauna in the mid latitudes. The equable climate model holds up well in pollen studies from those times, with it being much warmer at the poles, and not much change in the low nor mid latitudes. If anything, it was wetter along with the warmer----with much less water wasted in the ice caps/ice fields, there was more available for rainfall and humidity. Cave studies of pollen indicate that the mid continent was much the same as today during the eemian. There does seem to have been a long cooler period toward the end of(for the last 1/2 of?) the eemian wherein once oak forest were replaced by abies. But no indication of a generally dryer climate. We have even less evidence from the hoxnian, but what we do have does not seem to contradict that from the eemian. I do not know of any good cave-pollen-climate studies from the eemian nor hoxnian from the west coast.
No, I meant most of the US. Losing water will harm the West. Losing cropland will harm the Midwest. Rising sea levels will harm Florida and Manhattan. I hope that's a joke.
d I have long been opposed to the huge subsides given to "Big OIl" especially the "depletion allowance" * at tax payer expense. For example, tuna fishermen don't get a depletion allowance as fish stocks decline - They don't earn billions so can not be one of the biggest funders of lobbyist an contributors to Congress men who "vote their way." - They get regulated to limit production instead. Oil is too valuable to future generations as a chemical feed stock, to just burn up for heat, when a renewable, non-polluting alternative for fueling cars is available and well proven in Brazil for three decades now, and actually cheaper per mile driven with ZERO* subsidy when oil is $80/barrel. All the world's cars requiring liquid fuel a decade from now** (assumes many will be electric, more "telecommuting", more car-pooling via faster "high occupancy only" highway lanes in from the suburbs) alcohol fuel can be grown on just the abandoned pasture in Africa, where for centuries the low productive "slash& burn" agriculture has been so common. Doing that there and for other subsistence level farming, would put cash in the hands of millions of small farmers. They would could become buyers of more advance First world products like pharmaceuticals, digital cameras, etc. making more high tech jobs too. * Actually it has been out-competing gasoline, which is subsidized until last year. I.e. The socialistic government owns more than 50% of the stock in PetroBrass, and forced them before the recent election to sell gasoline at a loss. Five or so years ago their stock was worth ~ $90 dollars at the peak, now after years of politically dictated losses, it is about $5 per share. - that is huge "negative subsidy" for alcohol it competed against with increasing penetration of the car fuel market! ** It will take about a decade to convert liquid fuel requiring late vintage cars to alcohol fuel (at cost in mass of less than $200/ car) and only slight less than that to build new distillation plants, expand the cane growing into abandoned pasture, etc. Note doing that may actually increase food production, as use of fertilizer can be avoided if a nitrogen "fixing" crop (soy beans) is grown in the cane field for a year between new cane planting cycles. (The cut cane grows back from the roots for at least four years) Giving some fertilizer is most cost effective and is done by industrial scale producers, not by small farmers, but even their use is tiny compared that used in Iowa to grow corn and compensate for the short growing season there. So much is applied, that from an environmental POV, pure gasoline is better than "gasohol." This is because soil bacteria convert most of the excessive fertilizer into NOx - a terrible, even health damaging, GHG. CO2 is not damaging to your health even 100 times higher than current air concentrations and being a linear molecule, O=C=O not even a strong GHG compared to a non-linear, "3D" molecule like NOx or CH4 which in first decade after release does more than 100 times more global warming than CO2 does.
that's a silly thing to hope for you might find: http://www.geo.uni-bremen.de/geomod/staff/mprange/1-s2.0-S1040618213009622-main.pdf enlightening
