Climate Change

[Alan V]

Climate alarmisim is based on short-term thinking. Almost all the "dangers" of increased CO₂ or temperature are viewed through the lens of post-industrial human history. It doesn't even take into account all of human history, much less all life on Earth. It represents an ignorance of history. This is a theme that runs across many of the following points.

You will have to let me know which climate alarmists are not informed about paleoclimatology. All the books I read from the experts were well-informed about past climate change, and in fact such information informed their conclusions. The problem with your argument is that it's not the climate changing per se which is the problem, but the rate of change. Most natural climate change happens over thousands of years, and sometimes over tens of thousands of years. Now because of the human-caused release of greenhouse gases over short periods of time, changes are happening very much quicker, over mere decades and hundreds of years. So the challenge will be for life which is finely tuned to present climate conditions, including human life, to adapt that quickly.

This is why climate alarmism is focused on the short term. Per the business-as-usual release of greenhouse gases scenario, we could see anywhere from 2 to 5 feet total of sea level rise by 2100. Complex human infrastructures which didn't exist during previous big changes in climate are threatened. A full 50% of all species on earth could be committed to extinction, in part because they were already stressed by other human encroachments. Glaciers are threatened, which provide fresh water runoffs for millions of people in Asia. Parts of the western United States could return to dustbowl conditions within the same time frame. The existence of the Amazon Rainforest is threatened, which processes around 20% of the oxygen we breath. There are plenty of realistic reasons to be alarmed about the short term.

More atmospheric CO₂ is a GOOD THING.

This again ignores what life on earth is presently adapted to, and how unusually quickly present climate change is happening compared to paleoclimatological climate change.

Most of that warming, over 90%, is due to water vapour, meaning that CO2 and all other GHGs combined add up to a total surface-level warming effect of only 1.4°C or less.

This is simply incorrect. The total climate sensitivity is around 3C for every doubling of CO2. About 1C of that is caused directly by CO2. I have seen two figures from experts about the water vapor feedback: 1C and 1.5C. Neither rise to 90% of the total effect. And by the way, water vapor is a greenhouse gas.

We're still in an Ice Age. People hear all the time that we're "coming out of an Ice Age", but they fail to understand that means we are still in one. The Ice Age didn't end 12,000 years ago. The Quaternary, the Ice Age we're in, continues today. Since we can't see the future we don't know how much longer it lasts, therefore it's suffice to say we're in the middle of it. We're in what's known as an interglacial warming period. People today have no fucking clue how lucky they are - in an Ice Age there are alternating periods of glaciation and interglacial warming. The glaciation periods last, on average, 70,000-90,000 years. Interglacial warming periods, and we're currently 12,000 years into ours, last only 1/3rd of that time at around 10,000-30,000 years.

This is also incorrect.

In the last 2.5 million years or so, there have been dozens of glacial-interglacial cycles. So the natural pattern of climate change over that period has been one of long ice ages separated by shorter warm periods. It takes tens of thousands of years for the earth to cool down, but only a few thousand to warm again. We are presently living in such a warm period called the Holocene, which started after the last ice age ended around 10,000 years ago.

Scientists are convinced that these natural climate changes can be explained by small shifts in the earth’s orbit, the Milankovitch cycles, which slightly increase or decrease the solar energy it receives. The earth’s axis wobbles on a 23,000 year cycle, which is called the precession of the equinoxes. The earth’s tilt shifts on a 41,000 year cycle. And the earth’s eccentricity, how elliptical its orbit is, oscillates on a 100,000 year cycle. The 100,000 year cycle has the greatest impact on global average temperatures. Presently, the first two cycles are out-of-phase by about 10,000 years and the orbital eccentricity is small, so the length of our interglacial period would normally be extended beyond the typical. The last time the earth was in this configuration 400,000 years ago, the interglacial was 50,000 years long.

These variations are amplified by the increase or decrease of greenhouse gases, which follow them over several hundred years. Soils and the ocean release or capture CO2, methane, and water vapor depending on their temperatures, so they rise and fall in close correlation with the ice age cycles, amplifying their climate extremes. These greenhouse gases account for nearly half the glacial-interglacial global temperature changes. This correlation goes back 650,000 years, through seven glacial cycles.

This is the natural climate change we could expect if no other factors came into play. Nevertheless, present climate change will likely delay the onset of the next ice age for at least another 50,000 years. CO2 has varied between 180 and 290 ppm for hundreds of thousands of years. It was 280 ppm as late as 1750, before the industrial revolution. But at over 410 ppm today, it is about 45% higher, and likely the highest it has been for millions of years

We're not facing unprecedented conditions. People have the incorrect impression that 400 ppmv of atmospheric CO₂ is unprecedented - it isn't:

Climate enthusiasts that claim 400 ppmv is a "record high" level are completely ignorant to the past levels.

Again, you will have to tell me which climate enthusiasts are "completely ignorant" of paleoclimatology. We are facing unprecedented conditions for us humans. We have not been on the planet all that long.

In summary, the media, the climate enthusiasts, and the European politics surrounding climate change do not match the science. There is no need for mass panic. Labelling CO₂ "carbon pollution" is extremely deceptive and arrogant. It can only be "pollution" under the theory that CO₂ "should be" at a specific lower level, like say 315-325 ppmv (that's about where it would be without anthropogenic emissions since the industrial revolution), but there's absolutely no data or evidence in the scientific literature that suggests that level is optimal for life on Earth - indeed as I pointed out above the optimal level appears to be about 1,000 ppmv or greater.

Labelling people like me "climate deniers" when we're nothing of the sort is an insult to your own intelligence. Climate science isn't some inaccessible impossible to understand field of study - but it is very complicated, and one of the problems people have is they have a very hard time visualising complicated systems. Questioning some of the unproven science is not "denialist" it's prudent to the scientific method.

Again, here is the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change: https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

Here are some of the projected effects: https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/

I have read over 50 books on climate science, and you misrepresent basic points. That's why you are a climate denialist, even if you are merely misinformed.

In turn, I am happy to be called a climate alarmist.