Amidst media hysteria from Al Gore's latest propaganda, Iain Murray has some suggestions for the most sensible approach to the problem if it is a problem--adaptation.

You do realise that Iain's piece is actually less accurate and critically thought out than the pile of errors you posted claiming that Gore's film was nonsense?

Nah. Didn't think so.

Of course I don't. Why would I? You certainly haven't given me any reason to.

If you ever have an actual argument to make, someone may take you seriously.

The major source of global warming IS Al Gore. He's so full of hot air he'll raise the worlds temperature just by talking.

Can I make a bet? Given that this is a global warming-related thread, it'll be up to about thirty comments within a couple of days. Nothing seems to attract attention like this topic. Seriously, Rand could publish a post explaining that he'd designed a rocket that could launch a payload to LEO for 40 cents a tonne, and it'd get less attention.

Personally, I think we're making a mistake by dumping a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere, and I think we ought to dedicate a fairly reasonable amount of time and effort into trying to avoid doing that. However, I don't think that this whole global warming thing is so terribly, terribly bad. It's certainly a damned sight better than the last great threat, global thermonuclear annihilation of the human race. Also, it's not nearly as much a concern, to me, as radical islamic violence.

This is probably the number one reason why:
http://vathena.arc.nasa.gov/curric/land/global/tchga1.gif
and this too:
http://vathena.arc.nasa.gov/curric/land/global/tchgb1.gif

The truth is that the world's climate fluctuates from hot to cold and back again. Through ice ages and interglacial periods. Right now we are at a point just after the end of an ice age, so we would expect warming REGARDLESS OF HUMAN ACTIVITY. The question is really whether we are speeding up the warming or not (we probably are, to some degree). The Earth isn't going to become Venus, all the animals won't die, the human race won't go extinct. Period. The biosphere will adapt and human civilization will adapt. Just as they both have done when faced with equal or greater climatic challenges over the course of their respective histories. Imagining otherwise is living in a fantasy world that exists outside of reality.

Great Link Robin ... although I recommend reading it in context:

http://vathena.arc.nasa.gov/curric/land/global/climchng.html

Your point is exactly correct. I wish that persons that understood your point would appear on TV, in print, and on the internet to educate enough folks so that the activist, "sky is falling", crowd led by Al Bore won't succeed in promulgating their idology evidenced upon false climitalogical scare scenarios.

It's certainly a damned sight better than the last great threat, global thermonuclear annihilation of the human race.

Indeed, I agree with you, Robin. It's amazing how people seem to have forgotten that they still live under the threat of global thermonuclear annihilation. I guess the potential loss of a few hundred million or more lives pales compared to the global but modest changes that global warming could cause. This hasn't been helped by the increasing casual portrayal of nuclear weapons in the media.

If you look at extreme environmental-related disasters depicted in films like the "China Syndrome", "Waterworld", or "The Day After Tomorrow", they all come up with some contrived situation which vastly exaggerates the potential harm of environmental disasters compared to the use of nuclear weapons. A nuclear plant meltdown threatens the lives of millions (so it has been alleged, I cannot find a script quote to verify) while global warming causes either the complete flooding of all land or "super-storms" that destroy and drop Earth into a particularly bad ice age.

While at the same time, a number of films trivialize the use of nuclear weapons. For example, "True Lies" in particular ignores the implications of a nuclear detonation.

A simple question for all of those with the anti-Gore gut reflex: Have you seen the movie? Why don't you check it out first and then vent if you must? Science - remember - get the facts first.

In any case, I guess we don't have any choice but to adapt at this stage of the process, thanks to pseudoscientists funded by big oil and gas bags such as some of you who don't have a clue. It's particularly shocking to think that this blog which clearly is motivated by science, can adopt such a confrontational approach to this issue purely and purely because it is espoused by many who are of a different political persuasion.

Also please check out www.realclimate.org will you? I know, I know, it's a conspiracy, oh my!

Adding to the inevitable pile on:
Reading those links I find it a little ironic that much of the financial balancing between adaption and mitigation assumes that money not spent on mitigation is automatically spent on massive aid transferals to the developing world. Somewhat of a strawman, I feel.

Also important to note: the work by Goklany based its coastal flooding estimates on the IPCC 2001, which assumed that ice sheets would actually gain mass due to global warming; work since then has replaced that picture with a great deal of uncertainty as the impact of ocean warming on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet was not appreciated, or the direct connection between surface melting and icesheet dynamics in Greenland.

The WAIS and the GIS are huge wildcards in any adaption verse mitigation debate.

Also, the nature of global warming is that the change is ongoing, and that any adaption methodology has to take into account that one has to deal with a moving target.

I would echo the comments above, however, that the existence of way to many nuclear weapons is a greater threat to human civilization than global warming. That serves up a dilemma - encourgering a proliferation of fast-breeder nuclear power plants would be one way of dealing with carbon emissions; however, that would mean everybody in the world would by within months of obtaining nuclear weapons. Given the current excitment concerning Iran, I dont see that as a realistic possibility.

Fumanchu, Gore's movie is, last I checked, not a peer reviewed research article, of any sort. It is a portrayal, perhaps accurate, perhaps not, of a particular aspect of the science of climatology. Thus, it is not a primary participant in the scientific debate over climate change. Meaning that whether one has seen the movie or not bears absolutely zero relevance to the validity of one's position on climate change.

More so, read my post again, and others. And note carefully what I have said, rather than what you think I, and others, have said. A lot of people are in the same camp as I am. It is, I think, a scientifically and morally sound camp to be in.

adaption will involve many, many, people dying. Global warming probably wont kill off the human race entirely though.

Peter,
I don't need to see the Algore movie to disbelieve it's topic or be doubtful of the science.

They use the same computers and computer models to do global warming speculation that are used to forecast the weather. When they can tell me what next winter or summer will be like, I'll begin to believe.

Right now today they can't give a prediction for 10 days out. They are about 40% accurate at that time range. How is it that by NOAA standards they can be 40% at 10 days, but Mr. Gore is 100% right over the next 100 years.

This is the same 100 years I heard about back in the early 1970's. Shouldn't we have just 70 years left now, or have we bought another 30 years with the changes that have been made?

We were also supposed to have 20 years of oil left in 1974, we were going to kill the world oceans in 10 years in 1994. We were going to kill ALL or cut down ALL the worlds rain forest in 15 years in 1985.

It is doom and gloom sir, and it makes money. If all te people who worked on this film did it without taking a paycheck, I'd see some real concern. But Mr. Gore is making money out there stumping this thing.

realclimate.org and moveon.org are birds-of-a-feather.

Gore's blather is right there with Michael Moore's Fartenhype 9/11.

Here we see again the argument "it's all just leftist propaganda". They may use it for politics, but what if it's true anyway? Not all the hype, but the basics.

Read some Science or Nature.

And, IPCC acknowledges that there has to be massive adaptation anyway, no matter what is done to prevent it. It also acknowledges that natural variability is a big contributor (and there are numerous others, all explicitly listed), but there's human activity on top of that, which is significant.