Apologies for the long post!
Ian Wishart, a climate skeptic and journalist. (Not the best source, but when you logically think about it, 75 billion seems about right). In fact, according to the government of Finland, they collected $314,000,000 in carbon tax revenues in their first year of enacting the tax.
I wasn't disputing the number, just checking it wasn't plucked out of the air 👍
True, both sides basically believe the earth has warmed (Barely). However, causation is up for debate. What did you make of this a few pages ago:
"We cannot distinguish our own contribution from that of nearly every other contributing factor that plays into a change in climate."
Was that not enough to convince you?
Not entirely, and as you say, science is constantly evolving. If we cannot distinguish between our own contribution and others that simply suggests to me that it hasn't been explored in enough detail.
I'll reiterate - there are almost 7 billion of us on the planet, and over 50 percent of that population now lives in high energy consumption cities. If that doesn't contribute more than even slightly to climate change, I would be highly, highly surprised.
I've considered and researched both side's arguments very much. My conclusion, AGW does not exist (Or at the least is over highly exaggerated)
Over exaggerated politically perhaps, but it's a very touchy political subject because opinion is split so much and it affects economics to some degree. If the scientists were fighting this out behind the scenes rather than on a public stage you have to wonder how strongly the people denying AGM would be doing so. If there's no particular commercial benefit to AGM I suspect the people claiming it's real would still be doing so, but the people claiming it doesn't exist wouldn't be bothered.
I'm no conspiracy theorist but you also have to say that there's more in it for the most highly profitable companies if AGM didn't exist, and it's no coincidence that the strongest opposition to AGM often comes from these companies.
As far as I'm concerned, we're pretty well off as we are. Why should we bother reducing Co2, even if there's no real trade off?
I know the subject of this thread alone is global warming (a term I've never actually liked as "climate change" is far more appropriate - not
all areas of the Earth are warming), but the human contribution factor is about consumption and pollution too.
CO2 is just a greenhouse gas and one of the millions of other pollutants we put out as a species.
Not everything is simply about "reducing CO2". It's about reducing everything. Carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, hydrocarbons, particulates... and those are just the ones from cars. Sulphur, methane, chlorine, heavy metals, herb and pesticides, untreated sewage etc etc blah blah.
As Niky said above, it's about running things lean. Reducing CO2 will simply be a byproduct of reducing everything else.
Essentially my view on it has always been: Ignore the political factor, and simply think of whether you'd like to live in a polluting, wasteful society, or a society that can still function and progress whilst reducing it's impact on everything around it?
Anyone who would wilfully prefer to live in wasteful society with all other things being equal (i.e. you still have the same family, earn the same, have the same nice house, still own a nice car, still get to go out for beers with friends on a Friday night) has something seriously wrong with them.
My general thoughts on CO2 specifically:
I don't like the focus on CO2 specifically because on a personal level, it screws the UK consumer. We get charged on CO2 for road tax and it disproportionately affects different vehicles. Apart from anything, it's indiscriminate of how many miles you drive, even though CO2 output is directly proportional to the fuel you use.
I've a recent magazine that highlights that the cleanest car on sale in the UK, when emissions other than CO2 are concerned (i.e. the other emissions that are poisonous to humans such as CO, NoX, HC etc) is the Honda Jazz Hybrid. It puts out literally trace amounts of all those pollutants - to such an extent that it's nearly as clean as it's possible to make an internal combustion engine, and certainly puts out air cleaner than the air it uses for combustion if it's driving through a city like London...
...and yet, because it's CO2 is over 100g/km, it's denied free road tax and congestion charge exemption. So it's cleaner than any other non-electric vehicle in London, yet its drivers still have to pay 8 quid a day.
It's messed up, and that's why I don't like the focus on CO2. It doesn't take into consideration everything else. Same goes for factories, air travel and everything else.
Incidentally, I cannot even comprehend how people complain that cars are getting cleaner since they're managing it at the same time as getting far faster, safer, more comfortable and saving us money through less fuel. Again, it makes me think that people pining for the old days where they could consume as much as they wanted without thinking about it are probably idiots.
One last thing...
The only real point about CO2 is that when burning fossil fuels, we're putting in the atmosphere in seconds something that has taken millions of year to be compressed in the Earth's crust. Nature makes its own relative equilibrium as far as normal CO2 output goes, but it's only had a couple of hundred years so far of humans releasing billions of tonnes of it each year to adapt.
