I think Joe has said that we need to do something now and we need it to be aggressive towards reducing carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas released into the atmosphere.

The problem is the politics. To get rid of slavery in the United States in the 1860’s, we had to fight a civil war, North against the South. We were the only country in the world that had to fight a civil war to get rid of slavery. In Russia the Czar just made a decree that there would be no more slavery.

We have to live and work with the politics we have in this country. We could have democratic politicians who vote in huge Carbon taxes and very restrictive energy efficiency standards and then if that becomes unpopular, the next election they could be voted out of office and the votes reversed. That would not help the cause.

I have relatives in Germany who write about global warming as the problem of the world. Their hair is on fire. And they are doing something about their carbon use in Germany. In the United States, we still have a large percentage of the population who thinks global warming is something made up so climatologists can control the world. It’s a very different political climate.

A phrase I heard once is that politicians are like wind vanes, they will turn when the wind blows hard enough in the right direction and we are just not blowing hard enough to do something about our countries greenhouse gas release. That’s the political reality. And we haven’t convinced enough people to drive more fuel efficient cars and reduce excessive carbon use. It’s just to much of our culture and our economics. It’s like turning an oil tanker. it is very hard to do.

Am i missing something?

You still don’t want to suggest anything too radical, because it might not be too popular politically, and you scoff at the idea of adaptation.

But the situation IS just as dire as I said. Maybe worse than what i said.

i just dont understand where youre coming from.

While there is still a chance to avoid catastrophe, that MUST be the highest priority. BTW, there is no evidence that it would be easier politically to get the federal government to spend significant money on adaptation if it won’t spend significant money on mitigation. After all, we couldn’t even get enough money to rebuild the New Orleans levees to withstand a category five hurricane AFTER Katrina hit (or before it, for that matter, even though many people predicted catastrophe was inevitable).

So I consider most of this talk about adaptation to be a red herring by people who don’t understand how catastrophic climate change is going to be if we don’t act soon.

Of course the next decade is going to be hotter than this one. You can’t implement solutions fast enough to do anything about that. If we stopped all emissions tomorrow, the planet would still warm up 1°F, because it hasn’t yet come in equilibrium with the current concentration of CO2 — that’s why scientists are so damn worried.

This is not well understood, so I guess I will have to do another post on it. Slashing emissions quickly does NOT slash concentrations quickly — indeed at first it only slows their growth. And stopping concentrations from rising does NOT cut temperature growth immediately — you’d need to reduce concentrations to do that.

Thus, the next decade will be warmer than this one, and the 2020s will be even warmer. As will the 2030s. If we were WWII-scale aggressive, we might be able to peak in the 2040s, but I am “optimistic” that conservatives won’t let the country take the necessary actions.

“Concrete action is required now – not more hot air from public officials.”

Do you believe that or not Joe?

Maybe you are confident of the solutions, but pessimistic that action will be taken. in that case you should be pushing for adaptation measures if youre really concerned about getting something done.

If you’d read the book, which you obviously haven’t, you’d know I lay out a rapid solution. Note to D-pop: Hydrogen ain’t a solution to climate — heck it ain’t even a zero-carbon energy source, it’s just an energy carrier and a crummy one at that. (You are probably the only person on the planet to ever accuse me of just giving lip service to global warming — try reading the book or this blog before saying such silly things.)

I will be laying out the full solution this year on this website.