First of all it's sheer insanity to believe returning CO2 to the Earth's atmosphere is going to turn the planet into Venus or make it uninhabitable. There are cities near the equator that have greater populations than entire northern countries. How many people make plans to visit northern cities during the winter? Some yes, but really don't we all try to go south and suck up some sun and get warm?
The Carboniferous (the creation of Earth's coal) period lasted 60 million years and changed the planets CO2 level from roughly 1,500 ppm to about 350 ppm. When a young person cries and tells you that humankind (aka YOU) is destroying the planet and will soon make it uninhabitable look them in the eye and ask if they know commercial green houses use CO2 generators to raise CO2 levels to over 1,500 ppm during the day? That since the 60's the Earth has been greening? The lack of CO2 becomes dangerous to nearly all plant life when it falls below 250 ppm? That there are theories that one factor that leads to continental glacial ice sheets is the reduction of CO2 to the point most plant life on Earth dies.
Every one that I know believes CO2 is bad. If it's so bad then why do greenhouses spend money to INCREASE their CO2 levels? Why has NASA been documenting the greening of the planet for years?
Of course facts don't matter. You tell someone that the Earth is NOT over populated and they look at you like you're a nut. When you show them that 90% of the Earth's population lives in the Northern Hemisphere the look on their face is as close to Bull Shit as you can get. Man has essentially populated only half of the planet and as a pilot I can tell you there is so much emptiness it's hard to imagine anyone even seriously mentioning over population.
So back to CO2 and predictions that have been made regarding it's 33% (ish) increase since 1950. Yes CO2 has increased from about 300 ppm to 400 ppm (ish) and we are being lead to believe that this increase is responsible for the warming that has happened in the last 70 or so years.
Yes the Earth is warming. Saying that doesn't mean I buy into all the predictions that have been made of which I'm still looking for one that actually happened as predicted. Do you know of any that have panned out? Any scientist worth anything will embrace being proven wrong and learning something new is what scientist love... Not so much when it comes to climate change.
I know the Earth has been warming because for the last 450 years (ish) sea levels have been rising roughly 8 inches per 100 years and the rate of increase hasn't changed.
Why use sea level rise to document warming?
That's an entirely different blog post but essentially sea level is an excellent proxy that can't be easily manipulated. Developing one temperature for the entire planet is fraught with manipulation. Some of which are easy to spot like starting your warming graphs for the United States after the dust bowl but others such as the "normalization" of temperature readings are more insidious.
Another proxy that can be used is Artic Sea ice which we all know is radically decreasing and will soon disappear I say sarcastically. Of course those predictions were made 40 years ago and have come and gone but getting it wrong doesn't matter.
Has the Artic been ice free in the past?
Absolutely, so like a blind squirrel finding a nut, eventually these ice free predictions will come true, just not on the time scale "scientist" have predicted and likely not due to CO2 which I'm confident has been greening the Earth for over 50 years. It's quite possible human intervention and the release of sequestered CO2 has been a good thing as the atmosphere was becoming dangerously low in CO2.
Honestly, I wish that more people would focus on cleaning up other pollution that is wreaking havoc on our planet from heavy metals in our water, plastics in the ocean or Africa burning anything and everything so they can to cook and heat their homes.
Follow the black line...
