If we want to be fair, and not just debate to “win”, we should acknowledge — which this guy does not — that atmospheric CO2 has risen from about 260 ppm in recent history to about 400 ppm today, and continuing to rise; a 40% increase so far. This is because of all the stuff we burn. We’re tampering with a parameter of the ecosystem, and the question of how this will impact the system should be asked.
At the simplistic level, the theory of global warming is sound: The CO2 retains more of the Sun’s radiant energy; therefore the planet will be warmer. The ecosystem is vastly complex and flexible and fairly self-correcting, but the reasonable intuitive guess would be that, broadly speaking, global warming will occur.
My problem with “green” isn’t the theory but the political and intellectual corruption. It’s all been a colossal excuse to tax and control and pay off cronies and waste money on useless boondoggles. It would be great if we could really become that “green energy superpower”, but all I see is shuttered industries and production shifted to China, which now emits far more CO2 than we ever did. So the problem has passed beyond America, and we could disappear from the face of the Earth and the CO2 is not going to stop. This guy is right in pointing out that Australia can tax itself to death and it’s not going to matter one bit.
I think that, to the extent global warming becomes a problem, our technical solutions will lie in addressing that problem in other ways. Hey, blow up some nuclear weapons in the desert and bring on a touch of that nuclear winter to counteract global warming. That’s too gross an approach, but you get the idea.
But is CO2 a leading indicator of temperature or a trailing indicator. Some scientists say CO2 rises as temperature rises. The main thing driving temperature is the sun. The earth was warmer 1000 years ago. Greenland was named Greenland because it was green. The the Little Ice Age hit and it was no longer green and the colony there was no longer self sufficient.
If we want to be fair, and not just debate to “win”, we should acknowledge — which this guy does not — that atmospheric CO2 has risen from about 260 ppm in recent history to about 400 ppm today, and continuing to rise; a 40% increase so far. This is because of all the stuff we burn. We’re tampering with a parameter of the ecosystem, and the question of how this will impact the system should be asked.
At the simplistic level, the theory of global warming is sound: The CO2 retains more of the Sun’s radiant energy; therefore the planet will be warmer. The ecosystem is vastly complex and flexible and fairly self-correcting, but the reasonable intuitive guess would be that, broadly speaking, global warming will occur.
My problem with “green” isn’t the theory but the political and intellectual corruption. It’s all been a colossal excuse to tax and control and pay off cronies and waste money on useless boondoggles. It would be great if we could really become that “green energy superpower”, but all I see is shuttered industries and production shifted to China, which now emits far more CO2 than we ever did. So the problem has passed beyond America, and we could disappear from the face of the Earth and the CO2 is not going to stop. This guy is right in pointing out that Australia can tax itself to death and it’s not going to matter one bit.
I think that, to the extent global warming becomes a problem, our technical solutions will lie in addressing that problem in other ways. Hey, blow up some nuclear weapons in the desert and bring on a touch of that nuclear winter to counteract global warming. That’s too gross an approach, but you get the idea.
But is CO2 a leading indicator of temperature or a trailing indicator. Some scientists say CO2 rises as temperature rises. The main thing driving temperature is the sun. The earth was warmer 1000 years ago. Greenland was named Greenland because it was green. The the Little Ice Age hit and it was no longer green and the colony there was no longer self sufficient.