However, with these insignificant extra 0.5°C come storms with thunder and lightning, and tornados. Summers with long, constant heat and no rain, and autumns where crops will drown, followed by bitter cold winters. This is what will affect everybody. Subtle changes that are hardly noticeable make huge differences for weather.

As an obligatory XKCD reference, he termed a global temperature difference of an Ice Age Unit, or IAU.

In history, one IAU colder and his home was covered with a half mile of ice. Two IAU hotter and the seas were 200 meters higher and had palm trees at the poles.

As you point out, the climate change involved for just a few degrees of warmth difference can make a huge environmental difference.

When you think about a full Ice Age Unit that is huge. We know an IAU colder puts Canada, most of Northern Europe, and most of the Northern US all under a enormous blanked of ice and glaciers. We don't know what one IAU hotter looks like, but that is an enormous shift, and we will probably be there within the next few decades.

Local to my area, the mountains around Salt Lake City, long-term plans are pretty bleak. Predicted weather pattern changes means the desert increases, less rain and snow. Higher temperatures mean rain rather than snow, so ski resorts are likely going to stop being ski resorts, and rivers and streams that currently flow year-round will likely drop off due to lack of snow pack, becoming wet season only. Less water means serious problems to the population.

Part of me wants to start looking for housing in Canada which will likely change from permafrost to subtropical.

Contributing to about the same degree as a massive ship contributes to changing the sea level.

Dump 7 billion aircraft carriers into the sea and then get back to me.

That is what the mindless Green activists have been trying to indoctrinate into us here for the last ~30 years, and sadly they have been successful at politically enforcing some of their queer ideas.

Yes, damn them and their stupid attempts to save the environment we live in.

It's a shame because the rest of your post (re: US and China) was actually approaching sense for a change.

Obligatory:

Yes, damn them and their stupid attempts to save the environment we live in.

It is hard to take those people seriously when they are decrying this year the saving grace technology they were championing the year before.

It is hard to take those people seriously when they are decrying this year the saving grace technology they were championing the year before.

Are you saying that once a person has endorsed a technology, if they retract that endorsement when new facts concerning that technology come to light their credibility is obviated? That one should stick to ones' initial position, even when evidence suggests that it was wrong? That when the negative implications of something you previously thought was a good idea are pointed out, you should stick your fingers in your ears and keep telling everyone it's a good idea?

It is everything and always. No matter what the technology is, there is some reason why it should not be used. There is no pleasing these people. Sure, we think a technology is good for us, only to find out later that it is not and there is nothing wrong with that. My problem is that NOTHING satisfies them. We WILL leave a footprint on this planet. No matter what we do, no matter what we try, there will be some consequence. Either we accept that, invent some sort of Star Trek-esque 100% eco-friendly super tech, or go back to the stone age. However, the latter would require living in caves and that would disturb the habitat of some cave salamander or some such.

Hey what accusations to China, they have a smogging of a time. its happening

It is not their fault at all but only the hypocracy of western market. We in the west will buy cheaper phosphoric acid from china, manufactured with not only cheaper work force but without any enviromental saving expenses made at production as well. If you could target politicaly this issue, you would see what would happen in china, they would simply make just as expensive acids with top most standards, yet still a bit cheaper since work force does not demand that much so china would not even loose its economy advantage.

In west we apply all standards to save enviroment at hazardous factorings and productions, yet we buy all from china and let everything be made in china. Retarded.

The last clima summit just here in Paris is targeting the fact that global pollution cannnot be stopped at individual level of rules. I wonder wheather they will achieve something.

While not buying an ipod for myself would not do very much, if they fire some political issue, for example as buying phoshoric acid or plastics that is not licensed with some ISO enviroment certification will be illegal goods, this would do just everything that is possibly needed to stop all pathologic industry plants.

For example, the exhoustion level of easily aquireable phosphate ore in earth will be hit at about year 2032, while critical level consequences will start playing in at even about 2024. Now with that information, imagine all of that fosfo gypsum quantities that are generated to provide phosphoric fertilizers in twice ratio. Yes, there are organic sources of fosfor, but a synthetic radioactive phosphate fertilizer is much "more cool"

My problem is that NOTHING satisfies them. We WILL leave a footprint on this planet. No matter what we do, no matter what we try, there will be some consequence.

You are forgetting that basic principle of nature to exist is to- cycle (dead cat cadavere will absorb to asphalt in days without a trace, water beneeth asphalt will move remains where trees are). Fertile soil is just a few meters wide blanket on rock beneath. Once the cycle goes into depressive character, the cycle will stop.

We in this synthetic era have stepped out of cycles, possibly all of them (carbon dioxide, oxide, hydrogen, macro nutrition elements as fosfor, potassium, nitrogen). They are being run out and do not return to cycle at all. All of our recyclation attempts are a joke, and even if successfull at some resource, still being time cycle depressing at least.

There is no compromise, you either remain in cycle, leaving no exhoustive footprint for future at all, or depress the cycle, and once run out of vital resource for everyone/everything.

You naive ways of thinking there is nothing that can/should be done seems like a science/facts heresy fooling (which GMO is your favorite? Monsanto or BASF?)

Yes, damn them and their stupid attempts to save the environment we live in.

It's a shame because the rest of your post (re: US and China) was actually approaching sense for a change.

You have to differentiate between someone who attempts to make something better and someone who is
a) against everything, no matter what it is (but especially against people who work and who own something)
b) militantly stupid in a sheer unbearable fashion
c) making things much worse (due to being stupid)
d) advocating the exact opposite the next week

I am not saying that something doesn't need to get done. Sure, something must be done, or we are all doomed. But not like this. Not in such a mindless, militant, uneducated way.

Mix rapeseed into diesel and put ethanol into gasoline, and at the same time complain that there is not enough agricultural surface. I've already mentioned ozone and nuclear fallout with rapeseed. As for alcohol, it carries less energy per unit of mass (using more energy to haul it around) and causes greater wear on motors (producing motors consumes a lot of energy), and it creates huge amounts of CO2 during fermentation and requires a huge amount of energy to distill, too. But of course those don't count because you don't see them when you burn the bio-fuel. Oh, I'm so good, I feel so righteous by doing something good for the planet. Sustainable, yay.
Besides, ethanol creates large amounts CO when burning rather than CO2. Which is admittedly less of a greenhouse gas, but about 300-500 times more toxic. That makes replacing CO2 with CO a really smart approach to dealing with the smog problem in major cities. Reducing CO was the reason the Greens were on the streets to make catalysators mandatory 20 years ago.

No to nuclear energy! Who needs nuclear energy anyway, electricity comes out of the wall plug, shut off that shit. Except it doesn't work out if you don't have a better option, and if everybody uses huge amounts of electricity as if there was no tomorrow (no, I'm not talking about the hoover but about e.g. your cell phone, which indirectly consumes a lot more energy than you possibly imagine).
Also, energy is often (usually) not available where it is needed. Yeah, we have contracts with the companies running those nuclear powerplants too, the contracts still go for 25 years. Well, fuck them. Die, you fucking capitalist pigs. Oh, they're the same companies owning the major overland lines, too...

We will just use wind energy. We have a lot of wind in the North Sea, let's build gigantic offshore farms. That'll cost a fortune, but hey, I'm not working, it's not my money. Go ahead, you. Do something for your planet. What do you mean, we need 3/4 of our energy in the south?

Hey, let's build loads of windmills in the south. Investors, come forward, the country will give you a 30% subvention. And a revenue guarantee. Oh look, they kill birds. At least they killed one bird, which probably means they kill all birds. At least in theory. Away with that shit! You environmental pigs, you're never going to use that windmill on my birds.

Well there's rivers coming from the Alps, so you could build a dam and use watercraft. Right. Except when you try to build the smallest inline hyrodelectric powerplant, the Greens will protest against it because some fish might presumably die (even when there is no evidence whatsoever). Build a dam? Forget it.

So we've finally shut off that nuclear shit. We won! Now the powerplants must be disassembled, the waste must go away. Tomorrow! No, today! But not near me, I don't want that here. Hey, I said: Not here. No, not there either. Haul it somewhere, but not near me.

Oh wow, we actually managed to practically kill e-on and RWE within a year by breaking contracts and forcing impossible-to-fulfill conditions onto them. Their debt now exceeds twice their combined market value. Well, that's big win for the movement. Die, you environmental-polluting capitalist pigs.
In case they really get liquidated, it's 117,000 people without a job, and 160 billion less domestic product. I can't wait for that to happen. Yay, I feel so good and so righteous.

Castor! The Devil! How dare you transport nuclear waste to another country, I don't want that. No, I don't want it here either. But I don't want you to transport it away. What if something bad happens on the trip? Look, I will sabotage the rails to stop you. There you go. Much safer now.

See, we shut down that nuclear shit for good, and electricity still comes out of the plug in the wall. What did I tell you. Excuse me, what do you mean it comes crom a 60 year old Czech nuclear powerplant just a couple of hundred meters behind the border?