I studied physics and computer science at Cornell, as well as meteorology. My first job was as an intern at NOAA in Silver Spring, MD. Admittedly that was years ago, but do share your background. Your claims that we know everything there is to know doesn’t comport with my sense of science as a field of great caution. What do I know? Maybe the old ethos of scientists is gone, at least in certain fields.

Look, I am not a skeptic that humans are changing the climate. There is no question we are adding to the mix. I believe!! But to claim that we actually know what will happen in the coming century (“We have a model that is 100% accurate with all variable included. It is called the Earth. “) is a riot!

Our geological record is spotty but here are a few elephants milling about the room that make it hard to claim all variables are 100 percent sewn up:
* Carbon levels at around 390 PPM are well above the recent historical range of 200-300 PPM. But looking across just the last tens of thousands of years of carbon in this range we have had massive swings of 14 or 15 degrees C in relatively short periods of time with CO2 in its historic range. These are the ice ages. We have no idea what triggered each one, only that they are a positive feedback loop.
* Solar intensity is one of the most important variables of all (and yes it is significantly variable over thousands and millions of years) and it is completely absent from the geological record.
* A number of studies have attempted to look at carbon levels across geological time. The one thing that stands out is that historical carbon measurements are all over the map and no two studies come anywhere close to each other.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phaner ozoic_Carbon_Dioxide.png
About the only thing they agree on is that atmospheric carbon was once much higher than today.
And there’s this: “the early Phanerozoic includes a global ice age during the Ordovician age combined with high atmospheric carbon contents ”

Apparently the bar at which scientists are willing to say they know things with certainty has gotten a lot lower. This is not helping public perception.

In Tamil Nadu (south India), one of the hotter places on Earth where I have been twice, they have three harvests a year. On the other hand, ice ages are very much more difficult to deal with. Evidence points to a present warming trend and evidence is that humans are a part of it. But I’m just not seeing the end of the world as we know it, at least on that front.

Exhaustion of much mineral wealth is what we really need to be stressed out about if we really care about the kiddies. That is not a problem on a 100 year time frame. That is a problem arising right now. The fossil fuel / carbon problem is solving itself because we are running out of them anyway as thisspaceforsale noted.

Nuclear based electric power seems to be the only source that scales up to the level we need. Absent a viable alternative of massive scale what discussion is there to have?

Of course, a big part of that story is also state renewable energy mandates – individual action alone isn’t sufficient. But the reason we’ve been able to win state renewable energy mandates is because the market got big enough to prove the validity of the technology.
Smaller purchases such as more fuel-efficient appliances follow the same pattern: the bigger the market size for Energy Star refrigerator, the more the incentive to produce the big and small innovations that will drive down electricity use. Likewise,
As Simon argues elsewhere in the same piece, increasing the size of the clean technology marketplace goes hand in hand with increasing our ability to create strong climate policies. If the solar industry had the political clout of the oil industry, a price on carbon or a cap on emissions might be able to pass Congress.
Finally, to get a little more touchy-feely, I think Simon also understates the importance of cultural norms. Studies have shown that the installation of solar panels in a neighborhood increases the probability that a new solar panel will be installed. Others indicate that people are much more likely to engage in political action after they’ve made a commitment in their personal lives. Spreading the value of concern for the environment is itself one of the most important things we can do to build political power, and for many people, the most likely path to spreading those values is through commitments in their personal lives.
The establishment of cultural norms cannot easily be described in the language of utility – it’s hard to talk about comparing the utility of a lost plane ride with the “value” of establishing a cultural norm – but that kind of individualistic attitude is at root a problem for the climate movement.
buddhistwonk.tumblr.com

Of course, a big part of that story is also state renewable energy mandates – individual action alone isn’t sufficient. But the reason we’ve been able to win state renewable energy mandates is because the market got big enough to prove the validity of the technology.
Smaller purchases such as more fuel-efficient appliances follow the same pattern: the bigger the market size for Energy Star refrigerator, the more the incentive to produce the big and small innovations that will drive down electricity use. Likewise,
As Simon argues elsewhere in the same piece, increasing the size of the clean technology marketplace goes hand in hand with increasing our ability to create strong climate policies. If the solar industry had the political clout of the oil industry, a price on carbon or a cap on emissions might be able to pass Congress.
Finally, to get a little more touchy-feely, I think Simon also understates the importance of cultural norms. Studies have shown that the installation of solar panels in a neighborhood increases the probability that a new solar panel will be installed. Others indicate that people are much more likely to engage in political action after they’ve made a commitment in their personal lives. Spreading the value of concern for the environment is itself one of the most important things we can do to build political power, and for many people, the most likely path to spreading those values is through commitments in their personal lives.
The establishment of cultural norms cannot easily be described in the language of utility – it’s hard to talk about comparing the utility of a lost plane ride with the “value” of establishing a cultural norm – but that kind of individualistic attitude is at root a problem for the climate movement.
buddhistwonk.tumblr.com

I think you are mistaking morality for strategy.

My family stopped flying years ago because we felt that the levels of climate damage it does just for “fun” was immoral. The personal cost to me is much greater to get on a plane than not to. It isn’t some silly, ill-thought-out strategy to change the world’s carbon levels. It is a moral choice. We just didn’t want to do that much damage. It made us feel bad.

The phrase “loss of utility” doesn’t even make sense to me in this context.

YOU: “(1) Humans have adapted to major climate swings in the past, when technology and mobility were much less. We will adapt again. The climate was bound to swing one way or another anyway, whether we humans tossed our hat in the ring or not.”

SCIENCE: Human civilization has never faced major climate swings. Warming climate swings have been very slow in the past when naturally forced. We are pushing the climate ten times harder than what caused ice age to end.

YOU: “(2) Enormous amounts of carbon have poured into the atmosphere over the last several centuries. Climate change has resulted but swings have been quite modest so far.”

SCIENCE: CO2 has a long lifetime which means there is a delay between when we dump it and when the full effects are felt. Most of the CO2 has been dumped in the last couple decades. Changes are already dramatic (polar ice melt, permafrost thaw, ocean acidification levels). Lots more in pipeline from past CO2.

YOU: “(3) Accurate prediction in this area is nearly impossible. Not only are there many variables whose values we don’t know, we don’t even know what all the variables are.”

SCIENCE: We have a model that is 100% accurate with all variable included. It is called the Earth. Paleoclimate is very well understood now and we have a good idea of how the Earth climate reacted in the past…and so how it is very likely to react now.

YOU: “(4) This is a 196-party prisoner’s dilemma after all, with South Sudan as the most recent addition.”

SCIENCE: This is a 10-party prisoner’s dilemma. Top 10 GHG nations emit around 80% of GHG.

Good news for you is that you don’t have to. Go for it. Pollute away. Nobody is stopping you.

I’m unclear however why you feel you have to make fun of people who do feel a moral, ethical and self-preservation reason to pollute less.

Again, it is hard to know where to start.

Up in British Columbia the conservative government a few years ago did the sensible thing by deciding to do both a carbon tax and a cap & trade. Why?

Because a carbon tax can be brought in quickly and give the economy the maximum time to adjust. Economists all agree that the longer you have to transition off carbon the cheaper and easier it is. So the conservatives decided to give the economy a big head start by getting a low carbon price in ASAP. Smart. It has worked great and citizens strongly support it at the polls.

The reason you need a “cap” is to ensure the carbon levels actually go do. There are lots of ways to do a cap system. The conservative government in BC decided to join the biggest cap system (WCI) around to ensure integration and level playing field.

Carbon pricing is coming. The economies that hold out the longest before getting started are the ones that will feel the most pain.

From an evolutionary psychological point of view that incorporates group/group Darwinian selection I can imagine that societies that failed to have unproductive people that minimize their resource use got clobbered by a conquering group whose unproductive people tried to extract as much welfare and perks as would be dictated by selfishness alone.

So indeed, go right ahead. Leave the hot chicks to me guys and the fine wine too. Oh look! The sky is falling. See ya.

1) Obama has done lots from fuel efficiency to R&D to enforcing the Clean Air Act to greening military.

2) USA emissions have been falling for a few years now. Per capita we are down to 1964 levels and falling. Total emissions are down to 1995 levels. The GDP per tonne of CO2 has been rising much faster in USA than in Canada for example.

3) USA has a de-facto carbon tax on oil that is helping us to clean up our economy. At $90/gallon the average American sends $1,000 overseas to buy imported oil. It is half our trade deficit. Because of this, USA is getting much better at using less oil per dollar of GDP.

4) Coal in USA is a “dead man walking” according to MunichRe. Almost no plants have been built in recent years and many have been picked for early retirement.

As far as what to do to solve it, the author misses the essential fact that technologies get cheaper mostly because of economies of scale produced by DEPLOYMENT. It isn’t the geeks doing R&D in the labs that bring the prices down…it is the industry cranking out more and more and streamlining it.

Moore’s law worked because of DEPLOYMENT and was driven by DEPLOYMENT levels.

The author poo poo’s Germany’s investment in solar. But it is exactly DEPLOYMENT of solar that is driving the cost down so fast. Germans’ are heroes for understanding this and being willing to fund it. Solar is already cheaper than retail electricity in Italy. The solar boom is here…and not because of R&D. It is here because of the people who paid to deploy it despite it not being an immediate dollar return right then.

I suggest the author actually read a bit more about energy and climate facts before spreading gloom and defeatism based on incorrect info.

Listening to the likes of Charles Manson and Osama Bin Laden isn’t a great idea:

http://oi55.tinypic.com/2jb7fk7.jpg

Happily, actual thermometer records exist over two continents that
carry back continuously for multiple centuries, and these show that
recent warming is not at all odd:

http://oi49.tinypic.com/rc93fa.jpg

Laypeople tend to listen to astronauts more avidly than to psychopaths
who would artificially ration food and energy, worldwide, just for the
sadistic fun of it.

I’m a classic old school hippie, raised with The Whole Earth Catalog
as my childhood bible, and in it, Bucky Fuller features prominently,
since he inspired it in the first place. His whole spiel is that
limits to growth claims are bunk. Calling yourself tree huggers makes
me scoff. CO2 is plant food, not pollution, and it’s already greening
the planet significantly. Your genocidal rationing schemes will cause
starving people to destroy forests just to survive.

When the greens finally get behind thorium reactors, then we can talk.
Before then, we can only fight, and the skeptics are winning since you
hooked all your wagons to a small body of junk science.

Left wing journalist Alexander Cockburn spells it out for you in this
candid interview outside his home. He is still bashing nuclear but his
concerns I can take seriously since he isn’t a member if the Global
Warming cult.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n92YenWfz 0Y&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Despite evidence of fraud and counter evidence that history is not a
hockey stick you odd people insist on over-analyzing skeptics as being
fake moon landing screwballs.

Actual astronauts are not so confused about Global Warming claims:

http://www.populartechnology.net/2010/06  /nasa-astronauts-skeptical-of-man-made. html

Your hearts are in the right place but your heads are firmly lodged
elsewhere. Then you are forced to demonize your opposition, and you
become haters in the process. Calling us “deniers” all these years!
Pffft! I can even flirt up gals finally here in Manhattan and snicker
at greenies without striking terror into the poor girl’s heart, now
that the gig is up. Now they have heard if the controversy and are
interested in the opinion of a Columbia/Harvard trained Ph.D. chemist.
What a relief!

Why is everybody OK with this?

I have no idea why anyone would listen to Lomborg at this date: http://blogs.cfr.org/levi/2011/04/21/tru th-and-nonsense-on-chinese-clean-energy/