He looks old enough to remember what a proper mushroom cloud looks like.

But, then, time does play tricks on one's perception of "old".

...and, uhhh, I forgot what else.......

Duck and cover, just in case.

Are we waiting for China to comply with similar restrictions?

A viable alternative to coal fired electric plants?

Carbon sinks in the ocean?

Human pandemic?

Soylent green?

Mmmmmm: I give up. But I think Dembrow looks like Radar O'Reilly in a very creepy anagram sort of way.

Speaking of the political process becoming tiresome, here's my tip on how to handle those annoying phone calls:
"Oh, you're calling for _____. Darn, I was going to vote for that candidate, but now I can't. I have a strict policy of never voting for any candidate who calls me here at home."

> Are we waiting for China to comply with
> similar restrictions?

The science doesn't care. The earth doesn't care. It will warm regardless of anyone's politics, ideology, nationality, or excuse.

It's been firmly established -- over 100 years ago -- that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that GHGs warm the planet. This is really quite basic physics. It will take awhile, there might be some natural cooling in-between. But the future temperature is up. Worse, the time lag of CO2 warming means the worst is in front of us. And our CO2 emission path is exponentially upward. Our human population is exponentially upward. The economies of the huge developing world are exponentially upward, fast.

This really is the one issue that could end the world, although it won't happen in our lifetimes. But is that all we care about? Dembrow is right.

"This really is the one issue that could end the world, although it won't happen in our lifetimes."

Sorry. The "world" isn't "ending." You imply humanity will cease to exist - hyperbolic nonsense - but that has nothing to do with the Earth's existence. It's a self-regulating organism.

As far as Humanity's ability to adapt... Somehow earlier groups survived ice ages that may have enabled migration from the Asian land mass.Do we know what other cataclysmic events occurred in prehistoric times that were survived by species able to adapt? Viruses? That's why we're here to even talk about it.

While I agree with the need to consciously cut down on the use of carbon emitting fuels, and I do my part, I think the hysterical views are counter productive and add "fuel" to opposing opinions.

As far as the "one issue that could end the world...," I think a good old nuclear bar-b-que, or a rogue asteroid or comet, or a mighty kick-ass solar flare would do a much more efficient job in much less time. To end humanity, that is. The Earth, and the cockroaches, will adapt.

> It's a self-regulating organism.

Sure -- so is Venus, the product of a runaway greenhouse effect. There is already some evidence, from the last few year's worth of atmospheric CO2 measurements, that there may be a positive feedback going on -- CO2 increases in the '90s were ~1%/yr, but this century are running about 3%/yr.

Maybe you're right. What if you're wrong?

> It's a self-regulating organism.

The earth is a self-regulating system (it's not an "organism") in the absence of external (i.e unnatural) perturbations. Man's release of unprecedented amounts of GHGs is a significant external perturbation.

You make my point. Venus is still here.

Well, if you want to go science on it, at some point the sun will expand and the earth will be gone. I saw a great show about the future of the universe and it claimed eventually the whole thing will go dark.
At that point nothing will be left but the Hillary campaign.

...working on those super-nova delegates.

"I am the great an terrible OZ!"
..."pay no attention to that man behind the curtain"...
re: Bill McDondald's comment
I usually say something simmilar ending with, "please take me off your call list; so sorry you have such a sh*ty job".
The Hillary person who called the other day actually laughed as I was hanging up.

David: It's been firmly established -- over 100 years ago -- that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that GHGs warm the planet. This is really quite basic physics.
JK: CO2 is only a significant greenhouse gas at much lower concentrations than current. A doubling from current levels will only cause ONE DEGREE more because it is in saturation.

But here is another school of thought: “ Changes in carbon dioxide content lag those in temperature by five months.” From Nature 343, 709 - 714

Or perhaps you would believe what Al Gore’s science advisor wrote on his blog:
At least three careful ice core studies have shown that CO2 starts to rise about 800 years (600-1000 years) after Antarctic temperature during glacial terminations. These terminations are pronounced warming periods that mark the ends of the ice ages that happen every 100,000 years or so. See realclimate.org/index.php?p=13, be sure to note the twisted logic to try to pin the blame on CO2 after admitting CO2 did not start the warming at the end of ice ages

Since the cause cannot follow the effect, both of these references show that CO2 isn’t really a cause of warming.

PS: CO2 is not the major “greenhouse” gas, water vapor is. See: realclimate.org/index.php?p=142

David: And our CO2 emission path is exponentially upward.
JK: No it isn’t. The U.S.A. is actually emitting LESS CO2 per unit of GDP as time goes on. We have been doing this for years as the free market strives to reduces costs.

David: Our human population is exponentially upward.
JK: The rate of population increase has been dropping since 1970, yet panic mongers still use this red-herring to scare people and more importantly, raise money! See: UN population center

David: The economies of the huge developing world are exponentially upward, fast.
JK: Would you rather see them remain in poverty?

David: This really is the one issue that could end the world, although it won't happen in our lifetimes.
JK:
1. I’m still waiting for that peer-reviewed paper that proves CO2 increases FROM THE PRESENT level cause significant warming. Come on David, show it to me with a proper citation.
2. You are following admitted liars and profiteers:
Al Gore: Nobody is interested in solutions if they don't think there's a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is,
(From Grist, 09 May 2006, grist.org/news/maindish/2006/05/09/roberts/ bold added)

Then there is Al Gore’s income from spreading the panic:
1. Generations Mutual fund: Hon. Al Gore is Chairman. see: generationim.com/about/team.html
2. After "a conversation that's gone on for a year and a half," according to Gore, he has decided to join his old pal John Doerr as an active, hands-on partner at Kleiner Perkins, Silicon Valley's preeminent venture firm.
See: money.cnn.com/2007/11/11/news/newsmakers/gore_kleiner.fortune/
3. Al Gore appears to get $100,000 for speaking. See this for one example (price is on page 5):
thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0717071gore1.html
Its all about the money. Don’t ever forget:
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- Henry Louis Mencken

BTW, a British court found a bunch of inaccuracies in Gore’s film (“over-representation of factual presentations”?)
See: newparty.co.uk/articles/inaccuracies-gore.html

Steven Schneider , Editor of Climate Change Journal:
... we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might. have. (DISCOVER OCTOBER 1989, Page 47)

Jim Hansen:, the NASA guy that keeps an official temperature record:
Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time, when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of the global warming issue, and energy sources such as "synfuels," shale oil and tar sands were receiving strong consideration. Now, however, the need is for demonstrably objective climate forcing scenarios consistent with what is realistic under current conditions. Scenarios that accurately fit recent and near-future observations have the best chance of bringing all of the important players into the discussion, and they also are what is needed for the purpose of providing policy-makers the most effective and efficient options to stop global warming.
( from http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh6.html, bold added)
He says it is OK to lie.

He was associated with the “coming ice age” fallacy in the 1970's which advocated the cessation of fossil fuels to avoid an ice age. SCIENCE, VOL. 173, 9 JULY 1971: J. E. Hansen, personal communication. We are indebted to Dr. Hausen for making these Mie scattering calculations for us, for suggesting the use of the two-itream approximation, and for checking the fluxes obtained by the two-stream approximation against solne exact solutions (which agree to within about 5 perccnt) to the multiple scattering problem
[see, for example, J. E. Hansen, Astrophj.~.J . 155, 565 (1969)l. 17. J. E. Hansen and J. B. Pollack, J . Atmos.

He got $250K from Kerry’s wife’s foundation - do you think this will encourage him to look for other causes for warming?
giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20010305/

Thanks
JK

David: There is already some evidence, from the last few year's worth of atmospheric CO2 measurements, that there may be a positive feedback going on -- CO2 increases in the '90s were ~1%/yr, but this century are running about 3%/yr.
JK: Of course CO2 also increased during the cooling between 1950-70. And the oceans have been stable - cooling for the last few years.

David: Maybe you're right. What if you're wrong?
JK: w Huh?? What if YOU are wrong - your purpose solutions will:
1. Leave a billion of so people in poverty in the third world.
2. Lower our standard of living.
3, Force the poor to choose between heat bad food. (the elite will be able to afford carbon indulgences)

As someone who actually knows science, it is just not believable that we can cut carbon painlessly - with ONE EXCEPTION, which the greens refuse to consider: nuclear power.
For small applications, green energy can work. But to supply the national need, they don’t cut it:
1. Solar power will increase the cost of power by at least a factor of 5. Would require paving over almost one whole state.
2. Both wind and solar are intermittent, therefore we must have standby power available. This is already causing grid stability problems in Europe.
3. Wave and tidal power are pipe dreams.

Thanks
JK

Pay no attention to the man behind the Karlock.

I would not dismiss AGW skeptics out of hand.

Some readers of this blog will remember that Karlock was one of the few who saw through the fraud of So-What shortly after the City started peddling it.

During the buildup to Iraq, I remember the bullying of the skeptics of the intelligence reports of WMD unpatriotic, head-in-the-sand naysayers.

The vast majority of people listening to the Iraq war pitch from the neo-cons didn't have a clue about the facts (how could they?), most just believed the side they wanted to believe.

Three years later WMD skeptics were vindicated when we didn't uncover much of anything. Some neo-con's now theorize that the WMD's were spirited away on the eve of war, but nobody is listening to them anymore.

I wonder if we give into the demands of AGW crowd whether they might be held in higher contempt than the neo-cons in coming years. We only have to gamble with our (already suffering) economy to find out.

It's too bad we don't have some predictable benchmarks for AGW theory that could completely evaluate its soundness within a couple of years.

Instead, we are hectored that everything hinges on implementing economy-crushing regulations today, in order to prevent climatic cataclysm a century from now (and the central basis involves trusting climate models with questionable track records for "predicting" prior climate changes).

Call me shortsighted, but I'm not ready to give them my cow in exchange for some of those magic beans quite yet.

>> David: And our CO2 emission path is
>> exponentially upward.
> JK: No it isn’t. The U.S.A. is actually
> emitting LESS CO2 per unit of GDP

Jim...you are, simply, stupid.

US CO2 emissions are upward. That is the ONLY relevant parameter. Emissions intensity (emissions/GDP) mean not a wit, and is only a term invented by the Bush administration to try and fool people like you.

The earth does not care in any way what our GDP is.

It only cares what is the *absolute* amount of emissions emitted by the *world* (not just the US).

Please, Jim, try to be serious.

David: Jim...you are, simply, stupid.
JK:Always nice to get personal insults from people - it means that they have run out of rational arguments.

PS: Less CO2 per GDP is a step in the direction you desire, so why complain so much? Or, will you not be happy until you see poor people starve in the dark and Al Gore get richer?

Thanks
JK

I wish you McCain voters could work out your differences privately.