07-01-2017, 08:01 PM
(06-13-2017, 08:58 PM)Beaker Wrote: My take based upon logic and evidence provided by longer term info such as ice cores that give very accurate info going back hundreds of thousands of years, and fossilized stomata evidence that can go back millions of years is the following:
The earth has natural climate/temperature cycles.
Temperatures have been shown to have a very close correlation to CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
The normal cycling of CO2 levels has hardly ever exceeded 300 ppm in the Earth's atmosphere, and when they did, they just barely exceeded it. This was even during massive volcanic eruption times and other natural events that disperse large volumes of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
Since humans began burning fossil fuels, the levels of free CO2 in the atmosphere have been steadily increasing...the Earth can't recapture it at the rate we are emitting it.
CO2 levels in the atmosphere are now exceeding 400 ppm...a level which the Earth has never seen before as far as we can tell from all our methods of evidence.
With newer industrialized and high population nations coming online such as China and India, those levels will do nothing but rise due to the lack of regulations for emissions in those countries.
I don't believe humans are the sole cause of climate change, but the evidence shows that we are definitely contributing to a faster rate of change....and possibly a higher amount of temperature change than would occur naturally.
If we say man is the most intelligent creature on Earth, then that in effect means we should be stewards of the Earth for all other living things. The Earth is sending us clear cut signals that things are not healthy, yet we continue to debate it at the political level, instead of the common sense level.
Humans are contributing to climate change....there is no way we cannot be doing so.
No, not really. The 400ppm level is one that WE have never seen before. The earth certainly has seen in its history Co2 levels much higher. Ppm levels in the thousands.
This scant 120+ppm (.00012%) human caused increase of CO2 in the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution...from 280ppm to 400, is as someone put it "amounts to nothing more than fart in a hurricane".
When you have IPCC leaders clearly state that climate change policy is by which the global redistribution of wealth can be achieved, then it should cause eyebrows to raise even from good intentioned folks like you.
