Friday, December 18, 2009

Climate Change and Scale

One thing that always annoys me about the climate change argument is that proponents of human driven climate change tend to focuse on the last few hundred years or at most thousand of years. This stikes me as odd considering that there has been life on earth for hundreds of millions of years.

This is why I find the graph on this page very interesting.Firstly for most of the history of life on earth the atmosperic carbon level has been well over 1000 parts per million, and we are talking about levels between 400 -500 as dangerous irreversible climate change. The other thing that the graph seems to show is that the earths stable average temperature iis about 22 degrees.

SO on a geologival tiemscale the current averages of 16 degrees is markedly below average, it is then little wonder that the world is trying to get warmer. There is strong evidence that higher carbon levels lead cause photosynthesis and plant growth to accelerate.

Granted that our evolutionary history has occured during an ice age (while there are icecaps we are essentially in an ice age). So all in all while I support moves to reduce human pollution of the environment I remain strongly skeptical of the Climate change claims and associated agenda. Especially as this position is increasingly becoming a doctrine held by its proponent with religious zeel, this includes deliberate steps to sideline or suppress any and all contrary options.

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