A Hidden Loop In the Carbon Cycle Discovered 310
Googlesaysmysiteisdangerousanditisn't! writes "A recent article in Science says that researchers in China and the US have found massive carbon uptake in the world's deserts. The effects of this are huge. 35% of the Earth's land surface is desert, and the uptake equates to 5.2 billion tons of carbon sequestered each year. This is more than half of the carbon released by humans. In these 'dry oceans,' the grains of sand allow the carbon dioxide to enter and react with alkaline soil to become carbonates. Another scientist suspects that biotic desert crusts, alkaline soils, and increased precipitation may be driving the uptake."
PDF (Score:2, Insightful)
At what point does ythis break down? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok. So they've found a massive carbon sink that was unaccounted for. Great!
They also say that due to changing conditions, including increased precipitation, there is more uptake occurring.
Does this process ever reach a point where it stops? Is there only so much carbon that can be converted/sequestered? If conditions change enough, will this huge carbon sink disappear rapidly, adding a HUGE amount of carbon to the atmosphere?
This is fascinating, but it still feels to me like this situation could be as fragile as any others we've discovered around the globe.
Re:PDF (Score:5, Insightful)
It is called the status bar. It shows you what a link is pointing to.
Re:At what point does ythis break down? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that this is just an indication that we TRULY do not understand how the global climate actually works. There have been billions of years of fluctuations and change to get the Earth to where it is now. We have no idea how most of that worked and only a vague idea of what is happening now. In the search to figure out why temperatures are rising globally, several things have been named as contributory causative factors. There is NO definitive proof that x, y, or z has caused global warming, only that it is probable that all three have contributed. BTW, we also don't fully and empirically understand what caused past global cooling periods either. We have some good ideas, and some evidence that supports those ideas, but no true and complete understanding.
There is in fact little understanding of how the position of the Earth/solar system in the plane of the Milky Way affects solar radiation et al and thus how it affects planet temperatures. Desert sand is not the cure, it is a possible cure. There are others, like cutting down on human CO2 emissions etc.
Call me paranoid if you like, but implementing all the efforts we can to stop global warming may indeed have detrimental effects on the climate as a whole. Until we know *MUCH* more about global climate control knee jerk reactions should be kept to a minimum.
Yes, cutting carbon emissions is good, but lets not throw the baby out with the bath water or look for silver bullet cures. Mother nature works slowly so I'm reasonably certain that slow but sure methods will help where drastic measures (such as volcanic eruptions) are just another way to toss global climate on it's ear. The knee jerk reactions are probably what will suddenly dump HUGE amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.
Something is not quite right here... (Score:5, Insightful)
If this is indeed the case it would seem a bit strange that it has not been detected before. I mean with all the climate change debate going on there has been quite close scrutiny of the estimates of CO2 going into and out of the atmosphere, so if this is as big a carbon sink as described it would have to mean that the other sinks ( i.e the ocean and the biosphere ) are less potent than previously assumed.
Re:Create more deserts? (Score:4, Insightful)
How about we say the deserts allow the earth's thermal system to reach a balance? We have more deserts, which sequester more carbon, which makes us cooler, which sequesters less carbon, which makes us hotter, which makes more deserts.
We shouldn't worry about global warming, we should worry if we can survive global warming...
Re:At what point does ythis break down? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:At what point does ythis break down? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think a large part of greenhouse emissions being the blame is people want something they can point their finger at and put it on with the belief there is something they can do to change it.
The real problem isn't nature, and to your point, the real solution isn't changing anything, it's dedicated research.
Unfortunately, awareness isn't a terribly useful thing especially for the masses. When people learn part of the information, the wrong parts of the whole idea gets heavily associated and then it becomes misinformation.
Ironically, we need less Al Gores and interest groups and treehuggers trying to get 'the word out', we need more university graduates being interested in the study.
Since people can't simply be told there's nothing to worry about yet, they're going for second worst and being fed and recycled the idea that it is everyone's responsibility to ... and that by doing ... it will make things better.
Re:At what point does ythis break down? (Score:5, Insightful)
Depending on how you define "knee jerk", I disagree.
Reducing overall usage of oil is a good thing for many reasons outside of the potential environmental benefits, including:
So, if it's "knee jerk" for the US to ratchet up CAFE requirements (and the equivalents for trucks and trains) so we become best-in-breed at fuel efficient transportation, or for the US to increase investing in alternative energy sources, then I'm all for "knee jerk" reactions.
I've said it before and I'll say it again (Score:2, Insightful)
We [all of humanity, as in not one single person on the planet] do not even understand 1/100th of 1/100th of 1% of how our planet works. A lot of people believe that we are making a huge impact, but if you really do look at the big picture, we [all of humanity] actually take up a very small percentage of the planet. There is a lot of uncovered ground and water that works to clean up after itself and us.
The planet is not out of balance, we are not causing that much damage and in most places where we have caused damage if we stopped it would be cleaned up all by itself in 5 to 15 years. Some of the more damaged places would self-heal in 15 to 50 years.
Yes, there are things we should be doing to reduce our impact. But this whole global warming, global climate change thing happening now is NOT caused by us. Well, some of it might be, but we cannot possibly know that. We have so few years of records in the history of the planet it's not even funny. How far back do ACCURATE temperature readings go back around most of the globe? 50 to 60 years. How many years do we have accurate temperature readings for what are now populated areas? Maybe 200, at most.
We cannot even begin to understand what is happening now. For all we know it's going to be getting very cold in the next 5 or 10 years. We don't know what kind of cycles the earth or sun have. We should just do what we can, do not do anything extreme in any direction, just recycle, use glass and paper instead of plastic. Don't go out buying a new car every 2 to 5 years, drive it til it dies, then replace it with an electric, hybrid, or high mileage car. Use recyclable and recycled materials. Boycott products, companies and events that "offset" their carbon usage by buying "carbon credits", that's only a money making scheme and nothing more, it's doing nothing for the planet. Go plant a few trees yourself and tell Gore's companies and new industry to go fuck itself.
Our scientists are smart, yes, but they have so much to learn and much, much more to teach us.
Not the whole story (Score:3, Insightful)
Methane doesn't stay in the atmosphere as long as CO2.
Re:Create more deserts? (Score:1, Insightful)
No, it means that global warming isn't the disaster the proponents would have us believe.
What? Why? Deserts haven't suddenly started doing this now that we've found out, it's been happening the whole time and yet climate change is still happening. If anything this just highlights how far beyond the Earth's capacity to handle our greenhouse gas emissions we've already gone, and continuing on in anything like our current rate will result in far worse problems than previously believed.
Re:At what point does ythis break down? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that's really the problem, isn't it? Knowing what steps to take. Solutions implemented based upon incomplete and politically motivated science may actually make a "problem" worse.
Re:Create more deserts? (Score:3, Insightful)
You need to think that through a little deeper, nothing in this discovery changes existing observations of the upward trend in GHG concentrations, nor does it change the observed temprature trends, nor suddenly refreeze the Artic, reverse the melting of glaciers, fill the dams of SW Australia, restore the oceans ph balance, etc, etc.
There is nothing wrong with being skeptical but be aware that skepticisim is a skill [wikipedia.org], not an instinct.
Re:Not just a joke (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:At what point does ythis break down? (Score:2, Insightful)
I like the first suggestion, except I'd amend it to say that we must all stick *another* cork up our bums.
The rest of your comments all have excellent responses, which you can find for yourself. It's really easy to look these things up, why don't you do that rather than just pick the answers which agree with your degenerate politics?
Re:At what point does ythis break down? (Score:5, Insightful)
(a) that there have been times in the past with wayyy higher CO2 concentrations and
Yes, and it would have been pretty unpleasant for human beings had we been around at the time.
(b) that historically CO2 raises happen *after* temperature raises and
Yep, which just goes to show that if CO2 also causes temperature rises (pretty fairly conclusive that it does), that we'll end up in a rather painful positive feedback loop (CO2 goes up, causing temperature to go up, which causes CO2 to go up more)
(c) some of the measured temperature rise (of course, you are suitably sceptical about those measurements as well, aren't you?) can be explained by the fact we're coming out of an ice age and
I think that's pretty well accepted also, but historically there's nothing similar to what's happening now - we're rising MUCH faster than we should be.
(d) the fact that the Earth is neither a boiling Hellhole nor a ball of ice suggests that fairly effective negative feedback is at work in the climate?
No, that suggests that the Earth is (surprise surprise) a pretty good place for people to live in general. The concern is that it may not stay that way.
The concern is not that temperature is rising - that happens. It rises, it falls - there are perfectly normal cycles to all of this, and as long as we can learn to understand it, we can learn to live with it. What the concern IS is that we appear to be having an effect on our climate and we don't understand enough about what we're doing to it. It currently appears as if our effect is speeding up the "natural" warming quite significantly, and we're having a very hard time trying to figure out what the consequences of this will be. Maybe our effects will be nullified by natural processes and we can just carry on, but maybe they won't be and we'll end up killing ourselves (or just making life extremely unpleasant).
Because we're sitting here at "don't know", we have the choice of either ignoring the situation or trying to do something about it. I UNDERSTAND the arguments for both, but I don't agree with the argument for doing nothing.
The argument for doing nothing basically says, "well, we don't understand it, and doing something could cause economic problems. Because we don't understand it, we can't necessarily do anything about it.".
The argument for doing something goes, "We don't understand it, but we are certain that we are having an impact of some kind, and that has the potential to be very bad (it also has the potential to not be bad, but we're pretty sure it will be bad, and we don't want to take the gamble). So, what we'll do is try to reduce the factors that cause our effect."
We may not completely understand our climate, but:
1) We CAN see we're having an influence on it
2) We aren't 100% certain, but are pretty sure that our influence on it will cause long term bad effects
3) We are quite confident we know the cause of our effect on the climate (CO2 amongst many other things)
Because of this, the sensible choice seems to be "let's try to reduce or negate the effect we're having on the environment, because we can't be sure if that effect is going to cause us serious problems or not".
Car analogy time: I know very little about cars, and have to rely on what others tell me. I'm driving my car, and the oil light comes on. I recently changed the oil, and I haven't noticed any leaks, although honestly I wasn't paying much attention before now. My passenger suggests that maybe it's just that a circuit going to the oil light indicator is shorted somewhere, which is why it's showing that, and I really needn't worry - my car will be fine. Now, I can not be certain if he's right or wrong without investigation. So, I take my car to a mechanic, who checks only the circuitry going to the light. He says it's okay. At this point, I can choose to continue driving my car, thinking the mechanic missed something and it really is just a problem with the light, or I can ask the mechanic to check the oil system, even though I know there's going to be a larger financial cost involved in doing so. What should I do?
Re:PDF (Score:2, Insightful)
How about a PDF warning on that link, editors?
Such as this?
.DOC and the lackadaisical implementations of HTML specifications."
"WARNING: Attempting to browse the internet without a PDF viewer of some sort may limit your ability to display some content"
Or this?
"WARNING: PDF format has been known to be a general compromise between the proprietary nature of
Just to play devil's advocate, I'd ask what platforms currently don't have not only official PDF readers but alternatives as well?
Re:At what point does ythis break down? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sod the environmental issues, we need our very-limited fossil fuels for making the various plastics and other common compounds based on simple organic molecules!
People want something to save you from (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I'm getting the idea that for some people the goal isn't even to point fingers at something, but to point fingers at someone. Subtle but important difference.
Actually, even that is the superficial version. The longer one is that a bunch of people need not just to feel superior to you all, but to be a part of some grand cause that's never done or achievable. The last part is the more important one. It's what makes such grandiose tactually an _easy_ way out.
The quote which comes to mind, and kinda sums it all up, is, "It is easier to be a "humanitarian" than to render your own country its proper due; it is easier to be a "patriot" than to make your community a better place to live in; it is easier to be a "civic leader" than to treat your own family with loving understanding; for the smaller the focus of attention, the harder the task."
So people seek some grandiose cause to fight for, so they don't have to acknowledge that they don't achieve the small ones.
And again, it better be something so grand that nobody actually expects any given individual to achieve anything tangible. In a "small" task, like, say, "I want to finally get out of debt", or "I'll take some lessons and try to find a better job", or "I'll finally have a talk to my son about starting fights at school", there are very clear criteria as to whether you achieved anything or not. And at some point you have to admit that you didn't. It's not a very motivating thought. Worse yet, it might involve some personal effort and change. Good grief.
On the other hand, "saving the world" (from whatever global threat, from MS to global warming to God's wrath) is _easy_. It's a task nobody really expects you to achieve. So you can just moan and bitch a little about how the _other_ people should change, then be smug that you did your part. If it didn't achieve anything, it's because everyone _else_ didn't immediately drop everything and do as you said. Or even if they did, and it didn't actually work, hey, it's still their fault not yours: they didn't do enough, or didn't really understand you.
Big surprise that people choose the latter, eh? They're easy.
And it's not even something new. Since the dawn of time people have got into such grandiose fights to save others from whatever. For a long time, mostly from worshiping the wrong gods, or from worshiping them all wrong, or from some moral/philosophical detail that will doom us all. Mostly because they didn't have some scientific doomsday scenario, so God's Wrath was the best threat they had. Now they can do better.
Re:At what point does ythis break down? (Score:4, Insightful)
The real problem isn't nature, and to your point, the real solution isn't changing anything, it's dedicated research.
But you see, we are constantly changing something! We are adding carbon to the carbon cycle of the biosphere, and adding a lot of it, and increasing the carbon release rate. That's a change, and we're doing it, and there's no way we'll stop doing it, so option of "not changing anything" is out. But there is the uncomfortable option of trying to change our planet and biosphere as little as possible...
Re:Create more deserts? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yea, or by an alternate, but equally possible line of thinking: maybe CO2 isn't the only factor, since much more of it gets absorbed than we though in the first place? Maybe we should look harder for the other pieces and stop just wasting $$$ on computer weather models that predict oh-so-politically-useful disaster? ;-)
The point I am making is that the proponents of doing something about global warming NOW and at ANY COST do not KNOW what is going to happen. They can't, they have no hard evidence, no comprehensive theory on it, just a 'consensus that CO2 is the cause of global warming'. Last I checked consensus doesn't make something hard science, evidence does.
And I'm not saying nothing is to be done, we just need to be careful not to hop into a big trillion dollar bandwagon with Al Gore and the UN just to look dumb and swindled afterwards. I'm just taking Obi-wan's advice, that politicians cannot be trusted. Or bureaucrats, in the UN case. :-)
Re:Not just a joke (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but CH4 + 3O2 -> CO2 + 2H2O, which won't take long in an oxygen-rich atmosphere, and just gives us carbon dioxide back; the same carbon dioxide that was absorbed when the leaves grew in the springtime. Meanwhile the tree on the ground has grown over the course of the year, and locked up a bit more carbon in the form of wood.
Re:Create more deserts? (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless you are skeptical of global warming. Then you will be compared to Holocaust deniers and threatened with losing your academic funding and credentials.
Re:At what point does ythis break down? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:At what point does ythis break down? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've often argued that oil is too valuable to use as a fuel (generally), but really, why is it any harder to use coal or algae, or whtever as a plastic feedstock?
Re:Obviously (Score:1, Insightful)
Sure, as long as you don't skimp on the sandworms.
Only on slashdot could this be modded Informative.
Re:People want something to save you from (Score:3, Insightful)
As Larry Niven once pointed out, there is no cause so right that you can't find a fool fighting for it somewhere.
What you say about human is probably entirely accurate, and I have no doubt it describes many people on both sides of the debate.
Still, I can't help feeling that it's drifting away from the point. The issue is climate, not psychology.
it's you who is advocating massive change (Score:5, Insightful)
The real problem isn't nature, and to your point, the real solution isn't changing anything, it's dedicated research.
But we are changing something: we are emitting CO2 into the atmosphere, and our emissions are growing exponentially. That can't go on: either we stop voluntarily, or we run out of fossil fuel, or we get a climate catastrophe; there simply is no third possibility.
When you are saying that we shouldn't "change anything", you are actually advocating continuing a massive global change, a massive experiment with global climate. People like you are playing word games: you simply redefine what amounts to deliberate and massive change as "no change" by reframing the issue.
Re:At what point does ythis break down? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you part for global warming, become a pirate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:FSM_Pirates.png [wikipedia.org]
Re:of course you realize ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Which just goes to prove that having the job title "scientist" is no indication that you have the slightest clue about the climate. Point me to the research of a serious climatologist that believes this, and I'll read it with interest. Papers by people from outside that specific field - not interested! (hey, I'm a "computer scientist", would you like to read my paper about psychology?)
This might seem like a fair point but it isn't. Lets look at the scientists. I'm neutral on this, but I dislike the hysteria that seems to have gathered around each side. And that of the people predicting climate disaster now many are the same ones that predicted climate disaster back in the '70's, but the other way (ice-age).
My major problem with this is that "climatology" is a difficult field. It combines geology, meteorology, atmospheric research, marine research and a few others. But by and large, the doomsday predictions are coming from a group that are climate modellers. These people build up computer models of the climate and tune them using data from the past. The models are then used to attempt to predict the future of the climate.
And they're all dead wrong. The data is really spotty until 50 years or so ago so there's no idea how accurate they are. None of them are predictive. And none of them match the spotty historical data without what they call "forcing" and what everyone else calls "fiddling with parameters until it looks kinda right". Building scenarios based on them is like playing with lego, you tend to end up with what you were looking for.
Here's an interesting paper [aps.org] (from a real journal).
Some highlights (emphasis mine although it's all interesting):
It is of no little significance that the IPCC's value for the coefficient in the CO2 forcing equation depends on only one paper in the literature; its values for the feedbacks that it believes account for two-thirds of humankind's effect on global temperatures are likewise taken from only one paper; and that its implicit value of the crucial parameter K depends upon only two papers, one of which had been written by a lead author of the chapter in question, and neither of which provides any theoretical or empirical justification for a value as high as that which the IPCC adopted.
He goes on - the portion on how the models are verified is interesting
The point of this post is: hysteria solves nothing. We need to calmly move forward with rational solutions to the pollution that is caused by people, not suggest incredibly radical measures that are simply not going to be accepted by any but the most lunatic fringe. Dismissing valid objections with supporting evidence just because it doesn't say "Climate Modeller" on a business card is foolish.
Re:At what point does ythis break down? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hansen's data set is skewed to support his theories.
Prove it.
Notice how it doesn't seem to agree with the other temperature records out there.
All of the temperature records disagree with each other to a small extent. The GISTEMP record is not wildly out of line with any of the others, and some of them show slightly more warming than GISTEMP. See here [atmoz.org] for a comparison of the surface records.
Thats because Hansen has built into his system factors for changing the raw data based on his conclusions.
Again, prove it. Hansen has factors to correct for systematic biases in the instrumental observations. ALL the temperature records do (both surface and satellite), although they use different methods to make the corrections. That is quite different from corrections which change the data "based on Hansen's conclusions", which is an accusation of intention and fraud and requires proof.
Try using one of the satellite records where the data hasn't been fiddled with and you get a trend that is very different from what Hansen is predicting,
Actually, you don't. The trends are slightly different, but all within each other's error bars. Here [atmoz.org] is a visual comparison.
Furthermore, the satellite data is "fiddled with" as well. Indeed, the UAH data famously showed recent cooling before they discovered there was a mistake in their error-correction algorithms. Satellite records are by no means objectively superior to the surface station data.
I have no idea where that quote above came from about "Hansen's latest graph", but GISTEMP looks very similar to the other data sets even in the last 10 years; see the above graph.
If the difference between Hansen's numbers and three other temperature records isn't enough to convince you something is screwy with his data then check out all the issues with his temperature stations
If you throw out the temperature stations Watts classifies as "bad", you still get results that are quite close to the GISTEMP record. Or if you throw out the urban stations and only include the rural ones. And finally GISTEMP is quite similar to the satellite records.
There may be station siting issues, but they're clearly not dominating the trend visible in the global temperature time series.
Re:Not the whole story (Score:3, Insightful)
Meanwhile, the Antarctic ice is growing.
That doesn't contradict the previous poster's point, which is that models if anything have been conservative in their predictions of climate change. (Sea level rise is also faster than modeled.)
wow, who would have thought that systems and cycles on this planet are dynamic and will constantly change and adapt.
Again, that's not the point.
I don't claim to know all the answers to questions related to climate change, but I do know that there are far better ways we can be spending our money than on "man-made CO2" which may or may not have an effect on climate change.
You "know" that, huh? So where's the cost-benefit analysis you've run?
We know with certainty that pollutants in our water have negative health effects, we know for certain that toxins in the air we breath have negative health effects, but hey, lets forget all that and focus on something that occurs naturally in the environment with or without human influence.
That's wrong in so many ways.
First, that's a false dichotomy. No one is saying to forget other environmental hazards, they're saying that climate change is an additional and serious hazard that must be dealt with along with all other hazards, environmental and otherwise. It's like saying "Why build levees to protect from hurricanes when we could be spending the money on treating cancer?" You need to do both.
Second, while climate change occurs naturally, that has nothing to do with the current problem of harmful human-caused climate change. CO2 does have a significant effect on climate change and will have an even greater effect as emissions continue.
Third, scientific uncertainty when applied to policy doesn't work the way you seem to think. Your argument appears to be "We shouldn't spend any money on something which is uncertain, if we can spend it on things which are certain". But a policy of "no reduction in CO2 emissions" is only justified when you're CERTAIN that there will be little damage. If you're UNCERTAIN about future climate change, then the best policy is to buy insurance against the possible hazard, which in this case means reducing CO2 emissions. (Not as much as you'd reduce if you were certain of severe damages, but some reduction nonetheless, and certainly more than we're doing now.)
In any other situation with uncertainty people recognize the need to insure against risks, but somehow all that logic disappears when applied to climate change. This is what Bjorn Lomborg got hammered for by economists when he advocated the same thing (ignore climate change in favor of malaria and other threats): it's the risk of the lower probability but high impact events that really drives the need for insurance, and if you ignore uncertainty and pick lowball or even middle-of-the-road estimates and pretend you're certain about them, you're going to come up too low on the amount of insurance you really need.
Fourth, while there are hazards whose effect are more certain, they're not always the ones which need to be most urgently addressed. We know the bubonic plague is deadly but that doesn't mean we should be worrying about that first. In the U.S., air and water pollution still exist, but they are no longer really severe health hazards. I agree, if the river in your back yard is on fire or you live in one of China's smog-infested cities, those problems are pretty urgent. But climate change is also important, particularly in places that no longer have severe pollution problems. Climate change affects people's water and food supplies, where they can live, damages from extreme weather events, and many others effects of first-order importance.
Fifth, the problems are interrelated. A lot of air pollution comes from the same burning of fossil fuels that produces CO2. To an extent you can tackle both problems by reducing fossil fuel use (which also addresses the problem of dependence on foreign oil to boot).
Re:Something is not quite right here... (Score:2, Insightful)
Climate Change is GOING to happen. It is not an "if". It is not a "maybe". It is not a thing of the past. It is not some automatically 'man-made' "thing" that we can stop and play with if we so feel like it.
Indeed, but it's a question of "when" and "how fast" and "how much". These are the questions that have some meaning. For some reason, so called "climate sceptics" don't like to ask these questions though...
I assume (because otherwise what you say makes no sense) you believe either that our release of carbon from stable reserves hundreds of millions of years old has no effect on things like the CO2 content of atmosphere, or alternatively you must believe that even if there's an effect on CO2, that CO2 has no effect on the climate. Well, you seem to be in minority with this belief.
Not to mention I find it kind of illogical to believe that changing things should be assumed to have no effect unless otherwise proven. But then again, being an engineer, I've seen enough small, seemingly irrelevant things being changed by people who didn't know why it was like it was, and causing... unfortunate consequences.
So coming from this background, it's awfully hard for me to just believe either that release of carbon does nothing to the carbon cycle, and it's also awfully hard for me to believe that increasing CO2 does nothing to the climate. And general scientific concensus seems to agree with my gut feeling.
IMHO the general principle in things like this is "no, stop it until you know what you're doing... just keep your damn hands off of it already, you idiot". Now with climate, keeping our hands off and stopping our massive carbon release isn't really an option, but slowing it down is still better than incresing it even more.
Now that said, you recognize that the models we use today are hopelessly broken. You're not totally lost, yet.
But your conclusion from this seems to be, keep changing things (releasing carbon) at will (which in practice means increasing rate of release, what with industrializing developing countries and increasing human population) until we have 100% proven models and simulations. Now if climate weren't a "misison critical" system, I'd be all for that kind of experimentation, let's see what happens. But for mission criticla systems, no no, you're giving me a headache just thinking about it.
Re:it's you who is advocating massive change (Score:3, Insightful)
Why doesn't anyone want to talk about the known increase in solar radiation over the last 30 years?
That's not a "third possibility". It doesn't matter what current temperature increases are due to, or even if they are real. Carbon emissions into the atmosphere must invariably change global temperatures and weather at some point.
Maybe we won't run out of oil because it isn't really made from dead trees and dinosaurs
That's a real possibility, and if it's true, we are even more screwed because it would mean that the weather can become even more inhospitable than it has ever been in earth's history.
I'm just concerned that global warming is really another scam to take more of my money in the form of taxes to "save the earth"
The scam is that the government has been taking away everybody's money in the form of taxes to subsidize the oil, gas, automobile, and airline industries, and has been directing most of its military efforts at keeping the supplies from the Middle East flowing. The scam is that the government has been tearing up efficient transportation systems and changing urban planning in such a way that people simply don't have a choice but to drive a car.