GS, when you say the Earth was warmer than it is now and "better for human prosperity," are you speaking of something like the Medieval Warm Period, or the warm period during the Classical age, or something beyond the Holocene?
When the Vikings had vinyards in Greenland, we really don't know too much beyond the Holocene but theoretically it may have been idylic, as in the Garden of Eden or Amagadaveda if you prefer. (I had a friend who was in the studio when that was recorded by Iron Butterfly, not sure if he was the producer of record, he was a pretty slippery character.) :angel:
"To God one day can be as a thousand years and a thousand years can be as one day."
Other thoughts on this topic.
Carbon credit markets in Europe were a miserable failure, Cap and Trade will make the rich richer and the poor poorer and do not much to change climate, one way or the other. (except that those on the bottom end of the scale will have their way paid by those in the middle.)
When you say 'make the government wealthier and the private sector less prominate', you have the right idea but the wrong facts.
The government, to which the masses must support, or else, only goes deeper in debt to the top end of the private sector, namely the central bank, ie, the federal reserve which is privately owned.
Other industry and privately owned property becomes more and more influenced by government, ie 'owned'.
So what we have is creeping fascism, (or the other side of the same coin, communism or socialism). That is more and more power handed to the rulers in one way or another.
If you buy the whole global warming theory and many do, possibly because they are constantly brainwashed by the media, if you actually do the math you can still only come to the conclussion that human activity is very negligible unless you seize on the trigger theory, in that our small input might be the trigger that would bring about catastropic change.
Well now, how about sunspots or the lack thereof?? How about undersea volcanic activity?? (I'm firmly convinced that an undersea rift in the arctic ocean floor emitting hot gases there has far more to do with less sea ice and melting glaciers than human activity might have ever thought about.)
Then there is El Nino and La Nina which we can observe to affect climate, not only in North America but worldwide, and what do we know about what causes them???
I'd venture to say that SUV emississions in California have zero effects but does my theory have anything to do with California's stupid reactionary, paranoid ecological policies (that the rest of America is expected to pay for.?)
irate: