In 1980 Mt St Helens exploded covering forests which is now coal.

grow vastly more trees, and process the ones we cut down more efficiently ?
Loudmouth,
Too long a wait for the profit for investors. They want a return before they invest !

desalination plants
Loudmouth,
Desalination is only an alternative for small communities, larger towns & cities require so much that the environmental costs outweigh any other benefits. Desalination is like green technology, hugely polluting in the process up to the first drop of freshwater produced & then there is the power requirement..

So Aidan, are you claiming "the Earth is warming due to CO2"?
I thought that was old scare mongering science, that the claim now is "the climate is changing" is the new political scare, because they cannot explain the extreme cold last winter in the Northern hemisphere by the warming theory.

I've been around for 80 years and seen the climate change 80 times in my lifetime with hotter and colder and wetter days than we currently experience. The Earth is not a stable planet it changes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadly_earthquakes_since_1900

ttp://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian/top-20-deadliest-volcanic-eruptions-since-1900.html

It is true we need to stop pollution, both atmosphere and ground for a better future, but that does not change the Climate. Oral history gives us an event of great proportions when the Earth was covered by water and it was blamed on the behaviour of humans. Obviously the Ice caps would have to melt to create such a catastrophic event.

Hi Individual,

I was expecting governments to initiate and run such re-forestation schemes, and provide all the funding for vit: the nuclear power stations, the desalination plants and the on-going planting programs across the country.

Yes, it might be expensive, tens of billions every year, but we must do something to stop runaway global warming ! Half a degree temperature rise every eighty years, and an inch every decade in sea-level rise down here in Adelaide, is just too dreadful to contemplate !

Joe

Josephus,
>So Aidan, are you claiming "the Earth is warming due to CO2"?
Yes. Observations (both ground and satellite based) show the Earth to be warming, the CO2 level in the atmosphere is increasing, and we know why more CO2 in the atmosphere warms the planet. What more will it take to convince you?

>I thought that was old scare mongering science, that the claim now is "the climate
>is changing" is the new political scare, because they cannot explain the extreme
>cold last winter in the Northern hemisphere by the warming theory.
Then you were wrong.
The theory has no trouble explaining it. Indeed the theory PREDICTED it!
Europe is much warmer than North America is at the same latitude because of ocean currents (specifically the Gulf Stream aka the North Atlantic Drift). Warming changes the ocean currents, and more meltwater from Greenland reduces the salinity of the northern part of the North Atlantic, resulting in the warm water not travelling so far north before sinking.

Thirty years ago terms "global warming" and "climate change" were used in equal measure by scientists. Many saw the latter as preferable because of people like you who thought warming theory couldn't explain European cooling. But it was "global warming" that grabbed the media's attention. Then around the turn of the millennium, the neocons in America tried (largely successfully) to get everyone to refer it as "climate change" because their focus groups had told them it sounded less scary, and less serious, than "global warming".

Earth's climate is dynamic, with lots of feedback mechanisms both positive and negative. Changes are slowed down due to the large thermal mass of the oceans. so we are yet to see the full impact of the changes we have already made. Yet most people underestimate the problem, and assume that just stopping increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration will be enough to stop the planet warming. They don't even consider the danger of positive feedback mechanisms such as decomposition of clathrates (releasing methane into the atmosphere) and reduction of marine stratus (resulting in the oceans heating far more quickly).