[sck5]

cam said

"For ex. there IS a causal mechanism that is well understood for global warming - more CO2, other things equal, will cause warming.

NO NO NO...that is for a closed system which the earth is NOT!! I do not accept your FIRST underlying argument and neither do many scientists."

Actually, I think we are agreeing if you read my next sentence. The mechanism I cite COULD cause global warming - when you say "in a closed system" I think you mean the same thing as I do when I say "other things equal". But we cant know whether it DOES until we better understand the totality of the system it is embedded in, where the subsystem of CO2 is not closed and other things are not equal.

In the larger picture, there IS something like a greenhouse effect going on that has been there since the beginning of time - the earth gets some heat from its core and some because it absorbs more energy from the sun than it radiates back (i.e. the atmosphere acts to some extent like a GH). The question here is what happens when you add more man-made gasses to the picture than have been there before. Some believe that it warms the world up. Some think not and would say that the warming is part of natural fluctuations. Others would actually agree with both and say that the natural fluctuations in history are themselves the result of gas mixture fluctuation caused by things like volcanic activity. Given that the current warming (if we are measuring correctly and it is actually happening) is within the range of what we have seen in the historical record it will be hard to "prove" one way or the other because we dont have historical records of all of the variables in the atmosphere we might imagine are important.

So where do I come out? Neither side can "prove" themselves correct because these are all statistical arguments and as I said above there will always be counterexamples to point at. So what to do? Well, that depends how worrying you find the warming that does seem to be occuring. If you are worried then try to do something - If not, then be happy. But even if you DO want to do something there is the issue that maybe nothing we do will make any difference anyway.

If I were a conservative (which I am not) here is what would be pissing me off. All of things that are argued as "solutions" to GH gas warming are things that have been promoted for decades for other reasons entirely. (e.g. put a tax on gasoline or energy more generally). A conservative could well come to the conclusion that the libs failed to carry the day with the old arguments and so are moving on to new ones in hope that these might work better. That would piss me off. On the other hand, if you are a liberal you would look at this and say, Well, there is one more good reason to do what ought to have been done 30 years ago, why dont these people get it yet?

What I think will happen (and I am a lib but also try to be realistic) is that the market forces will win in the end. When oil gets expensive enough (and it will - our demand is still pretty huge and China and India are growing at a very high rate and can be expected to continue for some time to come) then we will start to switch to other cheaper forms of energy. Given that the need to switch could be sudden and painful (e.g. some ******* closes the Persian Gulf to shipping) it would be a good idea to do research to look at the alternatives now rather than waiting.

And by the way for those who dont want the government involved here - I share the pessimism on government investment decisions - but as long as the alternative energy sources are still more expensive than oil the private sector is unlikely to put much money into it. There ARE models of government funded research that has yielded great commercial applications - look at NASA or the government funding of basic DNA research which underlies all the biotech stuff. The private sector is the only viable alternative for a healthy growth sector in the economy but as long as the profit calculation is the way it currently is, they arent going to do much. I think the govt. could do something like offer a million dollar prize each year to the 10 best energy inventions - THAT would get everybody out of their armchairs looking for new ideas or ways to commercialize things.