Global warming?

[Lamplighter]

HM and PH45, you hit it on the head...
This article seems to be coming from an industry-related source,
at least as I read their answers to their 5 questions.

OilPrice.com
Written by MasterResource **
Wednesday, 26 October 2011 12:29
Global Warming Debate Finally Over? Five Questions For Richard Muller

Here are the five key questions that Muller and any critic of so-called climate skepticism must confront:
Q1: How has the global average temperature changed in recent history?
Q2: How much of that change is attributable to human activities, and how much to a given activity?
Q3: What can we expect to happen to the climate in the future?
Q4: How will those predicted changes affect people in the future?
Q5: What should we do today in response to Q1–Q4?

To prove my own bias, I could add Q6:
What are the consequences of doing nothing,
if Q2 is answered in the affirmative with respect to CO2 release due to human activities ?

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

To prove my own bias, I could add Q6:
What are the consequences of doing nothing,
if Q2 is answered in the affirmative with respect to CO2 release due to human activities ?

What annoys me about the climate change debate is that there is some inherent assumption that we should not work to adapt to any changes in our global climate. Looking throughout history, natural climate change has usually gone side by side with some of the biggest falls of civilization and important times of innovation so whether climate change is man-made or not, why are we not looking at way to adapt to our new potential world? I understand there is no way to predict what is going to happen, but our military has a response plan for most imaginable situations so why can't there be discussion of response plans from multiple scenarios of climate change, ranging from nothing changing to apocalyptic changes of our climate.

In my opinion, there should be two seperate debates about climate change: one political and one apolitical. The political debate should discuss human influence in climate change, pollution, energy security, etc, and how that should affect our investments and regulations taking both economics and environment into consideration.

The second apolitical debate should focus solely on a human response to climate change. This debate should take into account multiple possible climate change outcomes and their effects on society. For example, if regions in Africa starts to become drier and hotter, hurting agriculture in that region, what should we do in response and how can we plan for it. If the same regions in Africa start to become colder and wetter, making the current crops useless, what new crops could be planted and what can be done to ease the transition?

I feel there is no much discussion about adaptation since most of the energy with climate change is directed towards human influence and stopping climate change. So these people will not want to discuss adaptation because they would rather avoid the entire situation by stopping climate change. By creating a second debate where we get rid of the economic and environmental politics and take a pragmatic approach, real ideas could appear to our possible responses to possible climate change.

[Lamplighter]

I see, and essentially do agree with, your point about a second kind of discussion.

My career and life experiences tell me that while technical
people can, and do, engage one another in such discussions,
it's almost impossible for those discussions to go public.

Lead in paint, putty, solder, etc was my first career encounter ('70s)
with such discussions.
It was so frustrating to see technical proposals and solutions nullified
by industry management-types, politicos, and the other veto-ers.
It was always someone else's problem or responsibility, or there was no such problem.
Griff found an NPR discussion of fracking I feel is a good example

So far as "adapting" our lives to changes, I think this is going to happen... wanted or not.
Personally, I haven't actually tried to think about what kinds of things
could be done in the face of extended global warming.
I get stuck on things like war, abandonment, and other forms of apocalypse.

Compared with technical issues of prevention, the challenges involved
with reaction, repair, remediation, reparation, etc. are even more frustrating.
All I can imagine a cry of:
"Look out Canada, here come the Yanks"

As I say, my career experience always puts me into "prevention" mode.