>>> So even after making all these nearly impossible to meet concessions
>>> we would still be facing the costs of ever more extreme weather for
>>> decades.

>>> The despotic teabag congress is more likely to toss you a bone than
>>> Mother Nature.

>>> Any tragedy of the commons situation requires a political solution.
>>> Most humans don't think on decades long time scales.  Most voters are
>>> like infants and want -- and need -- relief _now_, i.e., "I want to
>>> fuel my SUV _now_, THIS MINUTE!"

>>> Politicians know this and Bloomberg will go back to being mum on the
>>> matter even before all the lights are back on in NY.

>>> The argument against geo engineering solutions is that it is
>>> unpredictable and not "natural."  Unpredictability is better than
>>> certain death.  Besides we are in effect already doing something that
>>> isn't natural.  We are already geo engineering, just not in the right
>>> direction.

>>> Bret Cahill

>> Humans have created a monster that they cannot stop.

> Certainly not by going back in time to "greenola natural."

>> You raise a good
>> point: what if there is nothing we could do to stop all the pollution
>> and atmospheric changes?

> I never suggested that, only that there is no realistic alternative to
> geo engineering.

> Geo engineering has come to mean bio geo engineering mostly because
> the chances of anything else working seem so remote.

> In this situation, no stone should be left unturned.

>> Do we just wait our turn in each local for a
>> catastrophe like hurricane Sandy? Mckibben wrote a book called Eaarth,
>> with 2 a's and he claims that the earth we live on now is definitely
>> not the same earth that humans lived on some decades. ago and that
>> there is no way back we already crossed the line. There is probably a
>> way to slow or stop the decay of this rock but what if there were not?
>> Would we be wasting our time trying?

> Solutions to the problems coming from AGW will generally require
> _more_ burning of fossil carbon, i.e., more pumps for irrigation,
> etc., so instead of nice "dove tails" you just get a lot of vicious
> circle "positive feedback" loops.

> Most deaths will come from geo wars, not famines, because it is a lot
> easier politically to start a war against a country "stealing" water
> than for a politician to convince his own people to accept famines.

> The only realistic hope is something like an alge bloom.  If you don't
> like biological solutions then start looking for some kind of really
> really cheap PV -- something that can be sprayed by aircraft to cover
> thousands of square miles -- that turns CO2 into carbon more
> effectively than any photosynthesis.

> There may be a real opportunity here as plants are < 1% efficient.