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Carbon Pollution Touched 800,000 Year Record in 2016, WMO Says (bloomberg.com)
Carbon dioxide levels surged to their highest level in at least 800,000 years because of pollution caused by humans and a strong El Nino event, according to the World Meteorological Organization. From a report: Concentrations of the greenhouse gas increased at a record speed in 2016 to reach an average of 403.3 parts per million, up from 400 parts per million a year earlier, the WMO said in a statement on Monday warning of "severe ecological and economic disruptions." The WMO said the last time the Earth had a comparable concentration of CO2s, the temperature of the planet was 2 degrees to 3 degrees Celsius warmer and sea levels were 10 meters to 20 meters higher than now.
The way you can tell CO2 doesn't have the effect on the climate the fear-mongers want you to think it does, is that as CO2 continues to climb climate changes do not track with CO2 increases, much less exhibit any kind of runaway effect which is the whole reason you were supposed to fear CO2 to begin with.
Luckily even for those of you that continue to fear irrationally, CO2 production will inevitably decline in the coming decades as solar and other forms of renewable energy take over for real, now that that are close to actually making more sense than fossil fuels.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
CO2's effect has been demonstrated conclusively.
Really, in what way?
How do you "demonstrate" the whole planet will warm into an unstoppable Venus like unlivable atmosphere? Because that's why we were told to fear CO2.
Meanwhile in real life even though CO2 increases exponentially, we see only the same slow warming trend we have been seeing for a while. Even the IPCC now forecasts MAYBE 2C warming over 100 years. So what? There's not any reason to fear that; unless you fear more livable landmass and better crop production the world over.
Even the article says CO2 was at this level 800,000 years ago, and the temperatures were 2-3C warmer - so what happened to that runway effect then? Why did everything not die then? Apparently it was all fine and everything carried on, so why are you worried NOW when humans have the technology to overcome even drastic climate shifts, much less the mild climate shifts we are actually getting.
Your post claims to be rational, yet you seem to fear something that we already no happened to no ill effect. How can you claim rationality when you deny such conclusive evidence to the contrary?
Indeed, if you had any kind of rational thought process to climate you would be down on your knees crying with gratitude that we may have held off the next ice age cycle a little while longer.
I'll let you all have the last word, because as I have seen in the past bringing rational thought to a discussion on climate sadly doesn't seem to have any effect - fear seems to be a lot stronger than intellect, so only time will heal the self-inflicted wounds you are causing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I guess we should start killing them off, eh "Captain"?
Environmentalists first!
Maybe we can do another Cultural Revolution or reopen the Gulags.
Maybe we shouldn't bother with restoring Puerto Rico's power. Less carbon, ya know?
Time to evolve? For 2C?
The high/low temperature spread today is more than 10C.
The summer winter spread is at least 50C.
And now you tell me that 2C over a century is going to cause species to die out. I smell a bit of alarmism in that claim.
About as much as I smell in the claim that the ice at the poles is going to melt (up from -40C) while the equator becomes unlivably hot . . . again, with a 2C overall increase. I could swallow the "average" claim, IF they said the poles would melt OR the equator would become unlivable. But, the alarmist want to claim both, with only a 2C increase.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Lucky then that climate change causes increased evaporation and probably overall increased precipitation.
And, again, good thing that climate change is here to help.
True, but the effects are diminishing with increasing concentrations. That's because CO2 acts like an optical filter, and most of the radiation is already absorbed. So, if that basic physics was all there was to the science, we clearly wouldn't have to worry about carbon emissions at all.
In order to conclude that there is any significant danger from greenhouse gases, you have to run climate models that make various assumptions about positive feedback loops; those feedback loops are not "basic physics", can't be "demonstrated in a laboratory", and are largely speculative and unproven at this point. You also have to assume that there are no additional negative feedback loops to counteract the effects, again something we don't know.
It's dishonest for you and others to conflate the basic physics of the greenhouse effect with the speculative models involving assumptions about feedback that are used to argue for the need to reduce carbon emissions.
There is no way of determining how rapid changes were in the past, the record isn't detailed enough, so that statement has no scientific basis.
What we do know is that mammals and primates thrived at much higher CO2 concentrations than today, and that the climate was generally milder and wetter. So if you want to argue that high carbon concentrations are a problem, you need to address that issue as well, and you need to address it better than through fabrications ("more abrupt") and handwaving ("allowed life more time to adapt"), because that is neither scientific nor rational.