To be fair to Putin, his plan of crippling modern industry, imposing vegetarianism, removing the right to multiple children, and cutting western living standards would make the impact of climate change significantly less... But it ain't gonna happen, and frankly I'd rather take my chances with the climate change.

"But it ain't gonna happen, and frankly I'd rather take my chances with the climate change."

Scratch beneath the surface and this is what we're left with. It's not so much that the Octavious's of the world don't believe anything can be done, it's that they don't want to do it. Call their bluff and they'll still refuse to cooperate.

The cure you prescribe is worse than the disease. It is as undesirable as it is unattainable. Humanity's greatest strengths have always been its ability to adapt and its ability to innovate. Its ability to give things up is poor in the extreme. We should look for a solution that plays to our strengths.

+1 Octavious for taking human nature into account. Putin33's solutions aren't designed in a way that works for actual homo sapiens.

It's cheap and easy to appeal to the laziness and greed of this mythological thing called "human nature" as a reason for why we can't do something. The irony is Octavious is saying that humans are adaptive, which belies the fixity of human nature.

Either humans are going to have to learn to change their 'nature' or catastrophe is imminent. I know complacent middle class (small l) liberals don't like to hear that, because that's inconvenient for their comfortable lifestyles, but the choices are stark. The climate is in crisis, and wishful thinking (engineering the environment) or surrender are not solutions.

Repeatedly demanding the impossible is not a solution. You accuse me of wishful thinking whilst at the same time pushing for a way forward you know full well will never be accepted by any major nation on the planet. You have to work with what you have, not what you wish you had. Once you have grasped this fact you might be able to do something constructive.

"Repeatedly demanding the impossible is not a solution."

Controlling the climate is possible, then? Really?

"You have to work with what you have, not what you wish you had."

We do not possess limitless ingenuity nor boundless adaptability. I'm calling for subtraction of what we already have, you're calling for addition of what we're likely never to get.

@Putin33 People don't tolerate subtractions from what they already have.

@Putin33

You stated:

"Halt car production. Implement commuter taxes. Shut down all coal power plants. Ban electricity-guzzling devices. Abolish meat production. Take advantage of the opportunity to de-industrialize that the blight of 'free trade' has provided us. "

At a serious, concrete, logistical level, *no one knows how to do any of those things*. The consequences of climate change are dire but so are the consequences of breaking the existing supply chains that keep everyone alive. There actually are not multi-year stockpiles of food, water, and medicine to tide civilization over while the revolutionary, austere new logistics are sorted out. If the crops don't get grown because the fuel, machinery, and fertilizers are not being produced and distributed, it's a Malthusian disaster next season, not down the line someplace. You're underestimating the complexity of partially and selectively dismantling production. Command economies can't even keep windshield wipers in stock.

That doesn't make any sense. Abolishing meat production would overnight free up untold acres of land for food production, because the vast amounts currently being used and wasted to force cows and other livestock to gain absurd amounts of weight would no longer be needed. How coal plants or automobiles are related to food and water supply, other than polluting it, is beyond me. If we reduced the number of vehicles being used we'd actually be able to put more of the very large unused labor force into food production.

"You're underestimating the complexity of partially and selectively dismantling production."

You're overestimating it. This type of thing has been done before, many times.

"Command economies can't even keep windshield wipers in stock."

Command economies relocated entire industrial bases in the middle of war and still outproduced their opponents and made superior products (e.g. T-34s). Market economies cannot do the kind of large-scale and fast-paced coordination necessary to overcome this problem. Relying on voluntarism to solve an issue like climate change is a recipe for failure.

“How coal plants or automobiles are related to food and water supply, other than polluting it, is beyond me. “

Coal plants and automobiles, and other forms of energy and transportation, are needed to produce the inputs to agriculture. Fertilizers, crop chemicals, prefabricated structures for processing and storage, and vehicles need to be produced industrially. The cultivation, processing and transportation of the crops requires electricity and combustible fuel. If that’s beyond you why do you feel qualified to suggest that it’s safe to dismantle?

Coal is a very inefficient energy source and automobiles are not relied upon to transport large-scale freight like crops. We do not need 'crop chemicals' nor fossil-fuel produced inorganic fertilizers for food production.

In what sense is coal inefficient? In turns of energy returned for energy invested its probably the best bang for the buck. Of course this does not take into account its negative externalities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested

I think I get what you mean. With coal much of the energy is lost as heat, and is not converted to electricity.

Another way of looking at might be the amount of C02 that release relative to the amount of energy produced, and by that measure coal is probably the worst.

Dump the CO2 and the heat into a greenhouse (you know, a big glass room full of plants?) and find a way to take the resulting O2 out into the atmosphere.

Why is it that everyone assumes that a substance that is 0.039% of the atmosphere has such an amazing dramatic affect on the planet. DOUBLE it...to .08%, and it's still shit.

Comparing a substance that is 0.039% of the atmosphere to a solid wall of glass is moronic...

...particularly given recent evidence that said substance is affected BY temperature change, not a cause of it...

http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/12/billion-dollar-climate-denial-network-exposed/

"Why is it that everyone assumes that a substance that is 0.039% of the atmosphere has such an amazing dramatic affect on the planet. DOUBLE it...to .08%, and it's still shit."

This is possibly the stupidest thing I've ever read. For example, the Inland Taipan snake, found in Australia, has venom with LD. 50 of 0.025mg/kg. This is a substance that is 0.000025% of the body, yet it will kill half the population, so to claim that 0.039% is nothing is just ridiculous.

mendax - you anaogy is possibly the stupidest thing you have ever said. You didnt' address my question *at all*, least of all did you address the *fact* that a recent peer-reviewed paper clearly demonstrates CO2 levels change AFTER temperature changes -- it is a lagging indictor; changes in CO2 are caused BY temp changes, not a cause of temperature changes

but I know...it's fun to keep your head buried in the sand and hold on tight to those outdated scientific **theories** because we wouldn't want you to keep up with modern science if it conflicts with your climate religion...

I quoted the part of your post I was responding to. Given this, I don't know why you think it's relevant to continue talking about the other part in an attempt to defend yourself. You are correct that temperature also influences CO2 levels, hence the idea of a tipping point, but this is nothing to do with my previous post - that was simply calling you out on a blatant lack of understanding.

http://www.drexel.edu/now/news-media/releases/archive/2013/December/Climate-Change/

Interesting research attempting to track the funding that goes into the science that denies climate change.

I hate to support Krellin's moronic objection, but there is one (1) shred of credibility to his point. Sometimes an incorrect conclusion from an authoritative source can "sustain itself" in a way, because subsequently people discard data that is too out-of-whack with the incorrect-but-accepted result. Feynman saw this with Millikan's oil-drop experiment:

‘[Feynman] was mercilessly skeptical. He loved to talk about the famous oil-drop experiment of Caltech’s first great physicist Robert Millikan, which revealed the indivisible unit charge of the electron by isolating it in tiny, floating oil drops. The experiment was right but some of the numbers were wrong–and the record of subsequent experimenters stood as a permanent embarrassment to physics. They did not cluster around the correct result; rather, they slowly closed in on it. Millikan’s error exerted a psychological pull, like a distant magnet forcing their observations off center. If a Caltech experimenter told Feynman about a result reached after a complex process of correcting data, Feynman was sure to ask how the experimenter had decided when to stop correcting, and whether the decision had been made before the experimenter could see what effect it would have on the outcome. It was all too easy to fall into the trap of correcting until the answer looked right.’

(From James Gleick via some other dude here http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=191 the only place where I could find a copyable quote, I hope *this* guy didn't snooker me with a falsehood!)

"the idea of a tipping point" blah blah blah...yes, more climate Scare-Model predictions that never true. I get it....<shivers...>...I'm very scared...

It's too bad the climate scare-ologists don't just reprogram all their fake climate models so that they don't always predict outrageuous doom scenarios...maybe they can predict unicorns will fly out of my butt.

tendmote - if you agree with my "moronic" objection, then apparently you are a moron, too.

Either that or maybe instead of always seeking a way to attack me you can just take the point and address it. Moron.

@mendax - the only blatant misunderstanding around is the blatant misunderstanding is that of the climate scare-ologists, who have yet to produce a single accurate prediction with their scare-dictions of doom and gloom. Second in line for the award for those with the least understanding of anything would be dance monkeys like you, who knowing that every prediction of the climate scare-ologists fails to comes true, still insist they are accurate and true as you quake in fear while keeping your CO2 releasing computer fired up 24/7 (yes, it releases CO2…it burns electricity, which most likely comes from some carbon-based energy source…making you an assclown and a hypocrite)

Your objection is moronic (and I didn't call *you* a moron) because it relies on 0.039% being a small scalar number, without regard to the impact of what is being multiplied by that number. Mendax's analogy is perfectly good, 0.000025% is also a small number but if that proportion of your mass is snake venom, that's high-impact.

I was trying to disown that point and separate it from your COMPLETELY UNRELATED point that contradictory data does exist. *My* point (borrowed from Feynman) is that there may be MORE contradictory data that is being excluded just because it seems "out-of-whack."

No, tendmote, the objection is not moronic in the least, because the evidence to back CO2 having this dramatic affect on the planet is completely lacking...but the opposite data may very well be present. The significance of 0.039% of the atmosphere being CO2 as compared to the other greenhouse gases is actually very important.

The significance of this tiny number having a tendency to change (go up AND DOWN) based upon temperature...and AFTER the temp has changed...is quite significant.

The fact the despite claims that CO2 is constantly building up (the production of said gas increases *constantly*) and yet we do not see the greenhouse effect becomign more dramatic in scale with the production of the gas is significant. The fact that over the last 10-15 years CO2 production has continued to increase, but we now, in fact, in a cooling phase, is significant.

Again, you use that fact that 0.039% is a tiny number as if that in itself has any meaning.

bump.

The Asian super Typhoon, and the North American 2K mile ice storms give some pause for thought on this climate subject; the more recent floods in southern UK and the 36 degrees C. in Frankfurt this past summer colour the media reports.
I do not mention the ice melt in the Swiss & Tibetan glaciers but it should appear obvious that the more powerful of the nation-states assembled in Copenhagen et cetera fail to publicly acknowledge the damage climate trends make evident.
The drumbeat of corporate interests in maintaining the status quo (CO/2- and sulfur burning-wise) with the message that nothing can be done & that if it were it would be of so Little Consequence that we'll all meltdown - such a Lobbying drumbeat in the halls of parliaments & lesser Legislatures belie the folly that humankind subscribes to Reason & Logic.
Aristotle examined biology not in the Laboratory & while his historical era didn't have the advanced math, & his school of thought made some errors, he did identify & categorize Reality.
If it's staring you in the face & you don't see it, optics won't help.