Inconvient facts and adapting to global warming

Fareed Zakaria:

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The gases that are warming the Earth have built up over hundreds of years. They do not disappear or dissipate easily. Even if the world adopted the most far-reaching plans to combat climate change, most scientists agree that the concentration of greenhouse gases will continue to rise for the next few decades. In other words, global warming is already baked into Earth's future.

Scientists estimate that simply to keep greenhouse gases at their current levels, we would need to slash carbon-dioxide emissions by 60 percent. Given current and foreseeable technology, that would require cutting back on industrial activity across the globe on a scale that would make the Great Depression look very small. In fact, the future will almost certainly involve substantially greater emissions of CO2. Most studies predict that the world will double its consumption of energy by 2050. Since much of that growth in consumption will take place in China and India, it will involve the burning of fossil fuels.

Between them, these two countries are currently building 650 coal-fired power plants. The combined CO2 emissions of these new plants is five times the total savings of the Kyoto accords—that is, if the Kyoto targets were being adhered to by Western countries, which they are not. Even under the most optimistic scenarios the industrialized world will continue to burn substantial amounts of coal and oil.

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No one likes to talk about adapting to global warming because it seems defeatist. But the result is that, as we debate the meta-theories about global warming, we're increasingly unprepared to deal with its consequences. Whether or not CO2 emissions are triggering certain reactions in the atmosphere, we can see that sea levels are rising. What are we going to do about it?

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Many environmental advocates fear that talking about coping with global warming will hamper efforts to slow it down. In fact, we have no alternative but to do both. Mitigation and adaptation complement each other. In both cases, the crucial need is to stop talking and start acting.

Zakaria has an internal contradiction in suggestion that we can slow it down, yet he has demonstrated conclusively that Kyota type regulations would do absolutely nothing but makes us poorer. Perhaps George Strait's ocean front property in Arizona may come to pass. Rock formations outside Austin Texas indicate that area was also once under water. Those are extreme possibilities that perhaps my great great grand children may have to deal with, but the change will be gradual enough for adaptation to take place. It is interesting that the world is coming to recognize that not only was President Bush right about Kyota, but he was right about the solution to the warming problem.