In truth, the Australian public will pay for it.

EC, really good post.

I think your gloom and doom predictions are a bit premature though,

... and you underestimate the possibility that new technologies could help curb the current discharge of green house gas emissions into the air.

Even the Pentagon Report into Global Warming anticipates a natural cull in human numbers as environmental conditions deteriorate. Western border control is now becoming so strict to control a mass influx from regions facing major food and water shortages. The Pentagon anticipates increasing conflict as resources continue to diminish.

Already global warming is having major human impact, but the healthy in priveliged societies will not really feel the impact for another 20 years or so. The wealthy willobviously escape much of the medium term fall out.

Coupled with declining fossil fuel production, life for many poor people will become intolerable. Or should I say more people will fall into intolerable poverty, but their voices will never be heard. Food production is so heavily dependent upon fossil fuels the prospects for large numbers of humans is bleak indeed.

Western countries will become fortresses. Our media will keep us ignorant of the conditions outside our cosy confines. Insurrections will be portrayed as acts of wanton terrorism. We will be increasingly controlled by fear, electronic toys and through a continuation of the dumbing down process that we have witnessed already. Our perceptions will be reframed in order that we conform to an increasingly intrusional society with draconian rules promoted through prejudice and hatred.

We are living in 1984 and Big Sister is with us, but she's not a product of government but the wellsprung of the multinational corporations. She is not in 1 place, but like God she is everywhere, from the billboards along the highways, to our television screens and the memes inside our minds we are fed daily.

The only question is whether the earth's environment will ever stabilise or has it already been pushed beyond the limits of its homeostatic mechanisms and desolation is inevitable. The skeptics in the know are not sceptical about global warming, but whether mankind has the capacity to affect the inevitable catastrophe that is maybe less than 1 or 2 centuries away. For them its simply a matter of making hay while the sun shines as collapse is sure to follow. But they will never tell you that because you are too small and insignificant to count. Bye bye buddy, welcome to armageddon

EC, really good post. The task of a one third reduction over ten years is tough. It will take a "war-effort" to achieve.

However, it is this that I wish to take issue with:


In truth, the whole of humanity will try to pay for its own pollution - and it will fail. We cannot even pay the interest bill. In short we should forget about trying to avoid global warming because it cannot be prevented. Why? We are past the point of no return. We will go >5 C by 2100 and on the way suffer mass starvation and all-out world wide resource wars. We are phkd.

The first world has the science/technology to survive as long as it can resist hungry invaders until they starve to death. However, I wonder if we have the political courage to cut 80% of the world out of any future.

So, the aim of joining any carbon treaty is to ensure we remain part of the winning side. If we shirk our load, the likely winners might not want to have us in their group.

The most common drive behind this passive attitude of the developing world is due to overwhelming problems of poverty, hunger, illiteracy and disease that the major parts of the third world countries have been struck down by these emerging threats.

Already global warming is having major human impact,

Of course the climate is changing. Everyone knows that. But are humans contributing? No one knows, and the smart money is on "no".

Maybe we're just along for the ride?

And for spiring it along, we may well get bucked off.

It dosen't really matter whether Global Warming is real or not, or whether humans are at fault here. The thing that matters is the initiatives people are taking towards Global Warming which are highly beneficial to humankind and the planet. Just because Global Warming or is isn't true dosen't mean we can simply pollute to our heart's content or squander the Earth's resources. We're going to run out of fossil fuels one day, and by then alternative energy sources will have to be adopted anyway. But why wait until then? The sooner we start making this transition from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources the better.

I totally agree with your sentiments. It seems that we spend way to much time on blaming who's causing the CO2 effects rather than solving the problem of how to cope with the increased CO2. Now some environmentalists may say that reducing human's CO2 footprint will solve the problem. That is not necessarily true. We still have to deal with the nature's side. I think the focus should be more concentrated on how to cope with the nature's responses to the increased CO2 levels so humanity and mankind civilisation can thrive and be in a beneficial embrace with nature.

To know what the scientists are trying to tell the public. The public are being given the middle road version - middle as in between the optimist an pessimist version. The reality is that the models are not generally factoring in the "feed forward" effects because the non-linearities in the maths cause huge uncertainty values - uncertainties that make the estimates unusable.

However, the climate scientist community is shit scared. If you look at most predictions from a decade ago for today's conditions (temp, glaciers, ocean pH, et cetera), you will see that they were under estimated. It is a case of exponential increases in response to geometric input.