Global Weirding: Visualizing Climate Change

The proliferation of jellyfish in the oceans may be a fairly bad sign, although to what extent the problem is climate change vs all the other bad things humans do to the oceans is up for grabs. The science--like the science of climate itself--is not even remotely close to "settled", but there is cause for concern:

http://www.wunderground.com/news/oceans-may-be-primed-jellyf...

It's also worth remembering that the Earth's climate over most of the 20th century was amazingly stable by historical norms. Year-to-year variation was fantastically small compared to the kind of thing seen pretty routinely in the past few thousand years. There were no multi-decadal mega-droughts, no dramatic swings in northern hemisphere temperatures of the kind seen in the Little Ice Age or the Medieval Warm Period, and so on.

It follows from this that even a return to natural variability is going to be challenging for us, and it's unlikely that the 1.6 W/m^2 that anthopogenic greenhouse gasses are adding to the mix is going to make things any calmer. Adding energy to chaotic systems rarely makes them more stable, and while the detailed consequences of the additional energy are unclear (despite what the "science is settled" folks claim) there is very little doubt that we are adding 1 - 2 W/m^2 to the Earth's energy budget.

That said, here's a relatively agnostic argument for carbon taxes, which the data show are pretty effective at curtailing greenhouse emissions: most carbon tax schemes are designed such that the revenue they generate allows governments to lower corporate taxes and person income taxes. Now, unless you're a wild-eyed socialist revolutionary who hates wealth and capitalism, you're likely in favour of lower corporate taxes and personal income taxes. I know I am. I would far rather have a tax on something bad (dumping waste into the atmospheric commons) than something good (income!) So I think there's an argument to be made for carbon taxes that even the most ardent capitalist can like, if not love.

Melting polar ice is really screwing with the jetstream and that's altering winter weather patterns pretty severely.

And what is the big picture? What is the effect on human beings? Fortunately, we have the data on this.

In the last 80 years, global deaths caused by climate (droughts, floods, hurricanes, cyclones, tornados, typhoons) have declined by 98%, all because people had cheap, reliable energy provided by fossil fuels.

Source: http://www.emdat.be/advanced_search/index.html - click on "Natural," and add subgroups "Climatological," "Meteorological," "Hydrological."

Because I prefer being alive, I'd much rather live in a warmer world (or one with weather that has changed is some unnatural way) than to lose the cheap, plentiful sources of energy that serve to protect me from an inherently dangerous climate.

I don't appreciate your straw man attack. I honestly don't recall ever hearing anyone argue that we should abandon fossil fuels outright. Instead what I hear from most people is a desire to increase research into alternative energy sources and evolve from fossil fuels to something new and better.

Keep in mind this energy transition has occurred before, back in the 16th century. The UK used to depend on wood for its energy. The US led in adopting coal, which was used only marginally for thousands of years. Coal was dirty, it stank, required new technologies to collect and distribute, while wood was cheap and plentiful. As it turns out coal was fundamental to the industrial revolution, the US as a leader in coal developed new industries and led in industrialization and leap frogged Britain.

I see human kind at the same crossroads, but with bigger stakes. Do we want to stick with fossil fuels until we potentially destroy our climate or can we discover new sources that will potentially introduce a new energy revolution, and who do we want leading this new energy revolution?

> I honestly don't recall ever hearing anyone argue that we should abandon fossil fuels outright.

Bill McKibben (founder and leader of 350.org) endorses a 95% ban on fossil fuels. He says that oil companies are "Public Enemy Number One to the survival of our planetary civilization."