Really, today’s news is no surprise at all:
Global concentrations of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere surpassed 400 parts per million this past spring for the first time, breaching a symbolic barrier set by climate scientists and policy makers, according to a report released Monday. …
“There is nothing magic about 400, it’s nothing better than 399 or 401,” said Oksana Tarasova, chief of the W.M.O.’s Atmospheric Environment Research Division. “This is like our obligation to ourselves, we’d like to not go over 400. It’s symbolic.” She said that surpassing the threshold “only shows that our commitments are not there.”
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So we can argue about a symbolic number. But not this one:
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Nor, likely, this:
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Which means that a Gulf city like this – Dubai – has a realistic lifespan of … what? Less than a century.
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Change means just that: change.
Climate change means benefits in some places and disadvantages in others.
Most northern nations, such as Canada, N-US, N-Europe, N-China or Russia benefit from less ice, less death by freezing, more ice free ports & rivers, lower heating bills or longer growing seasons.
Alarmists, be they priests, weirdos, politicians or scientists have for centuries exploited humans’ fear of the unknown or the unpredictable.
Man plays a role, as does nature ( sun, rays, rotations, ..) and it is obvious that 8B people, soon 10B have an impact on ” Mother Nature “.
Every action has a re-action and associated cost. Every $ spent on sth, say new taxes on gasoline or carbon, cannot be spent on other, perhaps far better ideas like poverty eradication, education of young girls in developing nations or water purification systems. This is grossly missing from the climate change debate. Is $1B or more likely $100B best spent on X, or on Y or on Z or in what proportions. One of the more level headed guys here are both Judith Curry or Bjoorn Lomborg, as much is uncertain and much misinformation or misallcation of $s leads to poor results or suboptimal investments.
Specifically, in Canada that means, for example that
a) we do not tax gasoline demand enough, but rather tax producers but then import oil from other far worse regimes, or that
b) we ship oil by rail and not by pipeline, or that
c) we do not tax parking on residential streets in MetroVan, or that
d) we do not build rapid transit but invest more in diesel spewing buses, or that
e) we do not have road tolls on major bridges, tunnels or intersections, or that
f) we hinder LNG developments
to name a few of the many many misallcations.
Why this site don’t have other languages?