For many, especially politicians and CEO's, die-off can't come fast enough.

Don't be blindly pessimistic. Please. There are so many positive, long-term changes happening in the area of consumption, just beneath the media-radar. The ball is in the air, the jury's not in, there's 7 billion of us humans alive (well - 6,88 as of today) and the number's still increasing by nearly 100 million a year (and that increase is our main problem, as that's what's sustaining the uncontinuable global economic growth - the disposable work-force driving the system growing).

Always remember: where there's life, there's hope!
(In spite of Obama...). 7 billion people is a lot of life, a lot of hope, a lot of creativity and a lot of will to live smartly and in peace.

Pachauri, Nobelist, is reminding us slow learners of the basic fact: our western life-style and daily activities can't continue without increasingly stopping itself now. That's the meaning of "unsustainable".

Stop recreational use of internal combustion engines.
Institute community use pickups.
Expand rail lines and light rail.
Change car lanes to bike lanes.
Tax all income above 100,000 until at 1 million the tax is 80%, no loop holes.
Break up all corporations.
Outlaw all corporate representation in government.
Outlaw all plastic packaging.
Outlaw monocultural megafarms.
Outlaw feed lots for cattle.
Make birth control mandatory by taxing the shit out of families with more than two kids.

This is a start. Less than this is pissing into the wind.

"Nothing will be done until we can address population numbers."

That Malthusian conclusion is SO 19th century!

We currently have the technology to live in a natural, sustainable, infinitely regenerative environment. What is lacking is the corporate/political will.

Think about how much we humans waste --- and not just materially, but intellectually --- on ways of killing each other. Now take half of that 'industry' and point it toward ending poverty and educating mankind in the ways of truly contributing to our overall benefit/survival and it soon becomes obvious that our "over" population is just another convenient ruling class ruse to keep our collective hands tied.

Europeans (and especially in Pachauri's India) use cars far less than USAn's. Even affluent Europeans have a carbon footprint half of that of a middle-class USAn. So for them, air travel is the big, "low-hanging fruit" in reducing carbon. In the USA, Canada and Oz, carbon emissions are off the charts due to car use (absurdly heavy and inefficient cars at that). There is also a lot of gratuitous AC use, even in places like suburban Toronto where most homes have AC and use it whenever the temp climbs above 20C, even though 30C is rare there. So, only in N. America and Australia does air travel sit down the list a ways.

Also, there has been a disturbing trend in Europe and India, of people choosing cheap short-haul domestic flights over using perfectly fine, often high-speed, train service. Short-haul flights are especially inefficient and carbon emitting, because so much of the flight is spent in the fuel-guzzling takeoff and climb. Steep taxes are an appropriate way to make the cost of the ticket reflect its actual externalized environmental costs.

But I agree, the changes he is suggesting are hardly radical, and like most physical scientists, he seems to be ignorant as to how social and economic systems work (Carl Sagan used to be maddening this way), so he views everything as people making poor individual choices, instead of overarching economic interests largely manufacturing and controlling those choices.

Yeah, climate scientists from all over the world came together, and in a secret plot involving thousands, carefully coordinated fake data from thousands of instruments gathered from over 100 years in order to produce hundreds of fake peer-reviewed articles in dozens of journals and hundreds of conferences. But it goes further than this, because in any other scientific endeavor, there are always many other other scientists working on finding different theories that explain the data. So, there were also hundreds of other scientists in on the plot, producing faked-failed efforts at alternate theories.

Now, the scheming scientists are doing all this because they want to impose one-world-government socialism on the God-blessed greatest (and smartest) poeple on earth, AMERICA!

And furthermore, there IS an explanation how these scientists, with upbringings in every nationality, ideology and religion in the world, could somehow all come together and decide on One-World-Socialism. Remember, these scientists are all Godless Athiests, doing their devil's work toward the goals of all science - to prove there is no God - the God of Jesus; the God of the Free Enterprise System! They are all followers of that great Atheist-in-Chief - KARL MARX!

- Q.E.D.

No, let's not.

Accordingly, let's recall that what we have just learned is not everything about the magilla, whole or partial.

We know that at least some in the movement for GW concern have attempted to repress arguments by skeptics.

We know that Exxon and other corporations funded at least hundreds of organizations under green-sounding names to publish "skeptic" research. We know that Exxon, Westinghouse, GE, and similar operations regularly intimidate employees involved in research.

This is, objectively, a far larger attempt to obscure a competing argument.

Let us grant too though that the GW movement has made far more extensive attempts at propaganda than those suggested by those emails. Most obviously, the position that "No debate exists" can hardly be tenable in a debate.

People lied. Let us prosecute them where that is possible. More likely and more importantly, let's not trust them as authorities.

But let us also view the data that can be verified, view the arguments, and advance towards actions in conjunction with that.

The argument is fairly simple, and itself has nothing to do with Republicrats and Demoplicans or how any of us feel about corporate personhood or governmental regulation.

Verify the data where you will:

1. The globe is currently warming.
2. Warming always has gone through all kinds of cycles.
3. This warming is out of rhythm.

The most obvious and economical conclusion is that there are other factors that influence climate, but that human activity influences climate too. There's nothing really strange about that: any event whatsoever requires a confluence of factors. Remove a factor, one changes the event.

We also know that the water rose and fell considerably with the rising and falling of the ice caps during the various ice ages.

Just because the usual political culprits are jimmying evidence and selling soap in all the ways they usually do and exercising all the usual apocalyptic paranoias does not mean we are not in trouble.

It just means we had better have a good look at what must be done, because smoke and fire will not stop humans from fiddling.

I too have relatives and co-workers that consider GW a hoax, the modest Cap and Trade bill a communist plot, and heaven forbid, the electric rates in New Jersey (already 50% nuclear) might go up a bit! Now they have the hacked "evidence"! These guys are angry old white guy neocon tea party types, and they think they should run the world. Also, with these guys, the truth about anything is second to bringing Obama down, and they just might do it.

Hopefully some leadership is coming from the car company and utility managements. Companies like Ford and Excelon are starting to see beyond the fossil fuel era. Something this rabble above and their pundits can't do. Otherwise, the best we can hope is the rest of the world addresses the problem while the US continues to devolve into a third world country, happy its getting a free ride on carbon emissions while it falls hopelessly behind in sustainable technology.

I have a friend with amazing musical talent (i.e. an 'artist' as it were) living in Toronto who now believes these recent e-mails (the server hacking at East Anglia) have blown the CC debate to smithereens. The good thing about this now week-long back-and-forth 'debate' is that it has made me read/research climate more than I have in my lifetime.

A few thoughts:

First, things seem even more dire than they are reported mainly because of 'feedback loops' --- which is the basis for Hansen's 'tipping point' theory. The earth's climate is so complex - there are so many variables that contribute to our weather - that meteorologic trends and patterns are very difficult to pinpoint. This opens up room for debate and denial.

Second, no amount of graphs or scientific data will change this friend's mind. He believes the scientists are all in cahoots (their reputations are at stake!) and CC is just a huge scientific community collusion. They want to take away our freedoms, eh?! Never mind the fact that these unlawfully obtained e-mails only represent a small percentage of the scientific community and the sheer volume of them has made it difficult to determine if they are genuine. (Admittedly, the scientists' silent response isn't helping matters.)

Finally, I agree with you, cosmobilly, these types of taxes and solutions, aimed directly at the average consumer's pocketbook, are exactly the kinds of things that will merely add fuel to their fire - no pun intended.

Tax do indeed increasingly fall heavily on those least able to pay. That has been the dirty secret of the so-called anti-tax/anti "big-government" movement for years now. The rich get income tax breaks while the poor pay regressive increases in sales, excise, and property taxes.

Go here: http://www.itepnet.org/whopays.htm

But in the case of energy usage, I know of no other way but tax-driven price increases, aside from mandatory rationing, to move to a low-energy consuming, low-or-no-car use infrastructure, smaller homes with more efficient heating, and eschewing AC unless it is really needed. Higher fuel taxes can be easily offset with income-based tax credits elsewhere, so they need not burden lower incomes. But this is only going to happen if the rich stop running the show.

Rail is the second most energy efficient way. Sailing vessels are the most efficient.

Again, I have to strongly disagree, Bobforreform.

Please read my earlier post.

In a few years we'll have 7 billion people on this planet. If we looked at this as an opportunity (i.e. 7 billion billionaires [don't think materially here, think intellectually]) instead of reducing it to the same-old Malthusian canard, it's not hard to imagine a world that can sustain life, equitably, for all its inhabitants.