Research sho there is no scientific debate about climate change

[Belsnickel]

(04-17-2016, 11:48 AM)Beaker Wrote: First, it has been repeatedly shown, both on Earth and other planets, that temperatures closely follow CO2 levels. So you can make the correlation with a high degree of certainty that when CO2 levels are high, temps are high, and vice versa. And there has been ice on the planet outside of ice ages. The polar caps have been around for the majority of Earth's history, ice age or not. Lastly, there are other methods of determining CO2 levels besides ice cores. Not all those methods result in statistical numbers, but give a pretty clea picture of CO2 levels throughout history.

That correlation of CO2 and temperature is not something I am disputing. As for the ice, I beg to differ. Ice starting forming on Antarctica about 40 million years ago, so less than 1% of Earth's history is potentially contained in the ice sheet there. The highest estimate I have seen for the Arctic sea ice pack has been 4 million, so we're dealing with less than 0.1%.

(04-17-2016, 11:48 AM)Beaker Wrote: One method is looking at the number of stomata on fossilized leaves. Those are the holes on the bottoms of leaves that take in CO2. Since the plant loses water when the holes are open to take in CO2, it is an evolutionary advantage to be able to survive with the least amount of stomata possible. When CO2 levels are high, plants have fewer stomata. When CO2 levels are low, the plants require more stomata to take in enough CO2 to conduct photosynthesis. Scientists can compare the number of stomata on fossilized leaves to modern day plants and plants fossilized during the times that we do have actual CO2 numbers and extrapolate the approximate CO2 levels at the time.

This is actually very interesting and I had no idea about this.

(04-17-2016, 11:48 AM)Beaker Wrote: The graph I posted was obviously a very simple representation of CO2 levels. But it was not meant to be the definitive say. It was simply posted to refute the most common climate change denier assertion that we are simply in a normal cycle of temps....when the levels of CO2 are clearly not within those normal cycle boundaries. You can find cyclic graphs that go back farther and have better data, but that one was fine to illustrate a point for most people.

I did look at one graph that showed periods within the last 400 million years with higher CO2 levels. Now, I can get behind the idea that what has occurred has been more rapid or has been caused by means beyond mother nature. But the claim that we are dealing with unprecedented CO2 levels on Earth is false based on that information. The chart you provide puts it at 400 ppm where this chart:


has some estimates putting it in the thousands.

Again, more playing devil's advocate here than anything else.