Personally I’m a multiple flip-flopper on AGW. I keep swaying around the agnostic position depending on who I read last.

Here’s an image from Aqua on Aug 12 that shows how it has dispersed.(courtesy of Volcanism blog)
http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk171/volcanism/misc/kasatochi_OMI_2008225.jpg

The government (via the Fed) caused the Great Depression as Ben Bernanke admits. That, in turn, led to World War II and 50 million dead. It is obvious that even today that the government has NOT learned how to mange the economy.

So, interfering with something so basic to the economy as ENERGY, is fraught with danger.

I can have some sympathy with your point of view and your philosophical rationale for your decision. It is a traditional position to adopt when outcomes are unknown.

However historically the philosophy has related to the individual’s decision about something that may or may not affect to them. Most notable example is Pascal’s wager.

What is proposed these days as the precautionary principle is not an individual decision it is a mass coercion since nothing else, it is said, will work. And that is probably true, it wouldn’t. But it occurs to me that what is proposed, being something that takes us into the unknown rather quickly, as also contrary to the precautionary principle. However it has a very high probability of creating something close the scenario you, and all of us, wish to avoid. I could echo your concerns, but from the other side of the canyon.

A simplistic example merely for illustration not as a basis for detailed scientific debate.

Mr. Gore and Dr. Hansen, et al, seem to be of the opinion that the world economy and its people somehow find the fiscal and physical resources to virtually eliminate the ‘carbon economy’ in around 10 years. Let’s accept that at face value for now.

To make that change without inducing enormous changes – likely reductions in our living standards and those of developing nations as a start and who knows what effect on the poorest people of the world – to our currently expected ways of life does not sound very feasible. To maintain most of our current life expectations but using new technology (even if possible in the time scale) would require enormous infrastructure changes, steel production, cement output and other things that I’m sure I don’t have to spell out.

All in a 10 year period (make it a little longer if you like, it’s still pretty dramatic) and all using current technologies constrained by currently available energy sources.

Just think how much CO2 all that activity would produce in the execution of the plan.

So if CO2 IS indeed THE problem and the problem is about to be aggravated beyond control by a tipping point a decade or so away, the Gore/Hansen plans would almost certainly guarantee the catastrophe you and we seek to avoid.

Of course were that to happen Gore and Hansen, et al, could point to their predictions and claim they were right all along and then annex their own laudatory chapter in what was left of human history. They would not be the first people to appear in that category.

The honest answer to the wager in this context, at a personal level, my very well be to resist breeding. That would offer a net benefit to the planet for around 80 years greatly reducing energy consumption and use of raw materials. And it would be a way to clearly demonstrate that you were able to make a difference.

I have yet to meet anyone who was infallible though I have known and worked with several individuals who were very strong and motivating other than one or two irrational weak points. They usually fell foul of their weaknesses or lack of complete information at some stage, sometimes quite destructively. They would, mostly, never admit to their mistakes, to do so would be to self destruct. It is the way most humans function I find – with very few exceptions.

Politicians are very familiar with all of this.

It’s not just the job losses and suffering. The banning of DDT has directly led to the deaths of 100’s of thousands, if not millions.

The shifting of resources from projects that could have benefited mankind to projects that are of no benefit whatsoever, is also a major source of suffering.

Perhaps someone could chart ‘adjusted’ temperature verses climate study grants? I predict a high degree of correlation.

The peak of SC24 has been postponed more than 1.5 years.
I’m sure though, that Hathaway is doing his best, and so we shouldn’t harp on him.
It just goes to show that predícting nature, let alone climate, is no easy or certain thing.

Models, even for the short term, have proven to be hardly better than rubbish.

The whole environmental movement is a misanthropic dishonest mess.
I hope they someday have to be held accountable for the job losses and suffering they have caused from DDT bans to Global warming to bio fuels.
it’s the poor and middle classes who have to suffer or pay for their misgiuded policies.

You have to listen to the Warmists to understand their view. Remember, AGW is a settled fact to them. We might as well be arguing about the existence of gravity for all the good it will do. All the “well, what about (fill in the blank)?” types of questions that bring up things we don’t really understand (like the role of aerosols in cloud formation) are disruptions of this world-view. It makes the explanation of the world-view more complicated, its solutions less certain to work, and its acceptance by the public as the sure-fire way to go less likely to happen. That is why they are so dismissive and aggravated with the so-called “deniers.” More to the point, they like to style themselves as unifiers of humanity and saviors of the planet. All this stuff about “uncertainty” disrupts the very important agenda they are trying to implement.

But yet again, that is my point. There is a lot of science involved, of course; however, when it comes to it, it is ideology that rules the day. That is why the IPCC can revise its reports over and over till their numbers mean nothing yet still talk to the public in press-releases about the imminent dangers posed by global warming.

But that’s life. Often messy and complicated. There’s hardly ever a straight yes or no that does not come with conditions. But that is exactly what the Warmists want to avoid; they want global warming to be inevitable. And THAT is why the models do not take it into account. It messes with their ideology more than their science.

http://www.avo.alaska.edu/image.php?id=14340

http://www.avo.alaska.edu/image_full.php?id=14818