The proposed solutions have not one tiny thing to do with the science of whether or not it's happening.
Not. One. Thing.
The science it not saying one tiny thing about what you should or should not do, simply what is happening and what may happen given different courses of action. IF you want to avoid climate change, you need to reduce the amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere, or do something else to cool the planet. How you go about that is for the politicians to work out. There's also a lot on what will happen if you do nothing, in case you want to try to just ride it out. That action is up to the politicians too.
...and of course, they screw it up. That's their job. Our political systems are built to make sure pretty much nothing effectual ever gets done.
But if it's your concern about human suffering that is driving you, then I'm a bit confised how you can say that the likely effects of climate change will do less damage to the poor and hungry than the development of sustainable energy sources (something we are going to have to do anyway, in the long run). Food shortages are one of the most likely effects of climate change.
So we can do something when we're forced to, or we can do it now and avoid the addional pain of major climate change. Either way we do it, but which way has less pain?
Sorry, missed this one.
There's a decent discussion here:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/01/a_beat_up_of_himalayan_proport.php
Are you actually interested, though? You want to think it's just a (really inept) conspiracy, right?
Oh really?? Read this critique by Professor George Reisman of Sir Nicholas Stern's UK government funded proposal. The part about the goat is especially prescient.
http://georgereisman.com/blog/2006/11/britains-stern-review-on-global.html
Sir Nicholas’s and the rest of the environmental movement’s hostility to carbon technology, is ultimately contrary to purpose not only insofar as it prevents the development of the low-carbon technologies they claim to favor, but also in that it simultaneously, and more fundamentally, operates to deprive the world of the ability to counteract destructive climate change, such as global warming.
Whether or not they are aware of it, in attempting to combat alleged global warming, Sir Nicholas, and the rest of the environmentalists, are urging a policy of deliberate counteractive global climate change by the world’s governments. They want the world’s governments to change the world’s climate from the path that they believe it is otherwise destined to take. They want the world’s governments to make the earth’s climate cooler than they believe it will otherwise be as the next two centuries or more unfold. But their policy of climate control is the most stupid one imaginable.
It’s more stupid than a modern-day equivalent of a savage’s attempting to control nature by the sacrifice of his goat.
The reason it’s more stupid, much more stupid, is that the goat that they want to sacrifice is most of modern industrial civilization—the part that depends on the 80% of the carbon emissions they want to eliminate, and which will not be replaced through any magical power of words to create and control reality, however much they may believe in that power. It is precisely modern industrial civilization and its further expansion and intensification that is mankind’s means of coping with all aspects of nature, including, if it should ever actually be necessary, the ability to control the earth’s climate, whether to cool it down or to warm it up.
If mankind ever really finds it necessary to control the earth’s climate, whether to prevent global warming or, as is in fact probably more likely, a new ice age, its ability to do so will depend on the power of its economic system. An economic system with the ability to provide such things as massive lasers, fleets of rocket ships carrying cargoes of various chemicals, equipment, and materials for deployment in outer space, with the ability to create major chemical reactions here on earth too, if necessary—such an economic system will have far more ability to make possible any necessary change in the earth’s climate. That is the kind of economic system we could reasonably expect to have in coming generations, if it is not prevented from coming into existence by policies hostile to economic progress, notably those urged by Sir Nicholas and the environmental movement.
What Sir Nicholas and the rest of the environmental movement offer is merely the destruction of much of our existing means of coping with nature and the aborting of the development of new and additional means. To the extent that their program is enacted, it will serve to prevent effectively dealing with global warming if that should ever actually be necessary.
A major word of caution is necessary here. The above discussion implies that the use of modern technology to control climate is infinitely more reasonable than the virtually insane policy of attempting to control climate by means of destroying modern technology. The word of caution is that in the hands of government, a policy of climate control based on the use modern technology could be almost as dangerous as the policy of government climate control by means of the destruction of modern technology.
In fact, a possible outcome of today’s intellectual chaos on the subjects of environment and government is a combination of major destruction of our economic system resulting from policies based on hostility to carbon technology and climate damage caused by governmental efforts to control climate through the use of modern technology. It’s not impossible that what we might end up with is an economic system largely destroyed by environmentalist policies plus the start of a new ice age resulting from government efforts to counteract global warming through the use of technologically inspired counter measures.
The only safe response to global warming, if that in fact is what is unfolding, or to global freezing, when that develops, as it inevitably will, is the maximum degree of individual freedom. (For elaboration and proof of this proposition, see Capitalism, pp. 88-90.)
Any serious consideration of the proposals made in the Stern Review for radically reducing carbon technology and the accompanying calls for immediacy in enacting them makes clear in a further way how utterly impractical the environmentalist program for controlling global warming actually is. The fundamental impracticality of the program, of course, lies in its utterly destructive character. But in addition to that, the fact that people are not prepared easily or quickly to make a massive sacrifice of their self-interests dooms the enactment of the program. Even if, in utter contradiction of the truth, the program were sound, it would simply not be possible to enact it in time to satisfy the environmentalists that the level of carbon buildup they fear will not occur. In other words, the world is quickly moving past the window of opportunity for enacting the environmentalists’ program for controlling global warming. (Concerning this point, see pp. xi-xii of the Executive Summary, especially Figure 3 on p. xii.) The implication is that either they will have to find another issue or different means for addressing the issue.
The only different means, however, are technological in character. Environmentalism thus stands a very strong chance of ultimately reverting to the more traditional socialism of massive government construction and engineering projects. It’s future may well lie with what is coming to be called “geo-engineering.” We shall see.
Again I come back to the fact that these kind of reports are premised on deontological ethics and not on consequences.