The answer to climate change...

...is according to Tony Blair "...the development of science and technology. Yes, we will get changes in the way we consume but we will be consuming differently, not necessarily less. People are not going to return to the 19th century. The critical thing is to use the technologies we have and to incentivise the development of new ones. That is the only practical way we will make this thing work.”

Well yes and no. New technology that is cheaper, cleaner and more efficient is obviously preferable to the old, but it won't stop climate change. Climate will always change just as the earth keeps on turning. Blair's statement is important however, and is another acknowledgement that the green red ethos of dismantling capitalism via fear of global warming is a dead duck. Any hair-shirt approach to dealing with climate change is bound to fail. People aren't going to accept a return to a world where energy is extremely limited. As the UK Labour MP Tom Harris says "...for some environmentalists the fight against global warming has another aim: the defeat of capitalism, of economic growth, of prosperity.Which is why I find their arguments so nauseating..." are you listening President Obama ? More here...

Those of us who take delight in vicious bloodletting are anticipating a formidable stoush between the green left factions (the realo's and the fundi's) a stoush which is steadily building up steam, and promising to be a winner takes all battle...

Can we solve climate change ?

...readers of this blog will understand the answer to this question immediately. No of course we can't solve climate change. No more than we can "solve" the problem of rainbows or volcanoes. And Mike Hulme, professor of Climate Change at East Anglia University agrees. He says "we are heading up a "dead end" by putting climate change science at the top of the political agenda.
In fact he thinks we are pretty arrogant to think we can control the climate.
...Mike, who has spent the last 25 years researching climate change, has just written a book about climate change where he questions why climate change has become "the mother of all issues... we should take the spotlight away from climate change at the top of the pile.
It is rather hubristic to think we can actually control climate. Climate change is the new human condition we have to live with. Let's accept this is the new reality.
Don't construct the problem in a way which means we cannot have a solution which is the way I think we have got it constructed at the moment." ...More here...

While remaining a believer in AGW, Mike Hulme at least reinforces the views of realists such as Bjorn Lomborg who argues that billions spent on climate change would be better targeted towards providing sanitation and safe water supplies to millions of people around the world who lack the basic amenities of life...and Lomborg also observes ...strategies to reduce carbon have failed. Meeting in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, politicians from wealthy countries promised to cut emissions by 2000, but did no such thing. In Kyoto in 1997, leaders promised even stricter reductions by 2010, yet emissions have kept increasing unabated. Still, the leaders plan to meet in Copenhagen this December to agree to even more of the same — drastic reductions in emissions that no one will live up to. Another decade will be wasted...more here...

Bjorn Lomborg would also presumably support Tom Harris,UK Labour MP, who writes on his blog... for some environmentalists the fight against global warming has another aim: the defeat of capitalism, of economic growth, of prosperity.Which is why I find their arguments so nauseating...