Quote:
Originally Posted by Dadhawk
The ratios, though, do matter.
If warming and/or cooling is a natural part of the cycle of the planet (which to some extent it seems to be) and humans (and other creatures for that matter) contribute to it in some small percentage, it's just a contribution to the inevitable one way or the other. We may be speeding it up in some inconsequential way (in "Earth Age" terms) but it may just be a blip on the clock.
Not saying making change isn't worth the effort, similar to how we have slowly cleared up the air from the early part of the Industrial Age, but it may not amount to much in the long run.
On the other hand, if the Earth had a steady state environment prior to, say 1500AD, with no variations, and all changes have happened since then, well, maybe we could make a meaningful difference. Thing is, it didn't.
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I think they do matter because the evidence suggests it is humans that are causing the changes, but I like to begin an argument from a point of agreement with anyone with an opposing view and work back to my position, or I like starting with the supposition that the opposing perspective is correct.* In this case, if it is humans then we can do something about it. If it is not humans then maybe we can still do something about it. Just because it could be natural doesn't imply that it doesn't present a risk to humans. That is all I am getting at. The opposing position is either that it is natural, and we are doomed, so why attempt to stop the inevitable (I think it is worth the effort if this is the case), or that it is natural, and we are not doomed, so why attempt to waste money on a problem that doesn't exist (the evidence suggests it exists)?
To review the evidence:
This is a graph of estimated average surface temperatures and the standard deviation of error on those estimates over the last 10,000 years. The chart is normalized against an arbitrary zero based on average temperatures across 1961-1990. As you can see, average surface temperatures have been increasing at an alarming rate.
What could be the cause of this change? Well, there could be many factors, but one could be CO2. When we compare CO2 throughout history over the last 400k years, we see fluctuations, but the recent trends are off the charts.
When we scale the chart from hundreds of thousands of years down to thousands of years, we see an alarming trend. Levels of CO2 and methane have been very stable for thousands of years, but there has been a precipitous rise recently, which coincides with the precipitous rise in temperatures.
While it is possible that the dramatic rise in CO2 and methane is natural, and while it is possible that there is no link between these greenhouse gases and the rise in temperatures (that it is just coincidence), it seems highly unlikely. It think we would be just fooling ourselves. Nevertheless, if we assume all these things are natural, that doesn't change the fact that they are alarming and problematic. What is our solution for surviving a natural rise in CO2, methane and global temperature spikes, even if those spikes are natural? How high will these numbers go? When will they stop or reverse? If the trends continue, how long do we have until these trends become extremely problematic or dangerous?
I think the idea is the same regardless of the cause. It could be a volcano that is about to erupt or a thousand coal factories that are about to emit a certain amount of CO2. Either the events have an effect or not, and if the effect is severe then we either react or we don't. The response will be different, but the place to start is to first recognize that there is a problem.
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*In a similar way of arguing, and as an example, I tend to focus on a place of agreement with people who want to argue that BEVs are dirtier than ICEs over the entire lifecycle of the car. Of course this isn't the case, even if it was once the case, but the point of agreement could be that we can all recognize that oil is finite and that using it for transportation forever is a dead end argument because it is not sustainable, so what is the sustainable alternative to gasoline ICEs? If it isn't BEVs then what is it. Likewise, I think anyone could look at the trends above and be alarmed, regardless of whether they believe humans are the cause, so then the question becomes, what should we do about it? The answer might be the same regardless of whether humans are the cause or not the cause. These would be things like carbon capture, reduced carbon emissions, moving to sustainable resources, etc.