Hasbeen, your response is extremely hypocritical — you frequently display the faults that you attribute to "warmists".

BTW Gary's not at all brave. He didn't write his misleading* criticism of wind turbines for the readers of this website, he wrote it for The Australian, which likes to discredit wind turbines and no longer lets the facts get in the way of a good story!

* If you're under the illusion the article isn't misleading, try reading the page Petro linked to!

Aidan. I take your point on the limitations of available fresh water. However, the effect of increased atmospheric CO2 for a plant, is to increase its efficiency in using the nutrient value of existing water resources, in other words, you get increased plant growth efficiency (some 28 to 30%) with increased CO2. Hence, it being used at some 1000ppm in tomato houses.

With an increase in atmospheric levels from 280ppm to 400ppm I have not noted an increases in average global surface level temperatures of more than about 0.7 degrees and, over the past near 2 decades, no discernible temperature increase at all really.

Laboratory studies indicate that increases in CO2 levels within the atmosphere are logarithmic, the 'heating' effect is drastically reduced for each doubling of CO2, so any volumetric expansion of the oceans creating increasing sea level rises is highly unlikely to have the effect of inundating farmland.

Hence, my comment that an increase of CO2 by German, Indian and Chinese clean coal fired electric plants is financially beneficial to those countries economies.

It's a bizarre argument.
Fossil fuels are also used to manufacture electric cars and solar panels too.

In fact, the amount of energy it takes to manufacture electric cars - the mining of all the components plus the additional minerals required for the fuel cells plus their transportation costs - is greater than the nett savings in fuel during the cars lifetime.

Likewise, the total amount of energy used to manufacture and fuel a nuclear power plant is greater than the amount of energy it will ever produce. It takes energy to mine, process and transport uranium too.
The only savings would be if they were mass-produced, which is certainly not the case.

Power plants (including nuclear) are not perpetual motion machines - You don't get something for nothing from nature.

The production of food - when transport, harvesting and fertiliser are taken into account - expends more calories than are produced.

The difference is the resulting long-term cost to the environment, which is what the debate should really be about.

Should the world wait until fossil fuels run out and react when the situation becomes critical or take steps now?

Prompete

The fertilizing effect of increased CO2 on plants is well know, however it is not certain that plants grown outside a greenhouse will benefit. It is an interesting area of science, but has very little bearing on the harm that increased levels of CO2 will have on the climate.

The trend in increased temperature since the 1970s remains pretty much unchanged, unless you cheery pick the data such as starting in 1998 and finishing in 2010, which is simply accounted for by the short term difference between El Niño and La Niña effects on global temperature.

The heating effect of CO2 is indeed logarithmic as you say, but then you say that the heating effect is drastically reduced for each doubling of CO2, which is slightly misleading. Each doubling of CO2 produces the same amount of heating. The important point is not the amount of heating that CO2 directly produces, but the resulting feedbacks of which, the primary one is the increase in water vapour leading to further enhancement of the greenhouse effect and thus higher temperatures.

Some of the effects on climate that have been observed so far are an increase in storm intensity, but not frequency, an increase extreme rainfall events (flash floods) more extreme droughts and changes to the lengths of the seasons. The rate of sea level rise has increased since the 1990s and will almost certainly continue to do so. A sea level rise of over a meter by 2100 is well within the bounds of possibility which would jeopardise numerous large cities on the coast.

Clean coal is an oxymoron.

wobbles says, "Likewise, the total amount of energy used to manufacture and fuel a nuclear power plant is greater than the amount of energy it will ever produce. It takes energy to mine, process and transport uranium too. The only savings would be if they were mass-produced, which is certainly not the case."

Complete crap.

Just saying.

Dr Hansen promotes nuclear waste-eating GenIV reactors like the Integral Fast Reactor. GE have the S-PRISM ready to go to the first country that will authorise it, based on the strong physics & engineering demonstration of the EBR2 for a few decades. While I reckon the IFR is a good idea, my favourite reactor was passed over by Nixon when he favoured the EBR2 program. He *should* have more fully developed the thorium Molten Salt Reactor program into the modern LFTR concept.

But renewables? Advocates keep contradicting each other! EG:

1. We're all going OFF grid, and magical storage devices are going to back up wind and solar on our own houses or industrial estates or offices in town.

1. We're all going ONTO a continent-wide SUPER-grid, and it's going to cost $10 billion in its own right to build and is an important backbone of the grid as we get wind and solar from Perth when there's a drop in wind and sunshine in Sydney or Cairns or whatever.

2. We're going to charge about half our electric cars at night on excess nightime baseload power supply when business closes down for the day!

2. We're NOT going to really do anything at night because... who needs power at night? Amory Lovins says the requirement for baseload electric power is a myth, and there's no real need for power at night. Except for charging iphones and running fridges and, HELLO, charging about HALF the American car fleet with surplus night time power! Amory seems to think we need to beef up the grid to allow ALL electric cars to charge during the day as well as everything else!

Honestly, when I hear contradictions like this in wishy washy wishful thinking fairy land, I agree with Dr James Hansen! Tooth fairy, here we come!