Reply #13: If you don't believe the points the OP made

[pscot]

there's no reason for you to accept my arguments. I don't mean to be rude. You seem intelligent and well intentioned, but I don't think you understand either the scale of the problem or where we are in our timeline to disaster. I'm not really a cynic, but I am profoundly skeptical of your claim that significant efforts at amelioration are underway. Tightening CAFE standards and offering modest subsidies for "green" tech project is like pointing a garden hose at a forest fire. As long as we're still talking about clean coal and offshore drilling, we aren't seriously addressing the problem.

If we had listened to Jimmy Carter we might not be in the fix we're in today. Your criticism of the Clinton administration is right on point. Clinton and Gore talked a lot and did very little. There is still hope that the worst case can be averted, but that hope is slim and dwindling. Strong measures would need to be undertaken immediately, and that just is not happening, either here or abroad. A temperature rise of 2 degrees centigrade is widely believed to be inevitable. Many think that's estimate is too low. Unless we stop adding greenhouse gases immediately, the rise will be greater.

This is known as the Keeling Curve. They've been taking these measurements since about 1950.

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/#mlo



http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100430081731.htm

"The only practical way to preserve a planet resembling that of the Holocene (today's world) with reasonably stable shorelines and preservation of species, is to rapidly phase out coal emissions and prohibit emissions from unconventional fossil fuels such as oil shale and tar sands," they state.

The authors outline strategies to make that phase-out possible. They include elimination of subsidies for fossil fuels; putting rising prices on carbon emissions; major improvements in electricity transmission and the energy efficiency of homes, commercial buildings, and appliances; replacing coal power with biomass, geothermal, wind, solar, and third-generation nuclear power; and after successful demonstration at commercial scales, deployment of advanced (fourth-generation) nuclear power plants; and carbon capture and storage at remaining coal plants.

Here's the World Meteorologicl organization report for 2009

http://www.whrc.org/resources/online_publications/warming_earth/scientific_evidence.htm

Wikipedia has an excellent summary of the IPCC report for 2007.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report