Important questions about global warming.
Inspired by a Rush monologue, and by the site cheatneutral.com.
All this kvetching about “Global Warming” would tend to indicate that there is some ‘ideal’ global mean temperature, and through man’s emissions of carbon dioxide we have caused the temperature to rise above that ideal. Is this ideal temperature knowable?
The concern over the so-called Greenhouse Effect seems predicated upon the belief that the global mean temperature can and will increase without bound. Is this possible within the confines of a closed, self-correcting system? If not, then what is the maximum attainable temperature before the system self-corrects. Is life sustainable at that temperature?
The talk of ‘carbon credits’ implies that creating a mechanism for removing CO2 from the air will somehow nullify its effect. Will the increased water vapor output of new forests outweigh the impact of the removed CO2?
I do not think it wise to begin talking of policy prescriptions to ‘solve’ global warming before we know what the real impact is, if there is a real impact, or if that impact is worse than the proposed lifestyle changes that would be imposed upon us to possibly stave off such an impact.
Because if the answer to stopping global warming from killing a million people is to kill a billion instead, I’m not so sure that global warming is a bad thing.