I’d like to hear more from those concerned a lot about how Global Warming will harm humanity regarding their calculations.    Kyoto is now recognized by anybody who understands the issues as failed and misguided.  Ethanol’s bizarre rise to fame was a great example of how “good intentions” often combine with opportunism, profit, and politics to make a dumb idea even dumber  (ethanol in early forms actually increases GW, though newer techniques do not.  However it’s still a questionable use of corn and innovation, fueled by farm belt political and profit agendas that conflict with common sense).

It seems to me there are – broadly – three camps in the debate:

1.  Extreme Skeptics.    “No global warming is going on”.    These folks are basically in denial about the large body of evidence such as …. thermometer and satellite ane ice core records …. that make it clear we are experiencing some warming.    These folks also insist wrongly that the evidence the warming is “human caused” is bogus or lies or  a science conspiracy.    Although there are legitimate concerns about some of the science surrounding global warming there is NO DOUBT we have warming and little doubt that “most” of that warming is human caused.     HOWEVER I do not think the warming carries the hazards often claimed.

3.  Alarmists.   This group  seems to have flunked math class…. many times….  they generally argue on general ground that we need to reduce emissions without bothering to calculate the costs of doing so and measuring those costs against the alternatives (feeding people who are starving NOW, getting water to people who need water NOW, educating people who need it NOW).    There are environmental catastrophes of biblical proportion and slowing development to meet our CO2 agenda appears to conflict with getting standards of living to rise.   It is bordering on nonsense to fear catastrophe from global warming even on long time frames.    Humans adapt daily to temperature changes and we can adapt centurially to a rise of 2-4 degrees if in fact it does materialize as projected.

2.  Common sense.   Moderate mitigation, much more focus on current emergency and infrastructure improvements.

Another wonderfully insightful, common sense, non-alarmist discussion from Bjorn Lomborg in his “Cars, Bombs, and Climate Change”

If we are to have a constructive dialogue about the smartest policy responses to global warming, we need to replace our fixation on far-fetched, Armageddon scenarios with realism about the true costs of dealing with this challenge.

Following are MY views, not Lomborg’s:

It’s clear to me that we have probably never seen in the history of science so much officially sanctioned alarmist nonsense as we have with climate change.   It’s not that there is no threat – there is a threat – it’s just that the climate issues  are very likely of less consequence than far more pressing catastrophic issues such as nuclear proliferation, possible economic collapse, and most importantly poverty and health conditions in many parts of the developing world – conditions that will at least in the short term require fossil fuels to help.

Perhaps even more importantly it’s absurd to think that China will “go along” with the developed world with respect to CO2 reductions.   They won’t and it’s naive to think this will change with any types of political pressure.

THEREFORE, we need to be thinking of ways to do the following:

1. Help solve pressing issues such as our own economic challenges, global instability, and continued massive poverty in undeveloed regions.    Working to modify some crazy trade barriers is a good start as well as strategic redirection of defense spending to actually provide for our defense rather than raise the stakes as so far has been done during the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama war spending sprees (in fairness Obama cannot yet be blamed for his massive spending.   His new policies may work or they may not – we don’t have enough data.  I would argue that the policies of the past failed to achieve a positive return on the massive investments).

More about military spending … later …

In the meantime we need to be adapting to climate change.   Luckily that’s not all that difficult.    Today I have already adapted to a temperature change of  about 50 degrees F.      Since the best estimates of global warming say we’ll have about a HUNDREDTH  of that temperature change happening in the next decade , I’m pretty sure I can keep the family alive.    If you want suggestions just send a self addressed stamped envelope to “Joe’s Climate Advice”, Talent, Oregon.