Science is what predicts your automobile, train, or even bicycle will work.
Just to put in another point - science doesn't do this, engineering does. Science teaches engineers how to make things work, though. In my perspective, an engineer doesn't care why it works, only that it does work. A scientist doesn't care if it works or not, as long as he can say why.
Perhaps that is the problem with global warming - too many scientists, not enough engineers. Why do you guys care who caused it, man, sun, or butterflies flapping away? I don't really care what caused it - I want to know what the most likely effects are and the cheapest way to fix them. (And an acknowlegement that this may not involve forcing China to give up oil).
There isn't a single scientific peer reviewed study that contradicts these findings in any way in decades.
To relate this directly to global warming, what about the failure of climate scientists to predict current atmospheric methane levels? Methane is an important greenhouse gas, and the fact that it apparently has a self-regulated maximum concentration far lower than anyone predicted would certainly change, possibly invalidate, a lot of the predictions made by models that did not include that fact.
This was a big miss - what about CO2, the boogeyman of the global warming crowd? What if there is a self-regulating aspect to it at some level? What we know from the historical record is that warming is always followed by CO2 - what if that is because there is a strong self-regulator built in that we do not know about?
You can say that I don't know that CO2 self-regulates - but I am not the one extrapolating current trends a few centuries into the future. I really don't trust a science built on models when they 1) base the models on past data alone, and 2) are making predictions wildly divergent from past data.
For a more interesting example of all the fallacies associated with this, please look at the stock market prediction algorithms - they share the same problems.
(OK, all you weak minded mods can now mod me down for daring to challenge you to think for yourselves!)
Not to mention that these scientists that can predict the next millenia's weather to three decimal points didn't forsee the recent unexplained drop in atmospheric methane levels. Methane is a worse greenhouse gas the CO2!
You can make all sorts of dire predictions if you assume that things will remain constant. The problem is that in the real world, nothing is constant... GIGO
weren't we supposed to have like 15 hurricanes hit New York this year?
Yeah, isn't it funny how a 1 degree change in a decade makes so much of a difference? Now, every weather event is Global Warming. It's hot - global warming. It's cold - global warming. It's windy - global warming.
Let me ask, can you tell the difference between two temperatures separated by 1 degree?
we tend to be smart and are used to often being the smartest one around, so we tend to be jackasses when other people express an opinion that does not agree with our own.
And, of course, the definition of "smart" that is used here is "agrees with me..."
Productivity is an economic term. It comes from the theory that governs how much stuff we all have - essentially, the amount of stuff we have is the difference between the speed of stuff breaking (called depreciation) and the rate at which we can build stuff (called production). The rate at which we can build stuff changes with 3 variables - the amount of stuff we have held back in investment (we could have made cars, but instead built car factories), the number of people around (as population increases, the amount produced increases - but there are inverse economies of scale), and the productivity (the amount of stuff one person can produce).
The organizations that govern the economy (the Federal Banks here in the US, or "the Fed") are very concerned with these numbers. The only thing they can control is the investment amount (they change the interest rates, which indirectly changes the investment levels), so they need to measure the other two factors so that they can keep the economy at peak efficiency. Your right, not everything created is cash - but to an economist, they all have a cash value (right down to the love for your daughter). Real economists make money primarily by estimating the value of all of those intangibles that are created. Exact? No, but close enough.
Now you know why ecnomists want immigrants (they increase the population and increase everyone's wealth, as long as the unemployment rate is low) and why technology is so important. For all pratical purposes, increased propperly applied technology = increased productivity - which makes everyone richer, from the poorest to the richest.
For extra points, you can now work out why it is in Bill Gates interests to raise the standard of living for all the poor people on Earth. (Hint: he has basically guaranteed himself a portion of world GDP - so now he should concentrate on raising that.) [Of course, charity is always good - I'm just pointing out that "the man" is incentivised to make poor people richer...]
I am not against cutting CO2, I just don't think it is realistic. The US is not the problem - we already have economic incentives to go away from pollution, and are doing it at a high rate. How are we going to convince the Chinese that they can't use oil and coal? Seriously, these people are very close to starvation - so what you suggest is tantamount to mass murder. Millions of Chinese will die to allow CO2 emissions to be cut! It's just not going to work.
And if you exclude China in any treaty, the CO2 emissions get worse, not better! Think about it, all the factories with emissions will leave the US (where they are regulated and forced to be minimally emitting by our internal economics) and move to China, where they will be operated in the most polluting method possible (because their economics are different).
We need to be talking about solutions, not dreams. We can discuss the dreams too, but only in the context of a possible solution. A solution is of the form we (a few people) do X, and we get Y as the result. A dream is of the form if only everyone on Earth would do X, we would get Y.
The only other way to take this is that the CO2 minimizers are in favor of nuking China. I don't really recommend that...
1. OK - say you can be the one to tell the Chinese that they have to stop creating energy. They are going to DIE, no lose money. The US is not the problem, we have been headed in the right way for a long time, moron!
2. OK, so you haven't read any studies on this, and you assume that I haven't either. Moron, the current ligth from the sun is too strong for efficient plant growth. At lower ligth levels, moron, plants will be able to grow in the deserts again. We are currently reducing the level of particulate matter in the upper atmosphere - which is causing warming problems, moron. Us rocket scientists (well, engineers really) do have to study many things - but unlike you, the things we do have to work in the real world!
3. Well, we can think about terrorists and prevent every technological advance for the next millenia. Or, we could realize that those smart enough to use high tech weapons do not typically resort to terror to communicate.
4. You just do not understand how big his head really is!;-}
Sorry I called you moron. You just really got on my nerves!
See my answer above - the deserts of the world become gardens. Plants work better at lower ligth levels than we have now, because the sun recently got brighter.
As I have told others, I want more discussion on possible alternative containment methods - I'm not asking you to choose one of mine. That said, the cost you refer to is hundreds of billions per year - which is the same as a few trillion at one time. Think about it - you can either pay $250K for your house once or pay $15K per year at the same present value.
Since you seemed to ask that honestly (and other have as well), I'll tell you my belief - not founded in much hard data. If we need to reduce the global temperature, it is because plants are dying from heat - as in deserts are forming, etc. So to a certain extant, I would expect the number of plants to increase, not decrease (I believe there are studies that show this part). Secondly, I believe that putting dust in the atmosphere may be a local cooling phenomenom, so it may be possible to only cool the deserts.
I'm not advocating any particular solution. I'm advocating looking for a solution, instead of declaring the end of the world unless we cut CO2.
You ignored something about the mirrors in the sky
Um, well, to be honest I ignored a lot of things... but my plan was just to orbit them and have atitude control only. Since they are large and reflective, atitude control could be accomplished simlar to a solar sail.
Reduction of CO2 levels...we know that will work.
Only if you ignore the realities of politics and how people work... personally, I find it much more likely that we can find a technological solution than that we can convince the Chinese to go back to starving...
Well, forgive me if I don't care what you believe to be possible. This is totally off-topic, but rocketry has ceased to be science, and the remaining problems aren't even engineering - they are business problems.
For example, the 747 costs an insane amount of money (even though it is mass produced) - and yet airlines operate at about 3 times the fuel cost. The current large-government space projects use the same design optimization decisions for rockets as they do for airlines - even though a rocket will fly a lot less! (Of course, why do they care - they have a cost plus contract!)
Now I could go into what I am doing, who I am, and my credentials - but you won't believe them anyway, and you'll find out soon enough...
a) there is strong correlation between multiple indicators of temperature and CO2 levels going back millions of years
That relationship is also known to be anti-causal (as in, in all cases the temperature rise came first), and so is irrelevant to this discussion.
c) there has also been an unprecedented increase in average global temperatures as indicated, among other things, by the unprecedented melting of glaciers and polar ice caps.
There are many precedents for this. The Earth has been both much hotter and much colder before. Wouldn't it be more realistic to say the average temperature seems to be rising? BTW, it looks like the poles may get colder, not warmer - be careful here, a lot of news articles pick which data points to show.
a) proves correlation, but b) and c) prove causation. Ten to 20 years ago there was some reasonable arguments that Global Warming was a) unproven or b) not man-made. No longer.
Actually, as I have shown, you haven't proven anything. That aside, good evidence exists that global warming is happening, and there is at least some evidence that it is human-caused. You just didn't give it.
As for climatologists trying to experiment, what do you think this whole movement to decrease CO2 emissions is?
Um, can we please not do Earth wide experiments that cost us more than any conceivable gain?
Climate change has no credibility problem whatosever. It is as much a fact as gravity.
Do you really believe that? Wow!
OK, let's try another tack - what would be the effect of decreasing the solar energy input by 1%? How about putting dust in the upper atmosphere? How about building a big wall across the equator to interrupt the jet stream? How about...
Climate change should be able to answer those questions. In time, it will be able to. Until it does, it is nothing like the theory of gravity.
I think you'll find the key point of unbelief is about the best methods of fixing/avoiding it. You are not trying to solve the problem, you are trying to say "look at me, I'm a hero, I'm smarter than you." That only works for pretend problems. For real problems, we need people willing to compromise and study effects.
You are not going to be able to convince people to give up carbon based fuels until there is an alternative. You may think you have one, but you don't.
First off 10degF would cause a lot of economic damage. So you can't hand wave and say it's not a big deal.
Nowhere in my post did I say that.
2nd your using different models your non CO2 model which explains things using more solar input vs. your CO2 assumptions (10 deg increase from 100% absorption) your saying increasing the temperature will have will be exaggerated by H2O unless that increase if from CO2.
Please restate in English - I'm not sure what you are saying, but in all my models I included both the CO2 and H2O greenhouse warming effects.
3rd other green house gasses like methane contribute to the problem.
Please demonstrate where my model did not take that into account.
4th weather events like hurricanes cool the earth. So dumping more H2O into the atmosphere has both a worming and cooling effect.
(Ignoring the cheap jokes I could make about a worming effect;-} ) The H2O does have many effects, although the one you mention is not the main one - the main cooling effect is that clouds are reflective. These effects are known, but what I said is basically true.
Finally Venus demonstrates the green house effect more so than earth because of the huge difference in the size of its atmosphere.
OK, so why does Venus have more of an atmosphere? It has about the same mass, volume, etc. In fact, the only real difference appears to be the amount of energy coming in from the sun. And when things get hot here on Earth, CO2 is naturally released from the ground (yes, I know that is not the source of current CO2). Maybe Venus having a thick atmosphere composed almost entirely of CO2 just might be related to its solar energy input? In other words, you have not shown anything.
Hm... well, I guess I'd better do something else today since I'm apparently "not in the field". So according to you, what does someone have to do to be "in the field"?
And although $20 per pound is not that unreasonable (about twice the fuel cost), the numbers my company will be demonstrating next year is $100/lb - and that was the number I used. Longer term we are heading towards $10/lb, but most of that is human cost not fuel cost.
1) Kyoto could not possibly have reduced polution. Best guess is that it would have increased polution, as oil/coal burning moved from efficient modern plants in the western world to inefficient plants in China. (As all energy intensive production moved to China, which is happening anyway).
2) It may be dangerous. It may not be. But it does put the subject in a new light - which is more dangerous, global warming or too much dust causing global cooling?
3) So do the other options - but at least this one I know about! Mirrors in space are actually quit cheap - they can be incredibly thin because there is nothing to snag on them, and no wind. Mass to orbit is expensive, but this could be done with minimal mass. Look at it as a solar sail (which is something we have actually made, BTW). The thing I like about this problem is that it directly solves the problem for as long as we need it, it is reversable (you reflect light away to prevent global warming, reflect light in to prevent ice ages), and it gives tons of money to my personal hobby horse. So you may discount this accordingly...
Since you requested numbers for #3, here are some BS numbers. Using 10 um thick square AL sattelites, each 100 meters on a side - say 300 kg each. Let's say you need to change the solar energy input by 1% - so you need to cover about 1 million square km, which takes 100 million satelites. At current costs of $10K per kg, this would cost $300 trillion. But that is just silly, because the current launch costs are mainly because volume is too low. A more resonable estimate is about 1% of that, or $3 trillion. Less than the "projected cost" of global warming.
But that would get us so much more than just a shield for global warming - it would basically provide free space access to all! (And that's why you can't believe me, because I am biased towards this solution!)
If more people would discuss this like you, we would probably already have a good idea of how to avoid the effects of global warming. (I say it that way because we don't know if we want to avoid global warming itself, but we are pretty sure that we want at least air conditioning;-} ). People need to stop talking about solutions that are not possible, and open their minds.
BTW, the reason I talk about the whole delayed heating of planets thing is because that is one of the things I study (albeit part-time), and (for example) the moon's dark side is warmed by the front side considerably (look at temperatures a few meters down) - and the moon doesn't even have an atmosphere. Your talking about a planet - with all that water, etc. How long does it take a planet to warm up after a change in energy input is provided? We don't really know. I have had one person here on slashdot claim that they do, but even on realclimate.org they say that the biggest unknown in global warming theory is the effect of the sun. In the only simulations I have seen the data on did not include the inertia effects of the Earth's mass - so were obviously flawed (but a good first attempt).
We need more research, not only into the causes of global warming, but also into the positive steps we can take to fix it. We need to realize that the US cannot change the world's CO2 output - CO2 is too important to other countries. So the US may end up paying for a world solution, but only if we stop asking for the impossible.
Whenever someone says that we must stop CO2 emissions, ask them if they support invading China to impose our CO2 limits on them...
Only if humanity does do something to prevent it. Like shade the planet using dust, mirrors, paint, etc. Or use modern farming techniques. Or grow stuff in greenhouses. Or a million other possiblities that will remain open only if we don't kill our economy.
People grow things in deserts. Humans are clever. We will find a way no matter what - there is only a question about the cost / benefit of doing something now. Any, obviously, that is highly dependant on what the something is, isn't it?
What you are missing from your world view is an appreciation of the bias of other humans. (Although I bet it's not universal - what if Bush had directed this movie?)
In your example, if the experts had nothing to gain from my running, then yes I would believe them. If, however, they were charging for admission to the bunker (or asking me to give them political power), I would not beleive them.
Some of the scientists studying global warming are interested in the science. Most of those talking about global warming are interested only in stopping the economy and returning to nature.
You return to nature. I'm going to build a rocket and leave you guys to your ruin!
Slashdot Mirror
Science is what predicts your automobile, train, or even bicycle will work.
Just to put in another point - science doesn't do this, engineering does. Science teaches engineers how to make things work, though. In my perspective, an engineer doesn't care why it works, only that it does work. A scientist doesn't care if it works or not, as long as he can say why.
Perhaps that is the problem with global warming - too many scientists, not enough engineers. Why do you guys care who caused it, man, sun, or butterflies flapping away? I don't really care what caused it - I want to know what the most likely effects are and the cheapest way to fix them. (And an acknowlegement that this may not involve forcing China to give up oil).
There isn't a single scientific peer reviewed study that contradicts these findings in any way in decades.
To relate this directly to global warming, what about the failure of climate scientists to predict current atmospheric methane levels? Methane is an important greenhouse gas, and the fact that it apparently has a self-regulated maximum concentration far lower than anyone predicted would certainly change, possibly invalidate, a lot of the predictions made by models that did not include that fact.
This was a big miss - what about CO2, the boogeyman of the global warming crowd? What if there is a self-regulating aspect to it at some level? What we know from the historical record is that warming is always followed by CO2 - what if that is because there is a strong self-regulator built in that we do not know about?
You can say that I don't know that CO2 self-regulates - but I am not the one extrapolating current trends a few centuries into the future. I really don't trust a science built on models when they 1) base the models on past data alone, and 2) are making predictions wildly divergent from past data.
For a more interesting example of all the fallacies associated with this, please look at the stock market prediction algorithms - they share the same problems.
(OK, all you weak minded mods can now mod me down for daring to challenge you to think for yourselves!)
Not to mention that these scientists that can predict the next millenia's weather to three decimal points didn't forsee the recent unexplained drop in atmospheric methane levels. Methane is a worse greenhouse gas the CO2!
You can make all sorts of dire predictions if you assume that things will remain constant. The problem is that in the real world, nothing is constant... GIGO
weren't we supposed to have like 15 hurricanes hit New York this year?
Yeah, isn't it funny how a 1 degree change in a decade makes so much of a difference? Now, every weather event is Global Warming. It's hot - global warming. It's cold - global warming. It's windy - global warming.
Let me ask, can you tell the difference between two temperatures separated by 1 degree?
we tend to be smart and are used to often being the smartest one around, so we tend to be jackasses when other people express an opinion that does not agree with our own.
And, of course, the definition of "smart" that is used here is "agrees with me..."
Productivity is an economic term. It comes from the theory that governs how much stuff we all have - essentially, the amount of stuff we have is the difference between the speed of stuff breaking (called depreciation) and the rate at which we can build stuff (called production). The rate at which we can build stuff changes with 3 variables - the amount of stuff we have held back in investment (we could have made cars, but instead built car factories), the number of people around (as population increases, the amount produced increases - but there are inverse economies of scale), and the productivity (the amount of stuff one person can produce).
The organizations that govern the economy (the Federal Banks here in the US, or "the Fed") are very concerned with these numbers. The only thing they can control is the investment amount (they change the interest rates, which indirectly changes the investment levels), so they need to measure the other two factors so that they can keep the economy at peak efficiency. Your right, not everything created is cash - but to an economist, they all have a cash value (right down to the love for your daughter). Real economists make money primarily by estimating the value of all of those intangibles that are created. Exact? No, but close enough.
Now you know why ecnomists want immigrants (they increase the population and increase everyone's wealth, as long as the unemployment rate is low) and why technology is so important. For all pratical purposes, increased propperly applied technology = increased productivity - which makes everyone richer, from the poorest to the richest.
For extra points, you can now work out why it is in Bill Gates interests to raise the standard of living for all the poor people on Earth. (Hint: he has basically guaranteed himself a portion of world GDP - so now he should concentrate on raising that.) [Of course, charity is always good - I'm just pointing out that "the man" is incentivised to make poor people richer...]
the majority of dopesmokers were not pacifists
I realize that coorelation is not causation, however in this case I think I may just let it slide...
I am not against cutting CO2, I just don't think it is realistic. The US is not the problem - we already have economic incentives to go away from pollution, and are doing it at a high rate. How are we going to convince the Chinese that they can't use oil and coal? Seriously, these people are very close to starvation - so what you suggest is tantamount to mass murder. Millions of Chinese will die to allow CO2 emissions to be cut! It's just not going to work.
And if you exclude China in any treaty, the CO2 emissions get worse, not better! Think about it, all the factories with emissions will leave the US (where they are regulated and forced to be minimally emitting by our internal economics) and move to China, where they will be operated in the most polluting method possible (because their economics are different).
We need to be talking about solutions, not dreams. We can discuss the dreams too, but only in the context of a possible solution. A solution is of the form we (a few people) do X, and we get Y as the result. A dream is of the form if only everyone on Earth would do X, we would get Y.
The only other way to take this is that the CO2 minimizers are in favor of nuking China. I don't really recommend that...
1. OK - say you can be the one to tell the Chinese that they have to stop creating energy. They are going to DIE, no lose money. The US is not the problem, we have been headed in the right way for a long time, moron!
;-}
2. OK, so you haven't read any studies on this, and you assume that I haven't either. Moron, the current ligth from the sun is too strong for efficient plant growth. At lower ligth levels, moron, plants will be able to grow in the deserts again. We are currently reducing the level of particulate matter in the upper atmosphere - which is causing warming problems, moron. Us rocket scientists (well, engineers really) do have to study many things - but unlike you, the things we do have to work in the real world!
3. Well, we can think about terrorists and prevent every technological advance for the next millenia. Or, we could realize that those smart enough to use high tech weapons do not typically resort to terror to communicate.
4. You just do not understand how big his head really is!
Sorry I called you moron. You just really got on my nerves!
See my answer above - the deserts of the world become gardens. Plants work better at lower ligth levels than we have now, because the sun recently got brighter.
As I have told others, I want more discussion on possible alternative containment methods - I'm not asking you to choose one of mine. That said, the cost you refer to is hundreds of billions per year - which is the same as a few trillion at one time. Think about it - you can either pay $250K for your house once or pay $15K per year at the same present value.
Since you seemed to ask that honestly (and other have as well), I'll tell you my belief - not founded in much hard data. If we need to reduce the global temperature, it is because plants are dying from heat - as in deserts are forming, etc. So to a certain extant, I would expect the number of plants to increase, not decrease (I believe there are studies that show this part). Secondly, I believe that putting dust in the atmosphere may be a local cooling phenomenom, so it may be possible to only cool the deserts.
I'm not advocating any particular solution. I'm advocating looking for a solution, instead of declaring the end of the world unless we cut CO2.
We can't predict the outcomes of any chaotic system
All of physics is based on a chaotic system - at its heart, QM is chaos. We can make pretty darn good predictions, though. Climate is no different.
You really believe this doesn't happen in scientific journals? How naive!
You ignored something about the mirrors in the sky
Um, well, to be honest I ignored a lot of things... but my plan was just to orbit them and have atitude control only. Since they are large and reflective, atitude control could be accomplished simlar to a solar sail.
Reduction of CO2 levels...we know that will work.
Only if you ignore the realities of politics and how people work... personally, I find it much more likely that we can find a technological solution than that we can convince the Chinese to go back to starving...
Well, forgive me if I don't care what you believe to be possible. This is totally off-topic, but rocketry has ceased to be science, and the remaining problems aren't even engineering - they are business problems.
For example, the 747 costs an insane amount of money (even though it is mass produced) - and yet airlines operate at about 3 times the fuel cost. The current large-government space projects use the same design optimization decisions for rockets as they do for airlines - even though a rocket will fly a lot less! (Of course, why do they care - they have a cost plus contract!)
Now I could go into what I am doing, who I am, and my credentials - but you won't believe them anyway, and you'll find out soon enough...
Let me guess, you work for NASA or Boeing?
a) there is strong correlation between multiple indicators of temperature and CO2 levels going back millions of years
That relationship is also known to be anti-causal (as in, in all cases the temperature rise came first), and so is irrelevant to this discussion.
c) there has also been an unprecedented increase in average global temperatures as indicated, among other things, by the unprecedented melting of glaciers and polar ice caps.
There are many precedents for this. The Earth has been both much hotter and much colder before. Wouldn't it be more realistic to say the average temperature seems to be rising? BTW, it looks like the poles may get colder, not warmer - be careful here, a lot of news articles pick which data points to show.
a) proves correlation, but b) and c) prove causation. Ten to 20 years ago there was some reasonable arguments that Global Warming was a) unproven or b) not man-made. No longer.
Actually, as I have shown, you haven't proven anything. That aside, good evidence exists that global warming is happening, and there is at least some evidence that it is human-caused. You just didn't give it.
As for climatologists trying to experiment, what do you think this whole movement to decrease CO2 emissions is?
Um, can we please not do Earth wide experiments that cost us more than any conceivable gain?
Climate change has no credibility problem whatosever. It is as much a fact as gravity.
Do you really believe that? Wow!
OK, let's try another tack - what would be the effect of decreasing the solar energy input by 1%? How about putting dust in the upper atmosphere? How about building a big wall across the equator to interrupt the jet stream? How about...
Climate change should be able to answer those questions. In time, it will be able to. Until it does, it is nothing like the theory of gravity.
I think you'll find the key point of unbelief is about the best methods of fixing/avoiding it. You are not trying to solve the problem, you are trying to say "look at me, I'm a hero, I'm smarter than you." That only works for pretend problems. For real problems, we need people willing to compromise and study effects.
You are not going to be able to convince people to give up carbon based fuels until there is an alternative. You may think you have one, but you don't.
First off 10degF would cause a lot of economic damage. So you can't hand wave and say it's not a big deal.
;-} ) The H2O does have many effects, although the one you mention is not the main one - the main cooling effect is that clouds are reflective. These effects are known, but what I said is basically true.
Nowhere in my post did I say that.
2nd your using different models your non CO2 model which explains things using more solar input vs. your CO2 assumptions (10 deg increase from 100% absorption) your saying increasing the temperature will have will be exaggerated by H2O unless that increase if from CO2.
Please restate in English - I'm not sure what you are saying, but in all my models I included both the CO2 and H2O greenhouse warming effects.
3rd other green house gasses like methane contribute to the problem.
Please demonstrate where my model did not take that into account.
4th weather events like hurricanes cool the earth. So dumping more H2O into the atmosphere has both a worming and cooling effect.
(Ignoring the cheap jokes I could make about a worming effect
Finally Venus demonstrates the green house effect more so than earth because of the huge difference in the size of its atmosphere.
OK, so why does Venus have more of an atmosphere? It has about the same mass, volume, etc. In fact, the only real difference appears to be the amount of energy coming in from the sun. And when things get hot here on Earth, CO2 is naturally released from the ground (yes, I know that is not the source of current CO2). Maybe Venus having a thick atmosphere composed almost entirely of CO2 just might be related to its solar energy input? In other words, you have not shown anything.
Hm... well, I guess I'd better do something else today since I'm apparently "not in the field". So according to you, what does someone have to do to be "in the field"?
And although $20 per pound is not that unreasonable (about twice the fuel cost), the numbers my company will be demonstrating next year is $100/lb - and that was the number I used. Longer term we are heading towards $10/lb, but most of that is human cost not fuel cost.
And no, all that won't ruin me.
Well, and to be blunt, neither will that solve the CO2 problem.
1) Kyoto could not possibly have reduced polution. Best guess is that it would have increased polution, as oil/coal burning moved from efficient modern plants in the western world to inefficient plants in China. (As all energy intensive production moved to China, which is happening anyway).
2) It may be dangerous. It may not be. But it does put the subject in a new light - which is more dangerous, global warming or too much dust causing global cooling?
3) So do the other options - but at least this one I know about! Mirrors in space are actually quit cheap - they can be incredibly thin because there is nothing to snag on them, and no wind. Mass to orbit is expensive, but this could be done with minimal mass. Look at it as a solar sail (which is something we have actually made, BTW). The thing I like about this problem is that it directly solves the problem for as long as we need it, it is reversable (you reflect light away to prevent global warming, reflect light in to prevent ice ages), and it gives tons of money to my personal hobby horse. So you may discount this accordingly...
Since you requested numbers for #3, here are some BS numbers. Using 10 um thick square AL sattelites, each 100 meters on a side - say 300 kg each. Let's say you need to change the solar energy input by 1% - so you need to cover about 1 million square km, which takes 100 million satelites. At current costs of $10K per kg, this would cost $300 trillion. But that is just silly, because the current launch costs are mainly because volume is too low. A more resonable estimate is about 1% of that, or $3 trillion. Less than the "projected cost" of global warming.
But that would get us so much more than just a shield for global warming - it would basically provide free space access to all! (And that's why you can't believe me, because I am biased towards this solution!)
If more people would discuss this like you, we would probably already have a good idea of how to avoid the effects of global warming. (I say it that way because we don't know if we want to avoid global warming itself, but we are pretty sure that we want at least air conditioning ;-} ). People need to stop talking about solutions that are not possible, and open their minds.
BTW, the reason I talk about the whole delayed heating of planets thing is because that is one of the things I study (albeit part-time), and (for example) the moon's dark side is warmed by the front side considerably (look at temperatures a few meters down) - and the moon doesn't even have an atmosphere. Your talking about a planet - with all that water, etc. How long does it take a planet to warm up after a change in energy input is provided? We don't really know. I have had one person here on slashdot claim that they do, but even on realclimate.org they say that the biggest unknown in global warming theory is the effect of the sun. In the only simulations I have seen the data on did not include the inertia effects of the Earth's mass - so were obviously flawed (but a good first attempt).
We need more research, not only into the causes of global warming, but also into the positive steps we can take to fix it. We need to realize that the US cannot change the world's CO2 output - CO2 is too important to other countries. So the US may end up paying for a world solution, but only if we stop asking for the impossible.
Whenever someone says that we must stop CO2 emissions, ask them if they support invading China to impose our CO2 limits on them...
Only if humanity does do something to prevent it. Like shade the planet using dust, mirrors, paint, etc. Or use modern farming techniques. Or grow stuff in greenhouses. Or a million other possiblities that will remain open only if we don't kill our economy.
People grow things in deserts. Humans are clever. We will find a way no matter what - there is only a question about the cost / benefit of doing something now. Any, obviously, that is highly dependant on what the something is, isn't it?
What you are missing from your world view is an appreciation of the bias of other humans. (Although I bet it's not universal - what if Bush had directed this movie?)
In your example, if the experts had nothing to gain from my running, then yes I would believe them. If, however, they were charging for admission to the bunker (or asking me to give them political power), I would not beleive them.
Some of the scientists studying global warming are interested in the science. Most of those talking about global warming are interested only in stopping the economy and returning to nature.
You return to nature. I'm going to build a rocket and leave you guys to your ruin!