It is obvious that “nuclear energy” refers to nuclear fission. It’s virtually certain that nuclear fusion would be found to be “socially acceptable” if it can be developed.

This is particularly true of hydrogen-boron fusion, whose only product is (nonradioactive) helium, and virtually no neutrons.

There are several attempts around the world to develop hydrogen-boron fusion, but the funding for these attempts is virtually non-existent:

http://www.progressiveengineer.com/PEWebBackissues2002/PEWeb%2028%20Jul%2002-2/28editor.htm

http://markbahner.typepad.com/random_thoughts/2006/04/alternatives_to.html

http://markbahner.typepad.com/random_thoughts/2006/07/how_id_solve_th.html

Your statement about CO2 changes and climate changes has no basis in reality. CO2 concentration changes have never caused temperature changes.

You are correct in that we should be careful to not induce (or allow?) cooling – but we really have no clue about the causes of current temperature changes.

Richard your mention of the Younger Dryas is of interest because we don’t know what caused it but we do know that we should be willing to pay plenty to avoid the risk of another one. We’ve already seen atmospheric CO2 levels change by more than five times as much as they did at that time (today we’re 100ppm above a multi million year maximum). We should not take casually the risk of another Younger Dryas event, there really would be human misery of terrible proportions were NH temperatures to change again to that degree, on such a short time scale. It has to be worth paying for insurance against the real risk.

Not only do we know of no precedent in the geologic record for the rate of change of greenhouse gases that we are inflicting on the planet, and I include events like the Eocene methane ‘burp’ of 55mya in this, but we also know of no time in which the rate of change of vegetation and forest patterns has been as great as it is has been in the modern era. So here are two things on which we are imposing historically rapid rates of change (greenhouse gas concentrations and vegetation distributions), both of which directly affect our climate, and which may interact with each other in ways we do not yet understand. I think we should be much more careful than we’ve been being.

The science indicates that the average global temperature from 1910 to 1940 increased at roughly the same pace as from 1977 to 2007. The first is said to be mostly natural; the second mostly caused by humanity. Before that, the data is simply not sufficient for determining decadel rates of change for average global temperature! The statement that recent warming is “…extremely rapid in the experience of Earth” is not supportable, much less “straightforward”.

It is quite possible that the recent warming is proceeding at a pace that is close to average, since the only two periods of warming for which we have actually measurments were very similar.

Also, if pre-industrial climate was so stable, how are we generating these wonderful studies that “…discuss the impacts of historically rapid climate change on ecosystems more generally.”?

I think you may be confusing speculation with observation; a common practice when it comes to climate change!

For nature, the rate of change is fast for interglacials, but not for glacials. The projected change is small compared to, say, the Younger Dryas. While the Younger Dryas was upsetting for sure, it was not disastrous.

I’d kind of agree with you about replacement of capital stock but I’d put it more strongly: “We should invest nothing more in capital stock that is not efficiently adaptable to operate without fossil fuel”.

variability: subject to [variation or] *changes*

From your comments here it sounds as if you feel the drooling, simian-like masses are too debased and ignorant to fully grasp the issues the IPCC are addressing. And it is your duty, as part of a small, elite eco-vanguard, to mount the barricades and inspire those unthinking troglodytes. Even if that effort involves colorful, gross exaggerations and outright misrepresentation.

Yet, as has been demonstrated here on a regular basis, the U.S. public, when polled, list climate change as a major concern. Even if that concern is heightened by a regular series of sensationalist headlines it calls into question the basis of what seems to be your reason for manning those barricades. The penetration of the issue into the general discussion in the U.S. is pretty deep.

And I know that the alarmist tone of broadsheets like the Guardian and Independent have ensured that awareness is even higher in the U.K.

I quit reading the Guardian years ago because of the apparent lack of a firewall between the op/ed page and the rest of the newspaper. Objectivity seems to have been caste aside, a victim of the ascendancy of naked advocacy. Your comments here just reinforces my opinion.

The Stern Review is another example of bias in the Guardian. You gave it extensive and uncritical coverage when it came out, you declined to publish op-eds that took issue with the Stern Review, you did not cover the critical reviews (e.g., the recent thrashing of Stern at Yale), you continue to treat it as an authoritative source, and you even missed the silly backpeddling by the Stern team in their feeble attempt to save their academic reputation.