Airborne_Again wrote:
It saves typing to omit the “antropogenic” bit, but that’s implied.
But it doesn’t need to be there 
The climate is changer no matter what.
LeSving wrote:
But, let’s say we fix global warming, then what? What’s the end goal? To continue multiplying until we eventually starve to death? This will eventually happen in not so distant future. But it will not happen until we have killed all other life.
Today’s humans stand a far better chance for a sudden race extermination, way quicker than waiting for some stupid global warming (whatever the disputed cause) or famine.
The final fireworks looms and the risks are growing bigger every second as I’m writing these words… and nobody cares.
“We’re doomed, doomed I say”.
I love Dad’s Army.
Dan wrote:
… and nobody cares
Really?
University of Cambridge – Centre for the Study of Existential Risk
derek wrote:
The rate of change is far from uniform though
So what? This is how the anthropogenic mass has evolved during the last century compared with all other biomass.
See the similarities with your graph? The correlation is 100%. Replacing biomass with concrete, gravel, bricks and asphalt makes no changes to the climate? In principal cutting down forests, replacing them with concrete jungles does not effect the climate? Not to speak of the energy needed to make all that mass. The main thing, there’s no end to it. It will keep on doubling every 20 years. Even IF CO2 has some negative effect, it will be a drop in ocean compared with this accumulation of mass, simply because it doesn’t stop growing. In fact, the only reason put forth to stop CO2 pollution, is for us to continue to multiply and produce stuff as if nothing else is happening.
Eventually something has to give, nothing continues into the heavens, and the only thing left on the globe (except oceans and deserts) is anthropogenic something. We still need to eat and breathe, and when that becomes problematic due to lack of recourses, we start behaving like rats.
A similar thing has happened on microscale (relative to what is happening now) as long as the human species has existed. Lack of recourses has eventually spread the human race into all corners of the world. Not without wars, and decimating of entire populations, sometimes over and over again. This time around there are no more places to go to, and the rate of population increase is beyond imagination.
Besides, climate scientist. What a bunch of biased quasi scientific pack:
The graph was specifically about global average temperatures and was in response to what I understood to be your point that temperature changes are nothing new as evidenced by your statement that your house was under lots of ice within the last 10’000 years. The graph to me suggests that recent temperature changes do look qualitatively different to what we have seen over the last few tens of thousands of years.
Interesting video from Sabine Hossenfelder that @LeSving posted. If I understood it correctly, a higher equilibrium climate sensitivity than currently used in IPCC models would mean we have less time to decarbonise than currently predicted. It did not sound to me like she was arguing that CO2 is just “a drop in the ocean”, or that it is unimportant. Looking at the earlier video of hers that she referenced, it seems that she is particularly concerned about global warming.
derek wrote:
The graph to me suggests that recent temperature changes do look qualitatively different to what we have seen over the last few tens of thousands of years.
Still, so what? This is important because? The earth has existed for a lot more than a few thousand years, and much larger and faster changes has occurred. The end of dinosaurs happened within a time frame of hours. Full of life one day, ashes and winter the next, and it took millions of years to recover. Lucky for us, it put an end to the dinosaurs that dominated the earth and gave us a chance to evolve. It could very well happen again. Statistically it will happen again, and could do so at any time.
The whole CO2 affair is nothing but a symptom and a distraction. A distraction from what is really going on. Anthropogenic mass is one thing. Looking at the biologic mass, and the picture is down right frightening.
The rate that this is happening today clearly is not sustainable all that much longer. IMO it’s not so much if CO2 affects the climate or not. The thing is, already today it makes no difference either way. It’s the sheer weight of us and all the stuff we produce and the rate of growth that is the problem. Simply put we are already way too many.
LeSving wrote:
Still, so what? This is important because? The earth has existed for a lot more than a few thousand years, and much larger and faster changes has occurred. The end of dinosaurs happened within a time frame of hours.
A major asteroid impact is of course an extinction event for many species and would be for us too, and it is certainly one of the possibilities that those who study extinction risks consider. Fortunately, they are pretty rare on earth, and there isn’t likely much we could do about one. (Using nuclear weapons to knock it off course is a long shot in my view). But the historical existence of such rare events and the very long time scales of some of the other big changes to earth’s climate in the past don’t make the possibility of large temperature changes (larger than humans have ever experienced) over short time scales unimportant now.
Rising temperatures are important because if they happen over a short period of time (compared to anything we have experienced in the last 20’000 years) they will substantially change our natural environment. It will make life miserable for significant proportions of humanity. Whilst I might have an intellectual interest in what happens to earth over much longer periods of time (10’000 years +), it is well outside my sphere of concern.
The fact that there are many other worrying trends in our natural environment too does not make me not care about global warming.
