Hi,

With regards to the pollution & toxins etc I agree that it is not a good thing to do, and we need to clean our act up, but what concerns me is that we are going to spend trillions on trying to stem the warming and we will have little or no effect.

One thing that amazes me with the earth is it's ability to quickly recover from virtually anything that happens. The example I can give is here in Australia we experience very long periods of drought and to look at the land you wouldn't think it would be able to recover i.e. not a living thing in sight, but add a couple of inches of rain and within 6 weeks the landscape is transformed into something you wouldn't have conceived 6 weeks prior.


>>Hi,
>>
>>Just for starters calculate how much energy is required to melt sufficient ice to raise the sea levels by 130 Metres, it makes what we produce look quite insignificant.
>
>People throw around a lot of numbers that may or may not mean anything. 130 metres is probably outside reality, but I guess my real point is that we have 6 billion people. We've unnaturally deforested and paved over huge areas of arable land, we mine, strip mine, pollute vast areas of our oceans and we kill off huge numbers of marine and land animals. We pour all sorts of unnatural toxins and pollutants into our air and water. We do everything in our power to try to make the earth as unliveable as possible, and I'm being asked to believe that this doesn't matter because it has no effect. Maybe it's me, but afaic, that represents delusion.
>
>>
>>>I guess the reason why I have a problem accepting that argument is that it is extremely difficult for me to believe that an earth with nobody on it and an earth with 6 billion people spewing garbage into the atmosphere will have the same unaffected natural cycle.
>>>
>>>>Just the natural cycle.
>>>>
>>>>>Neil
>>>>>
>>>>>so what do you think is causing global warming (so we are assuming there is global warming)
>>>>>
>>>>>Nick
>>>>>
>>>>>>Another flaw in his approach is that Column A Row1 will have the same outcome as Column B Row2 if the warming is being caused by processes other than our own, which is the case.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Now this is a really clever approach, imo. Very worth watching:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDsIFspVzfI
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Update: I would say there might be one possible flaw and that is that one would need to apply some sort of probability to the various squares. Sticking with his 2 columns; what if the probability of column B - bottom square is infinitesimally small. What if GCC is occurring (row 2) and we do nothing (column 2) but the extreme outcome case he presents is extremely unlikely and that a much milder outcome is most likely. Then it would not make sense to pick column 2 anymore. This would be the classic risk vs. cost of protection trade-off. If one argues that the potential consequences are so catastrophic that even a small probability event needs to be catered for then we could imagine a very long list of such events that would need to be attended to and then we would end up spending ourselves into oblivion.

bDsIFspVzfI