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Wolfhound

Man made global warming?

 The earth has been warming and cooling for thousands of years with temperature drops and increases that are much larger than the ones we've seen over the last century. Since we can't adequately explain or model those changes, what makes us think we can say with any sort of confidence that global warming is being caused by man?

Posted - July 15, 2021
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Responses


  • 19937
    The issue is not whether the earth is cooling and warming, the issue is whether man is hastening it's warming unnaturally.  You can see the effects in the extreme heat and drought in the west and the torrential rains and flooding in the Gulf, not to mention the decline in air quality.  The issue with the air quality is apparent because when Covid hit ad everyone was remaining at home, there were many fewer vehicles on the road and the air quality improved substantially.  Now that everyone is back driving again, there have only been a handful of days when Accuweather has indicated that the air is good or better and at that, not even for the entire day.
      July 16, 2021 8:30 AM MDT
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  • 3719
    The key is the rate of change.

    The realisation that pumping masses of carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere would create what's become called a "greenhouse effect" is nothing new. It was first raised about a 100 years ago but because it could only rely on the contemporary world-wide coal consumption (the primary fuel then) the change was forecast to take a long longer than we see now.

    Left to Nature, if anything the overall trend should be a very gradual slowing of the rate of the change, modified by occasional, fairly short cooler and warmer fluctuations; but that's not what's happening.

    The last time mankind saw a major climate-change was the end of the present Ice Age's Last Glacial Maximum, some 10-12ka, but although fast in geological terms it was probably still very slow in human terms; especially as those living then had no written records.

    Even if the climate and sea-level changes were rapid enough to be recalled in oral history ("Great-Great-Grandad used to hunt across there that's now under the sea"), the human population was still low and in widely-scattered societies.

    They could take a fairly slow natural change in its stride. They just moved home; following the retreating ice-sheets Northwards, for example.

    We are facing a similar change but at an artificially inflated rate and due to our vast population. nations, complex societies, ways of life etc., around the world, we will find it far, far harder than our prehistoric ancestors, to handle it.
      July 22, 2021 4:03 PM MDT
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