Monday we learned that the Washington Post Editorial Board has become a group of climate activists. Today, they say that America can’t wait
FOR MORE than a century, scientists have understood the basic physics of the greenhouse effect. For decades, they’ve realized humans can affect the climate by burning coal, oil and gas. But the country’s leaders remain divided on the need to curb greenhouse emissions, let alone how to do it.
Among mainstream scientists, this paralysis is mind-boggling.
There is now no doubt that the world is warming.
Not for the last 17 years and 10 months
In fact, many of the same “climate scientists” are now talking about the pause lasting another 10-15 years. One wonders, though, why the WPEB isn’t calling for the Washington Post to stop using fossil fuels to deliver their papers and power their office building.
The most reasonable climate skeptics accept these findings but point to two areas of continuing uncertainty. First, scientists are unsure precisely how much the Earth will heat up in response to a given increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations — the climate’s sensitivity to carbon. The experts have offered a range of possibilities. Second, it is hard to predict exactly what a given increase in global temperature will do to human society.
In fact, there are three knew studies that show that CO2 sensitivity is very low. As far as temperature rise, human society did very well during the previous Holocene warm periods, many of which were much warmer, while doing worse during the cool periods.
Waiting to deal with carbon emissions until the effects are clearer or technology improves is not a wise strategy. The emissions humans put into the atmosphere now will affect the climate in the middle of the century and onward. Technological change, meanwhile, could make a future transition away from fossil fuels cheap — or it might not, leaving the world with a terrible choice between sharply reducing emissions at huge cost or suffering through the effects of unabated warming.
Lead the way, WP: tell us how each of you on the Editorial Board has given up usage of fossil fuels.
