1) "Plants grow 180% faster in 800 ppm then in 200 ppm." This is certainly possible. However, the Earth is a complicated system and raising CO2 may affects plants in unknown ways.

2) "Fair enough, but they produce them at a limited rate, like there is a reason we only hear discussion about CO2." That's true, but it isn't a good reason to ignore them.

3) "There is very limitted evidence suggesting that fraking negatively impacts the environment and its far cleaner then lots of alternatives, like coal." Fracking is very bad for the environment. I can find some papers, if you'd like.

"Unless we find new tech and new energy sources, we will start seeing oil reserves deplete eventually. I doubt it will be in this century, but it will happen in mankinds future eventually."

This happens once it becomes economically feasible to do so. To throw money at an issue that will become a problem in unknown future is irrational and downright stupid. That's not how investment works, you have to prioritize because you are subject to a resource constraint. We have been gradually increasing our energy efficiency and inventing new ways of extracting energy from fossil fuels (oil sands, frozen methane hydrate) because it became reasonable to do so. Oil is getting more expensive, people demand clean technologies, companies see business opportunities in the segment. The principle of shared value is already replacing dumb CSR in the philosophies of major multinationals because it brings them money. So *we* are investing in solving the oil issue. It's just not in a "OMG let's forget about everything and focus only on this" style because that's not how can a functional society look like. That's how the Great Leap Forward with its backyard furnaces looked like.

There's little point in inventing in a technology that is economically unfeasible to operate, when you can be inventing technologies that actually are. Sure, it's nice knowing you have a backup and if aliens came and gave it to us we would be happy, but if their perfect solution that would cover our energy sustainablity forever would require drilling hundreds of miles in the ground, we would still not use it because drilling hundreds of miles in the ground is much more costly than using what we have.

@Draugnar: Farmland is being reduced and yeilds are increasing because technology has increased.

@Abge: I would like to see that date.

@Ulytau: +1

*data

@Fasces

Sure thing. I'll get to it in a bit.

A lot had been said on the dangers of CO2, but remember that CO2 is only one part of the cocktail of pollutants that are emitted when coal etc. is burned. Environmental factors aside, I want to limit what I inhale non-recreationally.

Well, as it turns out, I had forgotten what fracking was. I was actually thinking about Mountaintop Mining. My bad.

There are some concerns with fracking, though. Mostly involving methane leakage. I will agree that it isn't as bad as I previously indicated though.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-011-0061-5
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwH0Gnsrya38MEMyRzgwNFdjMEU/edit?usp=sharing

and from what I have read its far safer then alternatives, unless your in a matt damon movie, where apparently fraking causes cows to die and farms to blow up.

"Whether it is by nature or man or both, it would be madness not to invest in ways of adapting to it or engineering solutions to counter it. ..."

And what *exactly* does this mean? The models, as you say, are shit. The predictions of doom and chaos *never* come true. So what are you engineering to prevent? Longer growing seasons? Hmmm...not too hard to "engineer" for that one.

You are buying in to a lie if you think we MUST ACT "just in case", whether "it" is man made or natural...because you don't know what you are engineering FOR.

The ONLY suggestions that come from the radical environmental movement are "eliminate all fossil fuels and move to "renewable" which, geneally, cost more in energy to produce that they actually provide....witness the catastrophe of "ethanol" for example, which costs more in fossil fuel energy than it actually provides! And yet environmental whoackos will push it and fund it until they are blue in the face because it is "renewable" -- even though it also steals from the food supply. THAT is the madness and insanity of the "environmental" movement and their "solution" Electric cars that have batteries powered by...you guessed it...COAL powered plants...meaning, because of losses in the transmission system, actually costs you MORE energy in the long run instead of burning the fuel directly to power your vehicle...say...the higly energy-storing gasoline. But no....burning coal is FAR better than gasoline, says the ignorant environmentalist...

It's impossible to have a logical, rational discussion with environmentalists, becuase the *overwhelming* majority of them 1. Do not know science, 2. no nothing about the "solutions" they propose and what they *truly* mean, and 3. have beliefs in "climate change" that are more religious than they are scientific, meaning that they are unable to actually analyze real data and possible change opinions, because they have a faith-based "belief", not a scientifically held understanding.

I laugh at the fact that Krellin thinks he knows more about science then multiple Phds who have spend 20 years studying the climate.

Krellin man is well within power of destroying the world. The worlds nuclear arsenals should be held a such, great overstatements and generalizations based on limited research seems to be your forte.

Apparently the Russian and American nuclear arsenals are enough to destroy the world 4 times over.

"well within power of destroying the world" Even if you launched all the nukes at once, you would scar the planet and destroy a lot of life....but you would simply not "destroy the planet".

You are simply woefully ignorant.

So you geniuses are saying that the earth, as a big, generally round ball of stuff, would cease to be in existence, would no longer be orbitting the sun, if the puny humans launched all their nukes?

I think you are completely misjudging the SIZE of the planet.

Like all good environmentalist whackos you believe that *right now* is exactly how the world should *always* be. This ideology is the height of human arrogance...as for 99%+ of the history of the planet, the earth was fundamentally *different* from how it is now -- in terms of the global termperature -- both cooler AND hotter, and in terms of content of species...and 99% of all species that have ever existed are extinct...not *because* of man, but became extinct PRIOR TO man.

So this notion that we must *freeze* the planet earth with it's current temperature, foliage and species content is simply and utterly ridiculous. Arrogance in the extreme.

This does *NOT* mean that we should willfully damage anything - pollution is a bad thing, I agree, if done without a purpose - i.e. I don't mind a little smoke from a stack if it powers my industry and my hospital, and I am fully aware that mostly the smoke disipates and the very, very resilient earth deals with it...much as, left untouched, the Gulf of Mexico would have absorbed and disipated the large oil spill. In fact...oil *naturally* leaks in to the Gulf and the oceans *all the time* not because man drills...but because it's just *natural* that oil leaks in to the ocean...and the ocean "deals" with it.

Forest fires happen...and release "pollutants"...and other parts of the ecology *love* the fire and *love* the pollutants.

Bottom line, all this mad *hysteria* is all *extremely* MAN-centric arrogance. You can not "destroy" the planet....it is simply a nonsencial notion pushed on you by the Priests of Environmentalism to capture you with your self fear of change, because they have declared *now* to somehow be perfection.....all except for mankind itself, which, ironically, they hate, even as all their objectives are meant to preserve the pestilence they despise.

It's all rather amusing, actually.

I'm going to go run my car for no good reason...rev the engine loudly and watch for puffs of filthy smoke...lol

"multiple Phds who have spend 20 years studying the climate. " Al Gore and the typical hysterical mouthpeices of the "climate science" *industry* are usually NOT PhD scientists. But I *can* find you *real* PhD scientists that actually DO study the climate who say it is all garbage and nonsense....But, you know, Al Gore is selling carbon credits on the side...he has an industry and a platform to speak from, and you mind that are easilt persuaded by scary words that he has indoctrinated in to his new religion to such as extent that they....that is YOU...won't even review contradictory *FACTS*....let alone consider changing your ill-informed opinion.

Most environmentalist whackos (such as yourselves) when presented with data that contradicts thier religious climate beliefs, will not even read it.

I *dare* you to look up research on CO2 as a LAGGING indicator of global temperature, rather than a leading indicator. As a LAGGING indicator, it means it can not *cause* it...and the evidence *exists* that CO2 is a *lagging* indicator.

NOW...when confronted with an easily researchable topic...will you be "scientific" and study this new hypothesis? Or will you hold tight to your religious belief and not even examine data that is possibly contrary to your *faith*?

http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=11174

"I'm going to go run my car for no good reason...rev the engine loudly and watch for puffs of filthy smoke...lol"

You are arguing that car fumes aren't dangerous to the planet, and sure, I agree. Remove all the humans and in a few decades the world will be far on the way to being back to how it was before humanity. However, if you rev your engine in your garage with the windows closed for a while you will not be in such a good state. Like I said earlier, I'm not so concerned with what it's doing to plants, I am worried about what it is doing to me.

Like you said, turn the factories off in smog filled cities and sure, it will get better. But nobody is turning them off, and the smog isn't going away. There are thousands, tens of thousands of people being poisoned by that crap. So I most certainly feel that something should be done. I don't really care if it is cleaner use of fossil fuels, renewable energy, or nano bots to scrub the air. I'll leave that to smarter people then me. But I do not agree that simply burning more fossil fuels is a good thing.

JMO unless you live in Asia you don't have smog. Toronto's Air Quality Index is 25, and most cities in North America have an AQI of under 50, AQI of under 100 has negligible effects on human health.

I'm more concerned with Beijing which will occasionally reach 450, and the other Chinese cities which are even worse then that.

But overall I am not that concerned, on a per capita basis, the industrialization of England and America were far worse for the environment then the industrialization of China. The difference is America and Europe did it with more then a billion less people. Once China becomes a rich and fully developed country, it will start polluting less, just like we are, per capita (not overall) polluting less then we were a few decades ago.

@krellin - Destruction does not require something ceasing to exist. Shatter a glass window pane with a brick and the pane has been destroyed. It still exists in shard form but it is no longer a window pane. Likewise if you turn the planet into a smoldering slag heap, it still exists but it is no longer Earth. At least not one that can sustain life. Instead it is more of a moon-like environment. So it is, in effect, destroyed.

Fasces - I will dispute his fact that the Sahel is getting more rainfall now than before. Desertification is still happening in Africa and elsewhere in the world. Hell, its happening in the American Southwest right now. The Earth may be getting more rainfall, but that's primarily due to areas that already got a lot of rain getting even more rainfall.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4 /Greening_Sahel_1982-1999.jpg
This shows the change in vegetation across Sahel for the last 5th of the 20th century. Red means decrease in vegetation, white mean negligible change, yellow means increase of vegetation and green means big increase.

This data would suggest that, despite popular belief, Sahel isn't actually desertifying.

Bad link due to having the points symbol, here is another version of it:
http://tinyurl.com/c97gvsx

Change in rainfall hardly matters in reversing desertification, using one's brain does:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vpTHi7O66pI#!

Mine wasn't showing change in rainfall, it was showing a change in vegetation. Obviously a green peace of land is not a desert, hence why mine actually shows that Sahel isn't being desertified...

that said that was a really interesting lecture

@ Fasces: "My problem with the environmentalist movement is they want to curb economic growth to save the environment."

Some "deep green" environmentalists think that, but certainly not all enviornmentalists. I care deeply about the environment, and as such I'm a supporter or sustainable development - striking a balance between the economic, social and environmental impacts of man's activity, and seeking to allow growth to continue without causing harm to society or the environment.

Many "green" technologies are based on energy efficiency. Whether or not you believe that reducing CO2 emissions is important, if you reduce the amount of energy your business uses, guess what - your energy bills will be less. Amazing but true! Often sustainable solutions are just good business, but companies are slow to implement them because of an "ain't broke / don't need fixing" attitude.

Another example is driver training. If you run a company with a large distribution operation or company car fleet, training your drivers to drive more economically is environmentally positive since the vehicle emissions will be reduced - but sensible, economic driving will also reduce wear on tyres, brakes, and other components, prolonging their life and cutting your fleet maintenance costs.

It's just good business.

if it were just about co2 then it would make the planet greener, but it isnt. this is the scam of modern environmentalism. real issues like smog are competely ignored because everyone has to focus on co2.

but yeah, if it were just co2 and co2 somehow warmed the earth then it would be greener still - there was the most life on earth when the earth was warm and least amount of life when the earth was cold. however, that conjecture is nonsense, so i cant in good conscience use it.

but due to pollution (real pollution, not co2) i would say that it does not make the planet greener.

"Often sustainable solutions are just good business, but companies are slow to implement them because of an "ain't broke / don't need fixing" attitude."

Some are, but then they aren't optimizing the shareholder value and will get punished along the way if they won't hop on the train eventually. Most multinationals are exploring the options CSV offers and many, many of them already has projects focused on it. The others don't find it cost-efficient yet. Since you are mostly interested in the social aspect of CSV (logically, since you're an outsider to the company) you regard that as a slow and lazy attitude and in some cases, you are definitely right. However, most managers cannot be stupid morons, and since they hopefully know more about their business than you do, their unwillingness to act more green might be caused by relatively worse NPV of green projects compared to the traditional ones. Don't paint them with a broad brush.

i dont watch much corporate media anymore, are they reporting the horrendous winter in european countries? apparently moscow is bracing for the worst march storm in 50 years. makes me even more confident that global temperatures are declining and it only looks stable due to the complex hiding the decline. ref video: http://www.reuters.com/video/2013/03/13/moscow-braces-for-biggest-march-snowfall?videoId=241597184&videoChannel=1

@ulytau: "but then they aren't optimizing the shareholder value"

Yes, but the majority of companies don't have shareholders. A huge amount of economic activity is undertaken by small and medium sized firms that aren't floated on the stock market.