The Greens oppose the CPRS not because it is too weak, but because it will point Australia in the wrong direction with little prospect of turning it around in the timeframe within which emissions must peak, says Senator Christine Milne.
Al Gore is hoping, Obama is scared, Rudd is a wimp. The earth?
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You know you’re in trouble when authority figures say we must remain hopeful. Al Gore’s message of hope is now delivered with less passion and more desperation. Fear makes people do stupid things. The organisers of the Copenhagen conference have commissioned some of the world’s biggest advertising agencies to develop a campaign to save the planet. The funky creatives have decided that global warming is a “communication challenge” and the answer is to “empower global citizens” by creating a “popular movement”. So they have announced the existence of a movement and are planning an “aggressive” consumer launch for September. The goal? “Let’s turn Copenhagen into Hopenhagen”. Yes, Hopenhagen. There’s a website where people can send messages of hope to the UN delegates:
Presumably Australia’s contribution to the UN helps fund this bollocks. The advertising corporations behind the Hopenhagen campaign include Ogilvy & Mather which, when not saving the planet from climate change, is persuading us to buy more petrol from BP and cars from Ford. Then there’s Colle + McVoy which promotes petrochemicals for DuPont and Ketchum which wants us to fly more on Delta Airlines. So what did the G8 summit tell us about hope and desperation? Barack Obama’s speech at the L’Aquila closing event was beautiful, and remarkable on several fronts. He began with a powerful, unvarnished statement of the crisis the world confronts and the urgency demanded. He was frank about developing country anxiety over being treated unfairly, deploying the pregnant phrase “historic responsibility”, an admission of guilt. He acknowledged the past failings of the United States and made a convincing case that the country had now changed and takes global warming very seriously. (Listing the actions his administration had taken, he made no mention of clean coal.) Obama finished with a Kennedyesque flourish: “We know that the problems we face are made by human beings; that means it’s within our capacity to solve them. The question is whether we will have the will to do so, whether we’ll summon the courage and exercise the leadership to chart a new course. That’s the responsibility of our generation.” In his heart, Obama knows the game is up; he hinted at the thoughts that weigh him down when he is alone in the Oval Office: “I think that one of the things we’re going to have to do is fight the temptation towards cynicism, to feel that the problem is so immense that somehow we cannot make significant strides.” His closest advisers on climate, John Holdren and Steven Chu, know the science better than anyone. But leaders can’t say it so the G8 agreed that the world should aim to limit warming to 2°C by asking rich countries to cut emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, and for the world to cut emissions by 50 per cent. Obama said this is “what the mainstream of the scientific community has called for”, but he is at least five years out of date. The latest science is saying that aiming for 2°C is dangerous and, even so, to achieve 2°C global emissions must be cut, not by 50 per cent in 2050, but by “60-80% immediately”. The President stressed that any progress at G8 would not substitute for UN negotiations but support them. There is concern in the EU that the US will reach a bilateral deal with China. A Sino-American agreement would pre-empt the Copenhagen negotiations, sharply narrowing the possible outcomes. Europe has committed to a huge 30 per cent cut in emissions by 2020 if boldness prevails at Copenhagen. It has not been widely noticed that the US undertaking to cut emissions by only 4 per cent below 1990 levels would entrench a huge disparity in effort. Essentially, the EU would be carrying the developed world to the 25 per cent target. But the Europeans also understand that Obama and House Democrats have pushed climate policy as far as domestic political circumstances allow. That of course is where the Obama Administration diverges from the Rudd Labor Government. Rudd was in a stronger position than Obama to push hard on climate. He had a mandate from the electorate, an Opposition in disarray, a Garnaut interim report justifying radical measures and a financial crisis that could have been used to pour money into restructuring the energy economy. Unwilling to resist the pressure from the fossil fuel lobby Rudd went soft; the Captain Planet who thrilled the world in Bali morphed into a wimp. I’m guessing Rudd was shocked in L’Aquila when he realised how seriously Obama takes global warming and how the US push is making Australia look timorous, despite Al Gore’s polite comparisons. Everyone is scared. If the Copenhagen agreement fails to reflect the science there will be no second chances and we can expect a furious spasm of protest across the globe. In the United States, some activist groups are already preparing for a change in the rules of the game. A new website called Beyond Talk has appeared which asks people to put their names to this:
We can expect after Copenhagen the 2,288 people who to date have made the pledge will be called on to act. |
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31 Comments
December 7th…Pearl Harbour Day. A certain synchronicity…
This is why marketing types were first in line for the Golgafrinchan Ark B. They want to do something, but the only thing they know how to do is useless.
Congratulations on a most effective article Clive.
Such is the nature of the scientific evidence, including by leading climate scientists (Hansen, Broecker, Alley, Steffensen, Lenton, Schellenhuber, Rahmstorf, Zachos, in Australia Raupach, Pittock, Church, Karoly and MANY other), that the implications of climate change for human societies and nature could not be more severe.
Attempts of reducing carbon emissions may be insufficient to arrest global warming in view of the cumulative nature of CO2 and methane, which lead to atmospheric concentrations in excees of the the level which allowed the development of habitats where large mammals and humans could develope in the first place, from about 34 million years ago.
At current emission levels this threshold will be crossed in a few decades. Feedbacks from the carbon cycle and from ice melt/water interaction dynamics may accelerate this process. The lag effects of atmospheric carbon rises, including the melting of Greenland and the Antarctic ice and sea level rise, will take unspecified periods of time, placing the climate system in a transitional state. The transitional period, into which the climate system may have already entered, may be associated with abrupt tipping points, such as have been recorded during the recent history of Earth (14,000 - 11,000 and 8200 years ago). These development may, or may not, be out of human control.
There is a chance that, should societies undertake all the measures which need to be undertaken in an attempt to stem dangerous climate change, the process could be slowed down, possibly even reversed. Such steps need to include:
(1) Rapid deep reductions in emissions – 80 percent by 2020 relative to 1900.
(2) Fast track development of CO2 draw-down technology, i.e. CO2-sequestering types of vegetation, soil carbon enrichment, sodium capture plants (technologically no more complex than space projects, and financially not more expensive than military expenditure)
(3) Rapid transition to alternative clean energy and transport systems.
(4) Likely geoengineering measures aimed at slowing global warming and gaining time, an example being injection of sulphur aerosols over the poles, whose melting affects the rest of the planet.
The alternative to such efforts does not bear contemplation.
Andrew Glikson
15 July, 2009
Right on Clive - I have just returned from the Darwin 09 conference in Cambridge. General consternation, gloom and tears from session “What does the future hold?” - overpopulation is the elephant in the room and of course no democratic government would dare do the sensible thing - i.e. restrict having children - so we truly are stuffed. Rudd and Garrett with their religious convictions mean that “humans come before trees” and despite the fact that we already have the “Magic Pill” for anthropogenic climate change - the contraceptive pill - world population will peak mid-century at a completely unsustainable 9-10.5 BILLION. Yet more than ever we have religious leaders being given oxygen in the press with their mediaeval views about contraception and abortion. Populate and perish.
Clive Hamilton has again stated the position with utmost clarity. Unless emission cuts are made of the order of 80% by 2020 the game of civilisaton as we know it is over. Anrew Glikson has elaborated on it futher with one glaring msitake - the threshold he is talking about is already in the pipeline! CO2 along with Methane are already destined to exceed the 450ppm COs equiv. within less than 10 years. The lull in the planet’s reponse to passing various tipping points is just that - a lull before an unstoppable cascade of violent natural events. Few on teh developed world will own up to the fact that our oil-based society is the cause of the mess, and every effort to maintain that form of civilisation will only bring about its destruction. Until our lifestyle is headed directly towards being ecologically sustainable then we are still arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. We are presently at War with the natural environment by our way of life - the earth won’t be saved until we declare war on our present lifestyle and change it within years to that which is sustainable.
Response to D. John Hunwick.
Climate tresholds recorded by multi-proxy studies of Cainozoic systems include, within errors of +/- approximately 10-20 percent:
End-Eocene - 34 Ma - decline below 500 ppm CO2 and onset of an early stage of the Antarctic ice sheet
Late Oligocene - 23 Ma - levels rise to about or over 400 ppm CO2 - Antarctic ice melts
Early Miocene - re-warming, when Antarctica was re-forested, 190-260 ppm or higher (Pagani et al., 1999)
Mid-Miocene - 13.8 Ma - rewarming, up to about 400 ppm CO2, then cooling and formation of the modern East Antarctic ice.
Mid-Pliocene - 2.8 Ma - rewarming, up to 400 ppm CO2, melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet and Greenland, temperatures rise by 2-3 degrees C, sea level rise by 25+/-12 metres.
It is the latter scenario, with lag effects, the climate system is entering. With CO2-equivalent levels (includinbg methane) exceeding those of the mid-Pliocene. Hysteresis, the lag of effects behind cause, is likely to preserve the East Antarctic ice sheet for longer.
It is my view humans will be able to survive even the worst of climate change, including in high mountain valley enclaves, elevated volcanic islands and tropical regions shielded by thick water vapor/clouds. Civilization, hinged as it is on coastal, delta and low river valleys, is another matter.
Andrew Glikson
15 July, 2009
“…We are presently at War with the natural environment by our way of life - the earth won’t be saved until we declare war on our present lifestyle…”
Such pathetic doomsday nihilism.
“…It is my view humans will be able to survive even the worst of climate change, including in high mountain valley enclaves, elevated volcanic islands and tropical regions shielded by thick water vapor/clouds. Civilization, hinged as it is on coastal, delta and low river valleys, is another matter…”
Is this how desperate you need to sound to guarantee tenure these days?
Pity the evidence is contradicting your apocalypse.
“…Fear makes people do stupid things…”
Indeed.
Witness Clive Hamilton pushing this ‘solution’:
“I pledge, if asked, to perform non-violent civil disobedience and risk arrest in order to get our leaders to make the right climate-change choices.”
Baseless and deliberate fear-mongering; advocating cultish, lemming-like behaviour but above all, truly stupid.
You’re at risk of being typecast.
The Sixties are over Clive. Didn’t you get the memo?
Alright then, I’ll bite first. Everyone is thinking it, and I don’t have a reputation to uphold.
Mama, you’re an idiot. Your ravings very rarely contribute anything meaningful to these debates. Take your Heartland card somewhere else. Do some science. Prove that everyone else is wrong. Until then, shut your mouth.
What evidence is contradicting the apocalypse? Any answer including the phrase ‘cooling since 1998’ is an immediate fail.
.”There’ll be bush-fires for sure, me man,
There will, without a doubt;
We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.” (John O’Brien.)
How can we accept predictions about the temperature in future years, when the little box on my computer screen tells me that the actual temperature today was one degree higher than the predicted maximum in this part of Sydney?
Hennpenny flies again! I have not yet seen any evidence that the planet is about to disintegrate or that the world population will be reduced to single-cell life by 2015 or 2020 or 2050.
Stop going on about the science and start talking about the risks, the probabilities, the potential costs and the possible mitigations. This is an insurance issue. People do not need proof that their home will burn down before they pay non-refundable premiums to insure against the risk. It is the same with the possible effects of climate change.
Somewhere in the debate we should mention that reducing emissions by 80% in ten years is simply not going to happen, so there is not much point in talking about it.
At a time when global temperatures have gone into reverse, what sane government would shut down its existing power supply on the basis of computer modelling of a possible scenario based on theory and statistical fiddling? This would lead to the loss of many thousands of jobs and large-scale disruption to economies and societies around the world.
Clive continues to talk of ‘the science’ as if all scientific research into climate unarguably supported the global warming hypothesis. Many eminent scientists have disputed this. Ignoring the scientific debate like this and denying the existence of credible contrary scenarios is nothing less than scientific fundamentalism, which is the opposite of the spirit of free inquiry that science is supposed to represent.
Wow Evan ,
You are right about your reputation.
‘Do some science. Prove that everyone else is wrong. Until then, shut your mouth.’
Shouldn’t it be enough to just prove a few wrong and hasn’t that already been done?
Anyway at least thanks to Al Gore we are now safe from the threat of ManBearPig so i suppose his followers have some credibility.
Haha! ManBearPig! Just like on the hit television show ‘South Park’! LoL!
Here’s another quote I like from ‘South Park’
“Goddamn hippies!”
Haha! So funny!
Post your own funny quotes from TV shows! It’s not unoriginal, lazy or played out at all.
very nice…..not
- sascha baron cohen aka borat. rofl.
Well said Daniel
Yes i see your point.
I won’t make that mistake again.
For mine, the truth lies somewhere between the extremes of Glikson and the skeptics. I defy anyone not to see at least the hint of a plateauing in recent global temperature records, as depicted in Figure 3 of the Copenhagen Synthesis Report . I suspect that has a fair bit to do with the statement in the fine print about extending the smoothing time window from 11 to 15 years.
But the skeptics need to do more than deny. They need to put forward an alternative hypothesis for what drives climate change, if not CO2, CH4 etc. Their prime candidate is solar activity. But we’re just starting to come out of the deepest and longest minimum in solar activity for several cycles. As well, as the Synthesis Report says, we’ve had a La Nina regime prevailing for much of that time. If the skeptics are right, we should have had not merely a plateau, but a substantial, multi-year drop in global temperatures.
Consequently, as we head towards the next solar activity peak, and most indicators point to the onset of an El Nino, I’m tipping global temperature to head back above the long term trend line over the next few years.
Re Feilding’s plateau: Global Dimming from particulate pollution versus embedded global warming from GHG’s.
And what an immensely risky and unsafe free climbing manoevure on the rock face of human ecology it is.
For instance, as India and China and indeed Africa, Brazil and South East Asia generate more dirty energy (along with brown coal energy supplies in Victoria Australia etc), eventually decide to reduce their lung cancer statistics, the tissue thin veil will tear releasing embedded warming and runaway tipping points. Entropy will be our master, and cruel one at that.
I’m beyond fear now, and indeed depression. Now I just muck around with camp ovens, enjoy Eastern Yellow Robins darting around and marvel at the ascension of an unabashed Stalinist representing the best the NSW Green Party has to offer obsessing about the distribution of production however it is created.
After 6 arrests trying to save forests and stuff, and helping knock off the odd US$3B aluminium smelter in Chile, it’s time the well paid greenies took their turn. Do they even know how to get arrested? Did Peter Garrett ever?
Mark Duffett,
In so far as you view climate change science as published, for example by Hansen’s scientific team in the US, or Rahmstorf’s team in Potsdam, or the Raupach-Canadell CSIRO research, or indeed the implications of IPCC climate projections in the range of 2 to 6 degrees C as “EXTREME”, I am happy to send you recent relevant papers documenting the evidence.
These will include the following:
Lennton et al. 2008 - Tipping points in the Earth system
Easterling and Werner 2009 - Is the Earth warming or cooling
Eby et al. 2009 - CO2 and temprature projections for the 21st century and beyond
Dakos et al. 2008 - Slowing down as early warning system of abrupt climate change
Hansen et al. 2007 - trace gases and climate change
Hansen et al. 2008 - Target CO2
Broecker, 2000 - Abrupt climate change
and other papers.
I will be happy to discuss with you specific scientific points or questions.
Andrew Glikson
15-7-09
The fact that it’s still referred to as a ‘debate’ over climate change is as predictable as it is boring and depressing. I wonder if the same so-called climate skeptics agreed that there were WMD’s in Iraq (its a loose connection, but what the hell).
The point being that the constant ‘debate’ over what we all know to be true - that Climate Change is on, just like Iraq was about oil and not WMD’s (worst kept secret ever) - really only serves the status quo. In this case it’s the heavy polluters (for Iraq, who knows what they were thinking?).
We need to see some genuine action on Climate Change, and soon. Until then *queue Chic’s disco classic* ‘Ahhhh Freak Out!!’
Really Pwnerous, the history of ideas is littered with examples of ‘what we all know to be true’ turning out to the opposite. ‘What we all know to be true’ is one name for it, other names include ‘groupthink’ and ‘conventional wisdom’.
The implication of this way of thinking is that we have to sign up to ALL the same positions as everyone else in our group of like-minded people. As a true contrarian I believe it should be possible to say I agree with you on WMDs and I disagree with you on climate change.
To my mind it is the height of anti-intellectualism for Clive and others to declare that there is no debate when there are literally thousands of scientists out there who have declared in favour of the contrarian position.
By the way, Wikipedia has a list of the most prominent scientific dissidents at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming
Science being a multidisciplinary field, it is not sufficient to be a “scientist” to be regarded as an authority in any particular specialized area, what is needed is a record a peer reviewed publications on the subject. As it happens, all active and published climate scientist in research institutions and universities accept the evidence of anthropogenic climate change, consistent with:
(1) Direct observations in nature.
(2) Long term field and satellite meteorological measurements
(3) The basic laws of physics and chemistry of the atmosphere, primarily the infrared absoprtion/emission resonance effect of greenhouse molecules (CO2, CH4, N2O, O3, CFC). An essential text in this regard is on: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm.
There are those who genuinely doubt global warming - I hope they are right, for this would remove the daunting spectre of dangerous climate change.
If these people are serious, they ought to read the scientific literature, and come up with cogent points - which can then be discussed. If they are not right, they ought to reflect on the consequences for present and future generations should carbon emissions continue and no itigation and adaptation efforts undertaken by governments around the world.
According to Andrew: “As it happens, all active and published climate scientist in research institutions and universities accept the evidence of anthropogenic climate change”
Which 100% census of “all active and published climate scientist in research institutions and universities” demonstrate your wildly inaccurate assertion Andrew?
Is this not actually yet further ‘evidence’ of yet another delusional assertion of yet just another climate alarmist?
If ‘one’ can’t speak without silly hyperbole then in the words of Wittgenstein: “one must be silent”
Andrew, did you actually read the list? It contains climate scientists, atmospheric scientists, geologists, earth scientists etc. Do they know nothing about climate? Ian Plimer’s Heaven + Earth contains hundreds and hundreds of scientific references. He interprets these one way, other scientists interpret them another way. It is nonsense to say that ‘the science’ is some kind of monolithic edifice of truth than cannot be interpreted or queried.
Bollocks! They call it a “carbon tax” because “the people” just can’t seem to get their heads around a carbon dioxide tax! Or should I say the “breathing out” tax. Now more and more of the so called true believers are starting to say - hey is this real or just a ride! So yep, they are panicking.
This is like the terrorism dialectic - how do you fight an intangible enemy?
The best news I have heard is the “carbon dioxide is really bad people” have hired a swanky ad agency to make a mult-imillion dollar glamorama commercial aired on everything that can create a signal to tells us how much we need to worry and that it’s all our fault and therefore to get ready for some serious taxing. I guess you could liken it to readying the Christmas turkey for darn good baking.
No doubt this campaign, including the mega media spend, will cost somebody (us silly) millions and millions of dollar equivalents which could be far more wisely spent on saving the planet from all the really bad things going on like real destruction and poisoning.
Do you know who the political dupes want to run this taxathon? Yep, I am fairly certain it is the same guys who do the big bonuses and get taxpayer bailouts for creating derivative based bubbles bigger than the planet and exporting them to the world! This is exactly who Garnaut called for to manage the scheme in a piece in the Financial Review in February . Taxing you every time you breathe out is a big job but someone has to do it . So who better? Awake? Whether you believe in in MMGW or not, don’t fall for the global bankers’ three card trick! Well meaning scientific types are no match for scalawags - they get caught in the fine print every time.
As I have said a thousand times, stop the internationlists from destroying the third world ecosystems and in the process, removing the rainforests from the planet and fouling the oceans beyond salvation. Such concerted action directed against these tangible examples of world kill will work for sure to save mother earth!
Do you honestly think the biggest fionancial force in the world - the oil companies and the international financial interests who own them will allow oil to phased out any time soon? Half if not three quarters of the things we buy today are derived from crude oil. Everything is either plastic, vinyl, faux rubber, cleaning agent, detergent or shampoo. What have I left out - newfood? This cap and trade tango is a very clever way to indirectly tax the naive public one more time before it loses its collective last shirt. Then “back to nature” will be the only option.
Andrew,
I placed your position at one extreme mainly because of your reference to civilisation-ending sea level rise. I still find the work of Pfeffer et al 2008 most convincing on this score, i.e. no more than a metre or two of sea level rise by 2100. This discounts all-bets-off scenarios such as dislodgement of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, but I just can’t see that happening on a time scale of less than a century.
“…What evidence is contradicting the apocalypse?…”
It’s YOUR hypothesis Evan.
The burden of proof lies with you.
Even a child knows that.
Gullible believers like yourself can only talk about the (alleged) symptoms of (alleged) AGW.
You know less than nothing about the (alleged) CAUSE.
Even the IPCC admits it does not know the (alleged) CAUSE of (alleged) AGW.
Again all you do is pompously hypothesise…with no real evidence to support even your ‘best guess’.
Your continual ‘back-to-the-caves’ beseeching for a carbon-free world is a joke.
That you and the other climate proselytes keep banging on about it only amplifies your irrelevance to the real ‘debate’.
As big a folly is your brethren’s belief that a mystical Galt’s motor will magically appear and ‘save us’ from ourselves.
How do you reconcile such shamelessly misguided and dangerous arrogance?
Laughably, the climate cognoscenti also seriously entertain the plausibility of “burying” ‘bad’ gases underground as means of ‘footprint’ ‘reduction’; something even one of your original Apostles has now summarily dismissed as being beyond rational sanity.
Despite displaying all the attributes of a textbook politicanEvan, I give eternal thanks you are not in a position to drive public policy on this issue.
My - what a range of assertions and counter assertions - and some even with references! Thanks - but this does not come to grips with the problem. Just suppose Jim Hansen is right and all other scientists in the world are wrong - should we listen to him? I think it is prudent to listen and then look at what is at stake. As an ecologist (not an atmospheric scientist) I know that our biological systems are wearing thin, species are becoming extinct, and the variation in climate in recent years - if it persists - will tear the ecological fabric to the point where the ability of the earth to support 9 or more billion people will collapse. Yes I believe that some people will survive this century but their lifestyle will be more akin to Africa than Australia.
Can we pull back from Global warming if we really want to - in 5 or 10 years time? Economists tell us that to do so will cost more then than if we start today. I would much rather make a fullout effort now and be proved wrong than to do nothing (except rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic) and find out later that climate change is a really big problem - and we should have started long ago. Better to push for renewable energy sources that work now, review our quite unsustainable agriculture and place it on a more ecological footing. But we cannot even repair the River Murray! What chances have we in saving most of the planet?
Perhaps as Grouch Marx one said “why should I care about the future - what has the future done for me?” The problem is I do care, and all I see as a reasonable analysis from Clive Hamilton being torn to pieces for the most part by people who can’t even present a logical argument.
MichaelT, your point about ‘group think’ is disingenuous. Sure, we need to question things, but when the evidence on an urgent issue becomes overwhelming we need to move into action.
There are countless examples issues that have challenged accepted orthodoxy (Round Earth, Evolution, Sun Centric Solar System, Cigarettes linked to Cancer etc). These theories were vigorously debated at the time, but at some point were accepted by the scientific community and then the wider community.
The debate on Climate Change has been going on for over 40 years. You could argue it was largely accepted back in early 90’s with the Kyoto Protocol. Unfortunately the vested interests have managed to frame ‘Climate Change’ as an accepted orthodoxy that must now be challenged.
The rest of us just want to move on.
The death toll from climate change has already started, with over 400 people cooked alive in their homes in Melbourne due to the unprecedented southern australian / victorian heatwave in late January, not to mention the awful bushfires. Victoria is turning into a dry baking desert.
And these climate change denying filth still persist in saying ‘this is all normal’. Up till now I always thought of climate change deniers as simple morons. Now I see them as morons with blood on their hands.
I want one of the deniers posting here to tell me that what is happening in Victoria is ‘normal climate’.
The point is well made that this is no longer a debate about science but about political action. Clearly folk like Most Peculiar Mama et al are not convinced but thats neither important or the point. The point is that events will very soon prove either the skeptics or the proponents of APW correct so pointless spats about the queensberry rules of scientific postulates, logic or debating are, if nothing else, completely irrelevant. Ones position on this matter is simply a fact of ones actions. This means, of course, that most ‘skeptics’ are in fact ‘denialists’, and it also means that many well meaning suburban liberal types are going to have to take a look in the driveway. If you don’t beleive in climate change, be a long way away from people who do when things get nasty.
As for our leaders, well the point I was getting to in a round about way is that all those nice counter terrorist laws that were passed with a general “its not about you” kind of wink from the government will, I think, come back to bite the populous as a defence for the industrial status quo. Think you can protest against a coal fired power station - not in this state you can’t.
Despite all the deniers posts, I am yet to hear a good reason why we shouldn’t reduce our emissions. There are plenty of reasons why we should which don’t need explaining, but it’s not as if reducing emissions dramastically is going to destroy the world, or even kill economic growth. Yes the interests of the multi national energy companies will be effected, but that is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Warming aside, less emissions means cleaner air. So the debate about warming may still be ongoing (to the denialists at least) but there is no debate on wether reducing emissions is a good thing as it is a given. So I’d like to hear these deniers say why we shouldn’t reduce our emissions anyway.