Humans also almost assuredly can change climate, if they want. It's a lot easier to cool vs. warm -- set off a bunch of nuclear weapons (easy, produces nuclear winter, although maybe less so than fearmongered); or, be sane, and put a bunch of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere to reflect more sunlight and thus cool the Earth.

I personally think it's probably prudent to try to reduce CO2 emissions, but not drastically. The costs (financial and quality of life) of massive reductions in CO2 now are far higher than the costs to remediate with SO2 or other methods, at least until there's more precise data, the costs of reducing CO2 emissions are reduced, etc. We could probably drop them by a good amount in the developed world, but doing so in China/India/etc. would mean an unreasonable restriction on quality of life for billions of people.

"We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them."

There are a whole host of assumptions that your arguments rest on, from our ability to predict and control non-linear dynamic systems, to what we even mean when we say "cost" or "quality of life". It's great that you're optimistic, but I fear this is more of the same arrogance that got us into this mess in the first place.

It seems the same group of people with vested monetary or emotional interests in doing nothing on climate have simply dug in their heels, and their arguments change as they get dragged along. In 5-10 years I'm sure it will be solidly "well duh the climate is changing and it's our fault, but nothing to be done now except learn to live with it". This is extremely frustrating.

I have no doubts that we are undergoing climate change, however, since when have we NOT undergone climate change?

We have had catastrophic ice ages and the Medieval Warming Period, when the Earth was warmer than it is now. All without the help of man-made "greenhouse gases". We know that extreme climate changes have occurred in the PAST, and we know that extreme climate changes will occur in the FUTURE. What makes THIS particular climate change so different and more significant from the previous ones? Just because we happen to be alive for this one? A theory that only answers one particular observation but can't explain other observations doesn't feel particularly valuable to me.

Maybe you're skeptical that they're man-made. If so, why not put the quotes around "man-made" instead of "greenhouse gases"?

Unfortunately we are stuck with this misleading terminology in what is an already complex and politically charged area.

The speed at which it's occurring and it's correlation with man-made CO2 emission levels.

Uh, yeah, that'd be it. What with all the massive extinction events and all, it might be in our interest to minimize the effects.

Consider that our ancestors were fighting for survival in the midst of an ice age. Sure, its "pre-written-history" but it isn't "pre-human-history".

There is a common set of exchanges that occur in climate discussions that go like this:

Person A: "Here is climate change without humans" (person A in this context is trying to argue that change will occur because there are other sources of change)

Person B: "That was millions of years ago" (person B in this context is often trying to argue that what ever caused climate change 'back then', doesn't apply to current change)

Neither person directly addresses the emotional argument/fear, and neither person tries to establish a common frame of reference.

In context, kjackson2012 was making the 'things change' argument and your (snowrestler) response about the 'cold comfort' was in the context of the emotional argument.

It is kind of like an exchange that goes "Oh we ordered too much food for the party." followed by "That's cold comfort to Ethiopians who are starving."

On its face it seems like an argument that had we ordered less party food, there would be more food for Ethiopians. And yet the link between this party's food budget and that country's food problems is tenuous at best and generally a non sequitur.

The point I was trying to make was that responding to the comment about change with a statement about timelines is a common one in climate discussions.

Had I not reflexively responded to what I see as a common fallacy in the debate, I might have more constructively asked this:

Given that coastal dwellers are now aware that the sea level will change, possibly significantly, for their great grandchildren. And that we know that there is nothing known to science today or predicted by our models that can stop it, how do you suggest we comfort these coastal dwellers of the present?

BTW, I interpretted your post to be something like "houses have burned down throughout history. Let's start trying to make all our stuff fireproof just in case." To which I think a reasonable response is "let's figure out how fires are most likely to start, and do what we can to prevent a fire in the first place."

The fundamental question is whether we can do anything to slow or stop the global warming trend that we see today. Scientifically speaking, we know that the answer is yes: if we reduce the rate at which we produce greenhouse gases, we will reduce the expected warming. Whether that is politically feasible is a whole 'nother question.

The same body of science that you appeal to has noted that relative to the geologic record we are 'overdue' (or 'about due' depending on who you read) for a glacial event (aka an Ice Age). Given that, how would you score the sequence of events that humans managed to scale back their CO2 emissions and the world then subsequently plunges into an ice age which probably destroys civilization as we know it?

You may find that question is not as much a straw man as it first appears (or a false dichotomy), ice ages are a perfectly valid climate 'state' on our planet. Some literature would have you believe that the planet is usually an ice ball and periodically warms, but I haven't found those papers as compelling.

However, that we cannot, with certainty, rule out another ice age occurring as the 'normal' course of events suggests to me that the next millenium's climate is going to be different regardless of our actions. So I tend to favor a policy where we invest in survivability and mitigation and research, in that order.

The climate has such a huge impact on human society that we cannot invest to mitigate all outcomes equally. A major reason to fund scientific study of the climate (beyond the intellectual joy of finding things out) is to rigorously and continuously quantify the likelihood of potential climate changes, so we know where to invest.

The overwhelming conclusion right now is that warming is the most likely change in the near future. If you surveyed 1,000 climate researchers tomorrow, I'd be surprised if even 1 said that imminent glaciation is more likely than imminent warming.

Now, that could change, but if it does then the same scientific research that warned us of global warming would warm us of global cooling. But right now it's not, so it would be wasteful to start sending parkas to Florida.

Now, you might ask how we should invest our money in the face of coming warming, and that is a very good question. How much should we invest in changing our energy sources vs., say, building sea walls around low-lying cities like New York or Washington, DC?

To have such a discussion we would first need to accept the information we are getting from scientists--but it is here that we are stuck as a society. People simply do not want to accept it, so right now there is little investment in any direction.

Not actually true, and in any case a much more gradual warming over a longer timescale; it's well summarized at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warming_Period

I can't help being struck by the contrast between climate skeptic's loud insistence on greater scientific rigor in discussions of the present climate, and their hand-waving invocations of the MWP as a general-purpose tool of dismissal. I mean, all you need to do is look at a graph of the temperature data to see how different the rate of change is between the MWP and today.

First and foremost: The black line is an actual temperature measurement, while all the other lines are estimates based on proxies. Except of course: Secondly all the proxies appears to be correlated to the black line, because they have been chosen to do so. That is, the correlation to the black line is manufactured, and not a finding.

The rest of the graph is made in a completely different manner, and the proxies are allowed to carry the signal for themselves. I think it is very interesting that you can see a small medieval warming period from the proxy data, but nevertheless one shouldn't be too eager to compare the right part and the left part of the graph, as the methods used are actually not the same.

One can also show that the noise in the proxies will tend to pull the data towards the average and away from the extremes, which is exactly the lower rate of change and lower peaks you see. So that graph is really not very good, at all...

It seems like this is saying, 1. (implied) Humans are affecting the climate, but 2. Humans can't direct the change of the climate, and 3. The climate will change, regardless of Humans.

Therefore, 4. (Implied) Negative affects that Humans behavior has on the climate is irrelevant, and 5. Invest in Human survival.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the argument. It seems to assert that individual or collective behavior which may negatively impact the welfare of others is irrelevant, because those others should have been anticipating overall negative impacts and adapting anyway.

Maybe someone could give me an analogy to another uncontrollable phenomenon where it makes sense for Humans to ignore the consequences of their actions which may indirectly (or directly) affect others.

Now, to cover your points.

1) (Implied) Humans are affecting the climate.

Of course they are, so are sheep, so are whales, so are trees. Its a relatively closed system and the activity of all the internal pieces have an effect.

2) Humans can't direct the change of the climate

That is a true statement, there are theories about various geo-engineering things we are capable of doing to change the climate, but our best models disagree about the effect of those changes. We can detonate all our nuclear bombs and put megatons of aerosols into the atmosphere, we can try to jump start various ecosystems, we can try to change the proportion of various chemicals in the atmosphere. The bottom line is we don't know what those changes are bringing or what other strategies will bring.

3) The climate will change, regardless of Humans

This too is an accurate statement. When Yellowstone next erupts, the climate will change for centuries. I don't think there are any lines of research or reasoning that suggest that wouldn't be the case. All of our models predict that you put that much stuff in the upper atmosphere and it will change things down here.

4. (Implied) Negative affects that Humans behavior has on the climate is irrelevant.[sic]

This gets to the heart of the emotional crisis. Human behavior affects the climate, it enables change. Given the amount of leverage green house gases have in the models, it seems to enable a lot more change than we originally suspected. It is quite sensible and rational to work out how to minimize that forcing function. But the climate will still change, because Humans aren't the only agent pushing on the climate.

The emotion comes from the realization that no matter what you do, you can't stop this 'bad thing.' And that is really scary, especially when people put it inside what might be considered your 'time horizon' (the next 50 to 100 years [which is in itself bogus because we're still working out the models])

To use an illustrative example which is outside our time horizon, the Andromeda Galaxy is going to collide with the Milky Way[1]. It will, in all likely hood, result in the complete destruction of our solar system. There is nothing we can do about it. Except its going to happen in about three to four billion years. So nobody cares.

5. Invest in Human survival

So if you can accept that we don't know what we don't know about the way climate changes or might be changed. Then the best investment of your time is to work on things you do know how to do. There are lots of things that serve both purposes, you can work on battery technology that would make using electricity easier (fewer pounds of CO2 per joule than gasoline for example) or colonizing the moon (nobody on the moon is going to be directly changing the Earth's climate), urban planning at higher elevations, housing and moving populations above a rising sea level and at a reducing sea level. After all if we start another ice age all that seawater will be trapped in ice again.

I think a responsible species would be ready for any change, while developing a deeper understanding of how change occurs. So if you're not already in a research program studying the climate, your next best choice would be getting us ready for a change.

[1] http://news.discovery.com/space/galaxies/milky-way-andromeda...

Point 1: do you think humans are effecting the climate as much as whales or sheep? Less, more? If so, what order of magnitude, and what is the primary cause of the difference? (EDIT: also, do you accept the notion of the climate as a closed systems as excluding geologically sequestered reservoirs of hydrocarbons like oil and coal, or not?)

Point 2: If you accept as a given that man-made CO2 production is causing climate change, would reducing CO2 emissions be an equally valid strategy that geo-engineering?

Point 3: I don't believe anyone is disputing this.

Point 4 and point 5: If the human species is creating a preventable crisis, would it be wiser to _not_ cause that crisis and devote the same resources to solving a less avoidable one instead? (like say, an eruption of the Yellowstone Caldera like you mentioned)

ps - You say that the collision of Andromeda and the Milk Way will destroy our solar system, but from the referenced article, "The merger poses no real danger of destroying Earth or our solar system, researchers said"

Hopefully the reputation is not for flaming and invective, I'm a rational guy and seek out contrary points of view to understand them.

1) Humans are a huge energy transformer on the planet, so by definition, they have a big influence. One can argue that by raising sheep (flatulence jokes aside, a source of methane) and killing whales, you can link us to pretty much a lot of change. My original point is that the world is a closed system, our existence as the dominant species on the planet ensures our place at the top of the influencer pile of all other species.

The primary cause for the disparity of our impact is that we use energy to amplify our existence. We use gas to move our cars, we use electricity to power our appliances and light our buildings and homes etc etc. To achieve 'neutral' impact with the rest of the species we would have to live a feral existence without fire. (Long way of agreeing that our species has more impact than other species)

I don't quite get what you were driving to with the sequestration question. I tend to think of the world, at a gross level, as a thermodynamic system. Heat goes in from a variety of sources and heat goes out through other systems. Current climate models highlight the reduction of heat loss through the atmosphere as a factor in raising the mean surface temperatures. This is also the primary argument in the IPCC work for the case of anthropogenic contribution to global temperatures. I find the argument credible.

"If you accept as a given that man-made CO2 production is causing climate change, would reducing CO2 emissions be an equally valid strategy that geo-engineering?"

I think its more nuanced than that. I think of "climate" as the name of the emergent property of 'weather' which occurs as a result of the interaction between a lot of variables in a very complex system. The planets climate is thus the measurable combined effect of all these variables. In all of the models, the effect of CO2 concentrations is perhaps the greatest single factor on the overall climate.

That said, how the climate "should" behave (which is to say predicted to behave) at various concentrations, has not been all that great. Models say Greenland should have less ice than it does, or more, or temperatures should go up by X but instead they go up by Y or not at all. And all that says is that the climate is a complex system that we don't completely understand it.

And because don't understand it well we can't really say what will happen if we pull a few peta-tons of CO2 out of the air, or cover millions of acres (hectares) of land with solar cells, or replant millions of acres of trees, or remove them. Every push on the system causes it to respond, and that response can affect future pushes. That is what makes systems like this so amazing difficult to study. Very hard to isolate variables.

So with that in mind, my answer is that I believe that changing CO2 levels in any direction will push on the thermodynamic balance of the earth. What I don't have an answer for, and I have yet to see a credible argument for, is a solid statement how those changes will manifest, either way. At the extremes? Sure, but plus or minus 10%? Not so much.

And if you're thinking "But if we went back to pre-1900 levels of CO2 in the atmosphere wouldn't we reverse the change?" I'm going to disagree with that, a hundred years of higher CO2 and the system has adapted, take it all away all at once, and you don't know what adaptations will be wrenched away, even slowly we don't know. Consider the following.

There is evidence that bird migration is happening earlier as a result of higher average temperatures. This has happened over the course of decades, possibly centuries. As the migrations change other parts of the system also change, and the birds change as well. Now we figure out we can 'fix' CO2, pull it all out of the air and in under a decade CO2 levels drop and temperatures go back to what they were a century ago. Now the current generation of birds is screwed, they make their migration at the wrong time and freeze/starve to death. Not enough generations to evolve a new timing.

Clearly it's speculative but I am trying to illustrate that it has never been true that there is some lever that humans have their hand on where they could just 'dial in' the climate.

"If the human species is creating a preventable crisis"

I think this is a good way to frame the different ways of thinking about this.

One is "preventable crisis" where climate change is like pollution or small pox, we just make a few policies and regulations and put our minds to fixing it.

I think this is a comfortable way to think about climate change because it contextualizes it in human terms of past victories.

The other is "ignoring a preventable crisis" where climate change is like an earthquake or a hurricane.

This is the less comfortable way (but I think more rational) way of thinking about climate change. There are things we can do to lessen our risk (generate less CO2 for example on climate, not build on earthquake faults for earthquakes) but we approach it from the perspective of living with a changing system, and maximizing our quality of life in the presence of those changes.

p.s. If you want to be pedantic, it is hard to predict the local effects on our solar system from the impending collision with Andromeda, a more predictable 'bad' event is that the Sun will eventually run out of hydrogen and Earth will not survive its 'Red Giant' phase, but again, outside the timeline that humans perceive as a threat.

As for my response... you seem to have made a few presumptions about what I believe. Your comments about "all at once" restoring a pre-1900s atmospheric level, or humans ever having been able to "dial in" a climate aren't reflective of what I feel, fwiw. As the question you asked, I mentioned the closed system/sequestered carbon because I don't think it's valid to include carbon that has been removed from the atmosphere (CACO3, coal deposits, etc) when talking about a normal climate cycle.

I don't entirely understand the differences in the framing at the end, either. If you believe we need to reduce CO2 emissions, then we're in agreement.

And regarding the postscript - I didn't mean to be pedantic, nor am I an expert in the subject. I was just pointing out the discrepancy, and I probably didn't have to, so my apologies there.

Point 4: I'm not sure if there is anything we can do about Yellowstone, unless our hydroponics have advanced enough to allow us to live and farm underground and we establish tremendous power capacity to make up for the lack of sunlight.

do you accept the notion of the climate as a closed systems as excluding geologically sequestered reservoirs of hydrocarbons like oil and coal, or not?

Is this even a point of contention? Sequestered hydrocarbons like oil and coal are almost entirely from plant life, which means that carbon is from the air. (90%+ of plant mass is from the air) I don't see how you could consider those deposits of hydrocarbons to be separate from the earth's climate, at least from a macro perspective.

I'm fairly certain that assuming we are influencing and that we (society, not necessarily the individual) can do something, anything about climate change would be considered the more careful path.

http://www.economist.com/node/17722704

NB My own view on the climate change question is probably summarised as "profoundly confused" - I don't trust much of the popular or political literature on the subject and I don't have the time to review the academic literature (which will be biased anyway - I worked in academia for long enough to know well enough how that game works).

So I find it all too easy to believe that we can have an impact - but I probably agree that directing climate in a constructive way is probably beyond our capabilities as a species.

What I find so fascinating about climate change is that we are able to do this. It's a bit less huge than our atmosphere getting populated with oxygen for the first time, but still really exciting. Intellectually exciting, I mean, and personally terrifying.

Just because an asteroid might hit and change the climate doesn't mean we throw our hands up because it doesn't matter. I don't start smoking three packs a day just because there's a chance I could get lung cancer spontaneously.

Are you saying that humans lack the ability to create social structures that can control our emissions? Or are you saying that the IPCC is incorrect in attributing climate change almost entirely to human activity?