Anthropogenic Climate Change: Skepticism and why science is never settled

**safeorigin** · December 19th, 2015 02:23 AM

Climate Change. Global Warming. Carbon Dioxide. We often hear and read it in television, radio, and printed media. The airwaves have been littered with bullet point presentations and talking points by various influential people - including the President of the US, and even the Pope - Mankind contribute to climate change. Inaction will spell humanity's doom! The science is settled. Or is it?

Carbon Dioxide, as everyone knows, is the world's boogeyman. Depending on who you ask, it accounts for around 400 parts per million, or 0.04% of the atmosphere. A rise in Carbon Dioxide is said cause runaway greenhouse effect. The scientist said so, so must be true! They even made a graph for it! Perfect correlation, right?

Well... not if you stretch the time line to 600 million years.

But wait. But the science is settled. All this information must make me a climate change denier, right? Well, believe it or not, climate has been changing regardless of human activity. Even the climates of different planets in our Solar system are constantly changing. What about Inconvenient Truth? That hockey stick is frightening! We must do something about it, right? It's the Truth, after all. And it's settled science! Well, if check Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report(page 61) we will discover that there is, in fact, a pause in mean global temperature even though CO2 has been increasing. In this graph, we can see that NASA data shows that there's a pause for nearly 2 decades.

But. But. But. That paper has been debunked by NOAA, right? So the science must be settled then, right? Err... no. It has been peer reviewed and you might be surprised with the comment. But that can't be right! There is, after all, a 97% consensus that Climate Change is man made! Yeah, sure if you are creative enough with numbers.

So, if Carbon Dioxide isn't the primary driver of global temperature, what is? Now that we've established that the science certainly isn't settled, there are multiple candidates/drivers for this: The sun, for non-obvious reasons(magnetism, droplet nucleation); ocean oscillations(El Nino/La Nina cycle); cosmic rays; water vapor. Note that these aren't definitive and we're barely scratching the surface.

Hmmm... I suppose you have a point, then. But what if you're wrong? Shouldn't we get rid of fossil fuels altogether because they're harmful to the environment? Besides, there's already alternative sources of energy! It's renewable so it must mean we have unlimited amounts of power from it, right? Probably, no.

**minicarph** · December 19th, 2015 03:04 AM

Link ba Ito? Or you're question or answering yourself ..

**safeorigin** · December 19th, 2015 03:09 AM

Don't mind me. I'm just debating among my multiple personalities.

**minicarph** · December 19th, 2015 03:27 AM

Speaking of fossil fuel, sa tingin mo bakit mas masarap ang wine sa Italy saka France?

Kasi lagi nag-gyera dun nun araw ala Greek mythology. Yuh naiinom natin wine, fossil energy ng mga tao na bumagsak dun sa battlefield na yun nun araw

Kasi mahilig ako uminom ng Italian or French Red, para mapasa sa akin yun energies na yun

**pyramid00** · December 28th, 2015 06:45 AM

and to add to the confusion, a prolific indian blogger call climate change and al gore a lot of bs. he says that the real cause of climate change is methane. the world is now using very less cfc's but the hole in the ozone layer is still growing bigger!
source: ajitvadakayil.blogspot.com

**Vodka** · December 29th, 2015 05:31 PM

haha there was a time when there was "skepticism" about the health effects of smoking cigarettes. skeptics paid for by the tobacco industry

guess what the petroleum industry is doing now?

**dr. d** · December 29th, 2015 07:00 PM

Originally Posted by Vodka

haha there was a time when there was "skepticism" about the health effects of smoking cigarettes. skeptics paid for by the tobacco industry

guess what the petroleum industry is doing now?

well, nat king cole believed smoking improved his voice, and indulged in it heavily. he died of lung cancer.

**Vodka** · December 29th, 2015 07:52 PM

Originally Posted by dr. d

well, nat king cole believed smoking improved his voice, and indulged in it heavily. he died of lung cancer.

exactly

anyway i don't believe humans as a species are smart enough to solve major world problems. we are held back by our primitive hunter-gatherer tribal mentality. intelligence that's only good enough to survive in the harsh african savannah, but not enough to solve major problems that we've caused in the first place

**dr. d** · December 29th, 2015 10:19 PM

Originally Posted by Vodka

exactly

anyway i don't believe humans as a species are smart enough to solve major world problems. we are held back by our primitive hunter-gatherer tribal mentality. intelligence that's only good enough to survive in the harsh african savannah, but not enough to solve major problems that we've caused in the first place

we're too short-lived, as to have evolved more far-thinking brains..
millenia from now, if our species is still in power, their scientists will ask, "how can we have survived those dark (today!) ages?"