Rick Monteverde wrote: > Never said there was no warming, I said we didn't do it and that we're not > capable of doing anything practical to change it. > > Stephen, add your name to the list of those who choose to ignore the actual > content of my posts
Was I responding directly to you? Don't think so. I was commenting on a point Jed had mentioned. In any case, from what I've read, the "experts", while not 100% certain of the cause, are in near-universal agreement that it is *very* *likely* that the cause is anthropogenic greenhouse gases. One reason for concluding this, which doesn't take a sophisticated model to understand or reason about, is that anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 has been skyrocketing in parallel with the global temperature, which is, as they say, 'highly suggestive'. If you don't agree with those statements, then I don't know where you get your news but it's not the same science rags I see. >From what I've read it's also the case that the long term climate on Earth is highly unstable, according to the geological record. We've benefited from a relatively stable period which has lasted a good while now. Injecting a huge amount of CO2 into the atmosphere -- which, again, I hope you admit humans have been doing -- could conceivably destabilize things rather badly, sending the global climate into a Superball mode, which is unlikely to be good for humans, animals, coral reefs, or just about anybody else. In the general science community I don't think anything I just said can be considered "controversial" or even "doubtful". And even if you think the probability that the current changes are human-generated is smaller than the numbers I've seen bandied about -- which, IIRC, range from ~65% to ~90% -- it's hard for me to understand how you can feel that efforts to reduce the extremely high rate at which we're dumping CO2 into the atmosphere can be misguided. As someone put it, we're conducting an experiment in terraforming on an enormous scale and if the results don't work out well we're going to be in trouble. Perhaps we should scale back the pace of the "experiment", eh?
