Thread: Three-Quarters of Climate Change is Man-Made

anyone know how much stuff volcanoes put off, or how many thingamajigs yellowstone puts out
on a side note, anyone know what the atom looks like

I wonder how many people on DV would accept it? (I'd hope everyone.)

Old news, yes, but somehow people are convinced that "99% of scientists are wrong." That's like 99% of doctors saying "you have cancer." but choosing not to believe them.

I don't get it.

Me either.

I would have to disagree. I think we are only responsible for only a small part of climate change. Humans like to give ourselves too much credit. We're not all that important.

Like greenhavoc said, one volcano alone puts so much Co2 into the atmosphere; as much as all the cars in the US combined, or something like that. (no links)

No, we really have released an anomalous quantity of CO2.



This graph makes it look more dramatic than it is (the axis is not zeroed), but through recent history it has stayed pretty constant at 280ppm until the 1800s where it started to increase to around 330ppm.

Originally Posted by Seroquel

Like greenhavoc said, one volcano alone puts so much Co2 into the atmosphere; as much as all the cars in the US combined, or something like that. (no links)

If I had to guess, I would assume that they might have had the foresight to take things like this into consideration.

Originally Posted by Seroquel

I would have to disagree. I think we are only responsible for only a small part of climate change. Humans like to give ourselves too much credit. We're not all that important.

Like greenhavoc said, one volcano alone puts so much Co2 into the atmosphere; as much as all the cars in the US combined, or something like that. (no links)

Armchair climatologist

Originally Posted by Xei

No, we really have released an anomalous quantity of CO2.

This graph makes it look more dramatic than it is (the axis is not zeroed), but through recent history it has stayed pretty constant at 280ppm until the 1800s where it started to increase to around 330ppm.

I don't know whether the graph as presented is accurate or not, but you are ignoring a key error factor. CO2 has been measured at frequent and precise intervals in recent times, but cannot be measured in such a way when looking at proxy data. IF CO2 fluctuates frequently over time, the recent data would show it but the past data would not, because it's encompassing larger time periods for each data point. Does this make sense?

Originally Posted by Oneironaut Zero

If I had to guess, I would assume that they might have had the foresight to take things like this into consideration.

I doubt it.

It's funny; this is the conversation that many scientists (all of them except for that 1 outlier) talks about... 99% agree that the majority of the problem is our fault... yet us non-scientists like to rationalize and marginalize our impact. It's a pretty severe impact (not to mention the amount of oxygen we're losing from deforestation and destruction of aquatic areas that spawn algae.) Not only do we emit excess carbon, but we make it harder on nature to turn it back into oxygen and glucose by ... killing all of the lovely trees that do the work for us.

Originally Posted by ThePreserver

It's funny; this is the conversation that many scientists (all of them except for that 1 outlier) talks about... 99% agree that the majority of the problem is our fault... yet us non-scientists like to rationalize and marginalize our impact. It's a pretty severe impact (not to mention the amount of oxygen we're losing from deforestation and destruction of aquatic areas that spawn algae.) Not only do we emit excess carbon, but we make it harder on nature to turn it back into oxygen and glucose by ... killing all of the lovely trees that do the work for us.

Solution: in northern climates, once a land-clearing job is over and construction is more or less finished, plant loads of evergreens!

Originally Posted by BLUELINE976

Solution: in northern climates, once a land-clearing job is over and construction is more or less finished, plant loads of evergreens!

Many logging companies already plant trees to replace old ones (ever since they realized that if they DON'T, they will be quickly out of business.) The damage cannot be undone and reversed, we just have to stop it, and over a few centuries if we can stabilize it, we may be able to get things as close to "natural" as we can. Unlikely at this rate... but it's really the only thing we can do to keep oxygen in the air and biodiversity in abundance.

Originally Posted by Seroquel

I would have to disagree. I think we are only responsible for only a small part of climate change. Humans like to give ourselves too much credit. We're not all that important.

Like greenhavoc said, one volcano alone puts so much Co2 into the atmosphere; as much as all the cars in the US combined, or something like that. (no links)

Opinion trumps scientific fact.

307 million people live in America. There are 7 billion, BILLION other people emitting carbon dioxide as well. Ok.... not all of them have cars, or houses or electricity.
About half the world lives in poverty, lets just go with 3.5 billion to be conservative, and assume they don't use electricity or cars or anything.
America is only ~10% of that emitting population, probably a bit less. (since they have ~5% of the world's population and only half use coal and oil).

It doesn't take a whole lot of thought to figure out that the Yellowstone is a drop in the ocean compared to what humans are doing.

You can't pump trillions of tonnes of anything in to the atmosphere and expect nothing to change.

Originally Posted by cmind

I don't know whether the graph as presented is accurate or not, but you are ignoring a key error factor. CO2 has been measured at frequent and precise intervals in recent times, but cannot be measured in such a way when looking at proxy data. IF CO2 fluctuates frequently over time, the recent data would show it but the past data would not, because it's encompassing larger time periods for each data point. Does this make sense?

No.

Originally Posted by tommo

No.

I'll wait for the opinion of someone...more intelligent.

Originally Posted by cmind

I'll wait for the opinion of someone...more intelligent.

I was going type something to refute your statement, but as I was typing I realized that what you said was actually possible, if the data from the ice cores is an average for a certain time period and there are natural variations that occur over a short enough period of time with brakes between them. I do not believe this is the case, but I don't know enough about how the tests works and how accurate they are to be able to say for certain it's not like that.

And they just took all the measurements at the times the level of CO2 was low and missed the gigantic jumps to 330ppm?

Again, no.

And someone more intelligent will just rip your argument apart more than I would.

Originally Posted by khh

I was going type something to refute your statement, but as I was typing I realized that what you said was actually possible, if the data from the ice cores is an average for a certain time period and there are natural variations that occur over a short enough period of time with brakes between them. I do not believe this is the case, but I don't know enough about how the tests works and how accurate they are to be able to say for certain it's not like that.

Yay, I'm glad someone understood what I was trying to illustrate.

If you look at the data nature does produce more CO2 than man, but nature also uses all the CO2 it makes plus most of what man makes. The problem is the bit extra that we make that nature can't absorb.

Plant fields of weed. Seriously we could solve the problem with this and it would also improve the soil quality and make for good farmlands later.

Originally Posted by StonedApe

nature also uses all the CO2 it makes plus most of what man makes. The problem is the bit extra that we make that nature can't absorb.

Plant fields of weed. Seriously we could solve the problem with this and it would also improve the soil quality and make for good farmlands later.

QFT. Removed the first bit coz I don't know if it's true.

Source

So the problem is the extra 12 GTs of CO2(which is only 1.5% of the total amount in the system; though since this 1.5% isn't reabsorbed it just piles up). So if we can lower our output a bit and increase the amount that nature is able to handle by planting trees and other things we could deal with this situation.

The thing I don't understand is why it will be so catastrophic. Why will it be so hard for the system to adapt? Even if it is why is this such a hard problem to solve? Plant more things to absorb the co2. If we used weed there would even be the financial incentive behind it. People just really need to stop being total morons.

Originally Posted by StonedApe

Source

So the problem is the extra 12 GTs of CO2(which is only 1.5% of the total amount in the system; though since this 1.5% isn't reabsorbed it just piles up). So if we can lower our output a bit and increase the amount that nature is able to handle by planting trees and other things we could deal with this situation.

The thing I don't understand is why it will be so catastrophic. Why will it be so hard for the system to adapt? Even if it is why is this such a hard problem to solve? Plant more things to absorb the co2. If we used weed there would even be the financial incentive behind it. People just really need to stop being total morons.

We'd have to rethink our definition of "economic growth" then; since more people are becoming wealthier in developing nations, they have massive increases in demand; in China, the car is becoming a new status symbol; imagine adding another 1-2 billion cars to the equation in India and China... compared to the mere 200-300 million in the United States. That's a huuuge amount more. Then to build housing and develop farmland, more trees need to be cut down for the farmland, (and their demand for meat in increasing, if it hits the American demand for meat, it will be literally unsustainable to the point where over 100% of the land in China and India would have to be used for farmland... doesn't seem too feasible to me.)

To feed our OWN demand in the United States, 300 million meat eaters require 50% of the land and 80% of the fresh water for agriculture alone... but in a nation of similar size with an extra 800 million... that much land and fresh water doesn't even exist, and their demand for beef is already growing exponentially. (THIS is where the problem lies; we can't "stop" because demand is ever-increasing... and people are unwilling to cut their material consumption down.)