Hansen Prediction costs $535T
written by Gordon Fulks July 25, 2017
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First of all, as an experimental physicist, I know that robust empirical data have the last word in science, not theory. If the data we gather disagree with the theory, then the theory is wrong. That is the way science works. It does not matter how many supporters a theory has or who they are. If the data disagree, the theory is dead. In the case of Global Warming, the minute amount of warming observed over the last 150 years and when it occurred relative to increasing CO2 says that carbon dioxide is not the cause.
And if Hansen wants to reach back to the previous interglacial period known as the Eemian, then the ice core data must be discussed. It not only shows the very regular global temperature cycles we call ice ages but also the very close tracking with atmospheric carbon dioxide of the time. Hansen knows, even if Al Gore will not admit it, that atmospheric CO2 followed the global temperature and therefore could not be the cause.
Hansen is also well aware that we were warmer 8,000 years ago during the peak of the present interglacial we call the Holocene Climate Optimum when CO2 levels were lower. He is also aware of the fact that we have been cooling on average since then due to an advancing Milankovitch Cycle, involving changes in the Earth’s orbit, primarily caused by the planet Jupiter. The brief warm periods that have occurred in recent millennia go by the names of the civilizations they spawned: Minoan (Greek), Roman, Medieval, and Modern. They have nothing to do with man-made CO2.
Even more fundamentally, we should ask if our burning of fossil fuels and even our breathing is really contributing to the observed slow rise in atmospheric CO2. We release about 10 Gt of carbon into the atmosphere each year (as CO2) that already contains about 800 Gt. Yet the annual increase in carbon is only 5 Gt. That says there is a big leak! And the atomic bomb tests in the 1950s and 1960s revealed that specially marked carbon-14 disappears within about five years.
It turns out that the Earth has vast sinks for carbon, involving a total amount of about 40,000 Gt. That makes human emissions of a mere 10 Gt per year remarkably insignificant. The Earth’s biosphere and oceans are the big players in the carbon cycle, along with the atmosphere.
We should revisit occasionally what the proper role of government is. As the constitution was a good sense of direction, we need a core set of principles to add in order to deal with the future.
So many want to engineer society, remove risk, assist certain groups, rather than let individuals thrive and raise communities. Why?
Is Democracy where we all "get it good and hard" or is it the best means to a free society?
Should we roll with the special interests, or make the government achieve its proper role, what is that role, and how to do this?
When do deficits and governments become too large?
Government is becoming more elitist while trying to sell corrections to problems it created, what makes this possible?
This could also be inserted into the field above, or erased
Currently as a society, we are having a most difficult time discussing political issues. What is driving this? And why a rebirth in political culture would be a good thing.
Are "markets" dead as some would conjecture? Or is free enterprise what got us here?
At the heart of economics there are several possible economic schools of thought, the essence of these schools of thought and how they relate to our lives.
