2dye4, I don’t see the advantage of framing the discussion in terms of an overly simplified version of the climate (but I certainly appreciate the effort to focus the discussion). As IRStuff pointed out, the problem is that the equation itself doesn’t capture all the nuances. While this is an interesting discussion in itself, it’s not necessarily helpful in framing the debate as a whole. (What you’ve depicted is (kind of) an energy balance model. So, perhaps a discussion on the use of energy budget models vs. two-box models vs. GCM’s would be of interest?)
To me, the discussion is best served in framing it as a spectrum of agreement with the science. The “spectrum”, to me, works like this:
[ol 1]
[li]The Earth’s climate system has shown an increase in energy over the past century[/li]
[li]The increase in energy is mainly due to anthropogenic CO2 emissions (the attribution debate)[/li]
[li]The climate has a sensitivity to CO2 increases somewhere in the IPCC’s range (the sensitivity debate)[/li]
[li]The impacts of increasing the global temperature average become increasingly negative past a certain point (2 deg C is often this point) (the impacts debate)[/li]
[li]A risk assessment of the probabilistic range of impacts suggests that early mitigation efforts are more beneficial than adaptation or a “wait-and-see” attitude (the mitigation vs. adaptation debate)[/li]
[li]Mitigation can and should be achieved through personal changes/taxation/cap-and-trade/regulations/other/a combination thereof (the policy debate)[/li]
[/ol]
Framing the discussion as a spectrum allows us to drop terms like “skeptic” and “conformist”, where “skeptics” are (incorrectly) thought to reject all scientific evidence and “conformists” are (incorrectly) thought to accept, blindly, all scientific evidence. People can state, “I’m in agreement with some aspects but I begin to get skeptical at X”. This way you can see where you have a common understanding and focus the discussion on where people’s disagreement comes in. Furthermore, as each step in the spectrum requires an acceptance of the previous steps, you avoid the circular arguments and illustrate the logical narrative in climate science (and the inappropriateness of having issues with the last point and projecting that onto all the previous points).
One interesting point is that many people argue “we don’t know enough to justify mitigation” and believe this argument lies somewhere in point 2, 3 and 4, when really it might be closer to point 4 or 5. The uncertainty and probabilistic range of each previous point is included in the subsequent point. So, many “lukewarmers”, who believe that sensitivity is likely closer to the lower end of the IPCC’s range (but still in the range), are actually in agreement with everything up to point 4 . This may surprise people that feel the disconnect between skeptics and those that believe mitigation is required is massive and irreconcilable. We are actually much closer than it’s made out to be.
For me, I feel that there is a lot of uncertainty in sensitivity but so does the science. I’d like to say “let’s wait-and-see” but understanding the (probable) impact of slow feedbacks and rate that we’re seeing the fast feedbacks makes me think that the risk of the “wait-and-see” outweighs the gains. I, therefore, advocate for early mitigation but am cautious of some of the suggestions. This puts me in agreement with 5 but with my doubts on the answer to 6.
I don’t agree with cap-and-trade. I also don’t agree that people can just willingly change their life-style enough to make the reductions required on our own; we’ve simply become too comfortable and dependent to do so (myself included) and the normal means of production, which is out of our control, makes it incredibly difficult even if we were willing to (which I referred to early as the consumption-centric capitalist zeitgeist). While personal changes are certainly important, it will require more than that. In additional to personal changes, I agree with incentivizing energy-efficiency products/methods, increasing efficiency standards (and banning certain products/methods that don’t meet those standards) and revenue-neutral taxation initiatives (confusing this with promoting a socialist revolution or “tearing down the “capitalist zeitgeist”” is bafflingly silly).
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