Just let me finish and say this. If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop in several hundred years, perhaps as much as a thousand years because the system is overburdened with CO2 that has to be absorbed and that only happens slowly.Reading that quote, any sane person has to ask himself: if it takes up to a thousand years for Earth to cool after our CO2 emissions, what is the bloody point of cutting those emissions? It simply doesn't make sense! It just has to be a scam! As Anthony Watts comments:
Crikey! So much for the “think of the grandchildren” argument used by Dr. James Hansen.
This reminds me of an encounter I had with another Gaia-worshipping tree hugger a while ago. I and some friends had gone to an ancient oak forest near where I live, bringing our chain saws. We wanted to make a really big bonfire to celebrate Man's Dominion Over Nature Day, and we thought that those oaks would make the perfect fuel. However, after we had felled a few of the oaks, a man came up to us and called out:
"What are you doing? Why are you felling those oaks?"
I responded: "We want to make a bonfire."
He said: "But this forest is protected. You cannot do that!"
I responded: "I don't think that we are doing any harm to those oaks. It is only natural for them to burn."
He cried: "Are you mad? It will take many centuries for oaks like those to grow back again!"
Whereupon I replied: "Centuries? Are you telling me that even if I and my merry friends stopped cutting down oaks right now, it would take many centuries for the forest to grow back?"
He said: "Yes! We would have to plant new oaks to replace those lost, and they grow very slowly."
So I laughed at the poor imbecille: "Why should I stop cutting down these oaks if it doesn't make a difference until after many centuries?"
Whereupon I and my friends continued to fell oaks.
The moron who had harassed us with his idiotic nature-worshipping ramblings apparently felt so humiliated by the crushing intellectual defeat he had suffered that he had phoned the police as a petty act of vengeance, but that's a different story.
Nos ardere quercus
Update: also see Bishops Hill and Steven Goddard. And here is a cartoon by Josh:
