Well, we've done it. (relatively)Small blobs of carbon are successfully terraforming an entire planet. Global warming is BAD, isn't it?
First of all, global warming doesn't make the planet hotter. What it's actually doing is normalizing the temperature gradients. Cold climes are getting a little warmer, hot-spots are becoming more temparate. Yeah, the ice-caps are receeding a little, but geographically, that doesn't mean much.
Consider the glass of water. It has an ice-cube in it. When the cube melts, the water level doesn't change, as it's already displacing the water. For sure, not all the world's ice-caps are on the ocean. Antarctica has bedrock under the 15 miles of ice. But there's not way in hell that *all* the ice-caps will melt. Even IF the average temperature rises. True enough, the water level will rise. But not that much.
Now, let's look ahead a couple of hundred years. Anyone remember the Pleistocene? That was the last ice-age. The earth's erratic orbit around the sun is fairly constant. In fact, we get ice-ages fairly regularly. Guess what? We're due one in the next few hundred years. From what I can tell, it's already starting. Luckily, though, we have been able to pump enough CO2 into the atmosphere to delay this maybe a hundred years or so. By continuing to jet CO2 into the atmosphere, you are delaying the 2nd worst possible ecological disaster.The plants and wild-life love it. When the next iceage comes, most of the current flora/fauna will become extinct. Greenpeace will feel kind of stupid. Actually, they won't. They'll blame the iceage on industry.
Think about it. An iceage will lump 15km of SOLID ice onto most of North America, and blanket a healthy portion of Eurasia. The formerly balmy tropics and sub-tropics will turn into deserts. The ocean will dry up, and LOWER by 300ft. N. America will be joined to Asia by a 1000km wide land-bridge. Well, 1000km wide under the 15km of glacial ice.
On the plus side, anything that humanity has done to this point will be erased. There's no way for this glacial earth to support the current population. Maybe a couple hundred million of the harider races will survive. As a result, the Ozone will replenish, all the hydrocarbon pollution will disperse and degenerate into component molecules. After the ice recedes again, a fresh new planet will be "Born." There might even be some of us left to colonize it.
That is why I laugh at emmissions testing in 95% of situations. With the exception of smog problems,(and this counts for at least 5%) it is completely useless. Most of the pollution doesn't come from cars anyway. A single volcano eruption dwarfs that. Industry scoffs at pollution controls. Tell your government to focus elsewhere than the average person's car.