"n law-making, as in medicine, the first rule should be do no harm. And it is surely true that if the United States does not take the leadership in trying to counter climate change nothing will be done. But what if it is too late? What if everything the United States, or Europe, does in the way of clean energy and cutting earth-heating gasses is not enough to halt the onrushing warming to the world, with all its attending consequences?

The effects of humanity's industry, piggy-backing on a normal warming trend that has been going on since the 19th century, is causing temperatures to climb at an unprecedented rate. On that most of science agrees. But what if the centuries-long build–up of gasses and nature itself have conspired to make this trend irreversible?

This is not an argument against a strong effort on the part of mankind to at least slow down the warming. The United States and the world can and should make a big effort to stop making the problem worse.

But the world is not united. The developing countries feel it is unfair to demand caps just as they are industrializing, and we are moving into a post-industrial economy. It is simply not possible to shut down enough of the world's smoke stacks, and a lot of cap and trade begins to sound like a shell game.

So when the world meets in Copenhagen to discuss climate change come December, I hope there will be more thought on what has to be done if climate change cannot be prevented.

Where will we put the island peoples whose nations are inexorably disappearing? What can we invent that will keep crops growing in higher temperatures and less water? What can we plan now that will mitigate — and maybe even prevent — some of the worse horrors that we can now quite accurately predict?"

(Op ED contributor H. Green, NY Times)

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Bruce:

Here's someone who is tracking with your commendable line of thought.

As for human induced, I think the correct term is human vectors piggybacking on other, natural, build-ups. Given that our carbon production parallels the trend of temperature climb since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, I think it is certainly fair to say our production of carbon, other greenhouse gasses, and our general attack on forests world-wide have contributed a distinct additive vector to the climate change.

A