What are some of the arguments against making changes in carbon emissions in the United States?

Question

How credible are these arguments today?

Answer 1

It depends on what changes you mean. To meet the mandates of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Act in the US the cost would be increasingly high with very little impact. The EPA estimates the cost in 2050 will be $2.856 trillion a year and by 2098 we'll see a total reduction in US contributions of 25 parts per million of CO2. Given estimates of what China and India will be producing at that time, 25 ppm is a very small reduction for a very high cost.

Simply reducing the CO2 we emit won't help with the CO2 that's already in the air, either. We need to develop technologies to deal with this but simple carbon sequestration could start by just planting more trees. You need to balance that against the extra water a tree will need to live and the risk that if it burns in a fire or falls down and rots, the CO2 is then released.

The main argument against changing our CO2 emissions dramatically is that it's unproven that it will be harmful even if we double the level now in the air. CO2 levels have been 10 times higher in the past when there was an ice age and 20 times higher with temp only 10C warmer than now. That's a big temp increase but it would take a very long time for us to raise CO2 levels by 2000%. CO2 makes up only .04% or less of our total atmosphere and nearly all of the warming from greenhouse gases comes from water vapor, not CO2.

Answer 2

We would have to change our lifestyles a little for awhile.