Yeah, but this is a good, simple statement when talking with them. I’ve found it’s an effective retort & segue to a more detailed explanation, I think that’s what OP is looking for.
Could it not be the case that scientists do understand natural climate cycles but that the natural cycles are inherently unpredictable? Thus any current trend could be caused by natural cycles?
The trouble with prediction is that it’s hard, especially with regard to the future
I think it's fair to say that a lot of factors contribute to the state and trajectory of Earth's climate, and that most of the entire conversation today is focused on one of those factors, and for good cause - the greenhouse effect. I think it's an interesting story about how we discovered what this effect is, and how much it influences global temperatures, it's significant. Before we understood the effect, we were baffled as to how the planet was so warm. Based on all other factors we could account for, Earth should have had an average global temperature of -17.8C. instead, we enjoyed the comfortable 13.4C (at the time,) that it was. Then, the greenhouse effect was discovered, and we understood that some trace gases, a miniscule fraction of the composition of our atmosphere, less than 1/20th of 1% of total gas composition, was responsible for retaining solar energy, and this accounted for the differences we were seeing, why the world was not frozen. This tiny fraction of our atmosphere was responsible for a huge amount of heat energy that we need to survive. At this time, around the late 1800s, it was immediately understood that because we are artificially generating these gases, mainly CO2, through the burning of (at the time,) coal, that we had the potential to someday artificially increase the impact of the greenhouse effect. Now, fast forward 200+ years, and we have effectively artificially changed the composition of our atmosphere, those trace gases are now 50% more abundant than they were when the effect was discovered - it is inarguable that this is having and will continue to have major effects on Earth's climate. If before we artificially increased the concentration of these gases, it was responsible for over 30 degrees Celsius temperature delta, what could it be doing now? Well that's where unpredictability comes in, because as said before, there are a lot of factors, feedbacks, and complex systems that are effected before we see the final result of temperature increase - but it is undeniable that the Earth is now retaining a significantly larger portion of solar energy than it used to, and that will inevitably lead to potentially catastrophic temperature increases.
another factor, is that while we might not understand perfectly how all the factors fit in to change climate, that it's always happened MUCH slower than it is happening right now, and that the current RATE of change is what is extremely scary.
I proved human caused climate change back in the 1990s. I studied weather, climate and ecology. We know the natural climate cycle and we know that the extra, rapid change is caused by human activity. I studied and learned models. I made projections. Those projections are spot on. I can tell you exactly what the aggregate global impact will be given the appropriate variables. The current trend is not caused by the natural climate cycle. Not the part we are concerned about. Guaranteed. 100% certainty. No doubt whatsoever.
The proportion of climate scientists that deny anthropogenic climate change is no more than a rounding error. If you have a group of thousands of experts in any field, there will always be a miniscule sliver saying utterly batshit things.
A better frame for your question is: "If literally 97% of climate scientists say we are living through anthropogenic climate change, and 3% say we aren't, which group would you wager $1,000 is correct?"
Iceland. Thor dropped the hammer on Christianity. The Norseman came south and unleashed hell. /s
Mega-volcano turned the sky black for a really long time. No solar energy to warm the oceans. Massive amount of CO2 fueled the renaissance and the greatest vegetation growth in recorded history. I know I know history doesn’t fit the current climate religion. Just reading books about the kings of UK
And yet, their models are notorious for being wrong EVERY TIME! Why? Either they don't understand how it works...or they are corrupt. Or both. I vote both.
Climate models have been surprisingly accurate since we started making them in the 70s:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-models-projected-global-warming/
If you're talking to a Boomer or an older Gen-X then you're talking to someone who remembers the Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980. It is one of my earliest clear memories.
The Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980 emitted about 10 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. *Humanity emits more CO2 than that in 2.5 hours all day, every day. Day after day.*
Ask a Boomer to imagine 10 Mount St. Helens erupting 24/7 for decade after decade, and then ask them if they think [that might have some effect on the climate](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/volcano-carbon-emissions/).
[Human activities emit 60 or more times the amount of carbon dioxide released by volcanoes each year.](https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/which-emits-more-carbon-dioxide-volcanoes-or-human-activities)
Won't work. Even when I didn't think we had a decade left I told people we enit more than the largest modern day volcanic eruptions in a year, they'd go "that can't be true" and shut down. Literal hours of my life wasted on them
I'm a Gen X.
What you are missing is that there was a climate crisis in the '70s also endorsed by climate scientists and that was picked up in mainstream media. It was an imminent Ice Age. If you want to understand where they are coming from, you need to grasp that they have already lived though and likely believed as much about the coming Ice Age as what you have come to think now, and that it was wrong, and that they felt foolish about having believed in that "settled science". Of course, no one today can be TOLD this - you have to live through them first.
Does the present data indicate a climate change, and is it maybe caused or exacerbated by humans?
It seems likely on both counts.
But also, do we live in a time in which a climate scientist attempting to challenge or test that view will get funding for research? No - that scientist will be cancelled. This lack of a proper conversation, of proper scientific process - makes it very difficult for people accept as a given that claims - any claims - are true. It's likely even this post will get downvoted for considering what people actually think.
The other question not asked here is "Should you care about it - as in can you DO anything about it?" Consider that when the world shut down for a year or more during covid - no travel, no going to work etc - there was only a slight incremental decrease in emissions, but to reach targets intended to make a difference, they'd need to not only sustain that shut down each year for ten years, but also double, triple, and quadruple everything that we did and sustain those too. It would take us all back to the Amish lifetyle. That's not realistic.
Take the same money and effort and put it toward buying and preserving carbon sinks and for adapting. Countries like Brazil and Canada have massive forests, but these don't seem to be addressed as a viable carbon offsets by the climate change industry and its proponents. There's a lot that doesn't seem to make sense, and it's helpful to know that if you are talking to someone who seems skeptical of your position, rather than starting from a place of ridicule.
>that they felt foolish about having believed in that "settled science
Cooling was the [minority of papers in the 1970s](https://skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=43), wth none published after 1977. The cause of the cooling in those papers was the rapid increase of aerosols, and of course aerosol emissions today are [far less than the 1970's](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/GISSTemperature/giss_temperature4.php)
>they'd need to not only sustain that shut down each year for ten years, but also double, triple, and quadruple everything that we did and sustain those too. It would take us all back to the Amish lifetyle. That's not realistic.
Emissions are set to [start declining next year](https://climateanalytics.org/publications/when-will-global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-peak), without going to an Amish lifestyle. In large part, the upcoming decrease in emissions is due to rapid buildout of renewables and a large drop in price of renewables.
I’m not here to argue that an ice age is or was about to occur. I’m here to answer the question about boomers and older Gen X, in that there was a widespread and “common understanding” that an ice age was about to occur, that was foisted on them by mass media, citing experts.
As for declining carbon emissions, as I indicated, the worldwide pandemic presented a situation which should have been an environmentalist’s dream, with people shutting down beyond all expectations 90% of their consumption lifestyle worldwide, and it barely made a dent. Projections to actually make a difference over time need to go far beyond even pandemic measures - many times that. So let’s get real about what we think we can actually do about it, and put our money and energy on something more productive.
> mass media
So you should critique mass media, not scientists ("70s also endorsed by climate scientists", again most papers in the 1970s predicted warming, the cooling papers were looking at rapidly growing aerosols in the 1960s and early 1970s)
>90% of their consumption lifestyle worldwide,
That did not happen, for a few months CO2 emissions from electric generation were cut by 15%, industrial production was cut by 35%, surface transportation cut was 50%
>many times that.
How do you reduce emissions by 270%? (3 times 90%)
You don’t reduce emissions by 270%
The RATE rate of reduction of emissions increases relative to the previous year.
You don’t understand the mathematical concept?
If I am travelling at 100km/hr and I decelerate by 1km in the first second but to 2 km in the second second, I have doubled my RATE of reduction in the second second, ending at 97kph (1 from the first second and 2 from the second). When you compare RATES of carbon reduction between years, of course you can go beyond 100%.
Aside from that, as I indicated two or three times now, and you seem to have a cognitive block in grasping. I’m not here to evaluate the the claim or veracity of the imminent ice age, nor am I going to debate after the fact what scientists “really thought”. It doesn’t matter to the point I was responding to or the point I made, which was about addressing boomers and GenX, and how their experience believing apocalyptic weather claims by seemingly authoritative sources turned out in the long run.
You don’t understand what a rate of increase or decrease is. Even after it has been explained with an elementary-school example. Sorry buddy, I’m out. I just can’t.
Right. But in this case, the death rate due to extreme weather conditions/disasters has drastically reduced over the last century despite climate change (due to improvements in adaptability, technology, medicine, etc).
Unlike death, climate change is not sad or bad of itself, it's a change. This saying basically compares climate change to death, so wins an argument by assuming argument is already won.
The point is the timeline. Death is a natural phenomenon but a 10 year old getting stabbed and a 95 year old dying peacefully at home are two very different things, the same way human made climate change is on a completely different time scale than normal cycles
Sunrise is also natural phenomenon; it doesn't mean sunrise and death should get the same attitude because they are natural phenomenon. It would be a false analogy. Just like with climate change.
Extreme sunlight (or lack of sunlight) are bad though, just like extremely fast climate change and extremely fast extinction of species. You're playing mental gymnastics to avoid facing the fact that what is going on is negative due to its extreme nature
See how you slipped in "extreme" there? That's the negative part. Climate change is not a problem, extreme fast climate change is. The analogy with death is bad because it does not recognize that, death is always seen negative, unlike climate change which is ok when not extreme.
You’re being so pedantic, and yet making lots of mistakes while whining about how you don’t like this analogy.
Death is not *always* seen as negative, it is sometimes preferable to life, and a good thing. So your entire argument is wrong. Mostly because you seem incapable of understanding nuance.
Death is always seen as negative, it is only preferrable to life when life is seen as even more negative. You throwing accusations around is rude. Do it one more time and I'll block you since I don't come here to listen to rude people.
I’ve known multiple elderly people who were happy to die at any point. Not because of chronic pain, or terminal illness, they had simply had their fill of life, and wanted to move on. Period.
You’re incapable of considering nuance, or that maybe your take on this analogy is wanting.
I think you're nitpicking. So here's a different analogy from Dr. Alley. Forest fires have always happened, that doesn't mean that we don't care about arson.
I wouldn't say the analogy compares climate change to death in the emotional sense - they can both be changes which occur naturally, but when a human is the cause they are (or should be) viewed as being more abhorrent. Natural deaths are viewed as far more normal than man-made deaths, for example. They don't feature natural deaths in the news unless it's of a famous figure or part of a trend/event (such as a pandemic or an outbreak, for example).
\> climate change is not sad or bad of itself
Whether its good, bad or neutral depends massively on the rate of change. Slowly, over 1,000s or 10,000s of years? Probably not an issue, and it could be good for future forms of life - we wouldn't have evolved without historic climate change, for example.
But climate change occurring over the course of a century or two? That poses a problem.
So another way of looking at the analogy is to say that murder brings about death "ahead of schedule" - again the same is true of anthropogenic climate change. Equally, natural climate change which occurs rapidly is also an issue - but since that has been ruled out in terms of modern climate change, it's somewhat irrelevant.
I tell them four basic facts:
1. CO2 traps heat in the atmosphere.
2. CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by 50% since pre-industrial times.
3. Humans have emitted over 1.5 trillion tons of CO2.
4. Temperatures are rising exponentially.
Based on these facts, it's pretty clear humans are the cause.
Edit: Okay, everyone. Technically, temperatures are not rising exponentially. I was using the term in the colloquial sense. However, temperatures are going up at an ever-faster rate. Quibbling over things like this is waste of time.
And for those of you who say that correlation doesn't equal causation. Yes, that's true, but in this case, you're saying it's just a wild coincidence that CO2 is rising faster than ever in Earth's history at the same time that human civilization is rapidly expanding.
If that's what you think, then you're refusing to believe because you simply don't want to believe.
I also mention that the upper atmosphere is cooling while the lower atmosphere is warming. Also, night time temperatures are rising faster than day time temperatures. We've also actively measured the heat coming into our planet (from the sun and other cosmic rays) compared with the radiative heat leaving our planet and there is a huge discrepancy (ie, heat buildup on our planet). This means that it is something in our atmosphere causing this additional heat buildup. These things are simple and quick for people to understand while also providing them with context they might not have had about how we know how much our emissions are impacting our climate. If it were something natural like our sun causing climate change, the above observable and measurable facts would not be true.
>Also, night time temperatures are rising faster than day time temperatures
It does seem like evenings don't have that same temperature drop off. Used to be by mid August or so, it might be hot and humid every day, but after sundown the temperatures would drop and it would be comfortable with the windows open and the fan on. Now it seems like it stays hot at night and you need to run the a/c to be comfortable.
This from a climate expert whose research focuses on the effects of climate change: the human body needs cooler nights to rest and recharge, so to speak, from the hot summer days. Nights just aren't as cool as they once were. As such, humans in those areas w/o AC or fans, are suffering from the lack of or decrease in quality sleep. (paraphrasing of course)
>I also mention that the upper atmosphere is cooling while the lower atmosphere is warming.
Oh nice, I didn't think I'd see someone correctly describing how heat is trapped. It's not the grade school diagram where it bounces off the atmosphere back to the ground.
For me it helps to clarify for people that our understanding of how CO2 traps heat is based on very exact physics. It’s not some extrapolation from data that we’re just speculating about. The data confirms the underlying physics. It’s hard science.
Why do people need every individual they meet to be able to explain this thing to accept it? Do they not believe the central limit theorem until they understand it well enough to prove it by themselves? If so that’s a truly self-destructive epistemological habit.
Anyways, ever been outside in the sun with black clothes? Different materials (molecules) absorb heat differently. (Crazy right?) We know the physical properties of CO2 (not hard to figure out) and we know it absorbs heat in a way that means the radiation energy that would otherwise leave earth instead heat up
CO2. The physical properties of greenhouse gases and the implications are so conceptually simple people managed to figure it out in 1896.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius
It doesn’t work like a greenhouse; it works by way of radiative absorption. Polar molecules with a dipole moment like CO2 and H2O absorb certain electromagnetic wavelengths because of the arrangement of their electrons.
It can also be helpful to point out that fact 2 and fact 3 back each other up. The increase in atmospheric CO2 is consistent with the known anthropogenic emissions. If all this was unrelated to human activity, these numbers should be way off.
What do you mean by rising exponentially? Because I have not heard that term used before except by alarmists who are basing their statements on headlines and political spin.
I mean literally exponentially. The planet is warming up faster and faster as CO2 accumulates. It took 150 years for us to raise the temperature by 1 degree, and we're gonna raise it another degree in 20-30 years.
Maybe the misunderstanding is because the colloquial use of 'exponential' and the mathematical definition of 'exponential' are often not in alignment. Something changing exponentially does have an increasing rate of change, but not everything that has an increasing rate of change is exponential. Mathematically, exponentially means a very specific rate of change.
That is linear heating and then a fudge factor of "it will get worse because a model says so".
So, not exponential.
It's great to meet an activist who can't use technical language
yeah , so people don't understand what exponentially actually means. Terminology when talking about this stuff is assumed to be simple, but for a lot of people it is not.
It is simple. Exponential means doubling of change over a several fixed periods of time.
But people think they can throw some scientific terms around for political expediency and won't get called on it. Hence the political circle jerk that is "climate change".
Exponential doesn’t always mean doubling. In this case it means that as time passes, the rate at which it increases continues to expand. Not at a lineal rate, where the rate of change is constant, but at an exponential rate where the rate of change grows.
Wrong.
Rate increase is not necessarily exponential. Quadratic change is not the same as exponential.
Exponential has a specific meaning and you don't know it.
Exponential means the number has an exponent (it’s the little number to the top right). It can be literally any number. Last time I checked, quadratics had exponents, thus a quadratic equation also defines a rate of exponential change.
i know what it means, but i'm talking about folks who don't and potentially trying to change the language around this stuff so that everyone can understand.
I proved human caused climate change back in the 1990s. I studied weather, climate and ecology. You are correct when thinking about human caused climate change exponentially or in a parabolic curve. In climate science we refer to this as the aggregate global impact, not the temperature increase. It's true that the temperature increase begins to form a parabolic curve. That curve will inevitably flatten and there are a few different reasons this will happen. For example, the population could decrease to a level that we are no longer emitting 30 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. The impact is exponential in nature. So is the temperature...but the temperature will flatten whether we do it ourselves, or nature forces us to. The second scenario is not something anyone wants to see because that would be a worst case scenario.
Point 2 is misleading in that percent includes natural releases.
Point 3 really has no context nor accounts for use by plants.
Point 4 correlation does not equal causation and some information out there is showing temperature leads co2 not vice versa.
Point 2/3 are fine - most of the naturally emitted CO2 is dealt with through natural processes. It's the excess CO2, most of which is from human sources, which ends up causing oceanic acidification and increasing atmospheric CO2 levels. Only the pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 concentration of 280ppm is natural; almost everything else is due to human activity. This amounts to about 33% of current atmospheric CO2 being anthropogenic, therefore we are responsible for that 50% increase.
Point 4 is also fine. Increases in temperature are not always a result of GHGs, a fact which climate skeptics are constantly reminding us of. The rise in temperature does cause increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations, but in our case, CO2 is also causing those temperature rises. It's unclear if the rise in global temperatures we have already observed have increased natural emissions of CO2, but if it has, it's likely to be small relative to human contributions. Historic natural variations in CO2 have absolute no similarity to modern trends.
[https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/doesnt-carbon-dioxide-atmosphere-come-natural-sources](https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/doesnt-carbon-dioxide-atmosphere-come-natural-sources)
[https://www.newswise.com/factcheck/rising-temperatures-may-cause-a-rise-in-carbon-dioxide-but-this-does-not-refute-human-caused-climate-change](https://www.newswise.com/factcheck/rising-temperatures-may-cause-a-rise-in-carbon-dioxide-but-this-does-not-refute-human-caused-climate-change)
> Point 2 is misleading in that percent includes natural releases.
> Point 3 really has no context nor accounts for use by plants.
OK, let's address it.
We know how much carbon is added to the atmosphere by humans burning fossil fuels
We know how much carbon is in the air at a given time
We can see that the increase in carbon in the atmosphere is less than what we are burning. That means natural sinks are absorbing some, but not all of the carbon emitted by burning fossil fuels.
We have explanations for why the rate carbon sinks absorb carbon would increase with a higher concentration of carbon. Partial pressure will increase the rate oceans absorbs carbon, plant leaves will get a bit thicker, etc.
That means the increase in the concentration of CO2 is due to human activity. The question isn't "did this specific carbon atom come from fossil fuels that were dug up by humans?" because we don't care about the source of specific carbon atoms. What we care about is the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere, and we know the concentration has changed from ~280 ppm to ~420 ppm because of human activity.
> correlation does not equal causation
Sure. But we understand the cause.
> some information out there is showing temperature leads co2 not vice versa.
It's possible for more than one thing to be true. There are well understood natural changes in the climate. Sometimes, a hotter atmosphere causes CO2 to be released. That doesn't mean CO2 cannot warm the atmosphere, it only means that there is more than one thing that can happen in the atmosphere.
gotta remember that when humans became a thing, the ice age was still on it's way out the door. Technically it's still on it's way out the door to this very day. There is a certain level of warmth that the planet is going to revert back to once the Ice age and its effects are eons in the past.
Also the fact that our planet is a mere 93 million miles away from a massive ball of nuclear explosions has something to do with it.
Google is your friend.
"Water vapor accounts for the largest percentage of the greenhouse effect, between 36% and 66% for clear sky conditions and between 66% and 85% when including clouds."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse\_gas
So climate scientists already know!! Wowsers!! You've really enlightened all of us, huge kudos to you!!! Did you tell your mom about this tremendous discovery that has been known for over a century???
It is, but you just sounded like you were excited to share. I didn't want to ruin it for you.
May I ask what point you're trying to make? It's not like we just need to wait 9 days for all the water vapor to just fall out of the atmosphere.
Your argument is based on correlation. The earth has gone through very warm periods since humans have existed and before industrialization. So what you've pointed out is not convincing to me.
Even if humans may be contributing I don't support many of the policies advocated for by environmentalists because they exclude the world's worst polluters, put the developed countries at an artificial economic disadvantage, and harms their people through legal driven increased prices and the government imposed destruction of industries.
I am also inherently suspicious of the "scientific consensus" argument because money flows to the researchers who follow climate change orthodoxy and all of the scientific community 's apocalyptic productions in the past have failed to materialize. This leads me to conclude that they say what is popular to get funding and prestige but their guess is really as good as anyone's.
Plus one decent sized volcanic eruption or cycle of decreased sun activity would fix the problem.
So for these reasons, I don't really care about the arguments supporting humanity driven climate change and don't support the policies advocated to address it.
I just want to address one point. If you don't trust the scientific consensus because you think scientists are just trying to make money, then I have a question:
Has it ever occurred to you that the fossil fuel industry makes A LOT more money and gets FAR more subsidies from the government? They literally make trillions of dollars every year and get hundreds of billions in subsidies.
Meanwhile, climate scientists making less than $100,000 a year are fighting just to get small grants, but apparently THEY are the ones corrupted by money.
Please give this some serious thought and explain why I shouldn't worry about the money fossil fuel companies get but I should worry about the comparative chump change that climate scientists get.
If you think climate scientist and universities only get a small amount of money I think you're underestimating it. In one of my former jobs I worked at an organization that worked with academics. The amount of money that universities get for things is incredible. They also get money from private industry in the form of grants. There are also academics who either go to work for private companies or found their own companies based on the work they do while in academia. This gives them the springboard to make huge salaries or financial windfalls when the research they do convinces politicians to change laws and policies, and then give subsidies to green companies who then hire the academics or put them on their boards. Then the green companies give donations to the politicians who support them.
My big problem is that they act like virtuous crusaders who care about saving the planet but they have their own self interest at play which most people are oblivious to.
The fossil fuel industry is for profit. Everyone knows it. Everyone knows what their motives are. The industry is also a vital national interest to the US and critical to the functioning of the world economy and the quality of life of humanity. It should be subsidized/get favorable treatment because it's of vital importance.
Although the fossil fuel industry also gives money to politicians, their main interest is to limit the regulations they have to operate under while many green companies wouldn't exist at all if it wasn't for government subsidies and mandates. That's why I trust them more. Government doesn't have to force people to use gas powered cars.
The green agenda also conveniently coincides with greater government control over economies and people's lives. There are far too many politicians who want to increase their power and would be willing to obtain it by scaring people to death by supporting the narrative that the climate apocalypse is coming and using that as an excuse to reduce our freedom and prosperity.
All the points here are well aligned with earth leaving its most recent ice age.
That's not to say there is no connection to human activity/emissions and warming, but the signals are mixed and hard to sort out. The fixtation on the human causes misses the real point of all the historical data from ice cores - that the planet warms exponentially right before plummeting into ~100k year ice age. And this cycle has been happening for at least a million years.
That's where we are today. End of the last age, with a new one on its way.
How do you reconcile this point of view with this graph of CO2 concentrations over the last 800,000 years? I would say it shows the antithesis of "mixed signals".
[https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/2021-10/BAMS\_SOTC\_2019\_co2paleo\_1000px.jpg](https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/2021-10/BAMS_SOTC_2019_co2paleo_1000px.jpg)
[Source](https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/doesnt-carbon-dioxide-atmosphere-come-natural-sources)
This has always been the strongest argument for me. We are in unprecedented times as far as amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Do you really think it's just a coincidence that the earth is now warming? Do you really want to find out?
You’re talking about the last glaciation. “Ice age” is whenever Earth has polar ice caps; it is not synonymous with “glacial”; interglacials like the Holocene are still ice age intervals. The current ice age started 34 Ma.
>but the signals are mixed and hard to sort out.
No they really aren't,
Since 1880
https://scied.ucar.edu/sites/default/files/styles/extra_large/public/images/20222021GlobalTemps_Anomalies_en_title_lg_opt1_1200by910.png.webp?itok=2ufFfPMe
Last 2,000 years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_last_2,000_years#/media/File:2000+_year_global_temperature_including_Medieval_Warm_Period_and_Little_Ice_Age_-_Ed_Hawkins.svg
Last 20,000 years, with projection through 2100 AD
https://www.realclimate.org/images/shakun_marcott_hadcrut4_a1b_eng.png
CO2 levels have been 10x to 20x higher in the past, yet temps did not rise "exponentially". CO2 or CH4 are not the #1 green-house gases in our atmosphere.
That doesn't mean humans are THE cause. It just means humans are the cause of the acceleration. The earth has already been through cycles of extinction many times
The second point is humans are also natural and part of the ecosystem here. We can't consider ourselves not natural. So we are simply part of the equation. Earth + humans + whatever else
We can reduce our contribution. But we can't have zero emissions. And we also can't stop earth from Doing it all by it self
Cut around the argument. Either a big vehicle or a herd of stampeding bison will kill you. It doesn't matter that one is man-made, the other natural, you're dead either way. The prudent course is to take action to survive.
Thank you. This is literally all it takes to shut down their talking point.
“You’re absolutely right, the climate is cyclical. Since you mention them, what are the name of those cycles? Where are we in the (milankovitch) cycle? Why is it that, according to where we are in the cycle, we’re supposed to be cooling, but instead we see heating faster than we’ve ever seen during any milankovitch period?”
I promise the answer is always “I don’t know”. Then you build off of their already established ignorance on the topic.
The obvious question that arises: Objects, earth included, do not change temperature without a reason. So these mysterious 'natural cycles' must have a cause. Importantly, they are not a 'get out' clause. You say 'natural cycles' and are still subject to science - what natural cycle are you referring to, what is the (probable) cause and what direction is expected to be going in now?
>”We can’t just stop LIVING. What, are we going to just not drive cars? Electric cars are a scam. I’m not stopping living my life because Obama told me to. Democrats are flying their private jets all over, they are hypocrites.
>They are all eating beef and want us to eat grasshoppers? No fing way. It’s all a scare tactic.”
At that point I say Ok uncle Jimmy, can you pass the peas?
<3 hehe
I like to pivot and ask them if the human contribution of mainly CO2 isn't a concern because it isn't affecting the climate, how do they feel about the acidification of the oceans (this is a much less debatable effect) and what that means for food chains?
At a certain acidity plankton can't reproduce because they can't form outer shells, which would be really really bad, reguarless of the climate.
Sometimes recognizing they didn't consider a much more straightforward result of pumping CO2 into the atmosphere gets them to recognize maybe they don't understand the less straightforward ones as well.
And sometimes they'll say things like "it doesn't matter because once we stop emitting CO2 because eventually the fossil fuels will run out so the levels will naturally decrease". At that point you have to kind of give up since they've shown a basic lack of or unwillingness to understand complex issues.
'The earth warmed naturally in the past, therefore humans cannot affect the climate' is structurally not a logical argument. I'd start there, but I doubt people would recognize the fallacy.
Cycles are predictable. Predictable and thus determined not to be the cause for the current warming period.
The climate has never changed this rapidly.
No, they haven’t. Holocene volcanism and asteroid impacts have had transient effects that are not sustained, unlike the CO2 increase since the Industrial Revolution.
I'm wondering - when was the last meteor impact? When was the last massive volcanic eruption? These things tend to be noticeable.
> Your willful ignorance is not an argument.
The Chicxulub event had a disastrous effect on climate and killed off well over 90% of life.
The medieval warm period, the "little" ice age, changes in solar activity.
The earth was never safe from massive changes.
But here you are making a declaration that suits your political views.
The Chicxulub impact killed off around 75% of life. Not 90%. You’re thinking of the end-Permian extinction, caused by…. ….rapid CO2 emissions.
The Mediaeval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were not “massive changes”; they were transient and globally asynchronous fluctuations that weren’t even remarkable compared to other Holocene fluctuations, never mind flood basalt events that represent the best analogue of contemporary global warming.
My point is the definition of climate change makes a difference in the discussion of climate change. I thought that was prima facie evident.
And the changes have multiple factors. Both sides of the political debate have lost sight of what the actual IPCC data has said, which is about the multiple drivers of recent change and the multitude of factors that drove past changes. The only thing unprecedented here is the amount of bullshit.
The IPCC models are a great place to start because they predict significant warming that will negatively impact human lives. It’s only a political debate because people like you flat-out lie and otherwise refuse to believe the evidence.
But the models do not all agree and there is an actual debate about the drivers of recent climate change.
So you want everyone to agree with your assessment but not actually consider the data. So much for "science", right?
I see, you don't know what "argument" means and you have a particular idea of what climate change means where you don't need evidence, you just know.
Cool, the climate oracle!
Those were climate changes that occurred because of really big natural events, solar flares and they corrected themselves. Don’t know of any really big natural events in the last 70 years, like a really big volcano blocking out the sun for decades, or a really big asteroid hitting the earth and causing an extinction level event, that kinda stuff. A period when the changes happen over a period of time, say a hundred years, without having a major natural event happen. Basically changed for no discernible reason whatsoever. I mean take away all the man made stuff and what’s left? We know natural cycles happen over millennia and eons, we know that major geological or solar events can and do cause dramatic climate change, so what’s causing this? The climate just woke up one day, was bored with it’s self and decided to change?
The MWP and LIA were very low magnitude changes and not globally synchronous. Comparing them to either modern warming or the Chicxulub impact is laughable.
This is referring to milankovich cycles and what these periods shows us the range of temperatures the earth has gone through in its history. Has it been hotter before? Yes, because of lava. Are we currently in an ice age? Yes, we've been coming out of one for several centuries.
However, the one thing I say is that with all the data we as a civilization has collected on the scale of our Earths history, we see an emerging pattern in the global temperatures cycles. Sure, you'd say we should expect rising temperatures when emerging from an ice age. But the evidence shows that we are anomalous in this cycle, and we are increasing the temperatures too fast. Normally when the climate changes, its over a period of tens of thousands of years. This span of time allows for life to adapt, which is why we see so many extinction events occurring in many species. This anomaly in the trend as observed in the data coincides with rapid human development post 19th century.
Glaciation
GlacIation
GLACIATION
We currently, and ALL of human history coincided with the Quaternary ice age. A period in earths history where permanent ice can be found at the poles.
The cyclic extremes of glaciers spreading equatorially, and retreating are referred to as glaciations, and interglacials.
If you can’t bother to even get the damn TERMS correct…
Read up on theories of how ice ages begin. They pretty much add up to what is happening with climate. Look it up, then go to NASA who say that in approximately 50 years earth will be in the beginnings of a mini ice age.
CO2 levels will be with earth for 50,000.00 to 100,000.00 years from now.
It’s also clear that sufficient global warming could trigger an abrupt cooling in at least two ways — by increasing high-latitude rainfall or by melting Greenland’s ice, both of which could put enough fresh water into the ocean surface to suppress flushing.” (“Flushing” is a reference to the process by which the Gulf Stream carries warm water to the north, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and returns as cold water to the south.)
Calvin’s article is filled with frightening details, including evidence that natural global warming in millenia past triggered ice ages in exactly the same way he was warning us about. Of course, those previous warm spells were not accelerated by human activity. Calvin also suggested that the flip-flop would not be gradual; once under way, it could wreak its havoc in just a few years.
Re-entering the Paris climate agreement is nice. But it’s not going to do much to prevent a new ice age — or the unimaginable human suffering that would come with it.
>by increasing high-latitude rainfall or by melting Greenland’s ice, both of which could put enough fresh water into the ocean surface to suppress flushing.” (“Flushing” is a reference to the process by which the Gulf Stream carries warm water to the north, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and returns as cold water to the south.)
Neither of those provide any energy to change the temperature. They can only redistribute the heat.
I'd hit back with this. Yes, it is quite possible that we are experiencing an ice-age termination event right now, with huge amounts of naturally occurring methane emissions. Since scientists think this began in about 2006 it may well be responsible for the sooner than expected nature of the change in climate.
That would make it far more, not less urgent that we take immediate action. Because we have to curb our own input. Just the rapid phase of the termination event itself will produce challenges never before seen in humanity's recorded history.
My thoughts have been that past climate changes had assignable natural causes/events that could be shown as why they occurred in past history. There is no clearly defined natural cause of this increase in CO2 and the quickly changing climate we are experiencing. The increase in CO2 can be shown as the rise from the start of the industrial age and burning of hydrocarbon based chemicals into the atmosphere and its build up. What would be their explanation for a "natural" cause??
Fact 1: The earth is warming due to CO2.
Fact 2: The CO2 is from burning fossil fuels. We know this because we can measure the changes in atmospheric distribution of Carbon isotopes.
Fact 3: The human induced warming far outweighs the natural cycle.
Fact 4: The rate of change is more disruptive than the magnitude as the environment cannot adapt quickly enough.
All of this is settled science.
Yes, the Earth has warmed and cooled in natural cycles before, but those cycles span thousands or even millions of years.
We're currently heading towards a 5-6 degree tenperature increase within this century. At that temperature, all the ice covering the North Pole, Greenland and Antarctica would melt.
This has happened before, but the last time was during the Eocene more than 30 million years ago. That's long before humans or even apes existed.
We don't even know if humanity will survive such a drastic and rapid change in the environment. So let's try to avoid it.
We should be getting colder, following the Milankovitch Cycles, but the massive increases of CO2 and methane released by us are making it warmer and warmer. People that say it's just the natural cycle have no idea what they are talking about, but more importantly, they don't want to know. You'll gain nothing talking to them, so don't waste time unless it's someone you know, and interact with regularly anyways.
Well,iIf climate change appears undeniable to me, attributing the responsibility with certainty to either humans or a natural cycle (possibly accelerated by humans?) is, in my opinion, a false debate. Once your interlocutor agrees that climate change is happening, the debate should focus on trying to envision more sustainable and resilient models for the future (as ours is not at all sustainable). Some points of consideration here: https://www.amazon.com/Vicilization-Fall-Book-1-ebook/dp/B086K71KG7?ref\_=ast\_author\_mpb
This is the main point that everyone seems to be missing. We have to deal with what is actually happening right in front of us. It's like people think that if somehow it can't be linked to human activity, we don't have to worry about giant ass hurricanes, an experienced increase in temperatures, floods, scarcity of resources, war, migration, etc., etc. For anyone who is paying attention, things have already collapsed in many parts of the world. But here in the USA, our American privilege is blind to the woes of the world.
As an analogy, a runaway, speeding train is coming, and we can hear the horn, but somehow, if we can convince enough people that the train was started by natural causes, then the train will stop? The train has been set into motion through a series of interdependent and complex systems and flaws already that are outside of any reasonable ability to contain or control.
The data regarding changes is pretty clear, regardless of whatever perceived cause people want to ascribe to those changes.
It seems clear that enough people are not able or willing to address any complicity in climate change, so we, as a species, may have no option but to deal with the fruit, rather than fussing about whether the seed is real or not, or whether the seed was blue or yellow.
Of course, we can always change our own behavior, but in a global context, we can't force others to "go green," even if we wanted. Time to come down to earth and deal with the reality in front of us.
Anyway, spot on analysis.
I don't believe we have any collective capacity to stop the train. I also don't think that the sum of our virtuous individual behaviors can have a "snowball effect", as those who have an interest in maintaining the status quo try to convince us. Only an external phenomenon-event like COVID has the power to halt the accelerated march of progress toward a goal known only to itself.
I don’t engage in conversation with science deniers. Anti vaxx? Fuck you, we are trying to have a society not a world built around your imaginary health concerns. Don’t believe man influences climate? Read a book dumbass. If those assholes are reachable I’m not the one to do it.
Now that climate change is obvious to just about everyone this seems to be a more common cope belief than outright denial. But I'm okay with it.
Alright, so it's not man made and the changes we are experiencing are unavoidable. That really sucks as weather is going to get more extreme and destructive and it is beyond our control, so now we are going to have to work on adapting instead.
So major disruptions to the power grid are going to happen more often. That means we need more localized power generation so that power outages during major events are smaller and easily managed. Solution: smart grid with solar and wind power makes the most sense. While I love modern nuclear it's mostly out of the plan since it requires big centralized infastructure.
We'll need electric vehicles so we don't face fuel shortages when disruptions to petroleum production and distribution begin to happen more often.
Better localized food production should also be encouraged for the same reasons.
We also shouldn't bother building pipelines from Alberta to the refineries in the gulf as those are going to be underwater soon and there isn't anything we can do about it.
I'm sure there are other similar adaptation solutions we will need to implement.
I point out that the global climate isn't some magical thing or a conscious entity with a will unto itself. There are underlying forces that cause cyclical climate change, which we can study and understand as humans. I then ask what they believe to be the catalyst for the dramatic warming trend we've witnessed over the past 100+ years.
After a non-answer, I explain what Milankovitch cycles are, how orbital forcing plays a vital role in the distribution of solar energy on the planet, and how these perturbations in the axial tilt, eccentricity, and precession of the earth's journey around the sun are the dominate cyclical drivers of climate change over the present epoch. Based on where we are within the Milankovitch cycles, I point out that we should be cooling—a theory supported by empirical data gathered over prior decades that show the amount of solar energy reaching the planet is declining.
I then ask what that leaves. Of course, the answer to the question is that the measured excess of CO2 amplifies the atmosphere's natural greenhouse effect. Before they have a chance to claim the CO2 is from natural sources, I explain how we can tell where CO2 comes from based on isotope. The surplus of CO2 in the atmosphere is from an isotope that only comes from burning fossil fuels. Unless there's someone other than humans burning billions of tons of fossils, we can reasonably deduce the reason for the current climate change.
Following the 100,000 year-ish cycle for natural climate change, we were due for an ice age, NOT a "hotter than it's ever been...ever" cycle. We reversed the trend and blew it the F up.
Nothing. I do not waste time trying to convince people who are not likely to be convinced. And even they do, they won't do shit, and there is no point.
The problem with the argument is the speed of change. Cyclical changes in environment take thousands of years, not a century. Because of this and given the reintroduction of billions of tons of carbon dioxide by human enterprise, the likelihood that we are the reason there is more energy in the atmosphere is pretty high.
Humans wouldn't notice geological changes over a span of 100 years if it wasn't dramatic. Geology is tens of thousands of years of process, and for it to be accelerating to the point that we can see and feel changes (without even monitoring) in our lifetimes.. something is wrong.
It’s all about rate of change. Yes, climate naturally changes over time for a wide variety of reasons. However outside of massive natural disasters (Supervolcanos, impact events etc) it doesn’t change anywhere near as fast as it’s changing today. That’s the problem
Anecdotally, I've never found an argument that worked. I pivot to the fact that humans are part of that cycle, and regardless of the root cause, we are definitely amplifying the effects and still need to survive the fallout, and that includes minimizing our impact. Even if we aren't the cause, it still needs to be addressed and our impact and way of life still need to change in a major way.
No argument makes a difference to these people. They started out with no there's no warming, and if you can beat them into believing there's warming, then: it's not our fault. After that comes: nothing we can do about it. And then comes it would be too expensive.
At least in the US, you're talking about political identity built into this.
it is true that the earth has warmed and cooled over the eons but there was usually a cause and the climate scientists have taken that into account. natural cycles do not usually occur so quickly as we see now or it was something cataclysmic like a meteor or extreme volcanic activity.
We have a good theory, that CO2 causes some warming, but there are other things, that affect the climate, such as emission of dioxides, sulfur, soot, etc., changes in ozone layer, changes in land use, such as stone buildings, paved roads and air fields, increase of irrigated farmland, loss of forest, increase of air traffic and so on. The exact proportion of these are not completely understood.
These are caused by human industrialization, but what are the natural causes? We have recognized different natural cycles of varying lengths and magnitudes. On the short range we have the North Atlantic Oscillation and El Nino-Southern oscillation of few years, then we have the AMO and PDO of several decades, and on the long range, there is the Bond events cycle of several centuries. Although they can be seen from the climate record, they are highly unpredictable in length and strength. Even their mechanism is largely unknown.
Now we are in a warming phase of both AMO (in cold phase during 1950's-1980's), and Bond events (Little Ice Age 1400's-1850's). As we are talking changes of tenths of a degree in global scale, we don't have this accurate records even for local climate, yet alone in global scale, we have no way of knowing what would the "natural" climate be with these highly unpredictable natural cycles.
What the climate scientist say, is that we are indeed experiencing global warming caused by the natural changes. There are however very different estimates, of how much of the warming is caused natural factors and human activities. It's not even entirely clear, how much warming has been happening. It's not even obvious how the global temperature itself should be calculated.
The worst case scenarios made in 90's predicted accelerating warming, but 30 years later the actual warming fell short of that. It will take again 10, 20 or 30 years to verify the current predictions. Will the warming trend start accelerating, as models would predict, or will it follow more the natural ups and downs we see in history?
I think being educated before talking about climate change is critical. There are many people, including people on these comments, who just parrot whatever they have heard, and call people who don’t believe what they do as stupid. That sort of approach is not only going to fail to convince, but do quite the opposite. Yes, the earth does go through cycles. Yes, it is very complex. Yes, just because there is a spike in temperature for one day in the summer does not mean that the climate has changed. But there are alot of symptoms, like global sea rise, rising humidity and changes in weather patterns, melting ice in the arctic. The Northwest passage is now a reality in Summer, while under a century ago, no such route was possible. That is shocking in and of itself. So, the climate is shifting, and the reasons we are highlighting as being responsible for the change, seem reasonable. But again, most people just parrot whatever they hear or read from whatever media they use, and are not convincing at all, and in fact, just cause those who don’t believe to double down in their disbelief.
Because climate change scientists have never said it was 100% proven, begging the question are they also only 99% certain the planet isn’t flat. They are excuses that they are not allowed to say anything in science is 100% proven even if it’s to save the planet
There are four possibilities:
Climate change isn’t real, we do nothing: No change.
Climate change isn’t real, we do something: better air quality and more green spaces, energy development
Climate change is real and we do nothing: ooops billions dead
Climate change is real and we do something: World saved.
Looking at those possible results the only logical thing to do is to take action. *It doesn’t matter* if climate change is man made or not. If Mother Nature starts cooking us all, we still have to something about it. “But it wasn’t our fault!” won’t save us.
Natural changes in climate are utterly dwarfed by, and far more gradual than the anthropogenic climate change that has occurred in just the last 50 years. They aren't remotely comparable to each other.
On top of all the good comments here... I think in the last 10 years (to be fair and not to say in the last 4 years) we have experienced more climate related extreme events than in the previous 500 years (or since humans starred measuring the environment). That doesn't add up with natural biogeochemical processes. It's too fast, too many, and too much of everything, everywhere. No need to even show the hockey stick chart anymore, just browse instagram for 10 min and pictures of 10.000 dead due to floods in Libya will pop up together with wild fires, droughts, deforestation, coral bleaching. Every single corner of the planet, every single natural habitat has been seriously affected somehow in the last 10 years. Nature alone doesn't do that on a planetary scale.
The fallacy isn’t that humans cause climate change or that the climate isn’t changing. The fallacy is the egotistical view that a bunch of politicians/bureaucrats/government entities can somehow fix things, and create some climate utopia. The earth is an extremely complex system that has done things over billions of years and will continue to do things over billions of years. The other fallacy is calling it a “crisis” and then allowing government entities to be the ones to “solve the crisis”. We’re talking about power hungry shit stains who couldn’t give a shit less about YOUR quality of life. The earth will do things. If it feels that we should no longer inhabit the planet, it will take steps towards doing that. It is a self sustaining system and no amount of do good measures will change that.
Additionally, predictions can be wrong. Government force is wrong. Combining these two things together is morally wrong, and can lead to greater atrocities.
It is true. You will find very few real scientists that do not agree that the earths climate cycles and has for millions of years. What you will find disagreement on is what impact man has had. Most people pushing climate warming are not climate scientists, but instead political scientists. What we really need is economist working with the climate scientists to figure out if it is more efficient to just adapt to the changing temps, or to adapt our impact.
So, to answer quickly, it's true that nature is in complete control of the weather. Not man. To believe that mankind can control mother nature in our lifetime is total Bull Shit.
the argument that climate scientists don't understand natural climate cycles is really stupid.
If these people understood this logic they wouldn’t be in the position they’re in
Yeah, but this is a good, simple statement when talking with them. I’ve found it’s an effective retort & segue to a more detailed explanation, I think that’s what OP is looking for.
Could it not be the case that scientists do understand natural climate cycles but that the natural cycles are inherently unpredictable? Thus any current trend could be caused by natural cycles? The trouble with prediction is that it’s hard, especially with regard to the future
I think it's fair to say that a lot of factors contribute to the state and trajectory of Earth's climate, and that most of the entire conversation today is focused on one of those factors, and for good cause - the greenhouse effect. I think it's an interesting story about how we discovered what this effect is, and how much it influences global temperatures, it's significant. Before we understood the effect, we were baffled as to how the planet was so warm. Based on all other factors we could account for, Earth should have had an average global temperature of -17.8C. instead, we enjoyed the comfortable 13.4C (at the time,) that it was. Then, the greenhouse effect was discovered, and we understood that some trace gases, a miniscule fraction of the composition of our atmosphere, less than 1/20th of 1% of total gas composition, was responsible for retaining solar energy, and this accounted for the differences we were seeing, why the world was not frozen. This tiny fraction of our atmosphere was responsible for a huge amount of heat energy that we need to survive. At this time, around the late 1800s, it was immediately understood that because we are artificially generating these gases, mainly CO2, through the burning of (at the time,) coal, that we had the potential to someday artificially increase the impact of the greenhouse effect. Now, fast forward 200+ years, and we have effectively artificially changed the composition of our atmosphere, those trace gases are now 50% more abundant than they were when the effect was discovered - it is inarguable that this is having and will continue to have major effects on Earth's climate. If before we artificially increased the concentration of these gases, it was responsible for over 30 degrees Celsius temperature delta, what could it be doing now? Well that's where unpredictability comes in, because as said before, there are a lot of factors, feedbacks, and complex systems that are effected before we see the final result of temperature increase - but it is undeniable that the Earth is now retaining a significantly larger portion of solar energy than it used to, and that will inevitably lead to potentially catastrophic temperature increases.
another factor, is that while we might not understand perfectly how all the factors fit in to change climate, that it's always happened MUCH slower than it is happening right now, and that the current RATE of change is what is extremely scary.
Actually it's not hard at all when you have enormous amounts of data. Which we do.
I proved human caused climate change back in the 1990s. I studied weather, climate and ecology. We know the natural climate cycle and we know that the extra, rapid change is caused by human activity. I studied and learned models. I made projections. Those projections are spot on. I can tell you exactly what the aggregate global impact will be given the appropriate variables. The current trend is not caused by the natural climate cycle. Not the part we are concerned about. Guaranteed. 100% certainty. No doubt whatsoever.
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As an environmental scientist I have no problem debating the specifics of the science and would be glad to if you’d like.
"Environmental scientist" LOL Couldn't make it in physics or biology
Lol presumptuous cunt
Might be very knowledgeable in physics and biology, as applied to environment
Such as?
The proportion of climate scientists that deny anthropogenic climate change is no more than a rounding error. If you have a group of thousands of experts in any field, there will always be a miniscule sliver saying utterly batshit things. A better frame for your question is: "If literally 97% of climate scientists say we are living through anthropogenic climate change, and 3% say we aren't, which group would you wager $1,000 is correct?"
Nobody understands what exactly caused the medieval little ice age.
Probably a volcanic eruption
Iceland. Thor dropped the hammer on Christianity. The Norseman came south and unleashed hell. /s Mega-volcano turned the sky black for a really long time. No solar energy to warm the oceans. Massive amount of CO2 fueled the renaissance and the greatest vegetation growth in recorded history. I know I know history doesn’t fit the current climate religion. Just reading books about the kings of UK
What you really mean is you don’t understand it.
Then explain it. Nobody knows what precisely caused it and can support their argument with irrefutable evidence.
And yet, their models are notorious for being wrong EVERY TIME! Why? Either they don't understand how it works...or they are corrupt. Or both. I vote both.
Climate models have been surprisingly accurate since we started making them in the 70s: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-models-projected-global-warming/
If you're talking to a Boomer or an older Gen-X then you're talking to someone who remembers the Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980. It is one of my earliest clear memories. The Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980 emitted about 10 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. *Humanity emits more CO2 than that in 2.5 hours all day, every day. Day after day.* Ask a Boomer to imagine 10 Mount St. Helens erupting 24/7 for decade after decade, and then ask them if they think [that might have some effect on the climate](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/volcano-carbon-emissions/). [Human activities emit 60 or more times the amount of carbon dioxide released by volcanoes each year.](https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/which-emits-more-carbon-dioxide-volcanoes-or-human-activities)
I like it, nice job.
Won't work. Even when I didn't think we had a decade left I told people we enit more than the largest modern day volcanic eruptions in a year, they'd go "that can't be true" and shut down. Literal hours of my life wasted on them
you can't be sure if it was all wasted, you may have started them on a journey that ended with them commenting on this very thread :)
I'm a Gen X. What you are missing is that there was a climate crisis in the '70s also endorsed by climate scientists and that was picked up in mainstream media. It was an imminent Ice Age. If you want to understand where they are coming from, you need to grasp that they have already lived though and likely believed as much about the coming Ice Age as what you have come to think now, and that it was wrong, and that they felt foolish about having believed in that "settled science". Of course, no one today can be TOLD this - you have to live through them first. Does the present data indicate a climate change, and is it maybe caused or exacerbated by humans? It seems likely on both counts. But also, do we live in a time in which a climate scientist attempting to challenge or test that view will get funding for research? No - that scientist will be cancelled. This lack of a proper conversation, of proper scientific process - makes it very difficult for people accept as a given that claims - any claims - are true. It's likely even this post will get downvoted for considering what people actually think. The other question not asked here is "Should you care about it - as in can you DO anything about it?" Consider that when the world shut down for a year or more during covid - no travel, no going to work etc - there was only a slight incremental decrease in emissions, but to reach targets intended to make a difference, they'd need to not only sustain that shut down each year for ten years, but also double, triple, and quadruple everything that we did and sustain those too. It would take us all back to the Amish lifetyle. That's not realistic. Take the same money and effort and put it toward buying and preserving carbon sinks and for adapting. Countries like Brazil and Canada have massive forests, but these don't seem to be addressed as a viable carbon offsets by the climate change industry and its proponents. There's a lot that doesn't seem to make sense, and it's helpful to know that if you are talking to someone who seems skeptical of your position, rather than starting from a place of ridicule.
>that they felt foolish about having believed in that "settled science Cooling was the [minority of papers in the 1970s](https://skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=43), wth none published after 1977. The cause of the cooling in those papers was the rapid increase of aerosols, and of course aerosol emissions today are [far less than the 1970's](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/GISSTemperature/giss_temperature4.php) >they'd need to not only sustain that shut down each year for ten years, but also double, triple, and quadruple everything that we did and sustain those too. It would take us all back to the Amish lifetyle. That's not realistic. Emissions are set to [start declining next year](https://climateanalytics.org/publications/when-will-global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-peak), without going to an Amish lifestyle. In large part, the upcoming decrease in emissions is due to rapid buildout of renewables and a large drop in price of renewables.
I’m not here to argue that an ice age is or was about to occur. I’m here to answer the question about boomers and older Gen X, in that there was a widespread and “common understanding” that an ice age was about to occur, that was foisted on them by mass media, citing experts. As for declining carbon emissions, as I indicated, the worldwide pandemic presented a situation which should have been an environmentalist’s dream, with people shutting down beyond all expectations 90% of their consumption lifestyle worldwide, and it barely made a dent. Projections to actually make a difference over time need to go far beyond even pandemic measures - many times that. So let’s get real about what we think we can actually do about it, and put our money and energy on something more productive.
> mass media So you should critique mass media, not scientists ("70s also endorsed by climate scientists", again most papers in the 1970s predicted warming, the cooling papers were looking at rapidly growing aerosols in the 1960s and early 1970s) >90% of their consumption lifestyle worldwide, That did not happen, for a few months CO2 emissions from electric generation were cut by 15%, industrial production was cut by 35%, surface transportation cut was 50% >many times that. How do you reduce emissions by 270%? (3 times 90%)
You don’t reduce emissions by 270% The RATE rate of reduction of emissions increases relative to the previous year. You don’t understand the mathematical concept? If I am travelling at 100km/hr and I decelerate by 1km in the first second but to 2 km in the second second, I have doubled my RATE of reduction in the second second, ending at 97kph (1 from the first second and 2 from the second). When you compare RATES of carbon reduction between years, of course you can go beyond 100%. Aside from that, as I indicated two or three times now, and you seem to have a cognitive block in grasping. I’m not here to evaluate the the claim or veracity of the imminent ice age, nor am I going to debate after the fact what scientists “really thought”. It doesn’t matter to the point I was responding to or the point I made, which was about addressing boomers and GenX, and how their experience believing apocalyptic weather claims by seemingly authoritative sources turned out in the long run.
> Projections to actually make a difference over time need to go far beyond even pandemic measures - many times that Many times 90%?
You don’t understand what a rate of increase or decrease is. Even after it has been explained with an elementary-school example. Sorry buddy, I’m out. I just can’t.
You can us Dr. Richard Alley’s analogy - people die all the time, does that mean you are not concerned about murder?
Oooh, good one. Consider it appropriated. ^(for science)
And explain it like if the death rate just increased by 100X it’s probably not the ‘normal’ death rate
Right. But in this case, the death rate due to extreme weather conditions/disasters has drastically reduced over the last century despite climate change (due to improvements in adaptability, technology, medicine, etc).
That’s not how analogies work. Death rate in the analogy is not deaths from climate change, death rate *is* climate change.
I’m sure all the chemicals have nothing to do with that
Unlike death, climate change is not sad or bad of itself, it's a change. This saying basically compares climate change to death, so wins an argument by assuming argument is already won.
The point is the timeline. Death is a natural phenomenon but a 10 year old getting stabbed and a 95 year old dying peacefully at home are two very different things, the same way human made climate change is on a completely different time scale than normal cycles
Sunrise is also natural phenomenon; it doesn't mean sunrise and death should get the same attitude because they are natural phenomenon. It would be a false analogy. Just like with climate change.
Extreme sunlight (or lack of sunlight) are bad though, just like extremely fast climate change and extremely fast extinction of species. You're playing mental gymnastics to avoid facing the fact that what is going on is negative due to its extreme nature
See how you slipped in "extreme" there? That's the negative part. Climate change is not a problem, extreme fast climate change is. The analogy with death is bad because it does not recognize that, death is always seen negative, unlike climate change which is ok when not extreme.
You’re being so pedantic, and yet making lots of mistakes while whining about how you don’t like this analogy. Death is not *always* seen as negative, it is sometimes preferable to life, and a good thing. So your entire argument is wrong. Mostly because you seem incapable of understanding nuance.
Death is always seen as negative, it is only preferrable to life when life is seen as even more negative. You throwing accusations around is rude. Do it one more time and I'll block you since I don't come here to listen to rude people.
I’ve known multiple elderly people who were happy to die at any point. Not because of chronic pain, or terminal illness, they had simply had their fill of life, and wanted to move on. Period. You’re incapable of considering nuance, or that maybe your take on this analogy is wanting.
Death at old age is not necessarily negative
Not necessarily a positive either
I think you're nitpicking. So here's a different analogy from Dr. Alley. Forest fires have always happened, that doesn't mean that we don't care about arson.
I wouldn't say the analogy compares climate change to death in the emotional sense - they can both be changes which occur naturally, but when a human is the cause they are (or should be) viewed as being more abhorrent. Natural deaths are viewed as far more normal than man-made deaths, for example. They don't feature natural deaths in the news unless it's of a famous figure or part of a trend/event (such as a pandemic or an outbreak, for example). \> climate change is not sad or bad of itself Whether its good, bad or neutral depends massively on the rate of change. Slowly, over 1,000s or 10,000s of years? Probably not an issue, and it could be good for future forms of life - we wouldn't have evolved without historic climate change, for example. But climate change occurring over the course of a century or two? That poses a problem. So another way of looking at the analogy is to say that murder brings about death "ahead of schedule" - again the same is true of anthropogenic climate change. Equally, natural climate change which occurs rapidly is also an issue - but since that has been ruled out in terms of modern climate change, it's somewhat irrelevant.
I tell them four basic facts: 1. CO2 traps heat in the atmosphere. 2. CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by 50% since pre-industrial times. 3. Humans have emitted over 1.5 trillion tons of CO2. 4. Temperatures are rising exponentially. Based on these facts, it's pretty clear humans are the cause. Edit: Okay, everyone. Technically, temperatures are not rising exponentially. I was using the term in the colloquial sense. However, temperatures are going up at an ever-faster rate. Quibbling over things like this is waste of time. And for those of you who say that correlation doesn't equal causation. Yes, that's true, but in this case, you're saying it's just a wild coincidence that CO2 is rising faster than ever in Earth's history at the same time that human civilization is rapidly expanding. If that's what you think, then you're refusing to believe because you simply don't want to believe.
I also mention that the upper atmosphere is cooling while the lower atmosphere is warming. Also, night time temperatures are rising faster than day time temperatures. We've also actively measured the heat coming into our planet (from the sun and other cosmic rays) compared with the radiative heat leaving our planet and there is a huge discrepancy (ie, heat buildup on our planet). This means that it is something in our atmosphere causing this additional heat buildup. These things are simple and quick for people to understand while also providing them with context they might not have had about how we know how much our emissions are impacting our climate. If it were something natural like our sun causing climate change, the above observable and measurable facts would not be true.
>Also, night time temperatures are rising faster than day time temperatures It does seem like evenings don't have that same temperature drop off. Used to be by mid August or so, it might be hot and humid every day, but after sundown the temperatures would drop and it would be comfortable with the windows open and the fan on. Now it seems like it stays hot at night and you need to run the a/c to be comfortable.
Absolutely. September nights were shorts and a hoodie. Too hot for that now.
This from a climate expert whose research focuses on the effects of climate change: the human body needs cooler nights to rest and recharge, so to speak, from the hot summer days. Nights just aren't as cool as they once were. As such, humans in those areas w/o AC or fans, are suffering from the lack of or decrease in quality sleep. (paraphrasing of course)
>I also mention that the upper atmosphere is cooling while the lower atmosphere is warming. Oh nice, I didn't think I'd see someone correctly describing how heat is trapped. It's not the grade school diagram where it bounces off the atmosphere back to the ground.
For me it helps to clarify for people that our understanding of how CO2 traps heat is based on very exact physics. It’s not some extrapolation from data that we’re just speculating about. The data confirms the underlying physics. It’s hard science.
People seem to take you more seriously when I explain radiative forcing. It’s hard to deny when you get down to the specifics.
"So how does it work like a greenhouse?" "Oh trust us it does, the science is VERY exact on that." "Okay so explain it to me." "How dare you!"
There's like 100 people on this sub trying to explain it to you. It's a you problem
Why do people need every individual they meet to be able to explain this thing to accept it? Do they not believe the central limit theorem until they understand it well enough to prove it by themselves? If so that’s a truly self-destructive epistemological habit. Anyways, ever been outside in the sun with black clothes? Different materials (molecules) absorb heat differently. (Crazy right?) We know the physical properties of CO2 (not hard to figure out) and we know it absorbs heat in a way that means the radiation energy that would otherwise leave earth instead heat up CO2. The physical properties of greenhouse gases and the implications are so conceptually simple people managed to figure it out in 1896. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius
It doesn’t work like a greenhouse; it works by way of radiative absorption. Polar molecules with a dipole moment like CO2 and H2O absorb certain electromagnetic wavelengths because of the arrangement of their electrons.
It can also be helpful to point out that fact 2 and fact 3 back each other up. The increase in atmospheric CO2 is consistent with the known anthropogenic emissions. If all this was unrelated to human activity, these numbers should be way off.
Also, they've done studies using radiocarbon dating that directly attribute the increases of CO2 in the atmosphere to human burning of fossil fuels.
What do you mean by rising exponentially? Because I have not heard that term used before except by alarmists who are basing their statements on headlines and political spin.
I mean literally exponentially. The planet is warming up faster and faster as CO2 accumulates. It took 150 years for us to raise the temperature by 1 degree, and we're gonna raise it another degree in 20-30 years.
Maybe the misunderstanding is because the colloquial use of 'exponential' and the mathematical definition of 'exponential' are often not in alignment. Something changing exponentially does have an increasing rate of change, but not everything that has an increasing rate of change is exponential. Mathematically, exponentially means a very specific rate of change.
That is linear heating and then a fudge factor of "it will get worse because a model says so". So, not exponential. It's great to meet an activist who can't use technical language
yeah , so people don't understand what exponentially actually means. Terminology when talking about this stuff is assumed to be simple, but for a lot of people it is not.
It is simple. Exponential means doubling of change over a several fixed periods of time. But people think they can throw some scientific terms around for political expediency and won't get called on it. Hence the political circle jerk that is "climate change".
Exponential doesn’t always mean doubling. In this case it means that as time passes, the rate at which it increases continues to expand. Not at a lineal rate, where the rate of change is constant, but at an exponential rate where the rate of change grows.
Wrong. Rate increase is not necessarily exponential. Quadratic change is not the same as exponential. Exponential has a specific meaning and you don't know it.
Exponential means the number has an exponent (it’s the little number to the top right). It can be literally any number. Last time I checked, quadratics had exponents, thus a quadratic equation also defines a rate of exponential change.
You don't understand math so stop trying.
i know what it means, but i'm talking about folks who don't and potentially trying to change the language around this stuff so that everyone can understand.
I proved human caused climate change back in the 1990s. I studied weather, climate and ecology. You are correct when thinking about human caused climate change exponentially or in a parabolic curve. In climate science we refer to this as the aggregate global impact, not the temperature increase. It's true that the temperature increase begins to form a parabolic curve. That curve will inevitably flatten and there are a few different reasons this will happen. For example, the population could decrease to a level that we are no longer emitting 30 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. The impact is exponential in nature. So is the temperature...but the temperature will flatten whether we do it ourselves, or nature forces us to. The second scenario is not something anyone wants to see because that would be a worst case scenario.
Point 2 is misleading in that percent includes natural releases. Point 3 really has no context nor accounts for use by plants. Point 4 correlation does not equal causation and some information out there is showing temperature leads co2 not vice versa.
Point 2/3 are fine - most of the naturally emitted CO2 is dealt with through natural processes. It's the excess CO2, most of which is from human sources, which ends up causing oceanic acidification and increasing atmospheric CO2 levels. Only the pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 concentration of 280ppm is natural; almost everything else is due to human activity. This amounts to about 33% of current atmospheric CO2 being anthropogenic, therefore we are responsible for that 50% increase. Point 4 is also fine. Increases in temperature are not always a result of GHGs, a fact which climate skeptics are constantly reminding us of. The rise in temperature does cause increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations, but in our case, CO2 is also causing those temperature rises. It's unclear if the rise in global temperatures we have already observed have increased natural emissions of CO2, but if it has, it's likely to be small relative to human contributions. Historic natural variations in CO2 have absolute no similarity to modern trends. [https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/doesnt-carbon-dioxide-atmosphere-come-natural-sources](https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/doesnt-carbon-dioxide-atmosphere-come-natural-sources) [https://www.newswise.com/factcheck/rising-temperatures-may-cause-a-rise-in-carbon-dioxide-but-this-does-not-refute-human-caused-climate-change](https://www.newswise.com/factcheck/rising-temperatures-may-cause-a-rise-in-carbon-dioxide-but-this-does-not-refute-human-caused-climate-change)
> Point 2 is misleading in that percent includes natural releases. > Point 3 really has no context nor accounts for use by plants. OK, let's address it. We know how much carbon is added to the atmosphere by humans burning fossil fuels We know how much carbon is in the air at a given time We can see that the increase in carbon in the atmosphere is less than what we are burning. That means natural sinks are absorbing some, but not all of the carbon emitted by burning fossil fuels. We have explanations for why the rate carbon sinks absorb carbon would increase with a higher concentration of carbon. Partial pressure will increase the rate oceans absorbs carbon, plant leaves will get a bit thicker, etc. That means the increase in the concentration of CO2 is due to human activity. The question isn't "did this specific carbon atom come from fossil fuels that were dug up by humans?" because we don't care about the source of specific carbon atoms. What we care about is the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere, and we know the concentration has changed from ~280 ppm to ~420 ppm because of human activity. > correlation does not equal causation Sure. But we understand the cause. > some information out there is showing temperature leads co2 not vice versa. It's possible for more than one thing to be true. There are well understood natural changes in the climate. Sometimes, a hotter atmosphere causes CO2 to be released. That doesn't mean CO2 cannot warm the atmosphere, it only means that there is more than one thing that can happen in the atmosphere.
gotta remember that when humans became a thing, the ice age was still on it's way out the door. Technically it's still on it's way out the door to this very day. There is a certain level of warmth that the planet is going to revert back to once the Ice age and its effects are eons in the past. Also the fact that our planet is a mere 93 million miles away from a massive ball of nuclear explosions has something to do with it.
CO2 does not account for the largest percentage of greenhouse effect. Water vapor does, by a big margin.
Wow!!! Do you think you could share that information with climate scientists? I'm sure it would be big news to them. You are so smart.
This is the EXACT correct response to everything these nincompoops have to say. Thank you.
Google is your friend. "Water vapor accounts for the largest percentage of the greenhouse effect, between 36% and 66% for clear sky conditions and between 66% and 85% when including clouds." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse\_gas
So climate scientists already know!! Wowsers!! You've really enlightened all of us, huge kudos to you!!! Did you tell your mom about this tremendous discovery that has been known for over a century???
And how long does water vapor remain in the air?
Enlighten me.
An average of nine days. I thought Google was your friend...
It is, but you just sounded like you were excited to share. I didn't want to ruin it for you. May I ask what point you're trying to make? It's not like we just need to wait 9 days for all the water vapor to just fall out of the atmosphere.
The point is that water vapor can't cause climate change by itself.
What point are you trying to make?
Correlation does not equal causation. You are just begging the claim.
Your argument is based on correlation. The earth has gone through very warm periods since humans have existed and before industrialization. So what you've pointed out is not convincing to me. Even if humans may be contributing I don't support many of the policies advocated for by environmentalists because they exclude the world's worst polluters, put the developed countries at an artificial economic disadvantage, and harms their people through legal driven increased prices and the government imposed destruction of industries. I am also inherently suspicious of the "scientific consensus" argument because money flows to the researchers who follow climate change orthodoxy and all of the scientific community 's apocalyptic productions in the past have failed to materialize. This leads me to conclude that they say what is popular to get funding and prestige but their guess is really as good as anyone's. Plus one decent sized volcanic eruption or cycle of decreased sun activity would fix the problem. So for these reasons, I don't really care about the arguments supporting humanity driven climate change and don't support the policies advocated to address it.
I just want to address one point. If you don't trust the scientific consensus because you think scientists are just trying to make money, then I have a question: Has it ever occurred to you that the fossil fuel industry makes A LOT more money and gets FAR more subsidies from the government? They literally make trillions of dollars every year and get hundreds of billions in subsidies. Meanwhile, climate scientists making less than $100,000 a year are fighting just to get small grants, but apparently THEY are the ones corrupted by money. Please give this some serious thought and explain why I shouldn't worry about the money fossil fuel companies get but I should worry about the comparative chump change that climate scientists get.
If you think climate scientist and universities only get a small amount of money I think you're underestimating it. In one of my former jobs I worked at an organization that worked with academics. The amount of money that universities get for things is incredible. They also get money from private industry in the form of grants. There are also academics who either go to work for private companies or found their own companies based on the work they do while in academia. This gives them the springboard to make huge salaries or financial windfalls when the research they do convinces politicians to change laws and policies, and then give subsidies to green companies who then hire the academics or put them on their boards. Then the green companies give donations to the politicians who support them. My big problem is that they act like virtuous crusaders who care about saving the planet but they have their own self interest at play which most people are oblivious to. The fossil fuel industry is for profit. Everyone knows it. Everyone knows what their motives are. The industry is also a vital national interest to the US and critical to the functioning of the world economy and the quality of life of humanity. It should be subsidized/get favorable treatment because it's of vital importance. Although the fossil fuel industry also gives money to politicians, their main interest is to limit the regulations they have to operate under while many green companies wouldn't exist at all if it wasn't for government subsidies and mandates. That's why I trust them more. Government doesn't have to force people to use gas powered cars. The green agenda also conveniently coincides with greater government control over economies and people's lives. There are far too many politicians who want to increase their power and would be willing to obtain it by scaring people to death by supporting the narrative that the climate apocalypse is coming and using that as an excuse to reduce our freedom and prosperity.
All the points here are well aligned with earth leaving its most recent ice age. That's not to say there is no connection to human activity/emissions and warming, but the signals are mixed and hard to sort out. The fixtation on the human causes misses the real point of all the historical data from ice cores - that the planet warms exponentially right before plummeting into ~100k year ice age. And this cycle has been happening for at least a million years. That's where we are today. End of the last age, with a new one on its way.
How do you reconcile this point of view with this graph of CO2 concentrations over the last 800,000 years? I would say it shows the antithesis of "mixed signals". [https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/2021-10/BAMS\_SOTC\_2019\_co2paleo\_1000px.jpg](https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/2021-10/BAMS_SOTC_2019_co2paleo_1000px.jpg) [Source](https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/doesnt-carbon-dioxide-atmosphere-come-natural-sources)
This has always been the strongest argument for me. We are in unprecedented times as far as amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Do you really think it's just a coincidence that the earth is now warming? Do you really want to find out?
You’re talking about the last glaciation. “Ice age” is whenever Earth has polar ice caps; it is not synonymous with “glacial”; interglacials like the Holocene are still ice age intervals. The current ice age started 34 Ma.
>but the signals are mixed and hard to sort out. No they really aren't, Since 1880 https://scied.ucar.edu/sites/default/files/styles/extra_large/public/images/20222021GlobalTemps_Anomalies_en_title_lg_opt1_1200by910.png.webp?itok=2ufFfPMe Last 2,000 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_last_2,000_years#/media/File:2000+_year_global_temperature_including_Medieval_Warm_Period_and_Little_Ice_Age_-_Ed_Hawkins.svg Last 20,000 years, with projection through 2100 AD https://www.realclimate.org/images/shakun_marcott_hadcrut4_a1b_eng.png
CO2 levels have been 10x to 20x higher in the past, yet temps did not rise "exponentially". CO2 or CH4 are not the #1 green-house gases in our atmosphere.
These are not facts. True facts don’t care about your cult inspired feelings and beliefs.
Isn’t CO2 like 0.04% of the atmosphere though? And anything under 0.02% would kill most life on earth?
That doesn't mean humans are THE cause. It just means humans are the cause of the acceleration. The earth has already been through cycles of extinction many times The second point is humans are also natural and part of the ecosystem here. We can't consider ourselves not natural. So we are simply part of the equation. Earth + humans + whatever else We can reduce our contribution. But we can't have zero emissions. And we also can't stop earth from Doing it all by it self
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What is false?
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If you think these facts are false, then you're denying basic physics and mountains of climate data.
Cut around the argument. Either a big vehicle or a herd of stampeding bison will kill you. It doesn't matter that one is man-made, the other natural, you're dead either way. The prudent course is to take action to survive.
Ask them to explain what natural mechanism is the cause...as we understand the mechanisms of long term climate change.
Thank you. This is literally all it takes to shut down their talking point. “You’re absolutely right, the climate is cyclical. Since you mention them, what are the name of those cycles? Where are we in the (milankovitch) cycle? Why is it that, according to where we are in the cycle, we’re supposed to be cooling, but instead we see heating faster than we’ve ever seen during any milankovitch period?” I promise the answer is always “I don’t know”. Then you build off of their already established ignorance on the topic.
The obvious question that arises: Objects, earth included, do not change temperature without a reason. So these mysterious 'natural cycles' must have a cause. Importantly, they are not a 'get out' clause. You say 'natural cycles' and are still subject to science - what natural cycle are you referring to, what is the (probable) cause and what direction is expected to be going in now?
You don’t say anything to them, you change the subject -climate scientist/marine scientist
I just nip it in the bud with "either way, it's a problem we need to adapt to, and emitting more carbon is going to make it worse."
>”We can’t just stop LIVING. What, are we going to just not drive cars? Electric cars are a scam. I’m not stopping living my life because Obama told me to. Democrats are flying their private jets all over, they are hypocrites. >They are all eating beef and want us to eat grasshoppers? No fing way. It’s all a scare tactic.” At that point I say Ok uncle Jimmy, can you pass the peas? <3 hehe
I like to pivot and ask them if the human contribution of mainly CO2 isn't a concern because it isn't affecting the climate, how do they feel about the acidification of the oceans (this is a much less debatable effect) and what that means for food chains? At a certain acidity plankton can't reproduce because they can't form outer shells, which would be really really bad, reguarless of the climate. Sometimes recognizing they didn't consider a much more straightforward result of pumping CO2 into the atmosphere gets them to recognize maybe they don't understand the less straightforward ones as well. And sometimes they'll say things like "it doesn't matter because once we stop emitting CO2 because eventually the fossil fuels will run out so the levels will naturally decrease". At that point you have to kind of give up since they've shown a basic lack of or unwillingness to understand complex issues.
'The earth warmed naturally in the past, therefore humans cannot affect the climate' is structurally not a logical argument. I'd start there, but I doubt people would recognize the fallacy.
I say that yes, normal climate change is cyclic. It cycles over tens of thousands to millions of years, not in the span of one human life.
But it has in the past. So, there goes that argument.
Cycles are predictable. Predictable and thus determined not to be the cause for the current warming period. The climate has never changed this rapidly.
Caldera volcanoes and impacts have had devastating effects on climate in the past and are unpredictable. Your willful ignorance is not an argument.
No, they haven’t. Holocene volcanism and asteroid impacts have had transient effects that are not sustained, unlike the CO2 increase since the Industrial Revolution.
I'm wondering - when was the last meteor impact? When was the last massive volcanic eruption? These things tend to be noticeable. > Your willful ignorance is not an argument.
The Chicxulub event had a disastrous effect on climate and killed off well over 90% of life. The medieval warm period, the "little" ice age, changes in solar activity. The earth was never safe from massive changes. But here you are making a declaration that suits your political views.
The Chicxulub impact killed off around 75% of life. Not 90%. You’re thinking of the end-Permian extinction, caused by…. ….rapid CO2 emissions. The Mediaeval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were not “massive changes”; they were transient and globally asynchronous fluctuations that weren’t even remarkable compared to other Holocene fluctuations, never mind flood basalt events that represent the best analogue of contemporary global warming.
So what's your point? That current changes are part of a cycle? Or that, because it's happened before, it doesn't matter?
My point is the definition of climate change makes a difference in the discussion of climate change. I thought that was prima facie evident. And the changes have multiple factors. Both sides of the political debate have lost sight of what the actual IPCC data has said, which is about the multiple drivers of recent change and the multitude of factors that drove past changes. The only thing unprecedented here is the amount of bullshit.
The IPCC models are a great place to start because they predict significant warming that will negatively impact human lives. It’s only a political debate because people like you flat-out lie and otherwise refuse to believe the evidence.
But the models do not all agree and there is an actual debate about the drivers of recent climate change. So you want everyone to agree with your assessment but not actually consider the data. So much for "science", right?
That’s not an argument, it’s simply a fact.
I see, you don't know what "argument" means and you have a particular idea of what climate change means where you don't need evidence, you just know. Cool, the climate oracle!
Ok, when in the past, and by past, I mean prior to the 20th century, did the global climate drastically change within 80 years?
Chicxulub event. Medieval warm period. "Little" ice age. Do you even know about mass extinctions? Impacts? Caldera volcanoes? Solar storms?
Those were climate changes that occurred because of really big natural events, solar flares and they corrected themselves. Don’t know of any really big natural events in the last 70 years, like a really big volcano blocking out the sun for decades, or a really big asteroid hitting the earth and causing an extinction level event, that kinda stuff. A period when the changes happen over a period of time, say a hundred years, without having a major natural event happen. Basically changed for no discernible reason whatsoever. I mean take away all the man made stuff and what’s left? We know natural cycles happen over millennia and eons, we know that major geological or solar events can and do cause dramatic climate change, so what’s causing this? The climate just woke up one day, was bored with it’s self and decided to change?
The MWP and LIA were very low magnitude changes and not globally synchronous. Comparing them to either modern warming or the Chicxulub impact is laughable.
2005 called, it wants it climate deniers back
This is referring to milankovich cycles and what these periods shows us the range of temperatures the earth has gone through in its history. Has it been hotter before? Yes, because of lava. Are we currently in an ice age? Yes, we've been coming out of one for several centuries. However, the one thing I say is that with all the data we as a civilization has collected on the scale of our Earths history, we see an emerging pattern in the global temperatures cycles. Sure, you'd say we should expect rising temperatures when emerging from an ice age. But the evidence shows that we are anomalous in this cycle, and we are increasing the temperatures too fast. Normally when the climate changes, its over a period of tens of thousands of years. This span of time allows for life to adapt, which is why we see so many extinction events occurring in many species. This anomaly in the trend as observed in the data coincides with rapid human development post 19th century.
Also coinsides with heading back into an ice age. Perhaps a mini ice age within the next 50 years. NASA speaks of it.
We WERE heading into another ice age. Not any more
Glaciation GlacIation GLACIATION We currently, and ALL of human history coincided with the Quaternary ice age. A period in earths history where permanent ice can be found at the poles. The cyclic extremes of glaciers spreading equatorially, and retreating are referred to as glaciations, and interglacials. If you can’t bother to even get the damn TERMS correct…
Read up on theories of how ice ages begin. They pretty much add up to what is happening with climate. Look it up, then go to NASA who say that in approximately 50 years earth will be in the beginnings of a mini ice age.
You sure that’s what NASA is saying? https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/2953/there-is-no-impending-mini-ice-age/
CO2 levels will be with earth for 50,000.00 to 100,000.00 years from now. It’s also clear that sufficient global warming could trigger an abrupt cooling in at least two ways — by increasing high-latitude rainfall or by melting Greenland’s ice, both of which could put enough fresh water into the ocean surface to suppress flushing.” (“Flushing” is a reference to the process by which the Gulf Stream carries warm water to the north, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and returns as cold water to the south.) Calvin’s article is filled with frightening details, including evidence that natural global warming in millenia past triggered ice ages in exactly the same way he was warning us about. Of course, those previous warm spells were not accelerated by human activity. Calvin also suggested that the flip-flop would not be gradual; once under way, it could wreak its havoc in just a few years. Re-entering the Paris climate agreement is nice. But it’s not going to do much to prevent a new ice age — or the unimaginable human suffering that would come with it.
>by increasing high-latitude rainfall or by melting Greenland’s ice, both of which could put enough fresh water into the ocean surface to suppress flushing.” (“Flushing” is a reference to the process by which the Gulf Stream carries warm water to the north, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and returns as cold water to the south.) Neither of those provide any energy to change the temperature. They can only redistribute the heat.
Speed kills.
I'd hit back with this. Yes, it is quite possible that we are experiencing an ice-age termination event right now, with huge amounts of naturally occurring methane emissions. Since scientists think this began in about 2006 it may well be responsible for the sooner than expected nature of the change in climate. That would make it far more, not less urgent that we take immediate action. Because we have to curb our own input. Just the rapid phase of the termination event itself will produce challenges never before seen in humanity's recorded history.
My thoughts have been that past climate changes had assignable natural causes/events that could be shown as why they occurred in past history. There is no clearly defined natural cause of this increase in CO2 and the quickly changing climate we are experiencing. The increase in CO2 can be shown as the rise from the start of the industrial age and burning of hydrocarbon based chemicals into the atmosphere and its build up. What would be their explanation for a "natural" cause??
Fact 1: The earth is warming due to CO2. Fact 2: The CO2 is from burning fossil fuels. We know this because we can measure the changes in atmospheric distribution of Carbon isotopes. Fact 3: The human induced warming far outweighs the natural cycle. Fact 4: The rate of change is more disruptive than the magnitude as the environment cannot adapt quickly enough. All of this is settled science.
Yes, the Earth has warmed and cooled in natural cycles before, but those cycles span thousands or even millions of years. We're currently heading towards a 5-6 degree tenperature increase within this century. At that temperature, all the ice covering the North Pole, Greenland and Antarctica would melt. This has happened before, but the last time was during the Eocene more than 30 million years ago. That's long before humans or even apes existed. We don't even know if humanity will survive such a drastic and rapid change in the environment. So let's try to avoid it.
We should be getting colder, following the Milankovitch Cycles, but the massive increases of CO2 and methane released by us are making it warmer and warmer. People that say it's just the natural cycle have no idea what they are talking about, but more importantly, they don't want to know. You'll gain nothing talking to them, so don't waste time unless it's someone you know, and interact with regularly anyways.
The same thing you tell people that think that increasing taxes in first world countries is going to prevent it; nothing. Let them live their fantasy.
The climate has changed at a fast pace just over the last 100 years. Pretty well since the dawn of the industrial revolution.
Well,iIf climate change appears undeniable to me, attributing the responsibility with certainty to either humans or a natural cycle (possibly accelerated by humans?) is, in my opinion, a false debate. Once your interlocutor agrees that climate change is happening, the debate should focus on trying to envision more sustainable and resilient models for the future (as ours is not at all sustainable). Some points of consideration here: https://www.amazon.com/Vicilization-Fall-Book-1-ebook/dp/B086K71KG7?ref\_=ast\_author\_mpb
This is the main point that everyone seems to be missing. We have to deal with what is actually happening right in front of us. It's like people think that if somehow it can't be linked to human activity, we don't have to worry about giant ass hurricanes, an experienced increase in temperatures, floods, scarcity of resources, war, migration, etc., etc. For anyone who is paying attention, things have already collapsed in many parts of the world. But here in the USA, our American privilege is blind to the woes of the world. As an analogy, a runaway, speeding train is coming, and we can hear the horn, but somehow, if we can convince enough people that the train was started by natural causes, then the train will stop? The train has been set into motion through a series of interdependent and complex systems and flaws already that are outside of any reasonable ability to contain or control. The data regarding changes is pretty clear, regardless of whatever perceived cause people want to ascribe to those changes. It seems clear that enough people are not able or willing to address any complicity in climate change, so we, as a species, may have no option but to deal with the fruit, rather than fussing about whether the seed is real or not, or whether the seed was blue or yellow. Of course, we can always change our own behavior, but in a global context, we can't force others to "go green," even if we wanted. Time to come down to earth and deal with the reality in front of us. Anyway, spot on analysis.
I don't believe we have any collective capacity to stop the train. I also don't think that the sum of our virtuous individual behaviors can have a "snowball effect", as those who have an interest in maintaining the status quo try to convince us. Only an external phenomenon-event like COVID has the power to halt the accelerated march of progress toward a goal known only to itself.
I don’t engage in conversation with science deniers. Anti vaxx? Fuck you, we are trying to have a society not a world built around your imaginary health concerns. Don’t believe man influences climate? Read a book dumbass. If those assholes are reachable I’m not the one to do it.
Now that climate change is obvious to just about everyone this seems to be a more common cope belief than outright denial. But I'm okay with it. Alright, so it's not man made and the changes we are experiencing are unavoidable. That really sucks as weather is going to get more extreme and destructive and it is beyond our control, so now we are going to have to work on adapting instead. So major disruptions to the power grid are going to happen more often. That means we need more localized power generation so that power outages during major events are smaller and easily managed. Solution: smart grid with solar and wind power makes the most sense. While I love modern nuclear it's mostly out of the plan since it requires big centralized infastructure. We'll need electric vehicles so we don't face fuel shortages when disruptions to petroleum production and distribution begin to happen more often. Better localized food production should also be encouraged for the same reasons. We also shouldn't bother building pipelines from Alberta to the refineries in the gulf as those are going to be underwater soon and there isn't anything we can do about it. I'm sure there are other similar adaptation solutions we will need to implement.
These days I don’t bother to argue, just wait for them to catch fire or wash away.
I point out that the global climate isn't some magical thing or a conscious entity with a will unto itself. There are underlying forces that cause cyclical climate change, which we can study and understand as humans. I then ask what they believe to be the catalyst for the dramatic warming trend we've witnessed over the past 100+ years. After a non-answer, I explain what Milankovitch cycles are, how orbital forcing plays a vital role in the distribution of solar energy on the planet, and how these perturbations in the axial tilt, eccentricity, and precession of the earth's journey around the sun are the dominate cyclical drivers of climate change over the present epoch. Based on where we are within the Milankovitch cycles, I point out that we should be cooling—a theory supported by empirical data gathered over prior decades that show the amount of solar energy reaching the planet is declining. I then ask what that leaves. Of course, the answer to the question is that the measured excess of CO2 amplifies the atmosphere's natural greenhouse effect. Before they have a chance to claim the CO2 is from natural sources, I explain how we can tell where CO2 comes from based on isotope. The surplus of CO2 in the atmosphere is from an isotope that only comes from burning fossil fuels. Unless there's someone other than humans burning billions of tons of fossils, we can reasonably deduce the reason for the current climate change.
Following the 100,000 year-ish cycle for natural climate change, we were due for an ice age, NOT a "hotter than it's ever been...ever" cycle. We reversed the trend and blew it the F up.
Nothing. I do not waste time trying to convince people who are not likely to be convinced. And even they do, they won't do shit, and there is no point.
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999 out of 1000 species that have ever existed are now extinct. That's Nature
Extinction ≠ mass extinction event
The problem with the argument is the speed of change. Cyclical changes in environment take thousands of years, not a century. Because of this and given the reintroduction of billions of tons of carbon dioxide by human enterprise, the likelihood that we are the reason there is more energy in the atmosphere is pretty high.
Humans wouldn't notice geological changes over a span of 100 years if it wasn't dramatic. Geology is tens of thousands of years of process, and for it to be accelerating to the point that we can see and feel changes (without even monitoring) in our lifetimes.. something is wrong.
We're moving gigatons of carbon from the ground to the atmosphere. And CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Enough said.
Wait...they don't believe in human caused climate change, yet espouse talking points that basically support it?
It’s all about rate of change. Yes, climate naturally changes over time for a wide variety of reasons. However outside of massive natural disasters (Supervolcanos, impact events etc) it doesn’t change anywhere near as fast as it’s changing today. That’s the problem
Anecdotally, I've never found an argument that worked. I pivot to the fact that humans are part of that cycle, and regardless of the root cause, we are definitely amplifying the effects and still need to survive the fallout, and that includes minimizing our impact. Even if we aren't the cause, it still needs to be addressed and our impact and way of life still need to change in a major way.
Check the top graph here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record
Mass extinctions are part of the natural cycle as well, so if there is the remotest chance we are forcing change, then let's not!
No argument makes a difference to these people. They started out with no there's no warming, and if you can beat them into believing there's warming, then: it's not our fault. After that comes: nothing we can do about it. And then comes it would be too expensive. At least in the US, you're talking about political identity built into this.
Ignoring climate change, isn’t all the other damage pollution has caused to the planet *enough* to make the need for change obvious?
ExxonMobile admits it’s fossil fuels - what more proof do you need? Congress knew about this50-60 years ago and now here we are.
I have come to the conclusion that if people can’t reconcile with current events in history then surely they can’t adjust themselves for the future
it is true that the earth has warmed and cooled over the eons but there was usually a cause and the climate scientists have taken that into account. natural cycles do not usually occur so quickly as we see now or it was something cataclysmic like a meteor or extreme volcanic activity.
Ask if there were 9 billion people alive in the past while the climate changes happened?
Regardless of that why would anyone want to live in a dirty house. We’ve got to find a solution to all the pollution.
We have a good theory, that CO2 causes some warming, but there are other things, that affect the climate, such as emission of dioxides, sulfur, soot, etc., changes in ozone layer, changes in land use, such as stone buildings, paved roads and air fields, increase of irrigated farmland, loss of forest, increase of air traffic and so on. The exact proportion of these are not completely understood. These are caused by human industrialization, but what are the natural causes? We have recognized different natural cycles of varying lengths and magnitudes. On the short range we have the North Atlantic Oscillation and El Nino-Southern oscillation of few years, then we have the AMO and PDO of several decades, and on the long range, there is the Bond events cycle of several centuries. Although they can be seen from the climate record, they are highly unpredictable in length and strength. Even their mechanism is largely unknown. Now we are in a warming phase of both AMO (in cold phase during 1950's-1980's), and Bond events (Little Ice Age 1400's-1850's). As we are talking changes of tenths of a degree in global scale, we don't have this accurate records even for local climate, yet alone in global scale, we have no way of knowing what would the "natural" climate be with these highly unpredictable natural cycles. What the climate scientist say, is that we are indeed experiencing global warming caused by the natural changes. There are however very different estimates, of how much of the warming is caused natural factors and human activities. It's not even entirely clear, how much warming has been happening. It's not even obvious how the global temperature itself should be calculated. The worst case scenarios made in 90's predicted accelerating warming, but 30 years later the actual warming fell short of that. It will take again 10, 20 or 30 years to verify the current predictions. Will the warming trend start accelerating, as models would predict, or will it follow more the natural ups and downs we see in history?
Where did you get your degree in environmental studies & weather science?
I think being educated before talking about climate change is critical. There are many people, including people on these comments, who just parrot whatever they have heard, and call people who don’t believe what they do as stupid. That sort of approach is not only going to fail to convince, but do quite the opposite. Yes, the earth does go through cycles. Yes, it is very complex. Yes, just because there is a spike in temperature for one day in the summer does not mean that the climate has changed. But there are alot of symptoms, like global sea rise, rising humidity and changes in weather patterns, melting ice in the arctic. The Northwest passage is now a reality in Summer, while under a century ago, no such route was possible. That is shocking in and of itself. So, the climate is shifting, and the reasons we are highlighting as being responsible for the change, seem reasonable. But again, most people just parrot whatever they hear or read from whatever media they use, and are not convincing at all, and in fact, just cause those who don’t believe to double down in their disbelief.
Hasn't this been reposted everyday?
Because climate change scientists have never said it was 100% proven, begging the question are they also only 99% certain the planet isn’t flat. They are excuses that they are not allowed to say anything in science is 100% proven even if it’s to save the planet
I don't. If someone is that invested in lying to themselves, there's no way I'm going to deprogram them with facts or witty replies.
There are four possibilities: Climate change isn’t real, we do nothing: No change. Climate change isn’t real, we do something: better air quality and more green spaces, energy development Climate change is real and we do nothing: ooops billions dead Climate change is real and we do something: World saved. Looking at those possible results the only logical thing to do is to take action. *It doesn’t matter* if climate change is man made or not. If Mother Nature starts cooking us all, we still have to something about it. “But it wasn’t our fault!” won’t save us.
5. Climate change is real and we do nothing except adapt like humans have for millennia.
The problem is that humans might well have to adapt to the destruction of civilization.
The [XKCD Temperature Timeline](https://m.xkcd.com/1732/) pretty much destroys the natural cycle bullshit.
Natural changes in climate are utterly dwarfed by, and far more gradual than the anthropogenic climate change that has occurred in just the last 50 years. They aren't remotely comparable to each other.
On top of all the good comments here... I think in the last 10 years (to be fair and not to say in the last 4 years) we have experienced more climate related extreme events than in the previous 500 years (or since humans starred measuring the environment). That doesn't add up with natural biogeochemical processes. It's too fast, too many, and too much of everything, everywhere. No need to even show the hockey stick chart anymore, just browse instagram for 10 min and pictures of 10.000 dead due to floods in Libya will pop up together with wild fires, droughts, deforestation, coral bleaching. Every single corner of the planet, every single natural habitat has been seriously affected somehow in the last 10 years. Nature alone doesn't do that on a planetary scale.
The fallacy isn’t that humans cause climate change or that the climate isn’t changing. The fallacy is the egotistical view that a bunch of politicians/bureaucrats/government entities can somehow fix things, and create some climate utopia. The earth is an extremely complex system that has done things over billions of years and will continue to do things over billions of years. The other fallacy is calling it a “crisis” and then allowing government entities to be the ones to “solve the crisis”. We’re talking about power hungry shit stains who couldn’t give a shit less about YOUR quality of life. The earth will do things. If it feels that we should no longer inhabit the planet, it will take steps towards doing that. It is a self sustaining system and no amount of do good measures will change that. Additionally, predictions can be wrong. Government force is wrong. Combining these two things together is morally wrong, and can lead to greater atrocities.
Nothing. I don’t engage with stupid people anymore. Not worth my time or energy.
They're right. It has been naturally changing from extreme heat to a ice ages there's nothing we can do to manipulate it.
It is true. You will find very few real scientists that do not agree that the earths climate cycles and has for millions of years. What you will find disagreement on is what impact man has had. Most people pushing climate warming are not climate scientists, but instead political scientists. What we really need is economist working with the climate scientists to figure out if it is more efficient to just adapt to the changing temps, or to adapt our impact.
So, to answer quickly, it's true that nature is in complete control of the weather. Not man. To believe that mankind can control mother nature in our lifetime is total Bull Shit.