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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tuxgeo" data-source="post: 6683418" data-attributes="member: 61026">There are people who do read the scientific literature. For some, it's part of their job. I understand Crighton does so (at least to some degree) as background research for his stories. With that said, however, science is a human activity, and is therefore not immune to its own fads and trends. Back in the 1970s, global temperatures had been falling since about 1945, and there was some concern about "Global Cooling" (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling" target="_blank">Wikipedia overview</a>); but the favored terminology largely shifted to "Global Warming" as more and more science was done.There are more factors affecting global warming than merely human-released CO2 in the atmosphere: • human-poured, sun-exposed concrete and asphalt trap heat, and continue to radiate it back into the atmosphere at night; • deforestation reduces transpiration of water from the subsoil, because trees can have deeper roots than many other plants, and trees transpire water from the levels where their roots reach; • other greenhouse gasses besides CO2 can also trap heat -- water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, chlorofluorocarbons, and others. • improvements in solar capture of electrical power, and the accompanying storage and transfer of electrical energy, are permitting a gradual but perceptible shift in human energy usage away from the burning of fuels to the installation of hardware for human purposes. End result? It doesn't "end," but it does go in trends. As prices of solar technology continue to come down due to advances in the art, the economy will continue trending away from CO2 release from burning fuels. ("Anthropogenic global warming is scheduled to slow.") We'll still have oil, but its financial price, while falling recently, won't go to zero. Fracking is expensive; drilling is expensive; refining is expensive. As prices adjust due to both oil depletion and changes in technology, we'll release lower amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere in proportion to the amount of energy we use. We'll still need to do more to alleviate climate change; and I suggest reforestation, where possible, as a great option because: • trees absorb carbon, taken from the CO2 in the air, and sequester the carbon for later; and trees gain the ability to absorb more carbon as they grow larger (plant redwoods); and while the sea is also a great carbon-sink, it acidifies a bit as it does so; • trees shade the ground, absorbing light from the sun for use in photosynthesis, thereby reducing the amount of solar radiation that hits the ground and is there converted to infrared, then to be trapped on earth by the greenhouse effect; • the water transpired by trees adds to atmospheric moisture until it falls as precipitation or is removed by other means; where it falls, it refreshes other vegetation, not necessarily in the same country. If the sahara desert is shrinking, that may be a good thing. Is the US going to reforest Iraq and Syria? No, those lands don't belong to the US; instead, they belong to their residents. If those residents desire cooler daytime temperatures, they might collaborate to plant some trees; but they would need to select varieties that can survive and grow in such lands.</blockquote>

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