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Thanks for the article. It seems like the gist is - (please correct me if I'm wrong) 1) We have much better ways of measuring CO2 than we ever have before. 2)

Thanks for the article. It seems like the gist is - (please correct me if I'm wrong) 1) We have much better ways of measuring CO2 than we ever have before. 2) The amount we're detecting is going up and recently passed a major milestone 3) Serious and politically difficult cut backs in fossil fuels are required to decrease CO2 totals Taking all that as fact because I certainly don't know enough to dispute it, that's for sure, I have a few questions - 1) Is this actually "bad" for the planet, or is it just bad for humans? The article states that the planet had 400ppm 2-4 million years ago. I guess my question is, why is it bad if humans cause this when it wasn't bad when other phenomena caused it? 2) Could the earth have a feedback mechanism that we don't yet understand to deal with this on its own? These seem so common in nature on a small scale. It seems likely one could exist on a large scale, too. 3) If the only way out of this is drastic human behavior change, then it seems like we should switch to focusing on adapting rather than preventing. Humanity just won't make the levels of fossil fuel cuts that the article says are necessary. --- Also, to respond to your ant analogy - I gather that you equate my question of the average temp for 2014 to predicting waves from minute to minute in the analogy. If one year is too short, then what length of time is long enough to predict? I really think that a major reason why climate change is so unpersuasive to many people (myself included) is that the theories aren't testable in short enough windows of time. Please consider this analogy: I have invented an algorithm that correctly predicts the average value of the S&P500 over the next 50 years. The algorithm really works and it says the average value is 1000x higher than now. Obviously, people could use it to make a killing, even though the algorithm does not claim what the year to year value will be. I could explain my logic over and over, but most people are simply not going to risk their own money on it. However, if I correctly predicted the value of the S&P500 for 2014, 2015, and 2016, I bet lots of people would take my advice for 2017. Without that evidence can you really blame their skepticism?

acqq 13y ago
1) As humans are causing it, they are making the change much much faster than the natural effects did. The living world has much less time to adapt. Humans are producing the massive extinction. 2) No, the Earth would certainly not fix it for us, we know how CO2 behaves. A third of CO2 goes in the oceans at the moment, raising acidity which dissolves , for example, corals. It's another place where humans produce extinctions. 3) Human civilization is extremely dependent on the current state, most of the decisions are made like the current state lasts forever (very short term) and the deniers aren't focusing on anything else than spreading the belief that there isn't any need to adapt to anything. They deny the basic facts. You are also still making the same questions doubting the basic facts. There's absolutely no need to wait for any "confirmation," the scientific certainty is 97% right now. If you don't understand this, imagine that your doctor analyses your blood, your tissue samples, your medical history and many more observations and all results are absolutely consistent with the same illness, and 97 of 100 people die with that results if they don't stop smoking. In our case, we are actually even more certain than any "uncertain" medical diagnosis of today. We measure the "organism" not with one thermometer but with almost unlimited number of them, and we make the different "tissue probes" also on unlimited number of places all the time. All are consistent. More CO2. More heat. Nobody who understands basic science can deny that. You ask basically "shouldn't the patient smoke until the certainty that he dies is 100%?" Well then he is actually dead. The problem is, the patient is the whole earth, and we don't have another one.
- crazy1van 13y ago
  I'm afraid you may understand this science well, but not human nature. I'm not a climate scientist. 99% of the population are not climate scientists. So if the experts can't convince the population, they will never affect their behavior. Precisely predict some measurable events in the future and people will start to believe you. Until then, it is a lost cause. So again, I ask, if predicting the average temp in 2014 is too narrow of a window, what is a window of time you feel confident predicting?
  - acqq 13y ago
    Once again that what is being predicted is confimed every day on different independent places by different independent teams. If you don't understand the details and close your eyes to the fact that the "predictions" are confirmed by the different scientists in fully different research areas, then there's nothning anybody can do.
    - crazy1van 13y ago
      I really wish you would directly answer the question I've asked in several previous posts: What is the window of time you feel confident predicting the average global temperature? Initially I asked about an average within 2014, but you implied from your ant analogy that was too small of a window. So, what is a reasonable window of time and what is the predicted value?
      - acqq 13y ago
        "The Earth's average surface temperature rose by 0.74+-0.18 °C over the period 1906–2005. The rate of warming over the last half of that period was almost double that for the period as a whole (0.13±0.03 °C per decade)." Look at the graph: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Enso-global-temp-anomalies.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Enso-glob... If you would try to understand the numbers you would also understand that in the given limits we can exactly predict, and our observations already match the predictions. It's getting warmer, with the deviations which exist every year. Just like creek water has the flow where you don't know where every drop is but you can observe the flow. It's simply the nature of that. It is getting warmer, exactly as we predict. And humans are the cause. We proved that too.

acqq 13y ago

1) As humans are causing it, they are making the change much much faster than the natural effects did. The living world has much less time to adapt. Humans are producing the massive extinction. 2) No, the Earth would certainly not fix it for us, we know how CO2 behaves. A third of CO2 goes in the oceans at the moment, raising acidity which dissolves , for example, corals. It's another place where humans produce extinctions. 3) Human civilization is extremely dependent on the current state, most of the decisions are made like the current state lasts forever (very short term) and the deniers aren't focusing on anything else than spreading the belief that there isn't any need to adapt to anything. They deny the basic facts. You are also still making the same questions doubting the basic facts. There's absolutely no need to wait for any "confirmation," the scientific certainty is 97% right now. If you don't understand this, imagine that your doctor analyses your blood, your tissue samples, your medical history and many more observations and all results are absolutely consistent with the same illness, and 97 of 100 people die with that results if they don't stop smoking. In our case, we are actually even more certain than any "uncertain" medical diagnosis of today. We measure the "organism" not with one thermometer but with almost unlimited number of them, and we make the different "tissue probes" also on unlimited number of places all the time. All are consistent. More CO2. More heat. Nobody who understands basic science can deny that. You ask basically "shouldn't the patient smoke until the certainty that he dies is 100%?" Well then he is actually dead. The problem is, the patient is the whole earth, and we don't have another one.

crazy1van 13y ago
I'm afraid you may understand this science well, but not human nature. I'm not a climate scientist. 99% of the population are not climate scientists. So if the experts can't convince the population, they will never affect their behavior. Precisely predict some measurable events in the future and people will start to believe you. Until then, it is a lost cause. So again, I ask, if predicting the average temp in 2014 is too narrow of a window, what is a window of time you feel confident predicting?
- acqq 13y ago
  Once again that what is being predicted is confimed every day on different independent places by different independent teams. If you don't understand the details and close your eyes to the fact that the "predictions" are confirmed by the different scientists in fully different research areas, then there's nothning anybody can do.
  - crazy1van 13y ago
    I really wish you would directly answer the question I've asked in several previous posts: What is the window of time you feel confident predicting the average global temperature? Initially I asked about an average within 2014, but you implied from your ant analogy that was too small of a window. So, what is a reasonable window of time and what is the predicted value?
    - acqq 13y ago
      "The Earth's average surface temperature rose by 0.74+-0.18 °C over the period 1906–2005. The rate of warming over the last half of that period was almost double that for the period as a whole (0.13±0.03 °C per decade)." Look at the graph: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Enso-global-temp-anomalies.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Enso-glob... If you would try to understand the numbers you would also understand that in the given limits we can exactly predict, and our observations already match the predictions. It's getting warmer, with the deviations which exist every year. Just like creek water has the flow where you don't know where every drop is but you can observe the flow. It's simply the nature of that. It is getting warmer, exactly as we predict. And humans are the cause. We proved that too.