Nope. No change. Geo continues to believe that someone having a model in itself counts as evidence of something (or doing a lab experiment proves something about global climate).
It helps to understand 1 aspect of the climate.
It is not even rocket science... it's almost like predicting the position of a car.
If you move at 50 km/hour, then it'll take you 2 hours to get from A to B.
If you move at 100 km/hour, then it'll take you 1 hour to get from A to B.
That's useful to know, even if it doesn't tell you anything about the driver, or the route, or about other cars. There could be a traffic jam and in reality it could take 3 hours to get there instead of 1 hour. Or there could be an accident and you'll never arrive.
Still, it is better than knowing nothing at all.
I like to ignore ALL the evidence...for AND against ...and just look around my surroundings.
For 1 person in his daily life that is fine. But the present is not enough, even 1 person has to plan ahead: he has to fill up his car before a long drive, he has to earn money otherwise he cannot buy food, he has to fill his fridge with food otherwise he goes hungry the next day.
Confining yourself to the present means that you're too late.
To make policy for a country a government needs to plan ahead on a larger scale and further into the future.
Democracies do that on a scale of about 4 years, sometimes more if it is necessary.
To make policy on such a longer time scale, people need to make predictions using equations.
Those equations are a summary of the observations from the past.
Sometimes they're off. Sometimes they're ok. But they're the only thing we have to work with to make predictions and that's just the way it is... and whether you like it or not, policy makers actually use such predictions to plan ahead. Not because they like it, but it's the only tool they have.
The thing that continues to baffle me is that if a person really really is convinced that CO2 is a major driver, then why aren't they actually doing something about it? If every AGW alarmist put in some solar panels it would be a lot more convincing that they really think there's a problem than the usual tactic of smearing skeptics as "denialists".
And if everyone does his own thing, then what are we going to end up with - a huge mess and an enormous waste of money, that's what.
I just cannot believe that people think that doing something on your own is going to make things right. Because they could actually make things worse...
In my case, I moved closer to work so that I could take the bike to work instead of a car. Even if it rains or if it's cold, I take the bike. I turn off the lights when I don't need them. I wash the dishes by hand. I am not in a position to buy solar panels because I live in a flat.
Not everyone is willing to invest in new technology. Many people still invest lots and lots of money in oil, gas and coal companies. They're betting that everything goes on as usual and that policy-makers will fail at containing the CO2 problem.
Some economists even predict that those kind of investments are forming a huge bubble and that they can cause the next financial crisis.
And does that make sense? Yes, people tend to see profit rather than loss. They get greedy and bubbles form as a result of it. Does it mean that everything is peachy? Nope... it's just human nature to ignore things as long as they can and to continue as usual.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/apr/19/carbon-bubble-financial-crash-crisis
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/03/26/432617/the-20-trillion-carbon-bubble-interview-with-john-fullerton-part-one/
(this last link doesn't seem to work anymore atm...)
But then again, the solar panel market is also a complete fuck-up. It's broken because of policies in China. It's broken even more because of the seemingly random policies of governments. Yes - no - do this - no do that. If I had invested in the solar-panel market 5 years ago, I would've lost a lot of money. I wouldn't want to invest any money in such a market... it's just too unpredictable what governments will do.
Will they go for cheap coal-based energy? Or will they go for more expensive renewables?
http://www.businessinsider.com/europes-soaring-energy-prices-2013-11
(I placed that link in the peak-oil topic, but it's also appropriate here).
That kind of unpredictability is a real killer for making investments. It makes it really hard to change things.
I see it in the Netherlands... my country has a lot to lose because of global warming so to me it would make perfect sense to make huge investments in renewables, but nothing is done. Absolutely nothing. All the government cares about, is getting out of the current crisis and having everything cheap cheap cheap.
But what they dont get is, that cheap becomes meaningless once there's a 10 meter high wall of water waiting to flush my country down the toilet.
And before someone tells me that won't happen... it's an observation that sea levels are rising and that the huge glaciers are melting, ok. So don't even try to tell me that nothing's going on.
