www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall More Proof of Global Warming?

mea culpa, mea culpa, mea flatula culpa



hawk

From the wsj.com/article/SB124597505076157449.html , a good synopsis of the changing climate of opinion among both scientists and policy makers:

OPINION: POTOMAC WATCHJUNE 26, 2009
The Climate Change Climate Change
The number of skeptics is swelling everywhere.
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation.

If you haven't heard of this politician, it's because he's a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)

The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

Credit for Australia's own era of renewed enlightenment goes to Dr. Ian Plimer, a well-known Australian geologist. Earlier this year he published "Heaven and Earth," a damning critique of the "evidence" underpinning man-made global warming. The book is already in its fifth printing. So compelling is it that Paul Sheehan, a noted Australian columnist -- and ardent global warming believer -- in April humbly pronounced it "an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence." Australian polls have shown a sharp uptick in public skepticism; the press is back to questioning scientific dogma; blogs are having a field day.

The rise in skepticism also came as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, elected like Mr. Obama on promises to combat global warming, was attempting his own emissions-reduction scheme. His administration was forced to delay the implementation of the program until at least 2011, just to get the legislation through Australia's House. The Senate was not so easily swayed.

Mr. Fielding, a crucial vote on the bill, was so alarmed by the renewed science debate that he made a fact-finding trip to the U.S., attending the Heartland Institute's annual conference for climate skeptics. He also visited with Joseph Aldy, Mr. Obama's special assistant on energy and the environment, where he challenged the Obama team to address his doubts. They apparently didn't.

This week Mr. Fielding issued a statement: He would not be voting for the bill. He would not risk job losses on "unconvincing green science." The bill is set to founder as the Australian parliament breaks for the winter.

Republicans in the U.S. have, in recent years, turned ever more to the cost arguments against climate legislation. That's made sense in light of the economic crisis. If Speaker Nancy Pelosi fails to push through her bill, it will be because rural and Blue Dog Democrats fret about the economic ramifications. Yet if the rest of the world is any indication, now might be the time for U.S. politicians to re-engage on the science. One thing for sure: They won't be alone.

Write to kim@wsj.com

I never know what to think about comments of this type. Congress is scheduled to vote today on "Cap & Trade" which is effectively a national energy tax. Every household will pay $1,000 in additional energy taxes by 2012 and then $2,000 by 2020 (according to the Congressional Budget Office). Glad you guys are rich enough to give all that extra money to the government and laugh about it. By the way, these new taxes are not even going to plant trees or design new cows or anything. The new taxes are being spent on mostly pork. The reasoning behind the tax is to make the use of energy that comes from oil & coal so expensive that solar and wind are competitive.

I'll stick by my posts.

Republicans and Democrats are both wrong. Dems don't care about the environment and just want the new tax money and the power the comes with it. Republicans are speaking in terms of not spending money. Both are forgetting science and good stewardship. Environmental policy should be made upon the basis of sound science, combined with knowledge and understanding of how policy relates to people. Africa, for example, would do good to harvest its abundant energy resources to build a capitalist society for itself, and get itself out of poverty. Burning fossil fuels would be a huge positive environmental step forward for them.

The Cap and Tax bill will give Houston a pounding.

Mr Fielding of Australia should have made a "fact finding mission" to the South of his own country rather than flying off to the USA. I wonder WHEN the Australians are going to vote him out of office pretty soon.

The raging infernos that have left more than 160 people dead in southern Australia burned with such speed that they resembled less a wildfire than a massive aerial bombing. Many victims caught in the blazes had no time to escape; their houses disintegrated around them, and they burned to death. As firefighters battle the flames and police begin to investigate possible cases of arson around some of the fires, there will surely be debates over the wisdom of Australia's standard policy of advising residents to either flee a fire early or stay in their homes and wait it out. John Brumby, the premier of the fire-hit Australian state of Victoria, told a local radio station on Monday that "people will want to review that ... There is no question that there were people who did everything right, put in place their fire plan, and it [didn't] matter — their house was just incinerated."

Although the wildfires caught so many victims by surprise last weekend, there has been no shortage of distant early-warning signs. The 11th chapter of the second working group of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for example, warned that fires in Australia were "virtually certain to increase in intensity and frequency" because of steadily warming temperatures over the next several decades. Research published in 2007 by the Australian government's own Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization reported that by 2020, there could be up to 65% more "extreme" fire-danger days compared with 1990, and that by 2050, under the most severe warming scenarios, there could be a 300% increase in such days. "[The fires] are a sobering reminder of the need for this nation and the whole world to act and put at a priority the need to tackle climate change," Australian Green Party leader Bob Brown told the Sky News.

Destructive wildfires are already common in Australia, and it's not hard to see why climate change would increase their frequency. The driest inhabited continent on the planet, Australia has warmed 0.9°C since 1950, and climate models predict the country could warm further by 2070, up to 5°C over 1990 temperatures, if global greenhouse-gas emissions go unchecked. Beyond a simple rise in average temperatures, climate change will also lead to an increase in Australia's extreme heat waves and droughts. Southwestern Australia is already in the grip of a prolonged drought that has decimated agriculture and led to widespread water rationing; the region is expected to see longer and more extreme dry periods in the future as a result of steady warming.

It's important to acknowledge that no single weather event can be definitively caused by climate change — and it's possible that the current inferno in Australia might have been as intense and deadly even without the warming of the past several decades. Police are beginning to suspect that many of the fires may have been deliberately set, and the sheer increase in the number of homes built in fire-danger zones in southern Australia today puts more people in harm's way, raising the potential death toll. Still, heat waves and drought set the table for wildfires, and temperatures in the worst-hit areas have been over 110°F (43°C) while humidity has bottomed out near zero. Climate change will continue to be a threat multiplier for forest fires.

That's one more reason why the world must work together to reduce global carbon emissions to minimize the impact of climate change. The trouble is, though, CO2 cuts won't be enough. As a recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science points out, even if we are successful in cutting carbon emissions rapidly — hardly an easy task — the momentum of climate change will continue for centuries. That means our ability to adapt to the impacts of warming, including more aggressive responses to wildfires like those in Australia, will become all the more critical, lest natural disasters turn into human catastrophes. But it also means that the world we've become accustomed to will change, perhaps irrevocably. The wildfires in southern Australia are already the worst in the nation's history — but they surely won't be the last.

Leading climate Scientists believe recent bush fires in Australia caused by climate change [ipsnews.net]

Ukrainian Karpaty Summer Camp - Destroyed by record fires caused by climate change [cym.org]

Ukrainian 'Karpaty' summer camp in Australia detroyed by fire caused by climate change [picasaweb.google.com.au]

I.F.

The proof of Global warming is this that Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi and the writer of the bill, will stand to gain a fortune.
Stephanos I

Just that I can't resist a straight line.


Cap & Trade isn't inherently a tax. When that's actually what's done, it's the free-market response to bad regulation.

The traditional regulatory response to a million tons of goo a year being released would be to require particular technology to reduce goo at every point. A less-bad method is to set goo emission requirements (although this was successful in prior tailpipe emission reductions).

The free market responses are either to

a) figure out how much damage goo actually does per ton (call it $6), and slap it with a "Pigouvian tax" in the same amount ($6) per ton. This would at least get us to an optimal amount of goo.

b) Cap & Trade. Issue a permit or license to everyone currently emitting goo for the amount they currently emit. These permits can be traded, and indeed will be traded to those who can do something more valuable with the goo. These programs have been highly successful. A fee of *up to* $6/ton/year can be attached.

Once you've added any more tax than $6, it's no longer Cap & Trade.

And for those who want to eliminate *all* pollution, rather than acknowledging that there is an optimal level: are you *really* prepared to live without fire?

hawk

The following are exracts from the Executive Summary of an draft EPA Report, Proposed NCEE Comments on Draft Technical Support Document for Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions Under the Clean Air Act, National Center for Environmental Economics Office of Policy, Economics and Innovation, Office of the Administrator, U.S. Environmental Protection Administration (Washington, DC) March 2009) on which the Obama Administration has been sitting for months because its findings run counter to the Administration's prevailing metanarrative. I thought it was the "other" administration that was supposed to be "politicizing science", but what do I know? Of course, as someone who has read many such in-house reviews of draft scientific reports, this one is perhaps the most damning I have seen in ages.

The entire report is available online as a pdf file.


1. The current Draft TSD is based on the IPCC AR4 report, which is at best three years out of date in a rapidly changing field. There have been important developments in areas that deserve careful attention in this draft. The list includes the following five:

• Global temperatures have declined--extending the current downtrend to eleven years[!], with a particularly rapid decline in 2007-8; in addition, the PDO went negative in September 2007 and the AMO in January 2009 respectively. At the same time, atmospheric CO2 levels have continued to increase and CO2 emissions have accelerated.

• The consensus on past, present and future Atlantic hurricane behavior has changed. Initially, it tilted towards the idea that anthropogenic global warming is leading to (and will lead to) more frequent and intense storms. Now the consensus is much more neutral, arguing that future Atlantic tropical cyclones will be little different from those of the past.

• The idea that warming temperatures will cause Greenland to rapidly shed its ice has been greatly diminished by new results indicating little evidence for the operation of such processes.

• One of the worst economic recessions since World War II has greatly reduced GHG emissions compared to assumptions made by the IPCC. To the extent that ambient GHG levels are relevant for future global temperatures, these emissions reductions should greatly influence the adverse effects of these emissions on public health and welfare. The current draft TSD does not reflect the changes that have already occurred nor those that are likely to occur in the future as the result of the recession. In fact, the topic is not even discussed to our knowledge.

• A new 2009 paper finds the crucial assumptions in the GCM models used by the IPCC concerning strongly negative feedback from water vapor is not supported by empirical evidence, and that the feedback is actually negative.

• A new 2009 paper by Scafetta and West suggests that the IPCC used faulty solar data in dismissing the direct effects of solar variability on global temperatures. Their research suggests that solar variability could account for up to 68% of the increase in the world's global temperature.

These six developments alone should greatly influence any assessment of "vulnerability, risk and impacts" of climate change within the U.S. But these are just a few of the new developments since 2006. Therefore, extensive portions of the EPA's endangerment TSD which were based upon the old science are not longer appropriate and need to be revised before a new TSD is issued for comments.

Not only is the science of the TSD out of date, but there are a number of other disturbing inconsistencies between the temperature and other scientific data, and the GHG/CO2 hypothesis that need to be carefully explored and explained if the draft TSD is to be credible. Despite the complexity of the climate system, the following conclusions appear to be well supported by the available data (see Section 2 below):

A. By far the best single explanation for global temperature fluctuations is variation in the PDO/ENSO. ENSO appears to operate in a 3-5 year cycle. PDO/AMO appear to operate in about a 60-year cycle. This is not really explained in the draft TSD, but needs to be, or, at the very least, there needs to be an explanation of why OAR believes that these evidence cycles do not exist, or why they are much more unimportant than we believe them to be.

B. There appears to be a strong association between solar sunspots/irradiance and global temperature fluctuations. It is unclear how this operates, but it may be through indirect solar variability on cloud formation. This topic is not really explored in the draft TSD but needs to be, since otherwise the effects of solar variations may be misattributed to effects of changes in GHG levels.

C. Changes in GHG concentrations seem to have so little effect that it is difficult to find any effect in the satellite temperature record, which started in 1978.

D. The surface measurements (HADCRUT) are more ambiguous than the satellite measurements in that the increasing temperatures shown since the mid-1970s could either be due to the rabid growth of urbanization and the heat island effect, or by the increase in GHG levels. However, since no such increase is shown in the satellite record, it appears more likely that urbanization and the UHI effect are the most likely cause. If so, the increases may have little to do with GHGs and everything to do with the rapid urbanization during the period. Given the discrepancy between surface temperature records in 1940-75, and 1998-2008 and the increases in GHG levels during these periods, it appears even more unlikely that GHGs have much effect on measured surface temperatures either. These points need to be very carefully and fully discussed in the draft TSD if it is to be scientifically credible.

E. Hence, it is not reasonable to conclude that there is any endangerment from changes in GHG levels based on the satellite record, since almost all fluctuations appear to be due to natural causes and not human-caused pollution as defined by the Clean Air Act. The surface record is more equivocal but needs to be carefully discussed, which would require careful revision of the draft TSD.

F. There is a strong possibility that there are some other natural causes of global temperature fluctuations that we do not yet fully understand, and which may account for the 1998 temperature peak which appears on both the satellite and surface temperature records. This possibility needs to be fully explained and discussed in the draft TSD. Until and unless these and many other inconsistencies referenced in these comments are adequately explained it would appear to be premature to attribute all or even any of what warming has occurred to changes in the GHG/CO2 atmospheric levels.

These inconsistencies are so important sufficiently abstruse that in our view EPA needs to make an independent analysis of the science of global warming, rather than adopting the conclusions of the IPCC and CCSP without much more careful and independent EPA staff review than is evidenced by the draft TSP. Adopting the scientific conclusions of an outside group such as the IPCC or CCSP without thorough review by EPA is not in the EPA tradition, anyway, and there seems to be little reason to change the tradition in this case. If there conclusions should be incorrect and EPA acts on them, EPA will be blamed for inadequate research and understanding, and reaching a possibly inaccurate determination of endangerment. Given the downward trend in temperatures since 1998 (which some think will continue until at least 2030), there is no particular reason to rush into decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data.

Finally, there is an obvious logical problem posed by steadily increasing U.S. health and welfare measurements and the alleged endangerment of health and welfare discussed in this draft TSD during a period of rapid rise in at least CO2 ambient levels. This discontinuity either needs to be carefully explained in the draft TSD or the conclusions changed.

Jean Francois needs to consider the meaning of the term post hoc ergo propter hoc, and why such deductions can be fallacious.

This is a link to a series of EPA memoranda [cei.org] that show the manner in which the Obama Administration suppressed a report by its own scientists because it did not conform to global warming orthodoxy. A key line from the final e-mail is just inexcusable:


In other words, "'Shut up', he explained".

Those who want to find the complete draft report can find it here: Proposed NCEE Comments n Draft Technical Support Documement [cei.org]

Waxman & Markey have both admitted that even though they are the main sponsors of H.R. 2454 (the Cap & Tax Bill) they have not read it and don't know what is in it. Even Pilosi doesn't know what is in it.

AND TO TOP IT ALL OF THERE IS NO GLOBAL WARMING!

THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF GLOBAL WARMING!

The earth is cooling. Can't these people read thermometers? Can they understand nature and natural climate change?

Unfortunately facts don't matter to people who won't see them.

We need to revolt against the government and get back to following the Constitution. Please attend the next tea party in your area!

It seems most remarkable that our current congress has passed so much legislation in the last 6 months. Even more remarkable and most unsettling is that most of the bills passed havn't been read by those passing them!
Trillions of dollars borrowed!
Millions of jobs lost!
Billions in new taxes compunded on already high taxes!
Do our elected representatives even care that they are leading our country into ruin by NOT having any meaningful debate? Our elected represenatives appear NOT to have debated H.R. 2454 even half as much as it has been debated here on Byzcath!
That is scary.

I really enjoyed StuartK's cut-&-paste from the Wall Street Journal, so I thought I would do the same. Enjoy !

JUNE 15, 2009 It’s Time to Cool the Planet
Cutting greenhouse gases is no longer enough to deal with global warming, says Jamais Cascio. He argues that we also have to do something more direct—and risky.

By JAMAIS CASCIO
If we’re going to avoid climate disaster, we’re going to have start getting a lot more direct. We’re going to have to think about cooling the planet.

The concept is called geoengineering, and in the past few years, it has gone from being dismissed as a fringe idea to the subject of intense debates in the halls of power. Many of us who have been watching this subject closely have gone from being skeptics to advocates. Very reluctant advocates, to be sure, but advocates nonetheless.

What has changed? Quite simply, as the effects of global warming have worsened, policy makers have failed to meet the challenge. As a result, if we want to avoid an unprecedented global catastrophe, we may have no other choice but to reduce the impact of global warning, alongside focusing on the factors that are causing it in the first place. That is, while we continue to work aggressively to reduce the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere, we also need to consider lowering the temperature of the Earth itself.

To be clear, geoengineering won’t solve global warming. It’s not a “techno-fix.” It would be enormously risky and almost certainly lead to troubling unforeseen consequences. And without a doubt, the deployment of geoengineering would lead to international tension. Who decides what the ideal temperature would be? Russia? India? The U.S.? Who’s to blame if Country A’s geoengineering efforts cause a drought in Country B?

Also let’s be clear about one other thing: We will still have to radically reduce carbon emissions, and do so quickly. We will still have to eliminate the use of fossil fuels, and adopt substantially more sustainable agricultural methods. We will still have to deal with the effects of ecosystems damaged by carbon overload.

But what geoengineering can do is slow the increase in temperatures, delay potentially catastrophic “tipping point” events—such as a disastrous melting of the Arctic permafrost—and give us time to make the changes to our economies and our societies necessary to end the climate disaster.

Geoengineering, in other words, is simply a temporary “stay of execution.” We will still have to work for a pardon.

Nothing New
Altering the Earth’s temperature, of course, is hardly anything new. Human civilization has been changing the Earth’s environment for millennia, often to our detriment. Dams, deforestation and urbanization can alter water cycles and wind patterns, occasionally triggering droughts or even creating deserts. On a global scale, industrial activity for the past 150 years or so has changed the Earth’s atmosphere, threatening to raise average world temperatures to catastrophic levels, even if we were able to stop releasing carbon into the atmosphere immediately.

What we’re talking about with geoengineering, however, is something new. It’s a more deliberate manipulation of the environment, rather than a byproduct of other activities. And while we know more than we did just a few years ago about how it might work, there are still plenty of unknowns.

Geoengineering mainly takes two forms: temperature management, which moderates heat by blocking or reflecting a small portion of the sunlight hitting the Earth; and carbon management, which gradually removes large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere (as opposed to simply reducing the amount of additional carbon we’re releasing into the atmosphere). Temperature management is the more likely course of action, as it has the advantage of potentially quick results, while carbon-management techniques that would have a global impact might take decades or centuries to show results.

Sun Block
Temperature-management proposals boil down to increasing how much sunlight the Earth reflects, rather than absorbs. (Increasing the planet’s reflectivity by 2% could counter the warming effects of a doubling of CO2 emissions.) While a variety of techniques have been suggested, some don’t pass the plausibility test, either due to cost, clear drawbacks, or both.

For instance, one proposal would place thousands of square miles of reflective sheets in the desert to reflect sunlight—an interesting plan, until you realize that this would effectively destroy desert ecosystems. Another proposal calls for launching millions of tiny mirrors into orbit, where they would block some sunlight from reaching the atmosphere. But one study of the orbiting-mirror plan concluded that, to keep pace with the continual warming, we’d need to launch one square mile of sunshade into orbit every hour.

Two approaches hold the most promise: injecting tons of sulfates—essentially solid particles of sulfur dioxide—into the stratosphere, and pumping seawater into the lower atmosphere to create clouds. A recent report in the journal Atmospheric Physics and Chemistry Discussions identified these two approaches as having a high likelihood of being able to counter global temperature increases, and to do so in a reasonably short amount of time.

The sulfate-injection plan, which has received the most study, is explicitly modeled on the effects of massive volcanic eruptions, such as Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines; in the months after the 1991 eruption, global temperatures dropped by half a degree Celsius.

To trigger a drop in global temperatures, we’d need to loft between two million and 10 million tons of sulfur dioxide (which combines with oxygen to form sulfate particles) into the lower stratosphere, or at about 33,000 feet. The tiny particles suspended in the atmosphere act like a haze, reflecting a significant amount of sunlight—though not enough to notice at ground level (except for some superb sunsets).

While this seems like a large amount, several studies have shown it could be done using some combination of high-altitude balloons, dispersal in jet-aircraft exhaust, and even more exotic platforms such as artillery shells. As with volcanic sulfates, the particles would eventually cycle out of the atmosphere, so we’d have to refresh that two to 10 megatons of sulfur dioxide roughly every year.

Stratospheric sulfate injection appeals to many geoengineering proponents for a few reasons. It doesn’t require a massive leap in technology to carry out successfully; arguably, we could start doing it this year, if we needed to. It’s relatively cheap, probably costing just a few billion dollars a year. And because stratospheric sulfate injection emulates an effect of volcanic eruptions, we already have some idea of what to expect from it—for better and worse. We know, for example, that the cooling effect could start within weeks of the injection process.

We also know that stratospheric sulfates will likely damage the ozone layer (as happened after Mount Pinatubo erupted), potentially resulting in more skin cancer and damage to plants and animals. In addition, the scattering of sunlight will reduce the efficiency of some kinds of solar power, and some studies have suggested that it could disrupt monsoonal rain cycles.

A Higher Chance of Clouds
The other high-impact proposal, cloud brightening, increases the amount of reflected sunlight by making more clouds and thickening existing ones. One idea is to use ships to propel seawater thousands of feet in the air, where it would form or increase cloud cover.

The technique has both advantages and disadvantages compared with the sulfate-injection method. Lofting seawater into the air to seed cloud formation would have fewer environmental side effects than the sulfates, and may allow for targeted use to counter droughts. Because it would be relatively low altitude, it wouldn’t have the same scattering effect on sunlight as sulfate injection.

But increasing the extent and thickness of cloud cover could also have at least as powerful an effect on rainfall patterns as sulfate injection, increasing downpours in one area or contributing to unexpected droughts in others. Finally, the technologies required for cloud brightening are still experimental, though initial proposals look to be markedly more environmentally benign than those used for sulfate injection.

Both solutions could present a more dramatic problem if the geoengineering was to stop abruptly. According to some studies, global temperatures would spike once the geoengineering steps were ended, actually exceeding for a short time where they would have been without any geoengineering. Afterward, the temperature increase would continue as if nothing had been done to slow it. While this doesn’t mean we’d have to undertake geoengineering indefinitely, it underscores why geoengineering must be accompanied by carbon cuts.

Also, neither would do anything to solve other problems that arise from excessive levels of carbon dioxide, such as oceans becoming more acidic from increased carbon loading.

The Political Impact
Any kind of geoengineering would also face other issues. Most prominent are the political concerns. Since geoengineering is global in its effects, who determines whether or not it’s used, which technologies to deploy, and what the target temperatures will be? Who decides which unexpected side effects are bad enough to warrant ending the process? Because the expense and expertise required would be low enough for a single country, what happens when a desperate “rogue nation” attempts geoengineering against the wishes of other states? And because the benefits and possible harm from geoengineering attempts would be unevenly distributed around the planet, would it be possible to use this technology for strategic or military purposes? That last one may sound a bit paranoid, but it’s clear that any technology with the potential for strategic use will be at the very least considered by any rational international actor.

There are also more mundane questions of liability. If, for example, South Asia experiences an unusual drought during cyclone season after geoengineering begins, who gets blamed? Who gets sued? Would all “odd” weather patterns be ascribed to the geoengineering effort? If so, would the issue of what would have happened absent geoengineering be considered relevant?

Consider the Alternative
With all of these drawbacks, why would I consider myself an advocate of geoengineering, no matter how reluctant? Because I believe the alternative would be worse.

The global institutions we rely on to deal with a problem like climate change seem unable to look past short-term roadblocks and regional interests. At the same time, climate scientists are shouting louder than ever about the speed and intensity of environmental changes coming from global warming.

In short, although we know what to do to stop global warming, we’re running out of time to do it and show no interest in moving faster. So here’s where geoengineering steps in: It gives us time to act.

That’s if it’s done wisely. It’s imperative that we increase funding for geoengineering research, building the kinds of models and simulations necessary to allow us to weed out the approaches with dangerous, surprising consequences.

Fortunately, the deployment of geoengineering need not be all or nothing. Though it would have the greatest impact if done globally, some models have shown that intervention just in the polar regions would be enough to hold off the most critical tipping-point events, including ice-cap collapse and a massive methane release.

Polar-only geoengineering strikes me as a plausible compromise position. It could be scaled up if the situation becomes more dire and could be easily shut down with minimal temperature spikes if there were unacceptable side effects.

Still, we can’t forget: Geoengineering is not a solution for global warming. It would simply hold temperatures down temporarily, doing nothing about the causes of climate change, let alone ocean acidification and other symptoms of a carbon overdose. We can’t let ourselves slip back into business-as-usual complacency, because we’d simply be setting ourselves up for a far greater disaster down the road.

Our overall goal must remain the reduction and then elimination of greenhouse-gas emissions as swiftly as humanly possible. This will require feats of political will and courage around the world. What geoengineering offers us is the time to make it happen.

--Mr. Cascio, based in the San Francisco Bay area, is a futurist and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. He can be reached at reports@wsj.com.

Stuart, scientific reasoning (scientific method) and the formulation of scientific hypotheses are primarily inductive reasoning, not deductive reasoning. There is a big difference.


Additionally, the fact that the Obama administration may be censoring opponents of global warning is no different from what the Bush administration did to those who argued in favor global warming.

James Hansen, who works for Nasa and is said to be one of the foremost scientists researching global warming, had has work edited censored by the Bush Administration. A segment on the topic, with examples of the Bush editing, was done on 60 minutes. I put the segment from CBS news below.