Since the earth has been around for 4.8 billion years, how can we make a good decision on climate change?

being that we as humans have been around 10000 years, and only started recording and predicting weather in the last 80-100 years. how can we make a decision on something like the climate of this entire planet on less than .00000002% of its history recorded with accurate data?


my personal feel is there is not enough data to go either way. and the people making theories , are guessing at it. there is a chance that everything , the sun, ozone depletion, and normal cyclical climate cycles are causing this entire thing.

2009-06-30T13:20:25Z

okay lets go with the time of recorded history, and just so you know drilling ice doesnt usually work because, guess what ...the north pole melts, carbon emissions have increased since 2000 and what did they say back then, that the ice caps would melt by 2010. psst ice grew on the glaciers last year.

2009-06-30T13:22:18Z

also i think i know the biggest culprit, instead of blaming people as the largest cause of CO2 emissions, lets see CO2 can be released in much larger quantities by rotting vegetation, than humans, farm animals and motorized vehicles combined. just for the fact that a decomposing tree releases its stored up CO2 over its entire life span. people arent the main cause, so why are we spending money to cut back on what people are emitting.

Six Drive2009-06-30T13:32:44Z

Ya, the last guy pointed out some key errors you had in your question, good job. But I do get what you are trying to ask.

I am a trained scientist and look at all sides objectively and a few years ago when I was more younger and impressionable I was on the global warming band wagon. Since then, I have looked at global warming data and I too am not convinced 100% that its "all out fault." Im pretty sure we aren't doing the planet any good by pumping so much CO2 into the atmosphere but what exactly is it doing there? We have theories but to be honest, no one knows for sure.

If you look at the decal pacific oscillation (DPO) you will see that there is a 20-30 cycle of warm to hot climate change influenced by this warming and cooling of the Pacific. The last cooldown ended in the late 70's, early 80's and if you did some research you would see that at the time people believed that all the CO2 emissions were affecting global climates and that we were heading for an ice age. Well things heated up after that and it looks like the we heading to catastrophic global warming. Now it looks like we are getting over that warming stage and things will cool off once again.

Now this is all a theory of course, but its the theory with the most concrete data behind it that I have see so far to explain our shifting climate. If this turns out to be right then that means we are not affecting the earth's climate as much as we think and that also means that the planet and eco-alarmists will cool down. The only unfortunate thing about that though, is that turd, Al Gore, is going to make himself look like a hero when he did nothing at all.

Ottawa Mike2009-06-30T15:15:59Z

Is it possible that somebody is trying to implement policies that are not designed to have any effect on the climate at all but for some other reason?

Is it all possible that some people are so arrogant that their they think their primary idea is so above the average person and so complex to explain that they need to come up with a much more simple reason, something that the average, stupid, gullible Joe or Jane can understand and support? It should be noted that scaring the crap out of people is a good way to go about this.

Dana19812009-06-30T13:45:40Z

By understanding physics.

The planet's temperature doesn't magically change - any long-term changes are caused by an imbalance between incoming and outgoing energy. Such an imbalance is caused by something like increased solar activity or an increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases.

Climate scientists understand these causes quite well and the only one which can explain the recent rapid warming is the increase in atmospheric CO2 due to humans burning fossil fuels. See the link below for further details.

David2009-06-30T13:34:33Z

CO2 gets released and absorbed in much larger quantities by nature than what humans emit, but it is in balance. This balance has kept CO2 concentrations relatively constant, until the industrial revolution began, in which they began to rise. Look at the fluxes for land and ocean, and notice how carbon in cancels carbon out. This keeps atmospheric concentrations constant.
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/kling/carbon_cycle/carbon_cycle.jpg

We have data. There are ways of determining past temperatures and what caused those temperature changes. Not to mention that the physics that underlie man-made global warming do add up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity#Essentials

Anonymous2009-06-30T14:07:55Z

Your're right but it can't hurt to clean up our act even if man made global warming is a farce.

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