I stand by my statement that geoengineering has no friends in the Obama administration. As has been shown, whitening roofs has negligible value in the context of alarmists views of the energy flows that would lead to unacceptable warming. Beyond that, no one in the administration leadership has made a positive move even to encourage research on solar radiation management, the primary form of geoengineering at issue today. Further, the environmental power group (Browner et al) are adamantly opposed to anything that gets in the way of carbon reductions.

As for why I, a conservative and a skeptic, would like to see geoengineering research move ahead — because I’m a skeptic and a scientist and am adult enough to admit I don’t know what is going to happen, so having a sensible insurance plan available is not merely good sense, it is responsible human adaptation.

I really don’t mean to pick on one person, but how do the AGW faithful maintain the pretence of holding the scientific high ground with this sort of thing passing without challenge amongst them?

The Holocene is the current interglacial period, lasting from about 12,000 years ago to the present day. It isn’t unusual; they occur roughly every 40,000 or 100,000 years. The last one, known as the Eemian, was roughly the same length and many degrees warmer than the present. (Check that.) The two before were shorter but about the same temperature as today, the one before that was longer than the Holocene has been so far.

The early part of the Holocene about 8000 years ago was a warm period known as the Holocene climate optimum, and very likely warmer than today (check again), although not as warm as the Eemian. (This HCO may be what you was referring to, with the flowering of cities and agriculture.)

Climate changes on shorter cycles occur too. During the glacial periods, there are brief warm intervals (interstadials) called Dansgaard-Oeschger events, occurring with a cycle of roughly 1500 years. (Do check.) The equivalent between glacials are called Bond events, again occurring roughly every 1500 years give or take 500 years or so. These include the Minoan Warm Period (coinciding with the rise of the Minoan civilisation), the Roman Warm Period (ditto), the Medieval Warm Period, and now we have the Modern Warm Period.

Climate changes on yet shorter cycles as well. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation are large scale cycles in pressure systems over the oceans. (There are many others – they’re the same sort of thing as El Nino/La Nina, the most famous of them, but slower.) They operate on roughly 50-60 year cycles, so will swing from warm phase to cold, or back, after 25-30 years. (Don’t take my word for it.) The PDO was in the warm phase during the early part of the 20th century, when temperature rose. Switched to its cold phase during the 50s to 70s, when we had that little global cooling scare, and switched back to the warm phase for the late 70s to the end of the century, and (possibly coincidentally) the temperature rose again. Interestingly, it seems to be in the process of switching again to the cold phase at the moment, although it will probably be another 5-10 years before we can say for sure.

Normal, cyclic fluctuation in temperature is a perfectly respectable area of climate science. Why would anyone express amazement at it?
Could it be because it is not in the climate activists’ interests to tell anybody about it?

We believe in climate change – it changes all the time, and always has.

Do you?

Wow. The Holocene 2,000 years ago allowed mankind to grow crops and support cities. Why has the Holocene (a very unusual climate period historically) lasted so long? The vast quantity of GHG mankind is now dumping into the air will probably cause abrupt climate change resulting in the Earth going into a “hot state.”

“The alternative (to geoengineering) is the acceptance of a massive natural cull of humanity and a return to an Earth that freely regulates itself but in the hot state.” –Dr James Lovelock, August 2008

“Processes that would normally regulate climate are being driven to amplify warming. Such feedbacks, as well as the inertia of the Earth system — and that of our response — make it doubtful that any of the well-intentioned technical or social schemes for carbon dieting will (work). What is needed is a fundamental cure.” –Dr James Lovelock

How about utilizing the actual library facility to access the scientific data?
http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/widener/finding_materials/finding_materials.cfm

When in doubt as to how to proceed, ask a reference librarian:
http://hcl.harvard.edu/research/ask/

They discussed the topic from a very pragmatic angle and didn’t sound like conspiracy theorists at all. They unquestionably held the belief that whatever the realities of climate change that man’s impact is negligable at worst and that this all is just a normal, cyclical fluctuation in temperature. Because of hearing this I am now able to see the political angles.

Widener library, by the way.

answers to a rhetorical question:

First, people making that argument would all believe that geoengineering would be a better solution than drastic carbon emission reductions.

Some may be playing devil’s advocate (“I dispute your supposed consensus, but even IF they’re right, drastic emission cuts is a bad plan”)

Others may agree that the planet is warming, and that a warming planet is bad, but dispute that human emissions are a significant cause. In that case, cutting human emissions would make no sense, whereas the Pinatubo Option has been observed to reduce global temperatures.

–Human emissions have so far produced a global average temperature increase of 0.8 degree C.

–There is another 0.6 degree C. to come due to “thermal inertia”, or lags in the system, taking the total long-term global warming induced by human emissions so far to 1.4 degree C.

–If human total emissions continue as they are to 2030 (and don’t increase 60% as projected) this would likely add more than 0.4 degrees C. to the system in the next two decades, taking the long-term effect by 2030 to at least 1.7 degrees C. (A 0.3 degree C. increase is predicted for the period 2004-2014 alone by Smith, Cusack et al, 2007).

–Then add the 0.3 degree C. albedo flip effect from the now imminent loss of the Arctic sea ice, and the rise in the system by 2030 is at least 2 degree. C, assuming very optimistically that emissions don’t increase at all above their present annual rate! When we consider the potential permafrost releases and the effect of carbon sinks losing capacity, we are on the road to a hellish future, not for what we will do, but WHAT WE HAVE ALREADY DONE.

“The Greens’ resistance to geo-engineering sits very uncomfortably with its message that the planet is screwed and we’re all going to die. It suggests that Environmentalism has less to do with saving the planet than it does with reining in human aspirations. It suggests that they don’t actually believe their own press releases, and that they know the situation is not as dire as they would like the rest of us to think it is. And that Environmentalists are cutting off their noses to spite their faces – “we’ll save the planet our way or not at all.” It suggests that Environmentalists regard science and engineering as the cause of problems, and not the solution.” –Climate Resistance, 24 March 2008