The influence of the current environmental lobby ensures that there will be a thriving short term market for carbon avoidance and carbon fixation schemes as well as markets related to carbon trading. However, I am increasingly convinced, having read a lot of the science on all sides of the debate, that the quality of climate models is low in that they ignore major components such as the impact on cloud formation of cosmic rays. By contrast, evidence from research centres such as CERN, in which I have much higher confidence, especially Jasper Kirby, suggests that this may be able to account for the bulk of the warming we have seen so far, backed up by analysis of good proxy data going back millions of years (I am familiar myself with some of this data).
If you want to read Jasper's paper it is at: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0804/0804.1938v1.pdf or you can watch him present similar material at http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073. He isn't the only scientist saying this sort of thing, but he is pretty convincing, for me anyway, and when you put it all together, it makes a lot of sense.
Although CO2 may well also still be shown to be a significant contributor, I believe that we will find that current climate science bodies such as the IPCC have over-stated its importance in dealing with climate. The Cloud experiments at CERN (along with their collaborators at a number of other prestige labs) will investigate the cosmic radiation related mechanisms for cloud formation and will produce results over the next two or three years. Based on what I consider to be well-informed hypotheses by Kirby et al, I expect him to be shown to be correct. By contrast, recent evidence indicates that some of the most influential temperature records appear to be corrupted, data and models tweaked to fit hypotheses rather than the reverse, and worse still, group-think seems to have severely polluted the quality of application of the scientific method in large parts of the field. So while I have little confidence in the IPCC and some other climate bodies, I still have great confidence in the quality of basic science at a large number of sites, and CERN probably comes at the top of my list in that regard.
In my view therefore, it is highly likely that over the next few years, results from CERN will show that most of the climate change being experienced can be explained by variation in solar activity. Science will win out and most scientists will change their positions to adapt to this new knowledge - that is the nature of science when it is at its best - theories are changed to fit the data, not the other way around.
Even though limiting ocean acidification will also require management of CO2, the public understanding and support for carbon taxes is based on its impacts on climate. Consequently, it will be very difficult then to persuade people to back another reasoning base for the same taxes and governments will be accused not unreasonably of crying wolf. Due to decline in support, they will be very reluctant then to pour any more funding into schemes for carbon trading or fixation, and large corporations will also largely abandon their support for carbon markets and taxes.
Although it may take some time for schemes such as carbon trading to be dismantled, long-term valuations for any companies involved in CO2 reduction will fall very quickly once the science changes. Many green companies will go bust. Problems such as ocean acidification will be considered a lesser problem, solved on the fly by slow changes in carbon output that will happen in any case via technological change in energy and transport sectors.
The good news is that as the sun returns to 'normal', so will our climate and not for the first time, doom mongers will be shown to be wrong. The money we have already spent in green energy will not all be wasted, it will have accelerated development of cheap solar and wind power that will still have a market, (although subsidies will no longer be justified and will stop as contracts terminate).
Related to this, the CLOUD team is looking at a number of factors in cloud formation. The list is long but includes particulates and other aerosols, aircraft contrails, and various gases. They will investigate a range of atmospheric altitudes and temperatures and vary the kinds of radiation. I am confident we will know a great deal more about how our environment works as a result, and once the physics is understood, it can be factored properly into climate models, which will of course benefit from parallel development in many other branches of science. Since the 'climategate' affair, we can be reasonably assured that scientists will be more careful to do their work properly.
Summarising: strong short term market in carbon reduction and fixation technology due to what is likely to be shown as misunderstanding of climate science, but many companies in the carbon reduction sector will die in a few years when better science shows that CO2 is not the main problem. If you must buy now, get ready to sell quickly. The carbon band-wagon might well crash any time between the end of 2010 and 2012.
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