We have other forms of logic than our particular hyper-productive model of the free market, which after all is not so logical, since its main answer to the problem of the commons is to accelerate destruction of the commons exponentially. Education is the first answer, to teach people they have a connection to the commons (all people, other beings and the Earth); of course when psychological or institutional blocks to that education arise they must be dealt with psychologically and anti-institutionally (ie, r/evolutionarily).

Given our past history with the third world any such suspicions are perfectly justified; we have to allay their fears by giving them whatever help they need to become our economic equals (defined within an ecologically-ensconsed economy, which means we may have to come down and meet them partway.)

Don’t we make carbon a resource when the government starts buying it? AKA a carbon tax. Or maybe we will have to prohibit it, like we have prohibited other forms of vandalism and murder.

China and India and the “Third World” neo-capitalist countries complain that colonialists just want to retard their economic development, using CO2 as an excuse. So voluntary measures seem unlikely — even Kyoto was a flop.

The only hope, therefore, is to make CO2 a resource, so there would be enough profit in recycling it (to make synfuel or carbon nanotubes, for example) to justify the cost of saving the planet.

Repugnance is an emotion and thus stands in contrast to intellecual functions. If he thought the histrionic and maniacal focus on carbon dioxide were intellectually expugnable I’d be all for him. But he lost his chance; I guess I’ll have to stick with the clean coal deniers.

Makes sense when you consider all the developed contries are producing as much or more CO2 as they did previously and growing countries like China are adding to it every year. Until action is taken it will continue to accelerate…also the carbon sinks (ocean and forests) are slowing their uptake of CO2 (another unanticipated side effect of climate change) so we’re loosing that helping brake on CO2 growth.

http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=2nruCRcbnY0&feature=channel

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/ gmd/ webdata/ ccgg/ trends/ co2_trend_gl.pdf

The last 6 points are in the part of the annual cycle where levels rise. The gradient seems to get steeper each year, even compared to just a few years ago.

So much talk – so little action. It would be nice to see some tiny weeny glimmer of hope in the data. I don’t see any.

http://www.pbs.org/ wgbh/ nova/ extremeice/ program.html