Climate Moderatism

The decrease in heat waves into space 1 of the kind absorbed by greenhouse gases) is conclusive proof of a greenhouse effect, equal to a net 1,5 W/m2 (3 W/m2 from warming gases minus 1,5W/m2 from cooling gases, 2 which caused cooling in the Cold War era). Since the earth gets its average 288 K temperature from the average 240 W/m2 absorbed from the sun 3 (geothermal heat flow <0,1 W/m2), this extra 1,5W/m2 causes a net increase of 1,8 K (1,8 C, 3,2 F).
This was the average temperature throughout most of the Miocene over 2 million years ago, 4 and runaway feedback only began at 1,000 ppm of CO2 in the PETM. 21 However, because of habitat fragmentation, many species may not be able to adapt to climate change the way they have before, and unlike animals, humans cannot easily relocate. Even relatively small climate changes have caused destruction of civilisations, including the desertification of the Sahara 6000 years ago. 5
Every climate is created by a chaotic system of air/water currents in which even small global changes can cause large local effects. Warming happens more towards the poles than the equators, 2 and the reduced difference between the two moves precipitation fronts towards the seas 6 and the poles, * 22 causing more extreme weather. 17 (* Hence Antarctica is gaining ice. 23)
Not all data are correct, 15 but comparing all the data gives a compelling image. 16 18 However, with most desertification caused by farming 7 and over 34% of all forest destroyed, 8 global warming may not be our greatest environmental concern, and with 7 million deaths caused by air pollution per year, 9 perhaps not even our greatest environmental concern about fossil fuels. But fossil fuel taxes are nothing new, and those taxes can go to subsidies for renewable energy for those who can't afford either. The <1 mm sea level rise 10 would not be enough to flood our cities in centuries 11 and glacier river sources can be replaced with reservoirs.
Half of all manmade greenhouse gases are reabsorbed 19, and once we use mostly renewable energy (in the early 2030s 20), the rest can be absorbed by the increasing plankton, though it may also poison the seas. But with the extinction rate up to 10.000 normal, 12 83% of all land damaged 13 and 97% of land vertebrate biomass made up of humans’ and domesticated animals’, 14 it’s clear that humans can and are affecting an entire planet on a very large scale, and climate change is only part of that.
Renewable energy, like all technologies, grows exponentially through a bandwagon effect, and this will take a certain amount of time, but until then, we can't save enough on emissions in each sector without shutting them down, as people need to use a certain amount of energy no matter how much it is taxed. To really make a difference in climate change, we have to rethink our society.
In developed countries, this could be done by requiring people to work from home whenever possible, since commuting and offices are the largest part of the emissions we can cut. However, employers will never do this because it would make them lose much of their authority, and our governments lack the authority to make them do this. By the time people begin to work from home on their own, almost all energy will already be renewable. There is no way to reduce carbon sources enough to make a difference because the economy is too powerful to let itself be slowed down by governments, so instead we must seek to increase carbon sinks such as forests.
Because they are not yet developed, developing countries can more easily be changed by governments, and while they have less emissions the less developed they are, they can be turned into a carbon sink by requiring their cash crops to be shadow-grown (coffee, tobacco, tea, cocoa) in forests, which will retain not only carbon but also moisture, preventing them from turning into deserts through the climate change that is certain to occur. Many of these countries cannot develop in the same way temperate countries have without causing droughts, and due to their different climate, they must be forestry-based rather than field-based, which is the only way they can grow economically and ecologically. Therefore, the best way to reduce climate change may be to tax sun-grown cash crops and use those taxes to subsidise shadow-grown cash crops. These are far more likely to pass through Congress than further taxes on energy as the right wing is more likely to agree to them, so that the left wing should focus on increasing carbon sinks rather than decreasing carbon sources.
If you agree, please submit your comment to the White House.
1 John Harries et al.: Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth in 1970 and 1997
2 NASA Earth Observatory: From A Dimmer Past to a Brighter Future?
3 NASA Earth Observatory: The Atmosphere’s Energy Budget
6 Nature, Gabriel Vecchi: Global Warming Weakens Pacific Winds
13 National Geographic, Hillary Mayell: Human "Footprint" Seen on 83 Percent of Earth's Land
14 Helmut Haberl et al.: Land use and sustainability indicators
17 Scientific American: Extreme Weather and Climate Change
20 Ray Kurzweil, Washington Post: The coming era of unlimited — and free — clean energy
21 Richard E. Zeebe et al.: Carbon dioxide forcing alone insufficient to explain Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum warming, p3
22 Dai: Drought under global warming: a review
23 IBT: Nasa study shows Antarctica sheet gaining ice

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