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New Satellite Data Confirms Global Warming
starannihilator writes "Researchers at the University of Washington have analyzed satellite data using a new and more accurate method (using channel 4 on the Microwave Sounding Unit satellite) to show that the troposphere has been warming faster than the Earth's surface for more than two decades. Nature reports that previous interpretations (using MSU channel 2) did not indicate such dramatic tropospheric warming because the data were compromised by stratospheric conditions. For years, the debate over global warming raged largely as a result of an incongruency between trends in surface and tropospheric temperatures. The new data gained by MSU channel 4 are consistent with the surface temperature's rising trends and indicate that global warming is, in fact, occuring in the troposphere. Read the full article in Nature, or similar stories in the Seattle Times and Newswise."
I've changed my view on global warming. I used to think the whole earth couldn't warm or cool, but it would stay the same over time. Now I believe that the earth does warm and cool over significant variations. So we are in a global warming phase, if the toposphere is absolute proof (which we can't be sure about.)
The question is: What can we do about it?
The answer is: Unfortunately, not much. If we cut all the world's emissions of greenhouse gasses drastically in half, that wouldn't account for the other variations responsible for global warming like a more active sun or just the phase of the weather patterns on earth or the temperature of the sea. I have to think about it this way: If humanity did all it could to cool or warm the earth, what would we accomplish? The answer is that the earth is so huge and so complicated that we can't predict whether our actions would cause havoc or remedy. I mean, we could spend trillions of dollars on a system to cool the troposphere only to find out that by doing so we are causing more hurricanes and such.
The earth is a chaotic system, and chaotic systems for the most part are unpredictable. A variation of a few hundredths of a degree in one place in the world can be responsible for a hurricane in another.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
I blame the sun!
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
since all storys about environmental degredation get plugged up with rediculously weakly argued and unsubstantiated anti-global warming comments modded +5, why not just waste your mod points here instead?
By the end of the decade, the same satellite will predict a new ice age. These pie-in-the-sky baseless climate trend predictions go in cycles. Global cooling was all the rage in the 1970s, and it is due to come "in vogue" again.
By this point everybody (except some stubborn idiots) admits that the earth is getting warmer. The real question is: Why?
I'm fairly sick of new studies coming out every couple weeks proving once and for all that the earth is getting warmer. Maybe some more of those research dollars should be devoted to understanding why the warming is occuring and developing ways to cope with a warmer earth, rather than redundantly measuring the temperature via every possible method and then shouting: "GLOBAL WARMING!!!! GLOBAL WARMING!!!!"
If God had had a computer it would have taken him 7 months to create the earth...if he even bothered to do it at all.
Perhaps the biggest source of the problem is contrails. The study they did in the near airplane-less skies after 9/11 seems to indicate that they have quite a massive impact on weather patterns.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
Are we causing our demise by driving around? No. Factories killing us? No.
So, those smog warnings when they warn people with respiratory conditions not to go outside were all in my head.
Just because someone thinks that we aren't causing the warming doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying to cut down on emissions.
there is no evidence yet for man-made global warming.
Yes there is and stating otherwise won't change it any more and throwing a temper tantrum will. There is a tremendous amount of evidence of man-made global warming. Your political bias may make you unwilling to read the evidence, but man-made global warming is a fact accepted by the vast majority of respected scientists.
Rush said that global warming was a communist plot of the liberal hegemony, backed by anti-NRA and pro-ACLU supporters, in an attempt to get a feminist abortion doctor elected to the presidency thereby preventing the birth of the Anti-christ, thwarting Jimmy Swaggart's and Jerry Falwell's predictions of the second coming of Christ and the fall of Israel.
I think he's exagerrating.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Are we causing our demise by driving around? No. Factories killing us? No. Do those things contribute? Sure!
So you admit that they contribute, but you don't think they are a problem? If you have enough "contributions" they eventually add up to some nasty effects.
Now stop the panic and go do more research.
Hey great idea! Maybe we can finish the research just in time to show conclusive evidence that we did indeed mess up our planet beyond repair. Or maybe we could just try to cut down on those "contributions" now, until we can convince you crack pots that we are a danger to our environment.
an article about this every week? As another poster pointed out, most people realize there is a change going on. So is this really newsworthy?
Actually, there is not. Stating there is does not make it any more true than saying that the sun revolves around the Earth. Bad science uttered over and over is still bad science.
"Your political bias may make you unwilling to read the evidence"
I have a scientific bias (toward actual facts). Thanks for bringing up politics (foremost on your mind, not mine). The camp making up the "man-made global warming" myth is politically motivated.
"but man-made global warming is a fact accepted by the vast majority of respected scientists."
Since there is no evidence for it, they certainly aren't respectible in thie regard. These "political hacks first, scientists second" will be singing a different tune when the phony-baloney cycle turns around to global cooling. They'll scapegoat the same people for global cooling when that happens.
Limbaugh's not a "Christian Conservative", so replace the parts about the Anti-christ, Falwell and the 2nd Coming with some rant about Hillary and Terry McAuliffe.
I agree with you completely. Cutting down emissions is a good idea as long as it's done rationally.
Smog warnings and global warming are not directly related though. There's plenty of pollution that needs to be cleaned up down here at our level before we worry about the upper atmosphere.
Do some digging on your own, the earth has been far hotter than it is now even before we were industrialized.
Not agreeing or disagreeing, but can you cite some references to back that statement up?
What did you find there? Warming caused by factory smokestacks in the year 120,000 B.C.E.?
"evidence is so strong that there is indeed a worldwide consensus amonst reasearch scientists"
Correction: there is a concensus among scientists who happen to believe this trendy view.
"that there is a great chanc that we are indeed causing massive global climate change and hence we should attempt to progress with caution."
Correction: we don't have any idea that we are, and if we did, we don't know how actions one way or another would change things (IF AT ALL). We know so little about these matters. , to more recent data collected by statlite and other earth
Really. Does it now.
Because you just said that a "new ice age fad" is starting, and you're claiming it has something to do with global cooling. And now you're refering to a story about a thaw in Greenland threatens a new ice age, and you're saying this is about global cooling. Whereas the story is actually only about Global Warming. "Global Cooling" isn't mentioned - probably because no serious scientist believes it exists.
"Global cooling", in the sense of the temperature of the Earth lowering on average across the planet, is distinct from the idea of an "ice" age, at least in terms of the one you quoted. The Guardian is reporting, correctly, that one effect of a global shift in climate, even one that warms the Earth on average, can be that ice forms in areas where currently it doesn't. That's because warming can effect sea currents and other weather patterns, changing systems that usually bring warmth to areas of the planet that would normally freeze.
Try, for example, comparing London with Moscow. Compare how far North either one is, then ask yourself why London is usually temperate and Moscow is usually covered in snow. A brief look at other areas of the world level with London will tell you that there's something wierd about the weather in Britain (I mean, other than the rain, five year hurricane-strength storm cycle, etc): it's far warmer than it should be. That's because there's a weather system that actively moves heat from the Gulf of Mexico up to the British Isles (and thereabouts.)
Now, the evidence that global warming may cause Britain to turn into some icy wasteland isn't exactly scientific (not because it's impossible, but because right now they're trying to predict a chaotic system and simply assuming a change in the weather system will almost certainly have the worst result - nobody however really knows what the results will be), but it's being talked about as a possibility. It's a possibility because if you shove a huge amount of water into the ocean, it's not likely to act the same way as it did previously. The media, not the scientists, are raging about ice coming to currently unusually temperate parts of the world as some kind of inevitability. Do yourself a favour and don't pretend the rash harping of the media and the current scientific consensus are the same.
Utterly meaningless. This was a fad, a real fad, that lasted a few months. No serious scientists hung their hat on it. Scientists investigated it, but the ultimate conclusion was that the phenomena was bunk, and the reverse was, if anything, more likely.
The scientific community has been concerned about global warming since the mid eighties, if not earlier. They've been largely consistant. They've investigated trend after trend, and everything found has pointed in one direction.
The latest evidence is right at the top of this article. You see the headline "New Satellite Data Confirms Global Warming"? It's because, well, basically, there's this satellite data, it's just come out, and, erm, it also shows the globe has warmed.
The underlying concerns have a firm foundation. There's a lot of money being poured into discrediting it because, well, there's a lot of money to be lost if, say, we switch from oil to something more sane; because there are a lot of businesses that stand to see their costs skyrocket if their CO2 emissions are regulated; because there are ideologically swivel-eyed psuedo-libertarians who find it hard to comprehend that we might, as a group, need to do something. We rarely if ever see credible reports that GW isn't an issue. We regularly see well researched
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Gee, England had a wine industry for thousands of years. It's been too cold for wine grapes for several centuries, maybe things are returning to normal.
It seems the earth continues to change temperatures well within its historical range.
Anyone who wants me to punish people for doing far less "harm" than a single volcanic eruption, just demonstrate that this change in temperature is anything other than natural. Go ahead, I dare you.
Until you can, keep your ego-stroking self-centered "if it's not exactly like I remember then it's YOUR FAULT" attitude to yourself.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
This means China needs to radically boost its efficiency (not hard even with current technology), Indonesia has to prevent the drainage and burning of peat bogs, and all that. If things there continue as they have been going, the USA could cut emissions to zero and still not make things better.
This also means that the Kyoto system of quotas is fundamentally broken. It will not do to give each nation a quota; each emitter of CO2 and other climate-changing gases has to have an incentive to prevent those emissions, and the competitive advantage should go to those producers and nations which are doing it the best. This means something like a unified system of carbon taxes.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Which brings me to my next point: if you change the characteristics of the attractor, the behavior of the system can change radicaly in a very sudden fashion. I fear that this is what we are doing with climate change, and we may suffer huge damages from the results.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Ice cores
Any discussion of global warming as a climatic cycle needs to extend in a timespan of tens of thousands of years to look at a single cycle. The problem with the "global warming" as being a man-made effect is the localization of the time period were talking about. Most of the data being used to "prove" the theory are on the order of a decades and at best centuries. From a historical perspective we are in a regular warming trend that is situated inside of the end of an ice age. To this end it is highly likely that it will continue to get hotter regardless of human activity. This is factual based on data from hundreds of thousands of years. As the gp has said, while human efforts do have an effect on this pattern, to what degree is unknown. Anything contrary to this has to date has not modeled the climate to any appreciable margin of error. The problem lies in the complex interaction of a very large system. The simplifications assumed to actually compute projections cause unacceptable margins of error in a short future window.
How much more time do we have to spend convincing the public that we mere humans actually have the power to affect our environment?
Here's the thing:
- We have research that suggests a trend towards global warming
- Global warming is bad for us (rising sea levels, eratic weather patterns, etc.).
- We have research that suggests that we contribute to global warming.
Conclusion: Even if we are not the direct cause of the trend, perhaps we should be finding ways to slow/stop it rather than encourage it?I definitely agree that lower emissions is not a bad idea.
Which is all I am trying to say.
Although I always agree that everything requires "more study", I do agree with this poster's assessment of the situation. It is by no means contradictory to say that we can't change what is happening and that the Earth is a chaotic system. Worse yet, the Earth is a chaotic system for which we don't know all the variables, let alone how to change them.
This doesn't mean that conservation of the environment isn't a noble cause, because it is, I strongly dislike the smog here in Phoenix driving to work in the mornings. I just don't see exactly how anyone expects to "fix" the problems without breaking the system first.
Imagine trying to fix the bugs in a system the size of Windows with a disassembler, and then you're about halfway to the level of complexity you're talking about.
1) We are STILL exiting an ice age. Of course things are going to get warmer.
2) #1 aside, the average surface temperature of earth over a year and over the entire earth is not static. See, we are not in a perfect circle of an orbit. As the planets tug at us, we vary our position from the sun year to year. Charting this for the last nexeral million years and looking at the trend for the past few thousand, we see that we are in the middle of a period of being pulled to the sun.
3) It is mearly impossible to understand how much of the raise in temperature is attributible to nature and to us.
I think it would be good to minmize our destructive emitions. What woried me more than global warming is:
1) the whole in the Ozone layer
2) Light diminishing (from deseils)
3) Chemical imbalances (acid rain)
Temperature is a rather futile thing to control because it is so wild. Ice ages are normal. They come to an end, and they come back.
Few people know that Earth was an iceball for a long time. Then the water melted. They don't know if life formed before, after or during this period. But there was a period where we were all ice.
So to sum it up, forget temperatire, worry about Sulphur, Ozone and Carbon.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
And that, my friend, is why we're all screwed. By the time something "bad" happens, it will be a little too late---much like hearing the ambulance a few blocks away, but not pulling over until he's right on your arse.
Yeah, right.
Exactly how long has it been since we first took an accurate reading of temperature, much less CO/CO2 levels in the atmosphere? OMG, 0.2 degrees! GMAFB!
I understand that we use other indicators, but you have not convinced me that we even know that global warming, beyond any "normal", cyclic variation, IS occurring - yes it seems to be so, but science is about proof, not postulate.
As an engineer and a scientist, I am trained discern fact from fiction, but let's face it, if I'm trying to get research money, I know that the political-types are going to have to be motivated. The average voter/consumer is willing to relinquish control out of fear (think PATRIOT Act) or mystery (think religion).
It's kinda like Venkman in Ghostbusters says "you'll save the lives of millions of registered voters".
Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a critical component of spiritual devotion. Jon Krakauer
...is just keep chaning how you measure until you get the results you want.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
everyone know that global warming is going on. the only question being aruged over is "are we to blame?" and i say no.
this is almost exactly like what happened to the climate 1000 years back. it got warm enough that Greenland was usable for farming. that just seems like to much similarity to be a coinsiance.
but still, what is causing it??
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
is a fact accepted by the vast majority of respected scientists.
This is a classic fallacy of appealing to authority.
History is littered with majorities of respected scientists being embarassingly wrong.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
ts the more diffuse light which causes a slowdown in the plant respiration, which causes a drop of co2 going into the air, and the measured result is less overall co2 in the air.
Please explain to me how that works. maybe I am dim, but your sentence seems to contradict itself. plants do _not_ produce carbon dioxide as a by product of photosynthesis, in fact it is used as a resource. How can a reduction in this rate of the production cause less of the input material.
Spencer and Christy published the original paper on microwave sounding and atmospheric temperatures.
This is a classic fallacy of appealing to authority.
No, it is not an appealy to authority. It's based on the knowledge of the scientists, not their authority. That's like saying that the peer review process is flawed because it appeals to authority.
I have a BSc in Theological Determinism from Bob Jone's University.
You don't even know the name of the University! What a bozo! Do you think it is owned by "Bob Jone"? HAHAHA
Oh, and BTW, Mars has a climate entirely made up of CO2.
And you don't even know the difference between climate and atmosphere. Yeah, you're a real scientific genius.
To the unaware, there is a medal given out by Uppsala University in Sweden under the auspices of the Royal Swedish Academy called the Angstrom Medal. Pretty impressive stuff. Now there's this private group, the AFAB, who decided to give out an Angstrom Medal to Hoagland. Here is a nice quote from the department of Physics at Uppsala:
Also, it turns out after all that the people in AFAB have admitted that giving their version of the Angstrom Medal was "a mistake." This is like Taco and Cowboy getting together and deciding that I should recieve the "Nobel Prize," and then me running around adding to my name "winner of the Nobel Prize."BTW interplanetary climate specialist (what, are you talking solar wind here? What is this interplanetary climate you are speaking of?), you might think you know a lot about the subject, but your analysis of the Mars climate shows you are very ignorant (hint: you need to consider extinction values and optical depth, to name just two items). Please provide even a back-of-the-envelope calculation to show that Mars should be hotter than Mercury. While we wait, you can also tell us all about "the face," the "geometry of Cydonia," and you might as well weigh in with your scientific expertise and explain why the Martian atmosphere is as blue as a Texas sky. These are, after all, all topics widely promoted and lectured upon by the "great" Hoagland.
For the rest of you, if you want to see what a huge pile of horseshit people like this peddle, start with pages like this.
Yeah, yeah, I know, "fight the system," "the man is keeping you down," etc., etc. I apologize for my ramblings, but I am just part of the scientific intelligentsia who will not rest until we bury the "truth" and protect our positions, and we can't help but attack the few honest men like you.
Because there is no evidence of man-made atmospheric changes contributing to anything.
Here is an article from the BBC News about a scientific study that gives strong evidence of man-made greenhouse gases contributing to global warming. So you can stop with your bullshit claims about there being "no evidence." That link proves that you are either ignorant or a liar.
So what you end up with is 100% political efforts like Kyoto which requires that "bad" countries decrease CO2 emissions and requires that "good" countries increase them.
More bullshit. The Kyoto treaty did not require any country to increase CO2 emissions. That's just complete and utter fabrication.
I'd rather pay more for banana's and CDs to stop Martian invasion, Godzilla attacks, and hangnails. As long as you are paying to affect something that has nothing to do with anything....
Since you've already proven yourself woefully ignorant about the entire subject, your opinion about the topic is worthless. Do us all a favor: Stay home on election day and study rather than going out to vote. We'll all be better off if you do.
For instance, A volcanic erruption can cause so much more so called "greenhouse" gasses to be released into the atmosphere than all the polutants man has expelled since the first machine of industry.
That is, quite simply, crap. You're wrong and embarassingly so.
"There is no doubt that volcanic eruptions add CO2 to the atmosphere, but compared to the quantity produced by human activities, their impact is virtually trivial: volcanic eruptions produce about 110 million tons of CO2 each year, whereas human activities contribute almost 10,000 times that quantity." - Scientific American
Moderators, please don't mod up silly statements like these where sources aren't cited.
Chaos now has a relatively precise meaning in science - that very small, perhaps nearly invisible, initial conditions can produce, under some conditions, disproportionately large divergences in outcomes. But, if understood, this can make a system more, not less, predictable, for there are patterns to the kinds of changes that happen. The weather pattern over the earth is not well-understood, by any means, but we know at least two things - mankind is doing things that, theoretically, could produce a warmer earth, AND, the earth is getting warmer. Causality, or, more to the point, the importance of other factors affecting said causality, is not irrefutably established, but caution definitely would advise some courses of action over others. Those who say we don't understand so should do nothing are worse than B.F. Skinner, who in his time said, essentially, we don't understand the brain's workings, so we won't even try to investigate it. They have their heads in the sand, and are not doing any thinking worthy of the name. (And they may be pushing some sort of other agenda, and are hoping you are too stupid to think for yourself.) You don't light a fire in your house, and then notice the temperature rising, and claim "the proof isn't in yet, so I'll just keep burning!"
The degree was issued by BJU, therefore it's possessive.
If you have a degree from there, then they give degrees to illiterates! Here's what you wrote:
I have a BSc in Theological Determinism from Bob Jone's University.
What the hell is posssessive in that sentence? Tell me! The way that you've written that sentence, the University is owned by someone named "Bob Jone". If you wanted to say that the University was owned by "Bob Jones", then you should have written "Bob Jones' University", but that's not the name of the school is it? Your sentence says that the degree is "from" the university, not that it belongs to the university.
Are you saying that the university owns your degree? That Bob Jones owns the university? That Bob Jone owns the university? Just what's possessive in your mind?
Subset, superset. Thanks for playing though
Atmosphere is not a "subset" or "superset" of climate. Atmosphere is the collection of gases surrounding a planet while climate describes conditions like temperature, wind, and precipitation (no, I don't care that wind involves air -- it doesn't make one a subset or superset of the other). Temperature is a subset of climate. Rain is a subset of climate. Atmosphere is not.
Yes, after even he couldn't help notice that it wasn't limited to a handfull of "fags".
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
If it takes the Chinese twice as much CO2 to produce a dollar's worth of goods as it takes the USA, is it better for the world to have goods produced in China? China uses antiquated technology in many of its primary industries, but makes up for the inefficiencies with cheap labor. Many Chinese cities are terribly polluted from the byproducts of coal combustion without pollution controls (reminiscent of the Soviet bloc); many homes are heated by coal stoves rather than natural gas or even "town gas", and the environmental and human costs are high. The savings appear to be plowed into an increasingly aggressive military, with which the dictatorship is threatening democratic Taiwan and oppressing Tibet.
It would be well worth it to force China to divert some of its resources into cleaning up its mess and preventing it from getting worse. If China was only as efficient as the current US average, it would make a huge difference both for China and for the world.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
This is pretty laughable. Ad homoneim it may be, but Richard Hoagland is pretty much the worst offender in pseudoscience.
"Studies have shown that people who eat peanuts live longer than those who do not eat."
You don't know what you're talking about. The original outbreak of Legionairres in Philadelphia was confined to around a dozen old, white men. The government response was a stark contrast to the response (Reagan's response) to the AIDS epidemic.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
The more I learn about Wilson the more I despise him.
Wilson also deserves quite a bit of the blame for the demise of the mass transit industry in the US - mainly due to prices doubling from 1916 to 1920 - while transit fares typically were held constant. Transit systems were typically profitable before 1916, rarely so after 1920.
Similarly, the railroad's were really hurt by the Wilson administration in particular by the USRA (United States Railway Administration).
Weakened transit systems and railroads lead to increased use of cars and trucks along with increased CO2 emissions.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
He is just aghast that you are comparing something that does not exist to violence against another human being.
Global warming exists. Reputable scientists know it. If you disagree, then you're a fucking idiot. And killing off the human race is worse than raping someone.
but there is no call to perpetrate a personal attack by calling him a "fucking idiot" - it doesn't make your position any stronger or your argument any more convincing.
He wasn't interested in an intelligent debate. He simply said that global warming is "something that does not exist." No sources. No links. No rationale. I'm frustrated by people who won't even read the news stories on major scientific studies and simply pretend that global warming doesn't exist.
- That some people in the USA refuse to allow a double standard and actually hold others to blame for their contributions to the problem, or
- That the USA's standard of living is so much higher than e.g. China's?
I see a lot of USA-bashing in the world press, and enormous hypocrisy on the the part of many people and nations doing it. I'm not about to give anyone carte blanche.Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Nope. It's an appeal to authority. The poster didn't reference the research. He referenced the scientists. Furthermore, he used the adjective "respected" to describe the specific type of scientist.
This is clearly an appeal to authority.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Why not spend some time on Google and come up with your own links supporting your position?
I already did that earlier in the thread.
But that's an ugly trap that I've fallen into before. Someone posts an ill-informed opinion with no substantiating links and I reply with links. Rather than finding links to counter those that I posted, they attack the links I provided with claims that the authors were biased, that their opinion did not represent the mainstream thinking of scientists, etc. Suddenly, their position is the de-facto "correct" position and it's my job to disprove it.
Better yet, why not abandon the debate before getting to the point of personal attacks? Are you afraid that other readers might think that you have "lost" the argument in some way?
Maybe that's part of it. Sadly, "the last word" means far too much to many readers.
This could actually increase emissions, as producers shut down operations in industrial nations in order to move them to countries with unregulated emissions. You'd have to be an idiot, or a politician, to write a regime which allows such outcomes and call it an improvement.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
- It encourages third-world governments to increase their populations so they can get more carbon-tax money.
- Kleptocrats and other oppressive governments would have a strong incentive to make fuels expensive and collect a double bonus: tax money from their own populations, and emissions-credit money from the industrial countries. This becomes just one more avenue for rent-seeking rather than productive enterprise. Would you really want your money going to Fidel Castro, Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong Il or the erstwhile dictators of South Africa?
- It frustrates the solution of the problem by creating false distinctions regarding the place where greenhouse gases are emitted. This creates an incentive to move production to places with the best balance rather than to where emissions can be controlled the best.
Fortunately, this proposal is what we call a "non-starter". You're casting this in moral terms. What is the moral case for paying the oppressive government of China (or Zimbabwe) for not doing something that they shouldn't be doing anyway because they're less efficient than someone else? What is the moral case for paying a government to engineer a depression that "just happens to" depress greenhouse-gas emissions? The problem is one of your own creation; you made a sellable "property right" ex nihilo, and then complained because its use wasn't distributed "fairly". This problem disappears if you stop thinking of the issue as common property, and just treat it as a global tax regime with all monies managed on a national basis but the tax rate set by agreement. You would still need some global management (for instance, to insure that the sellers of carbon-sinking services account for their "production" and don't sell more goods than they've actually created), but all of the incentives for rent-seeking and national impovershment disappear.That is probably why proposals for tradeable credits and payments to less-emitting nations are being favored in the debates with the chattering classes. People whose lives are based on rent-seeking and other unproductive behaviors will jump at the chance to improve their business opportunities, even if it does nothing (or less than nothing) for the welfare of most of people in the world.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
What it does not entitle them to is a global taxation regime devoted to international transfers of wealth under an unelected, unaccountable and all but certainly corrupt controlling bureaucracy. You know, like Oil-For-Food?
Morally, this requires everyone to take similar measures to either avoid or ameliorate the harm. It does not imply that international welfare payments are even remotely justifiable as a response. That's not the situation. The situation is that we've been basing a growing world economy on fossil fuels since the 19th century, and on petroleum since the 1920's. We've put huge amounts of investment into infrastructure based on this, but it wasn't until the 80's or so that we became aware of the possibility of climate change as a consequence and not until a few years ago that we actually had unambiguous data to back up the theory.I certainly think we ought to do something about it, but it's not an excuse to indulge the global welfare state / global bureacracy wet dreams of the eurosocialists and America's academic left.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist