Climate change is real and that humans are the major cause of it.
March 21, 2010
– Comments (4)
Kurt Cobb has a very well written post on climate change.
Moving to the north made me so much more aware of climate change.
I have read some of Lovelocks stuff, his gaia planet philosphy and it makes sense to me.
Things that I do not think are properly considered about climate change include:
1) Glaciers used to reflect energy back into space, but now that so many have melted that energy is more likely absorbed.
2) The physical act of melting is stablizing to temperature. There is an enormous amount of energy absorbed in order to melt the ice caps and something like 20% of them have melted in the past 3 decade. When a critical point in melting ice is reached the ice will no longer be able to act as this massive energy sink that helps to stablize our temperature and mask what we've done and temperature starts to increase much faster.
3) Aerosol pollutants in the upper atmosphere reflect energy back into outer space. Aerosol pollutants can easily escape the earth's gravity during cosmic storms, which would be expected to increase with increasing temperature.
4) The melting ice is releasing methane gas that had been trapped under and in the ice. Global warming effects of methane are an order of magnitude worse then carbon dioxide.
Lovelock believes we are past the point of no return and that it is waste of time to worry about emission now, but instead we should be researching technology to help adapt to climate change.
So, do people consider what climate change might do to investments?
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