Gareth wrote:Well, that might be possible but first we'd need to work out whether we're having a significant effect, and then to work out a reasonable balance between having an effect and having the benefits that we currently enjoy.
That's a great thought - imagine if we could get a huge majority of the people who've devoted their lives to researching and thinking about these matters to agree, and if they could offer evidence based on everything from polar ice samples that show the composition of the atmosphere over tens of thousands of years, to the latest computer modelling. Imagine if the conclusion of all that research and thinking were that we are capable of causing a change in climate as great as those seen between the warmest and coolest periods of our planet's history, but in a tiny fraction of the time over which previous changes occurred. And imagine that the evidence showed that we've already made changes that will continue to manifest themselves in the next 100 years whatever we do tomorrow, but that it's not too late to change the future if we do something today. Would we act then?
David