Yes, but a fairly convincing argument would be if these techs are cheaper than the convenience of burning oil/coal. Google has an interesting initiative for that purpose.

Robin, sir, may I reproduce your fine article on my blog? I recommend you look first, you may find it unsuitable, although I hope not.
I am schitzoid, blog wise. http://my.telegraph.co.uk/clothcap – http://my.telegraph.co.uk/clothcap2 – http://my.telegraph.co.uk/clothcap3
(but apart from this socially irritating refusal to swallow BS, personality near normal – whatever that is)

Does land get more slippery to ice as temperature goes up?

The Greenland ice sheet has huge inertia – it will take a thousand years to melt it.

The Antarctic looks even more unshiftable: ice five miles thick and temperatures 37 degrees below zero down at the pole.

- http://timtyler.org/tundra_reclamation/

Re ocean acidification: The buffering processes are slow. Equilibration takes centuries. The ocean will take a hit the likes of which it has possibly never seen, or has possible seen 65,000,000 years ago at the paleocene/eocene boundary.

Re: temperature of the Antarctic interior: Nobody seriously suggests melting of East Antarctica. West Antarctic ice sheet sits on the ocean bottom and may become mechanically unstable with modest temperature increases. Also Greenland may well melt; it did melt in the previous interglacial. Total sea level rise at risk is in excess of 10 meters. (Of course, if Tim Tyler gets his way we are talking about 200 meters. so check the altitude of any real estate you may own before backing him up.)

Re: barrier reef; it is entirely possible that corals are sensitive to peak temperature; hence even if the statistics of temperature are merely smoothly shifted it is entirely possible that the periods of heat stress may be greatly expanded. I don’t know about this for sure but given his arguments on the other two points I’d bet this one is wrong too.

My evidence is anecdotal and from personal experience (another way of saying “no real evidence”). But since the evidence you presented was no stronger on the issue of how people worry, I thought I’d present mine. It turns on the fact that the most sucessful way I’ve found of convincing people to worry about future events is to start our with global warming, and work in other issues after.

Conversely, from a few conversation where I haven’t taken that approach, I’ve found that unconcern with future risks in general is highly corellated with unconcern about global warming in particular.

Do you think there is no limit to the number of distant future issues we can have many people consider in depth all at once?

Of course not, but we are nowhere near the saturation point.

Paglia:The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideolo

Higher carbon dioxide will cause ocean acidification. Yes, by a marginal degree (a tenth of a pH at most, we are talking about trace gases in a highly buffered system, remember). However, multiple experiments have been done with various oceanic wildlife in greenhouses at massively elevated CO2 concentrations (up to 1500 ppm), and to my knowledge, none of them have shown any adverse effects.

The great barrier reef has an annual ocean temperature variation of up to 10 degrees C along it’s length. How can raising the temperature two degrees destroy the coral? That claim is ludicrous on it’s face.

Indeed, comparing climate change to annual variation throws a large cloud of doubt over many claims. The Antarctic CANNOT melt due to climate change because CO2 could raise temperatures by 2-4 degrees, but the Antarctic is currently a balmy -20C.

Please, use common sense when dealing with this subject and research every severe claim on both sides, and remember that everyone wants to deceive you.

The biggest benefits accrue in the furthest north regions – where there are currently few people – because of the whole “icy wasteland” business.

With a bit of effort, we could turn those regions into something much more like a steamy tropical jungle – but we should not rely on political advocacy from the people who currently live there – because there are few of them. However migration is relatively easy, especially if there are tens of thousands of years in which to do it.

Re: It’s hard to see anyone benefiting from a several-degree rise compressed into less than a century, however.

“Global warming is more of an opportunity than it is a challenge for the British tourism industry, if speakers at last week’s the Tourism Society debate are to be believed. According to UK-based The Tourism Society, the debate was opened “with an assault on gloom mongering, suggesting that global warming was good news all the way for British tourism” Tourism Society chairman Roger Heape.”

“The development of the oil industry is one of the most important components in Greenland’s effort to establish a self-bearing economy,” Kim Kielsen, Greenland’s minister of mines and petroleum, has said. In the shorter term, the country is relying on the rapidly expanding eco-tourism market. Business is already booming in Ilulissat, where hotels are now booked up a year in advance and unemployment is 0 per cent.”

“The United States is predicted to be one of the tourism winners, with international tourism to the U.S. increasing an estimated 13.7 percent over what it would have been if the atmosphere wasn’t warming up.”

“The biggest winners: Canada, which they predict will experience a 220 percent increase in international arrivals by 2100, Russia (174 percent) and Mongolia (122 percent).”

In terms of the purely latitudinal zones of classical geography, the northern temperate zone has the biggest population, followed by the “torrid zone” between the tropics. If it could be shown that northern temperates would really benefit from warming, there might be the basis of a political divide here. It’s hard to see anyone benefiting from a several-degree rise compressed into less than a century, however.