Anyone that TRULY believes that we are at a precipice must embrace all “lesser evils”. This would include: renewal energy, nuclear power and engineering global cooling. If we are not at a precipice then our timeframe, and associated measures, can be more deliberate.

The situation is binary – either we have a “crisis”, where extreme measures are warranted, or we don’t. It can’t be both ways.

I am personally am of the viewpoint that we do need to act simultaneously on reducing carbon emission (a difficult task given the impact of natural CO2 and methane, and the ascendance of China/India/etc) and counteracting warming, so that we don’t pass a point of no return on our path to a carbon free future. Unfortunately, it does appear that solutions to counteract warming are anathema to the “global warming zealots” as evidenced in this blog.

This reminds me of my collegiate days when the environmental zealots stopped nuclear power from expanding in the US. Without being able to offer a viable alternative, fossil fuel based power plants became the standard, significantly contributing to the global warming problem that these same “activists” decry today (not to mention EPA’s estimate of the 100,000’s of live’s that have been shortened due to the increase particulate count in the air).

When will zealots learn that solutions must be designed to address the problem and, that these solutions must be practical – otherwise, the adage “the difference between vision and hallucination is execution”, surely applies.

[JR: Thanks for posting, even if we don't agree on everything.]

Actually it is pretty clear that (from a purely economic standpoint) the opposite is true. Continued high fossil fuel use will keep the price high. The rich countries can easily pay for that, the poorer countries can’t. The best way to help the poor is by voluntarily reducing our fossil fuel use and thus lower its price. You can expect an economist to understand the law of supply and demand, can’t you?

“If you ask me, the only redemption (and chance at regaining some credibility) for the SuperFreakonomics guys would be to cancel this edition of the book..”

Yes, pulping the book is the only honorable course for the authors.

Based on the confused and confusing remarks of Myhrvold cited above, riddled as they are with errors, and in particular improper argumentation (including plenty of logical fallacies) – my guess is Mencken would conclude Myhrvold surely doesn’t know the answer.

“Myhrvold said:
“They (global warming “activists”) are seriously proposing doing a set of things that could have enormous impact — and we think probably negative impact — on human life,” he says.”

Comment: “probably”: Wouldn’t you want some numbers/proper prospective modelling to back this up?

“They want to divert a huge amount of economic value toward immediate and precipitous anti-carbon initiatives, without thinking things through.”

Comment: How is Myhrvold’s own “probably negative impact” “thinking things through”; yet the tons of peer-reviewed actual quantitative modelling done on GW – by IPCC, Stern, IEA – is not?

“This kind of attack [by Romm] makes it very difficult for people to suggest new ideas. “

Logical fallacy of straw man. Better worded as: difficult for people to suggest woolly bad ideas that cause delay and therefore take us all closer to the iceberg. Just why is it bad to make it “difficult” for people to do that?

“I have thick enough skin to laugh it off when Romm attacks me, but plenty of people don’t. The politicization of science has a terrible impact on the unfettered discourse of ideas.”

Comment: “unfettered discourse of ideas”. What a phrase for this topic. Instead how about unfettered quantitative assessment and prioritisation of options based on performance available right now in getting CO2 down the most the soonest.

“… a big impediment to geoengineering.”

Comment: Thank goodness. Let’s get the whole planet to best energy efficiency, then the residual needed energy provided by non-carbon sources, ASAP. Only then, if there is a remaining problem – even look at geoengineering. All my reading of the modelling suggests we could get CO2 down even to pre-industrial levels (my preferred target) with capacity to spare. My view is we would never need even to go near geoengineering and “discourse” such as I have cited above.

“Serious climate scientists who are privately interested in geoengineering are loathe to discuss it publicly because they worry that somebody like Romm will attack and ridicule them if they do”.

Comment: What can be wrong, especially when time is short, with attacking flaky distractions?

“Indeed, part of the reason I chose to work on geoengineering and chose to go public about it is to try to get the topic to be more widely discussed.”

Comment: Good, a proper quantified discussion will certainly show thoughtful people that geoengineering is a total distraction as long as we are not rolling out a full global anti-CO2 program at the right scale and at top speed.

Clouds haven’t choked climate change in the past. Glaciers have advanced and retreated despite whatever it is that clouds are suppoed to do or not do, and the amount of extra-energy derived from the current level of greenhouse gases is around an order of magnitude greater than the forces that drive glacial advance/retreat.

Jeffery Davis’ Oct 22 post (10:13 am) brings up a question I’ve had about the effect that heating the oceans will have on climate, that I’ve never seen addressed.

Simple physics suggests that heating the oceans will increase the amount of water vapor that evaporates into the atmosphere. Surely this water vapor will eventually condense into clouds and fall as rain.

So, if an unavoidable effect of global warming is increased cloud cover over the Earth, won’t those clouds reflect more sunlight and wouldn’t that mitigate global warming?

I’m not saying that global warming won’t occur, only that it seems to me that the increased cloud cover it causes should slow it down.

[JR: Sadly, that isn't true -- see here. Also sadly, there are several strong positive (or amplifying) feedback that clearly dominate the carbon cycle, which is why in the paleoclimate record, once warming starts, it speeds up more and more.]

I’ve read recently that 20 million tons of SO2 represents the difference between what the US produced in 1990 and what it produces currently. There was active warming in 1990. So, we would probably need to add more: a lot of the cooling from Pinatubo was also due to ash.

Or we could curtail CO2.