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Your first paragraph makes sense, but your reasoning on climate change is lacking. > Climate change is a very complex topic everything ..interconnected with co

Your first paragraph makes sense, but your reasoning on climate change is lacking. > Climate change is a very complex topic everything ..interconnected with complex feedback loops. Main driver of global warming is CO2/methane levels. Main drivers of CO2/methane levels since the industrial revolution are human. That's not complex. > There are also many scientists who reject the notion of man-made climate change altogether This is only true if you are loose with your definition of "many" and/or "scientists". The reason for the apparent confusion over climate change is a well-funded long-term initiative by the oil industry to create confusion by creating fake complexity and doubt.

jongjong 4y ago
>> That's not complex. Humans only contribute around 3% of total CO2 emissions... That's almost certainly less than normal year-on-year variability of CO2 emissions from purely natural sources. The level of volcanic activity (which, on its own contributes more CO2 than humans) is not the same every year. It's difficult to see how human impact on climate change could be significant. Another thing is that CO2 is good for plants and trees; so increased CO2 should contribute to global greening; and there is evidence of this occurring. Since plants consume carbon dioxide, one would think that more plants and trees on earth would mean that more carbon dioxide would be taken out of the atmosphere. It seems like mother nature has already figured out how to achieve CO2 equilibrium. Do the climate change models account for things like global greening? Do they account for the fact that plants can evolve to adapt to a changing environment (with more CO2) through the process of natural selection? A good environmental model would have to account for all the different plant populations around the world and their DNA changes over time... We would have to understand how plant genes affect CO2 consumption; and the simulation would involve trillions of variables and probably require millions or billions of times all the world's current computational capacity to compute accurately. That's barely scratching the surface of the complexity. It's arrogant and disingenuous to suggest that it's simple. All scientists have been able to establish to far is correlation. There is no evidence of causation. Establishing causation is likely impossible due to the huge number of variables involved. Not only do we not fully understand how all the variables interact, we don't even know what all the variables are because the earth is so complex and massive.
- lakhim 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere#/media/File:Carbon_Dioxide_800kyr.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_at... If you look at a chart like this, and think: hmm, this is probably fine, you've completely lost the plot. Something is going to happen from this, and its probably not going to be fun.
  - jongjong 4y ago
    That does look impressive and scary but I wouldn't rule out: - Increased volcanic activity or other natural events (e.g. solar activity) causing this spike in CO2. - Flaws in instruments used to accurately measure CO2 levels in the past due to some variables which have not been accounted for. - That it could just be a temporary spike which will be offset by global greening, increases in ocean phytoplankton or some other natural events over the next few centuries.
    - jasonshaev 4y ago
      It's a bit ... presumptuous ... to assume that scientists that have been studying climate change for 4 decades never considered these possibilities. In fact, a quick google search: ``` While sulfur dioxide released in contemporary volcanic eruptions has occasionally caused detectable global cooling of the lower atmosphere, the carbon dioxide released in contemporary volcanic eruptions has never caused detectable global warming of the atmosphere. All studies to date of global volcanic carbon dioxide emissions indicate that present-day subaerial and submarine volcanoes release less than a percent of the carbon dioxide released currently by human activities. [https://www.usgs.gov/programs/VHP https://www.usgs.gov/programs/VHP] ``` Even if it were true that humans contribute less to global warming than scientists think, we should still try to decrease our overall CO2 output because it's still a contributor to climate change, albeit a smaller one, and the majority of processes that lead to us putting CO2 in the atmosphere are unhealthy in other ways. In the US 50% of greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to transportation and energy production. I think we'd all agree that burning fossil fuels is not great for our collective health and car/airplane exhaust fumes are full of stuff we don't want to breath.

jongjong 4y ago

>> That's not complex. Humans only contribute around 3% of total CO2 emissions... That's almost certainly less than normal year-on-year variability of CO2 emissions from purely natural sources. The level of volcanic activity (which, on its own contributes more CO2 than humans) is not the same every year. It's difficult to see how human impact on climate change could be significant. Another thing is that CO2 is good for plants and trees; so increased CO2 should contribute to global greening; and there is evidence of this occurring. Since plants consume carbon dioxide, one would think that more plants and trees on earth would mean that more carbon dioxide would be taken out of the atmosphere. It seems like mother nature has already figured out how to achieve CO2 equilibrium. Do the climate change models account for things like global greening? Do they account for the fact that plants can evolve to adapt to a changing environment (with more CO2) through the process of natural selection? A good environmental model would have to account for all the different plant populations around the world and their DNA changes over time... We would have to understand how plant genes affect CO2 consumption; and the simulation would involve trillions of variables and probably require millions or billions of times all the world's current computational capacity to compute accurately. That's barely scratching the surface of the complexity. It's arrogant and disingenuous to suggest that it's simple. All scientists have been able to establish to far is correlation. There is no evidence of causation. Establishing causation is likely impossible due to the huge number of variables involved. Not only do we not fully understand how all the variables interact, we don't even know what all the variables are because the earth is so complex and massive.

lakhim 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere#/media/File:Carbon_Dioxide_800kyr.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_at... If you look at a chart like this, and think: hmm, this is probably fine, you've completely lost the plot. Something is going to happen from this, and its probably not going to be fun.
- jongjong 4y ago
  That does look impressive and scary but I wouldn't rule out: - Increased volcanic activity or other natural events (e.g. solar activity) causing this spike in CO2. - Flaws in instruments used to accurately measure CO2 levels in the past due to some variables which have not been accounted for. - That it could just be a temporary spike which will be offset by global greening, increases in ocean phytoplankton or some other natural events over the next few centuries.
  - jasonshaev 4y ago
    It's a bit ... presumptuous ... to assume that scientists that have been studying climate change for 4 decades never considered these possibilities. In fact, a quick google search: ``` While sulfur dioxide released in contemporary volcanic eruptions has occasionally caused detectable global cooling of the lower atmosphere, the carbon dioxide released in contemporary volcanic eruptions has never caused detectable global warming of the atmosphere. All studies to date of global volcanic carbon dioxide emissions indicate that present-day subaerial and submarine volcanoes release less than a percent of the carbon dioxide released currently by human activities. [https://www.usgs.gov/programs/VHP https://www.usgs.gov/programs/VHP] ``` Even if it were true that humans contribute less to global warming than scientists think, we should still try to decrease our overall CO2 output because it's still a contributor to climate change, albeit a smaller one, and the majority of processes that lead to us putting CO2 in the atmosphere are unhealthy in other ways. In the US 50% of greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to transportation and energy production. I think we'd all agree that burning fossil fuels is not great for our collective health and car/airplane exhaust fumes are full of stuff we don't want to breath.