Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

And I'm not sure that you can nearly make a statement as specific as emissions in the Northeast/Midwest are responsible for the change in the jet stream to that part of the US. That might suggest that if those regions cut their emissions drastically, the problem will be solved. I think most climate scientists would consider the warming arctic to be a global phenomenon based upon rising CO2 concentrations over years/decades, which will tend to even out regardless of which continent actually emitted the CO2.

Right.  CO2 as well several other ghg’s are well mixed and fairly uniformly distributed in the troposphere, and have residence times (=mass/flux) that exceed annual time scales and can even be as long as century time scales.  
That helps explain why localized changes in emissions will not have localized effects.  It’s the same reason that you can’t sustain a water quality improvement effort in the bay of a lake (unless you disconnect that area entirely); as soon as you do the overwhelming mass and prevailing water quality of the rest of the lake will simply mix in and you’re back to where you started.

There have been significant improvements in other air quality problem areas and so they can provide some guidance, but yet they’re fundamentally different.  For example you could examine either the reduction of acid rain and the reduction of CFCs.  Both are at least partial success stories. Both of those had different properties however - acid rain contaminants (NOx and SOx) have short residence times (mainly because they rain out) and more localized sources (particularly SOx).  CFCs are more uniformly mixed but have a limited number of sources that can be more easily controlled.

In contrast CO2, CH4, N2O are more ubiquitous in terms of sources and have those long residence times in the atmosphere that make them hard to reduce and in need of a global scale response.  Localized efforts won’t get it done.

I look at it more from an economic perspective, anyway. I work in the energy & sustainability space, and various energy efficiency, energy management, and renewable energy technologies are all very economic in most parts of the country. 

It might surprise you to know that a few years ago when the construction industry was in shambles and there was a proposed gov't program humorously called "cash for caulkers", I [as a pretty fervent libertarian] actually thought it was a really good targeted economic stimulus package. It had all of the following positive elements:
1) Many people don't live in their houses long enough for energy efficiency improvements to pay for themselves, and energy efficiency is not heavily valued in the home resale market enough to recoup investment upon sale. Thus, the net aggregate spending on energy efficiency is lower than would make sense if people stayed in a house long-term, making it a perfect opportunity for a subsidy.
2) Homes are durable goods, so the life cycle of many energy efficiency improvements is very long-term.
3) At the time, the people hardest hit by the recession were those in the construction/building trades. This would have been a great targeted way to get those people some work while the housing crisis worked itself through. 
Lack of energy efficiency is a negative externality caused by high retrofit costs and a long payback horizon. If there was ever a reason to suggest that gov't subsidy might actually make sense, this is a perfect example. 
Instead, the gov't decided to throw money into "cash for clunkers", destroying assets which increased the sale price of older used cars [thus hurting the low-income] in order to prop up the auto industry so that the people who weren't impacted by the recession could buy shiny new vehicles. Stupidity.

I'm not a scientist or an engineer, although I have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express.

I'm a historian.  But for two years, I taught physical geography and military geography at West Point.  In the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering.

I was in the geography "group" within the department, but also interacted with the environmental engineers and the mapping, charting, and geodesy instructors.  This was in the mid-'90s, and AGW/AGCG was not a big deal.  We were closer in time to the "Global Cooling" scare of the late '70s than we were to to today's concerns.

But I remember a couple of things from that experience that seem to have significance today.  One was that the atmosphere does not act like a greenhouse.  So "greenhouse gasses" is really a misnomer.  Of course, it's just a label, and we use misleading labels all the time.  I don't see any harm to it in this case.  But the second was that CO2 is maybe the least "greenhouse gas-ish" of all the "greenhouse gasses."  It just doesn't trap heat very well.

Am I mis-remembering this?  Or were my engineering colleagues mistaken about CO2?

I addition, I have seen long time-span charts that showed times when CO2 levels were significantly higher than now and temps were significantly lower, and vice-versa.

just returned from Texas

it's much warmer there

and it's about 5-10 degrees warmer in Austin than Dallas - better for playing golf in shorts

let's ALL move there

For the most part, that statement is highly accurate. Simple minds and all that.

(That is not an indictment of this place, mind you. Just a general observation.)

For the most part, that statement is highly accurate. Simple minds and all that.

(That is not an indictment of this place, mind you. Just a general observation.)

Agreed. The level of discourse here is miles ahead of a lot of other forums [incl. the Area 51 board here lol].

It might surprise you to know that a few years ago when the construction industry was in shambles and there was a proposed gov't program humorously called "cash for caulkers", I [as a pretty fervent libertarian] actually thought it was a really good targeted economic stimulus package. It had all of the following positive elements:
1) Many people don't live in their houses long enough for energy efficiency improvements to pay for themselves, and energy efficiency is not heavily valued in the home resale market enough to recoup investment upon sale. Thus, the net aggregate spending on energy efficiency is lower than would make sense if people stayed in a house long-term, making it a perfect opportunity for a subsidy.
2) Homes are durable goods, so the life cycle of many energy efficiency improvements is very long-term.
3) At the time, the people hardest hit by the recession were those in the construction/building trades. This would have been a great targeted way to get those people some work while the housing crisis worked itself through.
Lack of energy efficiency is a negative externality caused by high retrofit costs and a long payback horizon. If there was ever a reason to suggest that gov't subsidy might actually make sense, this is a perfect example.
Instead, the gov't decided to throw money into "cash for clunkers", destroying assets which increased the sale price of older used cars [thus hurting the low-income] in order to prop up the auto industry so that the people who weren't impacted by the recession could buy shiny new vehicles. Stupidity.

This is why energy efficiency incentive programs exist and many companies like the one I work for offer financing options, as well. The non-residential sectors (commercial, industrial, governmental, non-profits) are also the major focus of these programs and the companies involved in them, though residential programs exist, too. To your point, improving building codes in the first place is incredibly important, too.
On a tangential note, GM just announced that they're ready to manufacture autonomous vehicles to deploy next year (as I understand it, they will own them all), starting in San Francisco and Phoenix, unsurprisingly, where they've already been tested. It will be interesting to follow how quickly they are adopted and what happens. Eventually, car ownership will likely be obsolete except perhaps in very remote areas.