Nov 7 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Mary Ellen Klas The Miami Herald

Florida produces 1 percent of the world's greenhouse gases and could have vast swaths of coastline swallowed by the sea, but the governor's aggressive proposals to curb the ravages of global warming may be an expensive "drop in the bucket."

Those were the comments a panel of scientists and economists made at a day-long legislative summit on climate change Tuesday. The House of Representatives convened the "Science and Economics of Climate Change" session to show legislators that global warming is real, but the solution is costly.

"There is absolutely no doubt that the cause of the greenhouse gases is human activity," said Martin Manning, director of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. If trends continue, he warned, global climate conditions will be the warmest in 125,000 years by the middle of the century.

Harold Wanless, chairman of the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Miami, was more grim: The ice sheets of Greenland are "starting to literally collapse and slide to the sea," and Florida "should expect a sea level rise of 1.5 feet in the coming 50 years and at least three- to five-foot rise by the end of the century."

That means "Turkey Point will be an island in Biscayne Bay" and "the expanded 10,000 Islands would have great fishing," he said.

Scientists tempered their alarmist predictions with cautious optimism, however, that technology and change can arrest the damage.

"Aggressive climate policies could make a big difference," Manning said.

Judy Curry, professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said it's going to take a "silver buckshot approach," with "no single solution and everybody has to do their part."

The debate served to underscore the importance of the global warming initiatives begun this year by Gov. Crist. By 2020, the governor wants tough new emissions standards on cars, energy-efficient construction of new buildings and penalties on utility companies that pollute the atmosphere with carbon-emitting power plants.

But the economists on the House panel were not as optimistic.

To pursue something "regardless of the cost" gives too much credit to uncertain science, said Gilbert Metcalf, an economics professor from Tufts University. "We want to be balancing reductions against the losses to our economy. . . . A state-level policy when you're 1 percent [of] world emissions is a drop in the bucket."

W. David Montgomery, vice president of CRA International, who has studied the economic impact of California's global warming initiatives, said Crist's proposals mirror those of California's and "the technology doesn't exist to get there."

The result in California has been a 14 percent increase in energy costs, an 8 percent reduction in carbon emissions and a $10 billion to $30 billion loss to the economy.

Crist is on a trade mission to Brazil, where he plans to sign an agreement with that country, as he did with the United Kingdom and Germany earlier this year, promising to trade carbon credits when they're available.