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To: Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit

"The fact that it is happening about 100 times faster than naturally and coincides with an exponential increase in CO2 in the atmosphere which just so happened to coincide with an exponential increase in human burning of fossil fuels is what leads me to believe that humans are affecting the change to some degree."

There's correlation, yes, but not necessarily causation.

For example, humans first started developing agriculture at the beginning of the Neolithic Revolution. At this time, humans started living in permanent settlements and finally gained control of their food supply, which led to a skyrocketing of the human population. Now, hominids have been using fire since Homo Habilis, but never in the numbers that our Neolithic ancestors did. The rate of usage of firewood jumped enormously at that time.

The time period in question also corresponded to a dramatic rise in Earth's temperatures and the receding of the glaciers. Could the increased prevalence of fire use by Man have dumped enough CO2 into the atmosphere to perhaps trigger the end of the last Ice Age?

Uh. No.

Because Earth's climate exhibits a bi-stable state, like the author describes (i.e. either very hot or very cold, never in between), then the transition from one state to the other HAS to be fast. It would be fast with or without our intervention, regardless of whether we try to help it along or try to hold it back.

We would do much, much better to allocate our hard-won intelligence to trying to figure out how to live in the soon-to-be warmer planet, rather than bickering about why it's happening or, even worse, exerting Herculean but ultimately futile efforts to stop it.


65 posted on 09/10/2006 10:59:32 AM PDT by Omedalus
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To: Omedalus
"We would do much, much better to allocate our hard-won
intelligence to trying to figure out how to live in the
soon-to-be warmer planet, rather than bickering about why
it's happening or, even worse, exerting Herculean but
ultimately futile efforts to stop it."


How do we know the planet is not going to go through a cooling phase?
66 posted on 09/10/2006 12:08:47 PM PDT by DaveTesla (You can fool some of the people some of the time......)
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