Climate change - executive summary

[aliantha]

I figure somebody around here will know.

Is there a quick-and-dirty, fairly objective, plain-English summary online somewhere about climate change? Asking for a friend.

Googling turns up stuff from the EPA (either not very detailed or too technical for me -- erm, that is, for my friend), the Environmental Defense Fund (which says you can't really make a dent by recycling and using CFL bulbs -- we should all donate to them instead ), and op-ed pieces that aren't exactly objective.

What I'm looking to know, specifically, is the sorts of innovative things that have been proposed to curb CO2 production. I get that we're not going to be able to roll back out of the danger zone immediately without taking the First World back to Third-World industrial levels. But I found one site where the self-styled experts in the comments were talking about things like planting grasslands as opposed to reforestation -- and something about putting iron in the oceans? I couldn't grasp what that was supposed to do.

I've also been trying to find info on where we're likely to be in about 25 years, if nothing changes. But either my search terms suck or nobody's willing to commit to a timeline.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

nobody's willing to commit to a timeline.

This is what is going to frustrate your efforts to find solid, reliable reports from people who know what they are talking about. Every time a new climate study comes out it invariably paints a gloomy scenario which will occur in the next 30 years if we don't do something now. The problem with that is this: such reports have been coming out for nearly 30 years. Either a) the people compiling the reports made mistakes on their timelines or b) they were simply wrong and were just making it up as they went along. I can publish a study saying that the Sun will go nova in 30 years and by the time my deadline happens no one will remember my report, so that is usually a safe number--far enough away in the future that by the time your results do not happen no one will remember what you said.

It will also be difficult to find reliable, substantive, and well-researched data about climate on the Internet that isn't designed solely to arrive the the results the people funding the study wanted (whether "omg it is happening now" or "there is no such thing"). Reports funded by Big Oil will conclude "no problem" and reports funded by government agencies will conclude "we really should do something" because the official government position is "we really should do something" since that position garners more votes at election time.

I have long been of the opinion that our conclusion that the climate is changing due significantly due to human activity is pure ego--see how important we are! One large volcanic eruption can lower global temperatures by 1 or 2 degrees for a couple of years yet most results state that our effect on temperatures is less than 0.3 degrees per year. No, we can't rely on--or cause--volcanic eruptions to help alleviate any heat build-up but that alone proves that we aren't as detrimental as many would like for us to think we are.

No, we don't want to do things like burning our old used tires and motor oil in the back yard but we do want to do things like trading out all the bulbs in your house for LED (the EDF is correct on that--don't use CFL, use LED instead), put up a wind turbine in your back yard, put solar panels on your roof, etc to reduce your dependence upon the electric grid.

Rather than planting grasslands or reforestation I recommend doing nothing and letting Nature figure out what it wants. If acreage which was stripped to the soil wants to be a grassland then that is what will grow; if it wants trees instead that is what will happen. I say this because the Dept. of the Interior used to try and prevent all forest fires and only after the fires happened anyway and were worse than they used to be did they realize that some forest fires are a good thing--they clear underbrush and the ashes put nutrients back into the soil. That is why we use controlled burns now rather than Smoky the Bear trying to put out all the fires.

TLDR
You won't find objective information about climate change on the Internet. At the very least, it will be exceedingly difficult to find it. Too many people have too much of a vested interest in the topic and they desperately want to be proven correct, even if they really aren't.

[aliantha]

See, that's why I came to the Watch with my questions. Nearly everybody else who's commenting on it online has an agenda.

I agree to an extent with what you're saying about reforestation and/or grasslands. The US Army Corps of Engineers screwed up the southern end of Lake Michigan by building breakwaters, thereby causing problems with erosion that didn't exist before.

[aliantha]

Anybody else? Nobody? Do I have to do a search in the Tank??

[wayfriend]

My only suggestion is to start with Wikipedia. There's a fairly rigorous process involved with keeping the information fact-based and unbiased. Which you can peak at in the Talk pages - each side's cranks won't let the other side's cranks get away with anything.

There's a page on carbon-neutral feul, for example.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

I concur--Wikipedia is significantly better than it was 10 years ago. These days it is highly reliable with some articles being updated almost in real time (the latest earthquakes in the North Texas area were updated on the Balcones Fault page in only two or three hours).