BrisbaneRhino wrote:DHM - sadly I think your view on world action is what is most likely to happen. The evidence for global warming and its impacts are simply too vague for any government to risk annihilation by trying to do something meaningful about it. It won't be until the worst effects become unavoidable to everybody that anything meaningful will be done. If you take that position, an interesting question is whether the government should in fact divert spending away from carbon reduction schemes and into schemes to offset the physical impacts of global warming. As for oil running out, I'm not sure the 40 years is right BTW. There is plenty more fossil fuel available if you're willing to pay more and more to get it. Ten years ago shale oil would not have been included in reserves forecasts because at $70-$80/barrel to produce nobody would have dreamed of touching it when the market was around $35-50 (and on a genuine marginal cost basis the Saudis can produce oil for way less than that). Now it seems profitable - even though its environmentally destructive and hugely energy intensive to produce. I just googled it, I'm no expert - I'm sure it's wrong. http://www.imeche.org/knowledge/themes/ ... il-run-out I guess that consumption is only going to go up (although once Jeremy Clarkson is 6 feet under that should give us an extra 5 years of petrol). There have been end of the world scenarios quite a few times since the war. I lived through the most realistic which was about the time the US decided to put cruise missiles within range of Moscow in the early 80's. That's the closest I'll ever get to the end of civilisation as we know it.

BrisbaneRhino wrote:DHM - sadly I think your view on world action is what is most likely to happen. The evidence for global warming and its impacts are simply too vague for any government to risk annihilation by trying to do something meaningful about it. It won't be until the worst effects become unavoidable to everybody that anything meaningful will be done. If you take that position, an interesting question is whether the government should in fact divert spending away from carbon reduction schemes and into schemes to offset the physical impacts of global warming. As for oil running out, I'm not sure the 40 years is right BTW. There is plenty more fossil fuel available if you're willing to pay more and more to get it. Ten years ago shale oil would not have been included in reserves forecasts because at $70-$80/barrel to produce nobody would have dreamed of touching it when the market was around $35-50 (and on a genuine marginal cost basis the Saudis can produce oil for way less than that). Now it seems profitable - even though its environmentally destructive and hugely energy intensive to produce. I just googled it, I'm no expert - I'm sure it's wrong. http://www.imeche.org/knowledge/themes/ ... il-run-out I guess that consumption is only going to go up (although once Jeremy Clarkson is 6 feet under that should give us an extra 5 years of petrol). There have been end of the world scenarios quite a few times since the war. I lived through the most realistic which was about the time the US decided to put cruise missiles within range of Moscow in the early 80's. That's the closest I'll ever get to the end of civilisation as we know it.

Rock God - that's exactly what I mean by vague. We cannot predict the extent of global warming (2 degrees, 3, 4?), the precise impact or how much humans need to do to stop/reverse it. People are sadly remarkably uninterested in future generations, and trying to get people to absorb serious costs today for something in the - for many people - distant future is always hard.

My only point for entering this thread was that to achieve anything I think we have to be as honest as possible about what is/isn't known, including abatement costs, which are in fact by far the easiset things to predict. I also think that scare-mongering tactics simply don't work. Another example of dubious scare-mongering is cited in The Australian this weekend about an environmental group trying to push the idea that climate change is causing more extreme global weather, despite the fact that the IPCC has said the evidence for this just isn't there yet. Like it or not, people pick up on these things and it tars all 'environmental scientists' with the same brush. Here in Australia the droughts which ended just over two years ago were being cited as direct evidence for global warming, and yet we've now had the wettest years on record. People aren't so dumb or permanently thinking about the environment for the blatant moving of the goalposts to not register.

In terms of panic stories, people got worried for a while and were willing to pay more taxes etc for a while, but once the sky didn't cave in, people moved onto the next thing and now the carbon tax is likely to bring down the Labor government at the next election. Its hard to get people to worry about something en masse for any period of time.

I personally think it ought to be couched in terms of a moral decision - and get people to look their own kids in the face before saying no to taking some pain on their behalf.

DHM - I remember being at school and being told all oil would run out in 30 years (that was sadly over 30 years ago). Oil will definitely run out at some stage. The only question is when, and don't be surprised to see humanity frantically trying to eke out the last few barrels of oil from currently unobtainable sources before we finally give up.

Given that he is attempting to crystallise precise conclusions from what is an enormously complex moral, political, social and scientific question I expect there are one or two flaws in his paper. Whether they bear any relation to the ones you raise I have no idea. What I do know is he is an accredited IPCC reviewer with a list of qualifications down to his shoelaces. Of course, arguments from authority can sometimes be fallacious but given that much of our current problem with global warming can be directly attributed to not trusting the experts until such time as your credentials match or exceed his I'm siding with him.

You talk about honesty being the key to finding a solution to the issue of Global Warming (provided we haven't already passed the point of no return). I agree entirely. Unfortunately, the words "nuclear energy" and "honesty" have, for the past fifty years, been kept so far apart you'd need a rocket ship to visit both in one day. Until such time when the public is granted full disclosure of the true costs in terms of money, the environment (current and future), health etc. we should treat it in precisely the same way we treat its lethal contaminants.