I found this newly-published paper on solar forcings interesting.

Quote:

We estimate that the sun contributed as much as 45–50% of the 1900–2000 global warming, and 25–35% of the 1980–2000 global warming. These results, while confirming that anthropogenic-added climate forcing might have progressively played a dominant role in climate change during the last century, also suggest that the solar impact on climate change during the same period is significantly stronger than what some theoretical models have predicted.

My view is that adaptation, rather than prevention, is key. Although human activities do affect our climate and atmosphere, there are a lot of other forces at work that we cannot control. The climate will never, ever remain static. The one constant in this world is change. Otherwise there'd be no Ice Ages, no Holocene Maximums.

We are arguably making the situation worse, but if the above paper is verified, our role in climate change is less than we thought it was. But it is increasing.

The only way we're going to mitigate this is by being wealty enough to afford investments into alternative sources (like oil from algae, my personal favorite process), and invest in them.

I also found this article about the climate and the Carboniferous Period. The author argues that continental configuratios play a large role in the formation of polar ice caps and Ice Ages.

I doubt society will change its ways so....

Personally, I think our only recourse is to reduce the insolation that the earth recieves. NASA recently proposed placing a semi-reflective surface of about 1 squre kilometer in a near sun orbit. The goal would be to reduce the insolation recieved from the sun by 1 to 2 percent. This could drastically cool our planet and at least provide short term relief from our seemingly out of control spiral.

Hard to imagine... I know. So were nuclear warheads/reactors not too long ago.

I'll dig up a link to NASA's proposition...

Cornelius -

how would we go about putting something that huge into earth orbit, let alone get it into "near sun orbit" and keep it there? Solar mass ejections would reduce it to shreds before long. This is quite unlike the (also weird) recent Russian project to use a much smaller solar sail in Earth orbit to see if sunlight could be reflected toward Siberia.

The one thing you are right about is that it is possible to achieve global dimming. We're doing it today, albeit only a little and that inadvertently, by pumping aerosols into the atmosphere. Ironically, cleaning up diesel cars with particulate filters will remove a major source of these aerosols.

I'm continually amused by the "it's a coincidence" contingent.

We should close all coal, gas and oil plants and replace them with renewables and nuclear power.

Or we should at least ban new contruction of coal, oil and gas plants. The current fossil plants will be retired in a few of decades and then only renewables and nuclear power will remain.

Starvid -

I hope we'll eventually figure out ways to make do with renewables and geothermal heat alone. There might be a breakthrough in nuclear fusion, but it would be folly to count on it.

The problem with nuclear fission is not so much uranium supplies or even the accident safety of modern designs such as pebble-bed ractors - as opposed to the many legacy reactors. It is dealing with the risk of weapons proliferation, the risk of terrorist attack and above all, the long-term storage of spent fuel and decomissioned reactor components.

The US has spent many years on its Yucca Mountain project, but the local NIMBYs are (understandably) opposed to making Nevada the nation's radioactive waste dump.

In Germany, a person recently died in an accident while protesting rail transports to the Gorleben salt mine. There is now concern that natural gas exploitation in the area could be causing earthquakes, typically <2 on the Richter scale but with the potential for more. The impact that might have on the long-term viability of the nuclear storage facilty is uncertain.

The French operate a reprocessing plant (they used to operate fast breeders as well). Both technologies involve handling industrial quantitites of the most dangerous substance known to man, plutonium. There was an uproar some years ago when the Japanese sent their spent fuel half-way around the world for reprocessing. What if the ship sinks or pirates steal it?

A final mechanism for reducing the volume of radioactive waste is using a particle accelerator to fire protons at it in a sub-critical reactor, yielding yet more useful energy. The final waste stream has a half-life of "just" several centuries, but the radiation intensity is of course much higher than for the primary waste. That means it is still hazardous for many thousands of years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fuel_cycle

Austria built a reactor at Zwentendorf in the 70s but public protests prevented it from ever being switched on; the country has never really looked back. If Iran wanted to back out of its nuclear ambitions without losing face, it could cite Austria as an example.

Cervus: Here is the skinny on your referenced World Climate Report. Perhaps you should have made this clear before you posted. Not surprised that this group would try to claim a big role for solar flux.

A newsletter on global warming, ozone, "sound science". WCR is sponsored by the Greening Earth Society, a Western Fuels Association project founded to spread the "good news" that global warming is benficial for the planet.

Look at the resumes of those who write for the site www.realclimate.org. This are real and accomplished climate scientists with decades of experience and knowledge. I think you would be better off getting you climate knowledge from these people rather than a web site that is a tool of the fuel industry. Even if your data is accurate, it hardly suggests that we should be less concerned with the impact of greenhouse gas emissions.

I strongly disagree with the positions being put forth by Rafael Seidl, Cervus, Alan, Hal, and company. They sound like the rest of the paid liars from Exxon. In their view nothing can be done to stop global warming, so get used to it and just learn to live with the consequences. They used to argue that global warming wasn't happening, but "that dog don't hunt no more". Now they are saying it is natural, not caused by fossil fuels, but if it is, it's too late to do anything about it.
If they are not going to offer Green Car solutions to address climate change, then I hope they find another forum to spread their misinformation.

James White -

I think your rant is fairly wide of the mark. I absolutely advocate sensible green technologies (automotive and otherwise), mostly to contribute in a small way to avoiding future armed conflicts over various natural resources.

In particular, I did not state that climate change cannot be avoided. I don't know if that's possible. Solar activity may or may not be an exacerbating factor so we have to assume to assume it might be - which makes action on our part more urgent, not less!

It's just that human nature being what it is, chances are the industrialized nations will end up taking too little action too late. Perhaps the exercise of drawing up concrete contingency plans would get the stragglers to wake up to the risks we are taking.

Starvid -

sadly, your assertion that "the sensitive parts like enrichment and reprocessing could be reserved for the great powers" flies in the face of reality. India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel all developed nuclear weapons technology under the cloak of civilian programs. Iran stands accused of doing the same right now.

Rafael Seidl:

As far as I am concerned India is a Great power and can have both nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

Israel is also a Great power at least militarily. But Israel, Pakistan and Noth Korea have all paid for their insolence by being shut out of all international fuel cycle activities. North Korea has been declared a pariah state.

The only reason the same thing hasn't been done with Israel and Pakistan is that they are regional Great powers.

The U.S. only supports nonproliferation when it comes from their perceived enemy. We still have an obligation to reduce and elminate nuclear weapons. We blink at Israel, India, and Pakistan. The piper will be paid eventually. On the bright side, maybe we can get some termporary cooling when the big bombs go off.

that's being done globally by mostly military aircraft as an unacknowledged special access project, although with things like barium salts... watch the sky fill up with the crud!