So I have a quick question about "global warming"

[vetrox]

For some reason I have been reading about greenhouse gasses and their various properties (i was originally looking at ozone for some reason. I have no idea how because i was trying to find out at what hight the atmosphere ends on kerbin with the resized planets mod)

One interesting thing i noted was these greenhouse gasses having an "atmospheric lifetime". Gasses do not "decay" but they have a lifetime due to being mixed with oceans, photosynthesis etc.

Onto the subject matter "Global warming". Now i put it in quote marks because i personally feel the name is a bit fear mongering. Although the basis of the media hype is true and co2 does make the earth warmer (laymans way of putting it) it also doesnt last forever.

According to the wiki article since the industrial revolution greenhouse gasses have increased by 40%. Now I'm going to assume a large portion of that increase happend at the peak of the revolution and that 21st century life is alot cleaner.

Now onto my question

The facts are, fossil fuels will run out so the extra co2 thats being produced will stop, to a degree, and the co2 that will have been produced will eventually "die" after roughly 100 years (i say roughly because there is no definitive way to measure)

So if we carry on burning fuels at our current rate until they run out (2050?) or are to expensive to find, mine and burn and take into account we have been burning these things since 1750's. There cant be much more of an increase in temperature to be had and afterwhich most of the gasses will "die"

Do we really have anything to worry about in the grand scheme of things. Would it be possible for us to burn so much as to make the world uninhabitable? From what i have read its the ozone that does all the damage (directly to humans), not the co2 (this is just the most common ghg attributing to increased temperature).

Say we do kill most of ourselves off we could return to normal (minus combustion engines) in 100 years or so?

EDIT: I'm no scientist. Just a guy who can read wiki articles. So dont condem me as some sort of heretic. If I have my facts wron please correct me in a mature fashion

Edited November 19, 2013 by vetrox

[Kryten]

There's no reason to believe CO₂ levels will return to the prior equilibrium level over timescales remotely that short. Absorption by the oceans is nearly negligible (at least in terms in greenhouse gasses, it's doing pretty nasty things to the ocean itself), and deforestation means the level locked up in plant material will never reach anything like what it was before the industrial revolution.

[mdatspace]

snipped

Greenhouse gas emissions have gone down in the US.

http://nation.time.com/2013/10/22/efficiency-natural-gas-keep-pushing-u-s-carbon-emissions-down/

Our emissions have gone down.

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-09-23/if-we-burn-all-the-fossil-fuels

From this article:"So here’s the lesson we need to learn from the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum. For global warming we can assume that 75% of it is from CO2, and the remaining 25% is from other greenhouse gasses like methane and nitrous oxide. If we burn all the fossil fuels we have left in the ground, that’s about 10-15,000Gt of carbon that we could put in the atmosphere.

That gives us 5x the CO2 from 1950, or 1,400ppm. This will give us 16oC of global warming. It will be a world where there’s an average temperature of 20oC on land and 30oC at the poles (the current average is 14oC). Keep in mind also, that 6oC of warming is generally enough for a mass extinction like the dinosaurs."

I do not have a lot of time to respond, so the rest will come later.

[vetrox]

There's no reason to believe CO₂ levels will return to the prior equilibrium level over timescales remotely that short..

The only reason i suggested it is because of

Atmospheric lifetime[edit]Aside from water vapor, which has a residence time of about nine days,[24] major greenhouse gases are well-mixed, and take many years to leave the atmosphere.[25] Although it is not easy to know with precision how long it takes greenhouse gases to leave the atmosphere, there are estimates for the principal greenhouse gases. Jacob (1999)[26] defines the lifetime of an atmospheric species X in a one-box model as the average time that a molecule of X remains in the box. Mathematically can be defined as the ratio of the mass (in kg) of X in the box to its removal rate, which is the sum of the flow of X out of the box (), chemical loss of X (), and deposition of X () (all in kg/s): .[26] If one stopped pouring any of this gas into the box, then after a time , its concentration would be about halved.

The atmospheric lifetime of a species therefore measures the time required to restore equilibrium following a sudden increase or decrease in its concentration in the atmosphere. Individual atoms or molecules may be lost or deposited to sinks such as the soil, the oceans and other waters, or vegetation and other biological systems, reducing the excess to background concentrations. The average time taken to achieve this is the mean lifetime.

Carbon dioxide has a variable atmospheric lifetime, and cannot be specified precisely.[27] The atmospheric lifetime of CO2 is estimated of the order of 30–95 years.[28] This figure accounts for CO2 molecules being removed from the atmosphere by mixing into the ocean, photosynthesis, and other processes. However, this excludes the balancing fluxes of CO2 into the atmosphere from the geological reservoirs, which have slower characteristic rates.[29] While more than half of the CO2 emitted is removed from the atmosphere within a century, some fraction (about 20%) of emitted CO2 remains in the atmosphere for many thousands of years.[30][31][32] Similar issues apply to other greenhouse gases, many of which have longer mean lifetimes than CO2. E.g., N2O has a mean atmospheric lifetime of 114 years.[19]

And mdatspace. Thanks i will give those a read in a bit.

Greenhouse gas emissions have gone down in the US.

http://nation.time.com/2013/10/22/efficiency-natural-gas-keep-pushing-u-s-carbon-emissions-down/

Our emissions have gone down.

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-09-23/if-we-burn-all-the-fossil-fuels

-snip-

I do not have a lot of time to respond, so the rest will come later.

Also

Keep in mind also, that 6oC of warming is generally enough for a mass extinction like the dinosaurs."

I was also thinking that with the advent of technology surely there could be some form of human life remaining. Although yes there would be species of plant and animals that would die out, Humanity may still be able to survive through the use technology?

EDIT: I snipped out some of my text. AS i was writing it a few things dawned on me that made my argument/opinion completley useless XD

Edited November 19, 2013 by vetrox
Removed small traces of my ignorance and grammar!

[Jim DiGriz]

So if we carry on burning fuels at our current rate until they run out (2050?) or are to expensive to find, mine and burn and take into account we have been burning these things since 1750's. There cant be much more of an increase in temperature to be had and afterwhich most of the gasses will "die"

There is quite a lot of coal in the ground, over 1000 GtC. CO2 response in ppm CO2 is roughly half of that value -- 500ppm CO2 just by burning all the coal. Pre-industrial CO2 levels were 275 ppm, we're now around 400ppm. That would kick it up to around 1000ppm CO2. You're correct that CO2 has a half-life of around 50 years in the atmosphere so it depends on how fast we burn it all up, but if you assume we are unrestrained in our acceleration of fossil fuel burning we can do that on the order of 50-ish years, and throw in oil and nat gas (and lets not talk about methane release from fraking nat gas) and 1000ppm CO2 is probably conservative. From paleoclimatology, the last time the Earth saw levels that high was roughly 40 million years ago -- and the Antarctic had melted.

Once you put the poles melting on the table, you get ice-albedo-feedback for one since the ice caps at the poles reflect radiation back into space, and that leads to further warning, so that even if you decrease the CO2 levels you have to take the time to re-freeze the whole Antarctica. There's also a feedback between high temperature as a cause and higher CO2 as an effect -- so that once temperature changes have taken hold, the biosphere actually produces more CO2 and doesn't wash it out as effectively, so you can't consider just the half life of CO2 without considering that you're bumping the equilibrium up to higher values all along the way. There are a whole lot of feedback loops that occur which make it likely that if we hit 1000ppm that the Himalayas will melt in 300 years or so, and Antarctica will be gone (probably on a longer timeframe like 1000 years, which is still a blink of a geological eye).

So, it will return, but it took 15 million years from the Eocene maximum until the Antarctica reglaciated.

And the globe was clearly habitable the whole time. We're not going to sterilize the planet through CO2 by any means. The problem is what kind of issues we cause ourselves in the meantime and what the cost is. Humanity will also survive (assuming we don't kill ourselves through strife and nuclear war or secondary effects like that). But far from having to worry about the Antarctic melting, we already are likely to have an ice-free Arctic in the summer months. There's evidence, and a strong reason to believe, that this is already changing weather patterns, and leading to very strong atmospheric blocking and a series of heat waves and (seemingly paradoxially) cold snaps, leading to a rapid rise in the number of billion-dollar weather disasters per year (more than can be accounted for just by land usage and inflation). You also dump more heat in the atmosphere and you energize weather systems. You have more moisture in the atmosphere so that rainfall is on average heavier -- and even snowstorms are on average heavier (they'll still occur and when they do they'll be more energetic). And then sealevel rise and inundation is terrible for communities living close to the sea (lots of them being very poor and not having any ability to mitigate the problem).

[vetrox]

-snip-

An informative post. Thanks.

Do you have any sources for this to hand at all? I would love to have a read?

Side question is there any way to turn carbon dioxide back into a 1 carbon and 2 oxgen? or just split it all apart then join the 2 oxygens? a way to artificially photosynthesise?

[Kerbart]

Side question is there any way to turn carbon dioxide back into a 1 carbon and 2 oxgen? or just split it all apart then join the 2 oxygens? a way to artificially photosynthesise?

The reason we ended up with all that CO2 was because the process of making it released a lot of (useful) energy. Obviously, undoing that will take a lot of energy.

[Jim DiGriz]

An informative post. Thanks.

Do you have any sources for this to hand at all? I would love to have a read?

Side question is there any way to turn carbon dioxide back into a 1 carbon and 2 oxgen? or just split it all apart then join the 2 oxygens? a way to artificially photosynthesise?

Best thing to do is to largely get off of the Internet, get away from the politics and start reading about climatology. A good start is here:

http://www.amazon.com/Earths-Climate-William-F-Ruddiman/dp/0716784904

That's a completely accessible undergrad-level introduction. If you want to get aggressive the graduate level text is here:

http://www.amazon.com/Paleoclimatology-Third-Edition-Reconstructing-Quaternary/dp/0123869137

You probably don't want to read this one, but for atmospheric physics and modelling:

http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Planetary-Climate-Raymond-Pierrehumbert/dp/0521865565

Then look for primary literature and published studies. For example, if you want to know about the relative strengths of man-made CO2 forcing vs solar activity, volcanism, aerosols, etc you can start here with a 2004 paper:

http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/publications/meehl_additivity.pdf

If you want to read what climate scientists say who are engaged in the political debate go to http://www.realclimate.org/ That site is bloggy and has a political bent, but if there's some global warming news that gets splashed all over Fox News, wait a few days and go see how real climate scientists tear apart the bad science.

If you have a particular "but what about argument X against global warming in mind?" you can probably start here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php Again, that site is necessarily more political, but the 'advanced' answers are typically well-referenced.

If you want hard statistical science with an unapologetic political edge to it go here: http://tamino.wordpress.com/

There was a really good online book about climatology that walked through the whole history of climatology from Arrhenius in 1896 to the present, but i had a bookmark catastrophe awhile back and haven't re-found that one...

And there's a whole subject of "geoengineeering" around what we could do if we assume that we're going to have rising CO2 levels and we have to meet that problem with some way to extract CO2 out of the atmosphere or to cool the planet via changing some other variable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering Most of those strategies are impractical, or the side-effects make them kinda sketchy. The most plausible way to scrub CO2 out of the atmosphere would be to dump iron in the ocean and cause massive plankton blooms and rather than artificially doing photosynthesis, just use the oceans to do it (leading to jellyfish explosions and causing a total collapse of the world's fisheries?). One guy has already started to try this as a bit of a geonengineering guerrilla: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_George

[Anton P. Nym]

According to the wiki article since the industrial revolution greenhouse gasses have increased by 40%. Now I'm going to assume a large portion of that increase happend at the peak of the revolution and that 21st century life is alot cleaner.

That assumption is wrong, alas. Though developed economies are using less carbon-intensive sources of power, developing economies haven't developed to the point they can afford to "go green"... and there are a lot of people in those developing economies. Fossil carbon emissions today are MUCH higher than they were in the 20th century because there are many more people doing the emitting. This'll get better when developing economies get to the point that they have the surplus capital to invest in more renewables and as the cost of low-carbon power sources drops, but right now we're burning more than ever.

-- Steve

[falofonos]

Side question is there any way to turn carbon dioxide back into a 1 carbon and 2 oxgen? or just split it all apart then join the 2 oxygens? a way to artificially photosynthesise?

There are some engineers working on solar powered photosynthesizing machines.

They're not technically more efficient at the co2 conversion and they're expensive to produce but progress marches on and the threat of extinction is a fairly good motivator to some folk at least.

[Maxwell Comp]

Speaking of reducing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, Shell is working on carbon capture technology. See Shell's website on climate change. The paragraph at the top of the page is amazing and I cite it any time someone tries to debate climate change with me.

It may prove more cost-effective to store carbon underground in the future; it's not an ideal way to handle it, but it is better than releasing it all into the atmosphere. Also, natural gas releases less greenhouse gas than coal, so it is a preferred alternative. The fossil fuel in danger of running out is oil; coal is still plentiful, and I think that the US estimates that it has a 300 year supply based on known domestic reserves.

Regarding the ozone layer, my very limited knowledge is that it helps filter the ultraviolet light from the sun. Excess ultraviolet light is linked to skin cancer and sunburn. I'm sure you know that the ozone layer is harmed by CFC's, but here's a not-quite-fun-fact: the man who invented CFC's also invented leaded gasoline, which put large amounts of toxic lead into the atmosphere. He had good intentions, but a very unfortunate legacy.

[peadar1987]

One of the main problems is with "feedback loops". Increased CO2 warms the atmosphere, that's not up for debate, it happens. What's less clear is the extent to which it will do so, and the magnitude of these feedback loops.

The loops are things such as CO2 stored in the ocean, water vapour, and methane trapped in permafrost. We heat up the planet by maybe 0.2 degrees with anthropogenic CO2, as an example, a load of CO2 outgasses from the ocean, the fraction of water vapour in the atmosphere increases, and some methane is released from the permafrost. These are all greenhouse gases, and cause more heating of the planet, which cause more greenhouse gases to be released, which cause more warming, and when things eventually stabilise, we've seen a heck of a lot more than 0.2 degrees of warming.

[Requiem762]

Sound theory but the big concern over global warming is the side effects like super storms, rising sea levels leaving Whole islands underwater, and droughts. All of this could displace hundreds of thousands and millions could go hungry from famine. Not to mention that if we don't start building a green infrastructure while we are weening ourselves of oil then we could end up having a few resource wars.

Not trying to scare monger or tow some party line just stating potential results.

[magnemoe]

Speaking of reducing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, Shell is working on carbon capture technology. See Shell's website on climate change. The paragraph at the top of the page is amazing and I cite it any time someone tries to debate climate change with me.

It may prove more cost-effective to store carbon underground in the future; it's not an ideal way to handle it, but it is better than releasing it all into the atmosphere. Also, natural gas releases less greenhouse gas than coal, so it is a preferred alternative. The fossil fuel in danger of running out is oil; coal is still plentiful, and I think that the US estimates that it has a 300 year supply based on known domestic reserves.

Regarding the ozone layer, my very limited knowledge is that it helps filter the ultraviolet light from the sun. Excess ultraviolet light is linked to skin cancer and sunburn. I'm sure you know that the ozone layer is harmed by CFC's, but here's a not-quite-fun-fact: the man who invented CFC's also invented leaded gasoline, which put large amounts of toxic lead into the atmosphere. He had good intentions, but a very unfortunate legacy.

Storing CO2 don't work very well as both the co2 cleaning and storing uses lots of energy so you have to burn more to get the extra energy.

The only setting where it might work is if you burn gas close to the well and pump the co2 down to increase gas pressure to extract more gas.

CO2 storage also have safety issues, you know an gas deposit is stable as the gas has stayed where for millions of years.

[K^2]

The loops are things such as CO2 stored in the ocean, water vapour, and methane trapped in permafrost. We heat up the planet by maybe 0.2 degrees with anthropogenic CO2, as an example, a load of CO2 outgasses from the ocean, the fraction of water vapour in the atmosphere increases, and some methane is released from the permafrost. These are all greenhouse gases

Here is a very useful graphic.

Look at the total absorption spectrum. Everywhere water vapor can make a difference, it's already saturated. More or less water vapor in atmosphere makes no difference. Methane isn't on here, but here is a graph, a bit less precise, that puts it into picture. So methane doesn't make a difference either.

CO2 is really the only worrisome one, and even it is saturated in places where it could do most damage. On the graph, you can see several small peaks near 10 microns. That's all that's going to contribute to global temperature increase as carbon dioxide concentrations increase.

We also have some mechanisms to keep CO2 concentrations in check. Specifically, the biosphere. Biomass increases as the CO2 concentration does, and typically, amount of carbon in biomass is roughly equal to that in atmosphere. Since the rate at which carbon from atmosphere is fixed into the biomass is directly proportional to the biomass, and anthropogenic CO2 output is on the order of 10% of total, we have a good resource there still.

Another thing to keep in mind, the reason C4 pathway has evolved and started displacing C3 pathway is CO2 deficiency. Most of the plants, including most agriculturally significant plants, are CO2 concentration limited. Increasing CO2 concentrations would result in increased yields in most food crops.

Basically, the environment responds to our increased CO2 output with increase in food production and ability to absorb CO2. The total human output can roughly double without running any risk of a runaway effect, and while weather pattern changes are possible, things like world-wide hunger that alarmists like to scare everyone is are not in the cards. Just the opposite.

[Jim DiGriz]

Speaking of reducing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, Shell is working on carbon capture technology. See Shell's website on climate change. The paragraph at the top of the page is amazing and I cite it any time someone tries to debate climate change with me.

CCS is expensive, a chunk of the energy the plant produces needs to go back into capturing the CO2 and would roughly double the cost of electricity generation in the US, plus you have to ensure that CCS really sequesters it and it will not leak, there's the same risk of causing earthquakes as fraking (which probably means insurance costs gets interesting), and then it hasn't been demonstrated on a commercial scale yet. If all the problems were sorted out with it, it'd be great, but none of that looks very appealing right now.

[Jim DiGriz]

One of the main problems is with "feedback loops". Increased CO2 warms the atmosphere, that's not up for debate, it happens. What's less clear is the extent to which it will do so, and the magnitude of these feedback loops.

A lower bounds on the magnitude is pretty easy to get to from looking at the feedback loops that are required to explain the ice ages. We know they're driven by Milankovich cycles driven by orbital variations, precession, etc in the Earth, but the effects on solar insolation alone don't give enough of a response to cause the observed temperature shifts in the ice age temperature record. The lower limit isn't up for much debate.

There is always the chance that we melt methane clathrites in the Ocean and cause a PETM-type event in which case you have a (geologically) sudden and massive positive feedback loop, so the upper bound on feedback are fairly unlimited.

[Jim DiGriz]

Here is a very useful graphic.

Look at the total absorption spectrum. Everywhere water vapor can make a difference, it's already saturated. More or less water vapor in atmosphere makes no difference. Methane isn't on here, but here is a graph, a bit less precise, that puts it into picture. So methane doesn't make a difference either.

CO2 is really the only worrisome one, and even it is saturated in places where it could do most damage. On the graph, you can see several small peaks near 10 microns. That's all that's going to contribute to global temperature increase as carbon dioxide concentrations increase.

That is at sea level. You're raising an argument that is over 100 years old. Arrhenius first postulated that CO2 increases could lead to a warming climate in 1896, and Angstrom in 1900 raised the problem that you cite here that water vapor saturates the IR spectra and that increasing CO2 will not result in any change in emissivity. The problem is the CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere from the surface high into the stratosphere and in the 1950s studies by the USAF and meteorological studies found that the stratosphere was very dry. At that level, increasing CO2 will block IR, and if you block IR at any level of the atmosphere you create a thermal blanket effect which warms the levels below it.

See the entire discussion here on the history of the CO2 greenhouse effect, and its references: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

We can also use satellites to measure both incoming and outgoing radiation and we can see that its not in balance so can observe the greenhouse effect, and we can use satellites to watch the IR lines for CO2 get wider as CO2 levels increase. eg: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html

We also have some mechanisms to keep CO2 concentrations in check. Specifically, the biosphere. Biomass increases as the CO2 concentration does, and typically, amount of carbon in biomass is roughly equal to that in atmosphere. Since the rate at which carbon from atmosphere is fixed into the biomass is directly proportional to the biomass, and anthropogenic CO2 output is on the order of 10% of total, we have a good resource there still.

We know from the ice age records, though, that there's positive feedback loops running between temperature and CO2, though, and that the biosphere doesn't stabilize CO2 like that. We're also chopping down the Amazon and causing massive peat fires, so we're actively reducing any effect of the biosphere to mediate our CO2 release.

Another thing to keep in mind, the reason C4 pathway has evolved and started displacing C3 pathway is CO2 deficiency. Most of the plants, including most agriculturally significant plants, are CO2 concentration limited. Increasing CO2 concentrations would result in increased yields in most food crops.

Assuming the crops aren't wiped out by massive weather disasters.

Basically, the environment responds to our increased CO2 output with increase in food production and ability to absorb CO2. The total human output can roughly double without running any risk of a runaway effect, and while weather pattern changes are possible, things like world-wide hunger that alarmists like to scare everyone is are not in the cards. Just the opposite.

Those are some wildly confident assertions with nothing to back them up.

[vetrox]

Thanks so far to the structured responses. With so many different variables and effects its hard to know whats what.

Although I've learned probably more usefull information here than anyone ever could by watching the "news"

Jim DiGriz thanks. I will try and find a copy of some of that (with the past and future climates book anyway)

I prefer to know the facts rather than be told various peoples opinions. I'm not bothered about the political side of things i just wanted to know about the various gasses, how they can be removed, what causes them to form (its not just our cars that do it, which i knew anyway but theres people that think only cars produce co2 causing global warming (they do release smaller quantaties of other harmfull gasses to you know)

Feel free to carry on with the discussion but I've got plenty of material to research and read up on. Im a curious kinda guy like that. I doubt it would benefit me in any way I just like to know. It saves me so much time by you guys linking me some of this stuff and its mroe informative than just reading a wiki article

Edited November 20, 2013 by vetrox

[vetrox]

Assuming the crops aren't wiped out by massive weather disasters.

This reminds me. Does anyone have a link or know of a book that has a study of the greenhouse effect and its effects on the weather? Im not condoning the idea that "global warming" causes mega natural disasters I just want it explained to me.

[K^2]

That is at sea level. You're raising an argument that is over 100 years old. Arrhenius first postulated that CO2 increases could lead to a warming climate in 1896, and Angstrom in 1900 raised the problem that you cite here that water vapor saturates the IR spectra and that increasing CO2 will not result in any change in emissivity. The problem is the CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere from the surface high into the stratosphere and in the 1950s studies by the USAF and meteorological studies found that the stratosphere was very dry. At that level, increasing CO2 will block IR, and if you block IR at any level of the atmosphere you create a thermal blanket effect which warms the levels below it.

And if you understand anything about how the "thermal blanket" effect works, you should realize that it's only relevant in the troposphere. "Greenhouse" is a terrible misnomer, since the actual greenhouse works completely differently. Upper troposphere is not particularly moist either, but still well within water vapor saturation.

We can also use satellites to measure both incoming and outgoing radiation and we can see that its not in balance so can observe the greenhouse effect, and we can use satellites to watch the IR lines for CO2 get wider as CO2 levels increase. eg: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html

They are balanced. They cannot be imbalanced. If they were imbalanced by a tiny fraction, we'd be cooked already.

And again, CO2 concentrations in stratosphere are irrelevant, and these are the main contributions to the IR lines. Temperature there is inverted, so if anything, IR opacity can help cool the planet.

We know from the ice age records, though, that there's positive feedback loops running between temperature and CO2, though, and that the biosphere doesn't stabilize CO2 like that.

There is a correlation between CO2 concentrations and temperature. That's all the records show, and nobody's arguing about it.

We're also chopping down the Amazon and causing massive peat fires, so we're actively reducing any effect of the biosphere to mediate our CO2 release.

And peats help bind carbon how? Amazon jungles are a factor, and yet every measurement done shows that total biosphere mass has been growing in the past decades. Take a look at pretty much any NDVI data to see that we've been increasing amount of land vegetation despite what we do to the forests. Ocean biosphere is a bit harder to estimate, but indication is that we aren't doing any worse there either.

Assuming the crops aren't wiped out by massive weather disasters.

"Changing patterns" and "weather disasters" are different things. You might as well say, "If we aren't wiped out by an asteroid," and blame that on greenhouse gasses too.

Those are some wildly confident assertions with nothing to back them up.

Yes, because there is such great evidence for looming "weather disasters"... People who claim that stuff don't even understand enough thermodynamcis to know what can and cannot change global temperatures. All I'm saying is that we aren't doing anything worse than this planet has already been through and thrived.

[drakesdoom]

Am I the only one that does not care if things get worse weather wise? Honestly look around people are bored, and people do really stupid destructive things when they are bored. Historically the only time people have not been fighting in their own backyard is when they are fighting in the neighbors backyard. Not to mention technological progress is accelerated under stress.

Personally I think massive coastal flooding, Megahurricanes, and blizzards that last weeks would be healthy for humankind as a whole. Colonizing mars would be better but no one seems to want to step to bat on that one.

[Tw1]

. All I'm saying is that we aren't doing anything worse than this planet has already been through and thrived.

True, but these changes are very rapid. I'm more concerned about the loss of ecosystems than bad weather, particularly sensitive ones like reefs. Sure, the world will still be here, add may bounce back if given the chance, but not without loosing lots of cool things we have around us already.

For example, I enjoy swimming at the beach in summer, yet a few degrees warmer, and I will have deadly box jellyfish arriving at my local beach. Sea level rise, even small, requires a lot of change to coastal infrastructure. We will survive, but not without many problems.

And isn't it that plants put more energy into toxins when you increase the CO2 levels?

[PakledHostage]

Yes, because there is such great evidence for looming "weather disasters"... People who claim that stuff don't even understand enough thermodynamcis to know what can and cannot change global temperatures.

All people who claim "that stuff", or only some of them? Can you please expand?

[Sternface]

Honestly, I'm of the opinion that global warming is more about politics than science.

For example, the accepted "scientific" mathematical models were not only completely wrong the last 15 years, during which time the Earth has actually cooled or stayed the same, and during which time Antarctic ice has actually grown and reached record levels, but they fail to model past weather which is known!

I believe they place far too much emphasis on CO2 in their models.

The reason why this smells political is because the bureaucracies involved are reluctant to publish any material which suggests that global warming is wrong.

Science doesn't toss out data because it doesn't fit the model...they change the model to fit the data.

There is also a lot of money involved with industrial carbon regulation and credits. Like most political things, follow the money. If this were purely science, you would follow the data...

Now, do I believe in climate change? Of course. The Earth used to have an atmosphere of hydrogen cyanide, and endless tropical oceans. As for right now, I believe we are still coming out of the last mini ice age (did you know that 1000 years ago, Greenland used to be green?). And when the Earth comes out of an ice age, it tends to gradually warm up.

The question is not whether or not the climate is changing, but whether or not humans are playing a large role in this change, and in a direction which would not naturally occur. Honestly, the idea that humans could affect something of this magnitude comes off as pretty striking arrogance.

But I'm open to being wrong. Just my opinion on the matter.

The reason why it bothers me is that it causes people to ignore very real, but less dramatic consequences of pollution. Mercury in seafood being one example.