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Scientists: What We're Doing To The Earth Has No Parallel In 66 Million Years (washingtonpost.com)
mspohr writes from an article on The Washington Post: We haven't seen this much CO2 added to the atmosphere in 66 million years: "If you look over the entire Cenozoic, the last 66 million years, the only event that we know of at the moment, that has a massive carbon release, and happens over a relatively short period of time, is the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)," says Zeebe. "We actually have to go back to relatively old periods, because in the more recent past, we don't see anything comparable to what humans are currently doing." [New research suggests, even the drama of the PETM falls short of our current period, in at least one key respect: We're putting carbon into the atmosphere at an even faster rate than happened back then.] "The anthropogenic release outpaces carbon release during the most extreme global warming event of the past 66 million years, by at least an order of magnitude," writes Peter Stassen, an Earth and environmental scientist at KU Leuven, in Belgium, in an accompanying commentary on the new study. "Given that the current rate of carbon release is unprecedented throughout the Cenozoic, we have effectively entered an era of a no-analogue state, which represents a fundamental challenge to constraining future climate projections," the study concludes.
Some will say "That's just, like, your opinion, man. You have no proof humans are causing this."
Some will say "God gave us the Earth, and the end is near anyway so what does it matter?"
Some will say "So it gets warmer, so what? I hate cold weather anyway."
Some will just say "Gee, that's interesting" and get into their SUV and drive off, leaving all the lights and heater running in their house, and they DGAF.
What an absurd thing to say. The total amount of CO2 is not the thing to pay attention to. That is a huge number. The thing to pay attention to is the CO2 level in the atmosphere which has gone from around 280 PPM range in the 1800s to over 400 PPM now. That released CO2 will eventually be processed by biology, but that takes time, and in the process the oceans will acidify, which screws up many organisms including coral and calcifying algae. It of course also forces warming and climate change. So stop talking nonsense about what percent of the total CO2 humans have generated relative to the amount in the whole world.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
C02 monthly mean concentration. Looks like we've gone from about 310 ppm to over 400 ppm.
From the wikipedia: Human activity since the Industrial Revolution has increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, leading to increased radiative forcing from CO2, methane, tropospheric ozone, CFCs and nitrous oxide. According to work published in 2007, the concentrations of CO2 and methane have increased by 36% and 148% respectively since 1750.
Of course, the next step is to claim that the Wikipedia + NASA + all scientists are in some kind of conspiracy to distort the truth according to a left-wing agenda. You may now proceed with this phase.
Many people wrongly labeled as "deniers" aren't denying anything. They're merely taking a far more stringent and critical look at the data than those who have political agendas to push do. The wrongly-accused "deniers" are just doing science as it's meant to be done. Science inherently involves questioning absolutely everything, in every way possible. Science isn't about creating "evidence" that can be used to blame humans for naturally-occurring environmental phenomena so that they can be subjected to carbon taxes and other shenanigans. Science is about looking at the observations and evidence from all angles, without preconceived notions and without goals revolving around forcing a leftist philosophy on others. Science isn't about politics. Science is about the truth, regardless of how we may interpret that truth.
Science doesn't advance because people agree with the status quo. No, they point out where current theories are wrong. That's when science really advances. In most fields, dissenting views are welcome debate because it benefits science. But that doesn't happen with global warming. Dissenting views are silenced just like you see happening here. Not only can science be wrong, but it often is. Can you imagine if opponents to String Theory or General Relativity were silenced in this manner? Thankfully most branches of science don't act like this. When you silence criticism as is happening here, it ceases to be science. It's a religion. Remember, about five decades ago, scientists were concerned about global cooling. Before then, cigarettes were considered healthy. People twirled paintbrushes that were used with paint containing radium, blissfully unaware of the dangers. Diet and exercise science is far from settled, with new guidelines being released frequently. We shouldn't censor dissenting views; it's bad for science.
You have no fucking idea how science works. Science advances as data is gathered, theories are refined or new ones are proposed. It isn't some game of topplng windmills. If a theory is invalid, yes it will be rejected, but that is not the sole activity of science, nor, really is it the main activity of science.
Do you seriously think there are scientists in any great numbers running around trying to disprove QM or tectonic plate theories? Is that what you think physicists and geologists are doing? If that is what you think, then you are an ignoramus.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It is literally impossible to claim that our rate of CO2 change over the past 100 years is unprecedented in the historical record because we have no proxy with that kind of resolution. We see the world today in the equivalent of 4k UHDTV in full color, our records from the past are equivalent to cave paintings, and we're claiming that the color of deer is unprecedented.
But don't let that get in the way of a good, scary, apocalyptic tale of warning!
Just wondering, do you accept the fact that the warming due to CO2 increases logarithmically? Since we've obviously both survived and thrived since the 1800s, and there's no realistic scenario where CO2 rises exponentially, isn't this a problem that solves itself with cold, hard math?
The 120ppm we've added so far (if you attribute 100% of it to humans) will have done more warming than the next 120ppm, which will also do more warming than next 120ppm, until the affect is too small to be measured.
Notice how all dissenting views get modded to -1
Frankly I think it's wrong even trying to divide the world into "dissenting" and "assenting." At least, it's not a very scientific way of looking at it. The author of the paper has a good discussion at the beginning of this paper.
You shouldn't mod people up based on whether you 'agree' or 'disagree' with them. Rather, mod them based on whether they've read the paper or not, and the quality of their analysis. Scientific thought should be respected.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Yes, let the people have their say in the vetting of science. This is a democracy! So long as brother John down the road is unconvinced, and so long as local channel 8 (sponsored in part by Exxon Mobile) gives him a mic to debate these important issues, it's unsettled and there's no cause for alarm. Keep doing what you're doing. No one has to adjust. Nothing is wrong. Everything is fine.
Seriously.
"The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"
Okay. Stop fucking screaming about it already. We get it, atmospheric carbon is ridiculous now.
But that simply isn't important.
How do we address the problem in a way that doesn't destroy modern civilization, kill off a large percentage of the world population and send us back to the Stone Age?
And how do we get universal buy-in from other governments?
That's the important part.
What we have now are a bunch of armchair "research scientists" competing for funding so they can continue to bleat on about how "bad" things are. Like nobody else in the world can read automatically collected data. It's like a bunch of bazaar vendors scrambling over a lucky "first customer of the day".
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Translation: Stage 5 of climate change denialsim: okay, climate change was a hoax, and no it's not being caused by the sun, or volcanoes, or whatever stupid bullshit you guys drag up to deflect from your own responsibility. Now we're at, okay, AGW is happening, but it's toooo haaaard to do anything about it!
Problem: the costs of mitigating climate change are insignificant next to the costs of ignoring it.
We could have solved this problem decades ago, by moving to renewable energy sources. But nooooooo, we had to listen to the apologists for Philip Morris first. Sorry, that autocorrected from Exxon for some reason.
Listening to climate change deniers now makes as much sense as listening to people who were chickenhawk warmongers on Iraq for what to do about ISIS or Syria.