^Classic!
Trouble is whenever a critical problem arises it always reverts to politics. Politics today have reached the zenith, or at least they are close to it, of manipulation by interested parties. Just look at the carry on with boat people and the noise surrounding that issue which smothers the fact that we are flooded with "legitimate" immigrants swarming in to the mines.
I just love the following clip. The technology and the resources are there, they already exist. The corporate world will evade change at all costs, even to the extent where it risks our ultimate demise:
I'm intrigued that words to the effect of "little old us? we couldn't possibly change the climate, it's all scientific hype" still gets a run. Every organism on the planet interacts with and affects the climate to some degree. And many times in the past an organism has become dominant on the planet and changed the climate to a huge extent.
The "great oxygenation event" 2.4 billions years ago. Cynobacteria got a hold on the planet and produced oxygen. The oxygen rusted the iron that was floating around and deposited it on the sea floor. When all the iron was used up the oxygen filled up the atmosphere. That was the end of domination by the anaerobic bacteria.
The cyanobacteria are also thought to have triggered Snowball earth 650 million yrs ago.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth
Rapidly multiplying life then accelerated the recovery from Snowball earth.
The point is that the earth's atmosphere is what it is because of life on earth. Geologic records show several instances of dominant organisms swinging the climate wildly in some direction.
Stand back and look at how dominant we are. We've cleared so much forest and replaced it with shallow rooted food crops and pasture. Caught and eaten half the fish in the ocean. Burnt coal in 200 yrs that was carefully stowed away by trees, as part of the climate balancing act, over millions of years.
We're having an effect, don't worry about that. 200 million years from now another technological life form might get a run on the planet. They detect a 1 mm layer in the rock formations separating two distinct sets of fossils. "What happened here?" they'll say " It looks like the 6th great mass extinction!"
Global Warming, Climate Change, Fact or Fiction, a Carbon Tax will do nothing towards fixing it.
