I just realized that's why I'm not worried about it. I.e. technology will probably save us. Am I too optimistic?
If we can magically create software that can create software that is more intelligent than humans, then the singularity is nigh.
The solution to global warming will most likely be a series of clever "hacks" such as electric cars, recycling, carban taxes, turning off the lights when you leave a room, etc. Most of all changing politicians to increase the speed of change.
There doesn't seem to be a giant off switch that can wipe out global warming.
There is. All you have to do is bury trees in giant holes.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080513101652.ht...
I thought of this, did 15 seconds of research to see if any studies had been done, and it's pretty clear that, not only is it practical, it would be fairly cheap. Doesn't matter. The whole point of "global warming" is the same as every other leftist movement, control over the economy.
Also, the land required to plant AND bury all the biomass towards this end would have to be roughly the size of North America. Albeit creative, this does not seem like the definitive solution to global warming unless you have some serious political muscle.
What you are suggesting is a massive 'carbon cycling' economy, digging up CO2 from fossil fuels, burning it, recovering that CO2 from trees, and then burying it. Over long, long timescales, this is the same process by which the fossil fuels were synthesized. It should be least plausible that this is not the most efficient thing we can come up with!
The primary difference here is that it isn't pre-emptive. If it turns out that global warming is an actual problem, then and only then, it can be countered by burying trees. If it turns out that global warming was all a ruse (probable enough) then nothing needs to be done.
Regarding global warming, it may not be catastrophic, but it's... absurd to call it a hoax. Average temperatures are rising. Do you have another explanation for the receding ice caps, then? Do you have a different prediction for the greenland glacier? If the north pole is free of ice in the summer, ice must be melting in Greenland, too. If it's melting in the summer faster than accretion in the winter, the Greenland ice is melting. If the Greenland ice is melting then unless Antarctica is growing, the sea level will rise. According the geological record, the ice caps grow and retreat in a nonlinear way; suddenly, in other words. According to the wikipedia:
"If small glaciers and polar ice caps on the margins of Greenland and the Antarctic Peninsula melt, the projected rise in sea level will be around 0.5 m. Melting of the Greenland ice sheet would produce 7.2 m of sea-level rise, and melting of the Antarctic ice sheet would produce 61.1 m of sea level rise. The collapse of the grounded interior reservoir of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would raise sea level by 5-6 m."
Additionally, it is estimated that a sea level rise of just 20cm could create 740,000 homeless people in Nigeria. and already there is evidence that diseases from warmer climates, such as malaria, are growing in extent. http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/11/report-climate.html
A 2004 World Health Organization study estimates that climatic changes that have been occurring since the mid-1970s caused more than 150K deaths by 2000 through increasing incidences of diseases such as diarrhea, malaria and malnutrition, primarily in developing countries. The study projects a potential doubling of climate-related deaths by 2030.
Are you claiming that these aren't happening, or that they aren't problems?
The only thing left is massively parallel, but we can do that now, no need to wait, and we still don't have a singularity.