Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain Snooze
I was speaking to a professor of geology, a gentleman who has spent all of his adult life studying rocks. That is, he is not someone who gets his information from 5 minutes of Googling. We had a discussion covering a wide range of subjects.
He disputes anthropogenic climate change*. When talking about this I had nothing to argue. That is, I knew I did not have the expertise to argue his position. Something else I found very interesting was his style of argument; he get didn't bothered, he presented his case in a calm manner, countering all my points with a convincing counter argument where as my stupid brother presented his Googled arguments with a "No, I'm right because I've read it" and wouldn't listen to new information.
His main point was that Co2 levels follow temperature, not the other way around.
He also is well aware of the fallibilities of himself and his peers.
*I am not saying he is right; I do not know. But it was interesting to hear from a very knowledgeable person a counter view.
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A geologist is not a climatologist. There is some overlap like how a veterinarian is not a physician. Just saying.
If CO2 levels follow raises in temperature then why is that? What causes natural swings in temperature? If normally CO2 follows a rise in temperature then does he believe nature is warming and causing a spike in CO2 levels? If he thinks the events are separate, that global temperatures are rising, but CO2 rise is not the cause of it, but agrees that the CO2 rise is human caused, then is it possible that the link between CO2 following temperature was only during natural processes and that this is an unnatural process because we are the cause of the rise in emissions? In short, is this different because it isn’t natural? Does he feel it is fine continuing to dump greenhouse gases in the air indefinitely or does he think we need to change that behavior?
I guess I have a number of questions. The levels we are seeing are unprecedented. The projections for what the world will look like in fifty, one hundred years or longer given the same behavior are hard to predict, but that seems like a crazy, stupid experiment to do. Maybe global warming is harder to predict than ozone destruction or smog concentrations, but the data is alarming. I would question his opinion if he wasn’t alarmed too.