Quote:
Originally Posted by wmiddlemas
We are lost under your solution:
There is a direct correlation in parts per million of carbon to the growth of world population with an exponetial increase in the last half of the last century. For the last 500 thousand years the carbon concentration in the atomosphere has been no higher than 350 parts per million. Now it is over 365 per millon and growing. Last year alone it grew by 2 parts per million -- and unprecidented increase in just one year ! Additionally, with the melting of glacier and polar cap ice, methane is increasing at an ever increasing rate further adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Basically from a growth of 2.5 billion in the early fifties to 6.0 billon now, the increase in carbon in the atmosphere is an astronomical 4% with most of it coming in the last 20 years.
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BUT the earth has gone through periods of warming before and ice ages. In those cases there was not the current trend of human emissions to be the cause of the changes. Life adapted and continued to live on the Earth. The issues with the current climate change are related to the speed with which the clomate is changing, as it happening so quickly that it is difficult for species to adapt. Humans will also have to adapt to different living conditions, regardless of whether the changes are directly related to humans or not. There is not adequate documantation of the causes and responces of previous large climate chages for people to predict with any certainty what will happen or exactly how and why it is happening.
There are correlations between increases in emissions and changes in climate. There are also correlations between the sales of sun hats and the sales of sun block. Sales of sun hats do not cause sales in sun block, they are connected by the fact that they are both related to changes in the weather. Correlations do not prove dependancy. Scientific theories continue to exist because they cannot be disproved. Once a theory is disproved it becomes invalid. The link between the increase emissions from humans and changes to the climate does not appear to have been scientifically disproven, hence it is a live theory. However until we can explain exactly what is happening, how it is happening and accurately predict what will happen we do not know if the theory will turn out to be in the relms of the world being flat (which was a valid theory until somebody managed to sail around it without falling off) or the relms of the existance of gravity (which increases in knowledge have all confirmed and behaviour continued to correspond to predictions).
Stories continue to be published about revisions to predictions from organisations such as the IPCC. This would illustrate that their current understanding of the subject is not sufficient to enable them to explain exactly what is happening, how it is happening or accurately predict what will happen.