Herbert
I have asked countless proponents of AWG and the answer to your questions always boils down to "It is so because the government tells me so."

And that is to ignore the other equally glaring gap in their assumptions: What reason is there to think that government has the knowledge, the selflessness, or the capacity to make the situation better than worse, even in its own terms, when all downsides are considered both ways, and how have you reached that conclusion?

Leigh - go back and look at the President Obama's statement. Now look online at the stuff on "fracking", including the recent discussions on this site. Sure the american president is promising a wholesale switch to gas. Vast reserves of it have become available thanks to the new technique, and its set to become cheaper than coal. As the reserves are also becoming available near big population centres, and its difficult to trade gas across regions, it makes sense to use the stuff to generate electricity.

I checked your link to the DoE project for developing PVs and had another, hearty laugh. In the push to green electricity PVs have proved to date virtually useless. Despite immense subsidies - a german report estimates that generators in that country pay PV projects eight times the wholesale price - it is difficult to find any network where the technology contributes more than a fraction of a percent.

The US DoE will need to put in a great deal of work indeed. Maybe they will also need a magic wand or a genii from a lamp to make real headway.

Where is the proof, demands Herbert. The answer of course is, in the scientific literature. If you refuse to look at it, you are unlikely to see it. P Hume's odd notion that it is so "because the government tells me so", suggests that he too is unwilling to actually look for himself. It has very little to do with "the government" - there is a huge body of scientific research from around the world, which he can freely examine. If he wants to ...

Nicco.

Thanks for the guidance. Actually, I am quite familiar with the literature, and the issues. It is generally acknowledged (though subject still to some debate) that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 would lead to around 1 deg C increase in Global Mean Temperature.

Any increase beyond that is derived from models that incorporate assumptions of positive feedback. There is no proof of positive feedback. Rather, it appears that actually the feedbacks are more likely neutral or negative, meaning that a doubling of CO2 will likely lead to around 1 deg C or less. If you can point me to PROOF about the positive feedback assumptions in the literature, I will take notice.

Nicco - actually there is no proof in the scientific literature, as such. If you look carefully you will see indications. These are along the lines of 'This computer model can be made to match historical results, therefore there is some hope that the model and the physical principles we assert are used as part of it may be of some use in forecasting future climate states.'

Or: 'we've accounted for everything else, so what could possibly be causing the warming known to have occured between 1975 and 2000 but industrial activity'. This has to be followed by, 'the warming that should have occured between 2000 and the present, according to our models, is being disguised by other factors'.

That is the level of "proof" we are talking about. If you have any more direct I'm happy to hear of it.

I'm just so over this climate change hype. Why do Governments permit fuel guzzling entertainment, fuel guzzling generators to aircon schools in places with great natural breeze, encourage more fuel guzzling travel, etc etc. just the other day they were raving on about space tourism. Isn't anyone here old enough to recall the same sort of hype about depleting the ozone layer ? Aren't rockets blasting holes through the ozone layer & leting UV heat up the atmosphere ?
Are people really so stupid these days that they think if you can make a dollar out of it it's ok with the environment but demonstrate about global warming whilst setting electrical appliances on full blast. Is mankind really evolving into a mindless specie ? It certainly looks that way.