Quote:
Originally Posted by GP_Matt
I won't get into the climate debate, but I have often wondered what would happen if we do commit to the CO2 reduction plans that every country continues to promise to meet. As a thought experiment, I like to picture them being too successful and in the distant future humanity is faced with the threat of a dangerously cooler Earth. Will we bring out the old internal combustion engines again to help pump out greenhouse gasses? Will there be a an ad campaign asking people to take extra trips when driving, maybe even shaming people who take the bus?
|
The way I see it is that we have two different processes affecting climate: natural and human-caused. The natural processes can make it warmer or cooler; at this point the human-caused processes are basically limited to making it warmer (short of some really exotic and in my opinion potentially risky ideas). Then there are 3 options humanity has - leave climate as close to "natural" as possible, keep climate as close to current conditions as possible (which is not the same thing), or somehow optimizing our climate. There is a fourth option, of course - letting things get completely unbalanced and out of control by unrestrained human-caused warming, but I don't recommend it.
Presuming the choice was not to leave climate "natural", I think causing additional warming would not be hard if global temperatures started to get too low. The trick is doing the right amount of warming in that case. Realistically we aren't going to totally eliminate human sources of warming in the near future so it's not really an issue at this time though; the focus right now needs to be on making sure we don't over-warm.