Quote from kentuckythrower on Jul 13^th, 2012, 12:14pm:

    The overall temperature of the planet is rising at a rate never seen before in history.  Glaciers are receding at many times what their normal rate would be.  The ocean levels are rising faster than ever before.  This started with the Industrial Revolution.  The evidence is a matter of putting two and two and two together to get six.  The earth is in a warming cycle that would have occurred anyway, but we've greatly accelerated it and are continuing to do so..  The best minds in the world are almost unanimous in recognizing this.  I wish it wasn't so.  Sadly, by the time global warming really rears its ugly head it'll be too late to fix it.  I'm probably too old and sick to still be around to see the worst of it, but if you're still alive when the stuff hits the fan, kentuckythrower, listen for my cosmic "I told you so," from the great beyond.

kentuckythrower, here's an example of what we can do to our planets physical surface. And this is getting oil, which will help contribute to global warming when we use it for fuel etc.
 
This is a story about mining tar sands in Alberta, Canada. It's a story of pictures, with a caption for each to explain. Very drastic pictures.
http://www.businessinsider.com/canadian-oil-sands-flyover-2012-5?op=1

"Global cooling" is news to me: an invention to support your argument. You don't mean the ozone layer-- which was identified by scientists, leading to targeted and effective action ?
 
What is to be done ? I don't claim to know about this-- but wasn't there a precise framework, the Kyoto protocol, about limiting emissions ? Each country agreeing to targets, then implementing them internally by switching to cleaner sources of energy, to be obtained by legislation, tax incentives and subsidies, and complemented by a seachange in individual consumption patterns ?
 
The more we wait, the more (I think) the alternative is
 
1. The need for much more radical action (e.g. taxing air travel so heavily that it becomes a luxury good; massive shifting of resources and population), by the state
 
OR
 
2. The development towards that outcome, by chaotic conflict-driven competition processes.  
 

So what do you mean ?

I google Global cooling; wikipedia mentions something inthe 1970s, the second sentence of which is somethign to the effect that the scienfitic community didn't believe in it. I feel no inclination to pursue.

On global cooling there are two things.
 
One is, during the '50's (I think it started there late) through the '70's there was some measured decrease in temperature that was attributed to certain aerosols.  Some of which were man-made and some that were natural.  This lead to the banning of many of the components of aerosol spray cans.
The other is recent tree-ring (I believe that is the principle source) data compilations of the last 2000 years or so that show the roman and medieval (I think, it's been a couple of weeks since I read this) warm periods weren't as warm as thought (at least local to the trees whose rings gave us this data) and that there appears to have been a cooling until the start of the industrial revolution.  That cooling corresponds to one of the global cycles that would indicate we should still be cooling and potentially heading for the next minor ice age (or even a major one).
 
There are a few problems with global warming.  Probably the biggest one is that the debate has become political not scientific.  Another is we only have one Earth, we can't exactly set up an experiment with a control and see what happens.  Another is the complexity of out climate, we are continually learning new influences (such as the potential for cosmic rays to influence cloud formation - studied within the last year) some of which may add to or take away from the warming of the planet.
 
The question becomes: How do you want to gamble?
And it is a gamble.  If we are creating the increase in temperature and we do nothing (or try something too late), we lose.
If we are creating the increase and we try the wrong thing, we lose.
If we aren't responsible and we spend lots of resources and money trying anything, we lose.
If we are responsible and do the right thing soon enough we may break even, there is even a chance we come out a bit ahead.
If we aren't responsible and do nothing we break even or come out a bit ahead.
 
Based upon what I've read and seen, I accept that we are around 60-70 % responsible and natural cycling covers 20-30 % and at least 10% is as of yet unknown.
 
ron

• Solar farms (in their current incarnation) are a bad idea. Lots on soil erosion.
  
• Wind turbines are good, but their usefulness is limited to a few very windy places. Anecdotal evidence also points to bird strike problems.
  
• Hydroelectric turbines are responsible for the extinct of more than a few freshwater fish populations in the US. They also greatly affect the flow of waterways, impacting crops and climate. About 14,000 refugees were displaced in Haiti because the country's first hydroelectric dam dried up a riverbed used for irrigation.
  
• Geothermal has the same problem of wind, you can't use it in very many places. The climate must be cold or geothermal plants won't produce much energy, and you're almost entirely limited to the area around a dormant volcano. (Which may or may not become active and destroy your power station...)
  

I've seen research for huge, solar power greenhouses that look like glass nuclear cooling towers. Wind turbines are powered by the updraft from the greenhouse effect, and the inside of the tower is used to grow crops out of season. It seems like a good solution to the soil erosion problem of solar farms. Slight chance of tornadoes, however. Newer hydroelectric ocean current turbines look like they'll be able to rotate like weather vanes, will prevent fish from swimming in, and won't block off huge areas the way hydroelectric dams do. Small wind turbine weather vanes and solar panels can be mounted on home roofs and high rise buildings for lower impact power generation. I'm not sure geothermal is every going to be widely practical means of major power generation, however. The same principal of the Seebeck Coefficient may be used to create small amounts of electricity by exploiting the cooler temperatures at the top of a high rise as compared to the bottom (or the ground). It might at least create zero energy central air.
 
Regardless of my pessimism about current tech, there's lots that can be done.

All those researchers I've mentioned many times indicate the same thing... If the "green" technologies could get just a bit of the government assistance and research and tax breaks that are lavished on the fossil fuel industries....Things would jump forward much faster.
 
Worried about soil erosion from big solar farms?  Put 'em on buildings.  Go back to my post on the "smart grid" and "point-produced" energy.
Bird strikes?  Inconsequential.  A tiny percentage, so tiny as to be insignificant.
It's grasping at straws.
The Tennessee Valley has been using hydroelectric power for many, many years.  Some fish are affected, some thrive.  There are ways to accomodate migrating fish.    
Fish populations are vastly more affected by GW than by building hydroelectrics.
 
These things can be done, we just need the political will to do them.  Germany, cloudy, landlocked Germany, has been generating between 25-50% of their power by solar alone.    
What could we do with vast stretches of unused sunny desert?    
Years ago, the idea of orbiting vast solar collectors and beaming the resultant energy down to the surface via microwave transmission was proposed.  
Entirely do-able, by all accounts.   The microwave "pressure" would be spread over many square kilometers where collector farms much like solar panels would function.
You could walk through the whole thing safely.