On 12/10/2014 9:17 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> You seem to accept both that the earth is warming at a geologically (and
on
ecological time scales as well) extremely rapid rate
Rapid, but not unprecedentedly rapid.
Mere assertion. What evidence can you cite that in the past the Earth's temperature has
risen more than 0.7degK in 40yrs?
> if AGW
Don't forget IHA.
> contributes just a small fraction of global warming then what other
climate
drivers do you propose as providing the rest of the driving force for
climate change?
I don't know, whatever super complex factors that have caused the temperature of the
Earth to go up and down so radically over the billions of years that existed before
humans ever evolved I guess.
But in this case we don't need to look for "super complex factors". We know exactly how
much CO2 we've added to the atmosphere and we know exactly how it traps heat. The only
uncertainties are in the positive feedback factors, like water vapor, snow cover, methane
production,... That's where the 1.5 to 4.5degK range comes from. The main factor for the
temperature variations on the scale of millions of years is the change in solar intensity
and the Earth's orbit. But those are ruled out as causes of the changes over the last
40yrs by direct measurement of isolation.
> As for your sanguine attitude that global warming (along with the
inevitable
attendant sea rise and flooding of the most densely populated and
agriculturally
productive regions of the planet) is not so bad…
The Earth has been at a vast number of temperatures in the last billion, or even in the
last million years, do you have any reason to think that the temperature it was in 100
years ago was the exact temperature that would maximize human happiness and productivity?
Do you have any evidence that raising the temperature 4.5degK will not be disastrous for
many millions of people?
> you are entitled to your opinions
Thank you. And you are entitled to my opinions too.
> we should be very, very careful before experimenting with the basic
equilibrium
states of our planetary biosphere.
Forget it, we gave up that option long before the pyramids were built. It was not a
coincidence that the megafauna of North America and South America and Australia that had
existed for many millions of years disappeared almost immediately after humans visited
those continents for the first time. And today there are over 7 billion people on the
Earth, never before have there been that many large animals of the same large species,
nothing ever even came close. To keep that many animals alive radical things are going
to be needed to be done, to also keep them happy even more radical things are going to
be needed, like directly or indirectly diverting nearly 40% of the planet's
photosynthetic output to human use. It would be astonishing if that sort of intervention
did not cause global changes of some sort to the climate, but short of asking 5 or 6
billion people to kill themselves there is simply no alternative.
Stupid hyperbole. Nobody is asking anybody to kill themselves.
And don't talk to me about windmills, if this is a serious problem it needs a serious
solution, you need more than moonbeams and lollipops to keep 7 billion people alive.
Yes, it needs nuclear powerplants and solar powerplants and population control and
increased power efficiency. But so long as deniers like you obfuscate the problem as
"just natural" and "hotter's really better" the oil company lobbyists will win the
propaganda war and nothing will be done.
Brent
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