Global Warming: How Warm Is Too Warm?

Closing our eyes and pumping another decade’s worth of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at the current very dangerous rate would not seem to be a very bright idea. The gases remain in the atmosphere for centuries, and in some cases millenniums, which means the damage cannot quickly be undone.

What a miserable legacy for this generation to leave to its children and grandchildren.

James Nash is a climate scientist with Greatest Planet (www.greatestplanet.org). Greatest Planet is a non-profit environmental organization specialising in carbon offset investments.

CO2 Science

Essenhigh (2009) points out that the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in their first report (Houghton et al., 1990) gives an atmospheric CO2 residence time (lifetime) of 50-200 years [as a "rough estimate"]. This estimate is confusingly given as an adjustment time for a scenario with a given anthropogenic CO2 input, and ignores natural (sea and vegetation) CO2 flux rates. Such estimates are analytically invalid; and they are in conflict with the more correct explanation given elsewhere in the same IPCC report: "This means that on average it takes only a few years before a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere is taken up by plants or dissolved in the ocean".

Climate bill losing its steam

But that doesn't keep people such as Gary resident Rose Lige from journeying to Washington, D.C. to advocate for a strong bill. Her incentive? A painful memory of her dad dying from [CO2-induced?!] lung cancer after working in the steel mills for 30 years, and an effort to revive her home town.
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"We transformed the steel industry in Indiana over the last 20 years. We have some of the most efficient (mills) in the world. (Cap and trade) would immediately put a large tax on them because they're using a lot of energy. Is that going to make them more efficient? No, it's going to make them go somewhere else," said Mark Helmke, Lugar's adviser.

AB 32: The Normandy of Climate Change Legislation | Triple Pundit: People, Planet, Profit

Goldenhersh argues that should California voters uphold AB 32, we will witness a transformation of energy policy—the Normandy invasion of climate change. Pair that with a Jerry Brown victory in the governor’s race, and you have cap-and-trade in California by 2012 or 2013.

First came Climategate, now it’s JournoList; Who’s next for an email scandal? | Washington Examiner

Now the JournoList scandal is spreading into the deepest precincts of the Mainstream Media, as The Daily Caller’s Tucker Carlson smacks his lips in anticipation of his next juicy revelation.

Only one casualty has resulted so far, but lots of journos are walking around this week with deeply furrowed brows, others are trying to get ahead of coming revelations by confessing their participation, and still others are no doubt sitting at their laptops wondering how it all came to this.

And no wonder, considering the numerous bloody threats breathed against Rush Limbaugh by JournoList participants, other violent imaginings of how great it would be smash some right winger’s head through a window, and extended discussions about why it would be just dandy for the feds to march in, arrest Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, then shut down Fox News forever.

Well, well. Now JournoList founder Ezra Klein, The Washington Post blogger who had seemed to be on the fast track to fame and fortune in the shark tank up the street from The Washington Examiner, is now having to explain why he shouldn’t make public all of the emails ever sent to and fro on the now-famous listserv.

Flashback: Ezra Klein - Can you solve global warming without talking about global warming?

To expand a bit on a point I made on Rachel Maddow's show, I'm just not sure how you do a response to climate change if you can't really say the words "climate change."
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In response to this, Rachel said that no one wants to hear about climate change.