When you get beyond denialism you still find a fair number of skeptics who accept AGW but nevertheless don't see it as presently that much of a problem or at least as important as challenges like world hunger. The most influential of that kind of skeptic from my experience is the Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg. He thinks global warming is something to worry about say in 2070; in the mean time there are bigger fish to fry and depriving the 3rd world of their fossil fuel would presently be an economic crime. I think he is a bit cracked about AGW but since he does present a lot of data and graphs in this video and some historic background he at least raises the discussion above the usual brain dead denialist mantras. To avoid confusion the video is the second picture down. http://blog.ted.com/2013/11/12/me-h...-understand-your-new-ted-talk-bjorn-sure-ama/
The problem is that by the time Lomborg thinks it will be OK to act, in 2070, it will be too late to fix the problem. We have to act now, and quickly, if we want to fix the problem of 2070. In the first place, there is already a lot of warming "in the pipeline" that would still occur (due to slow-acting feedbacks) even if we stop emitting all CO2 tomorrow. In the second place, the residence time of CO2 in the air is centuries, with a very long multi-millenial tail. You can't stop a supertanker when it's ten feet from the rocks, or even a hundred feet from the rocks. The global climate system is a lot like that. We need to think a lot farther in advance that Lomborg imagines.
yup even if could stop all the emissions tomorrow the Greenland ice cap is gonna continue an accelerated melt for the next 500-1000 yrs(it's been recorded losing mass at 27 vertical feet per year), sea levels will continue to rise for the next 500 yrs at least and we will lose a number of coastal cities and save other only at a cost of trillion$ in flood protection...
I think Lomborg makes the mistake that a lot of folks make that since life expectancy and all the things that go with it have increased in relatively recent times that the fossil fuel world should be acknowledged as a positive and extends that forward. Plus he thinks that increased CO2 will be a boon to agriculture. According to this site Lomborg has a bad habit of playing fast and loose with the evidence. They take the trouble to detail it out. http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/
Basic science tells us that increased CO2 will be a boon to agriculture. We know that higher CO2 levels increase plant growth. http://www.nature.com/scitable/know...atmospheric-concentrations-of-carbon-13254108 http://www.climatecentral.org/news/study-finds-plant-growth-surges-as-co2-levels-rise-16094
I think the nature article particularly was somewhat ambiguous on the point of the benefits to agriculture generally of increased CO2. They give a solid thumbs up to the benefits to legumes however. That and a number of other matters are addressed in this somewhat more skeptical view of the effects of CO2 increase. The thought here is that global warming will more than negate the benefits of CO2 as an added enhancement and that increased CO2 in a greenhouse is a lot different than out in the open. It is a subject that is evolving so I will try to stay neutral and open on the matter as new information comes in. https://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-plant-food.htm
A further note: The article offers a more advanced level enhanced discussion which I think is worth while clicking on.
That is a hypocritical statement. If you argue that it is invalid because it is in a greenhouse, how can it then be concluded that in a controlled environment temperature increases? So how does one then show CO2 is a greenhouse gas? An, how many parts per million do x to the climate? Or CO2 is absorbed by the oceans?
Perhaps to somebody else you just said something lucid but to me it is incoherent. You might want to restate your thought.
Extra carbon is only beneficial to plant growth in those environments where the more common bottlenecks to plant growth (water, phosphorus, and nitrogen) exist in abundance. That happens in some places on Earth, but not that many. Also, the definition of an "abundant" supply of bottleneck materials varies by plant species. Globally, FAPAR (Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation), which can be measured by satellite, is flat or slightly down in recent decades. Thus it seems that globally CO2 fertilization is fighting to a draw against poleward-advancing deserts.
Those of us who believe the earth is or may be warming but it won't be catastrophic are sometimes called "lukewarmers". If global temperatures and sea level rise continue to fail to accelerate, it seems a rather reasonable position to me.
