Bill,
Mr Brown brougt up a good point, the real issue is not the validity of
AGW, but rather what our collective response to it should be..
Lets talk about:
1) Carbon taxes
2) cap and trade
3) ban the use of coal for electricity
4) use of nuclear energy
5) improved energy efficiency
6) development of renewable energy sources
7) development of alternative energy sources
Even though I do not believe AGW is valid, I DO believe in some of
the above actions for reasons that have nothing to do with AGW. I am
against actionds 1,2,3. I AM IN FAVOR of actions 4,5,6,7. (I
wonder, does that make me a green wieennie?)
If you don't believe in anthropogenic global warming, you probably
aren't a greenie wiennie - though you'd probably have to consult the
likes of Jim Thompson and his sycophants to get an authoratitive
opinion, since they invented the term, and presumably have some dea of
what they had in mind.
If you don't believe in global warming it is unlikely that you know
enough physics to have a useful opinion on any of the schemes you
listed. There are people around who do know the physics, and still
don't believe in some aspects of anthropogenic global warming but
there aren't many of them - the overwhelming majority of the sceptics
don't know what they are talking about.
If you want to see a more or less sensible scheme for tackling
anthropogenic global warming (and a number of other problems that need
to be sorted out in the process) you could usefully read Jeffrey D.
Sachs' book "Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet" ISBN
978-0-14-311487-1.
He's the director of the Earth Insitute at Columbia University where
they study the economics of the process that would be needed to get us
from where we are to where we need to be, and the book presents some
of their conclusions in a form that is more or less accessible to the
general public.
He does like carbon taxes (as I doo too) and he doesn't think much of
cap and trade. He doesn't think that it is remotely practical to ban
burning coal to generate electricity, but he thinks that new power
stations should be required to capture the carbon dioxide generated,
and sequestate it underground or deep in the ocean, and that the
current generation of coal-burning power stations should be retired as
fast as possible (which isn't going to be all that fast).
He's in favour of nuclear energy (which is to say, uranium-burning
reactors - nuclear fusion is eveybody's dream, when it is finally
reduced to practice). I think he's failed to learn the lesson of
Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, which is simply that people get
sloppy, and getting casual with a nuclear reactor has a large
potential downside.
Improved energy efficiency is another no-brainer, as is the
development of renewable energy sources.
Renewable energy isn't always availalbe when you want it, so it needs
to be coupled to the development of better schemes for storing
electricity overnight (for solar energy generators) and from day to
day (for wind-powered generators).
"The development of alternative energy sources" is a liitle too
unspecific to be much use.
What do __you__ think the world should do in response to AGW?
I don't know enough to say much useful on my own account. I do know
enough to think that Jeffrey Sachs' program is probably a good
starting point.