Rushinbear said:
AunBear89 said:
Rushinbear said:
AunBear89 said:
DUH...
Well played. 2%/98%, perhaps. Perhaps.
Or 3%/97%. Or 16%/84%. Or 51%/49%. See - I can pull random numbers out of my arse, too. It's that kind of rigorous discussion that we have come to expect from climate deniers. Just make stuff up...
I'm not denying; just saying that mankind's impact is insignificant compared to Nature's.
Wadda you got?
https://freedomsfoundry.com/2019/06/12/the-whole-climate-story/
Rushin
If you want a genuine, scientific opinion, you aren't going to find it in a publication with "freedom" in the title. You aren't going to find it in an article that uses language like:
Quote:
But, we should not bankrupt ourselves and our nation to assuage a false guilt perpetrated by politicians and corrupted scientists. We need to be smarter than that.
That goes on both sides.
This article uses a lot of misconceptions and also takes a lot of true information that no scientists would disagree with and than applies it completely incorrectly. My guess is that a lot of the scientists they are citing would be ticked off at being cited for these propositions as that is true of almost any anti-climate change position piece. We aren't going to get answers from posting on a football board. I'm not a climate specialist. I do have a reasonable background in evolution which required me to understand different climates of different periods and that helps to understand how these arguments are misleading. If you really want to get at the issue, take this post and check what I'm telling you against actual climate scientists, not ones who are calling people names on either side.
Has the earth been warmer? Yes. Has the earth been a lot warmer? Yes.
Has the earth been colder? yes. Has the earth been a lot colder? Yes.
Does the earth's temperature fluctuate? Yes.
No one ever denied any of those facts. They do not tell the story.
Geologic and Evolutionary time frames are VERY SLOOOOOOOOOOOW. The issue is not that the earth is warming. It is that it is warming very fast. It is exceedingly rare for the earth's temperatures to change this fast. As in it happens when there are global catastrophes. Like periods of massive volcanic activity. When we talk about temperature fluctuations we are talking about over tens of thousands of years. For instance, in our current period of like half a million years, we are fluctuating between glacial and interglacial periods. We've had 5 major periods of heating. Those have occurred on the low end over 10,000 years and on the high end like 90,000 years. The temperatures in these periods of extreme heating have increased about half a degree to one degree EVERY THOUSAND YEARS. For instance, starting about 150,000 years ago the earth went through a dramatic period of heating where it heated about one degree fahrenheit every thousand years for 20,000 years. During that period of time, much of Africa became almost uninhabitable. The human species almost snuffed it right there, clinging to life on coastlines and very few other places (a fact that is demonstrated by a significant lack of genetic variation that shows we went through an evolutionary bottleneck at that time). Some think humans were reduced to a population of hundreds during this time.
Over the past 140 years the earth's temp has gone up 2 degrees. That is exceptionally fast. It has gone up almost a degree and a half in the past 40 years. That is flash gordon fast. Keep in mind that the last glacial period was the result of a 2 degree cooling over a much longer period of time.
The sun absolutely impacts the temperature of the earth. And over the past 50 years, the energy from the sun that has hit the earth has DROPPED slightly. Further, fluctuation in the sun's energy changes the temperature of the earth at every layer of the atmosphere. And yet the warming of the earth is taking place in the lower atmosphere only and the upper atmosphere has actually cooled somewhat as would be predicted by the energy drop from the sun.
Carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gasses are in fact a small portion of the atmosphere by volume. I'm not sure why that is relevant. It takes a tiny fraction of cyanide compared to your body volume to kill you dead in seconds. So? Carbon dioxide levels have risen almost 50%. The difference in those levels is almost entirely predictable by the amount of Carbon dioxide human activities are releasing. The increase in temperature is almost entirely predictable by the activity of excess greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
Why does it matter? Because temperature changes at this speed changes the environment rapidly. It changes things faster than species can evolve or adapt or migrate. They die out rapidly.
To be frank, the earth doesn't care. The earth took an asteroid hit that wiped out almost all animal life. And when the temperatures stabilized a handful of mangy little rats looked out on an earth filled with almost endless niches to fill and had a 65 million year party. Earth will be fine.
But when you want to look at the cost of preventing climate change you should look at the cost of not preventing climate change. Because it is going to get you one place or the other. So, be ready for more extreme polar vortexes where Texas freezes over. Be ready for California to get a few degrees hotter, increasing the evaporation rates in the summer and causing bigger forest fires. Be ready for hurricanes to be more powerful. Be ready to start building more water breaks and flood control in the bulk of our cities that are on coasts. Be ready for more droughts in some areas and heavier rainy seasons in others. At the end of the day, if you do not want to accept that man is causing the climate to change, fine. But the climate is changing and these are the results of that climate change. So if you don't want to reduce greenhouse emissions, okay. But either way you need to prepare for what is coming.
Look, Rushin. As far as I'm concerned, humans are not good at this. We will sit in this pot of water like the metaphorical frog not noticing while it boils to death (frogs don't really do that, by the way). I came to the conclusion years ago that scientists better be working on methods to extract or otherwise eliminate greenhouse gas from the atmosphere to bring it down to normal levels. Because I don't believe we are going to do enough about this other than argue and point the finger at others and ask why we should do something when someone else won't. Hell, maybe technology saves us and carbon based energy sources just become obsolete on their own accord. I doubt it with how fast temps are increasing. So as far as I'm concerned we are buying time until the scientists come to a solution and we hope that solution doesn't accidentally destroy the atmosphere.