Letters to the Editor
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grr
"So when I explain that there is an iterative principle of blancing of carbon dioxide and oxygen at work on Earth (even thru periods when mountain sized asteroids collapsed the life cycle) and has been for 4 BILLION YEARS, this is powerful stuff."
Thing is, for most of the earth's history, there was about 5 times as much carbon dioxide in the air and the temperature was about 10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it is now. It's clear that the current climate, in which humans evolved to function and created a complex civilization, is in fact kind of metastable, like a golf ball sitting on a tee; and tipping point is exactly the right description for the situation.
At the beginning of the carboniferous era, there was 1500 ppm of carbon dioxide in the air and the average temperature was ten degrees higher than it is now. This contributed to hugely lush plan life, which pulled the carbon dioxide out of the air faster than it could decay back into carbon dioxide, so that it got buried and fossilized into coal and petroleum. It took all those plants 100 million years to get the climate into its present state. We are now digging up all that carbon and converting it back into carbon dioxide over a period of a few decades. Why would you think that wouldn't give the system a kick? Why would you think it could absorb that rapid a jolt without disturbance? We've already run the carbon dioxide back up from 280 ppm to 380 in a hundred years. Yeah, maybe eventually the plants will take it all up again, even though so far there was only the one carboniferous era in the 5 billion year history of the earth. I'm not going to tell my kids to wait that long and see if it all works out.
The onus is no longer on scientists to "prove" that smoking causes cancer and heart disease, although the tobacco industry dismissed all the evidence as mere correlation and dismissed the verified point by point chain of biochemical cause and effect with "But there might be other causes we don't know about".
Well, the same folks who told us that all the evidence wasn't in yet on smoking are the same ones who are now telling us that all the evidence isn't in yet on carbon dioxide and climate, that all the evidence is mere correlation, and that although there is a verified point by point chain of physical cause and effect, "there might be other causes we don't know about". Stephen Milloy of junkscience.com, for example. Although it's nice to see he has parlayed his "scientific" skills into a continuation of his lucrative career, when the same evidence is presented in any field of science where there isn't a great deal of money invested in believing it false, there just isn't any reasonable argument against it. (Aside from evolution, that is; which, naturally, is also 'debunked' by junkscience.com http://www.junkscience.com/aug99/darwin.htm using the exact same arguments: "a lot of people suspect that these claims go far beyond the available evidence" and "There are a lot of potential dissenters" but "This is covered over with the vague claim that all scientists agree " and "real science is replaced by flim-flam" and "our leading scientists have to resort to the sort of distortion that would land a stock promoter in jail.")
As the article in Salon here points out, scientists are trained to be conservative in their predictions; things which are less than 100% certain are presented with the words "could". "might", "possibly", etc. The result? The reverse scaremongers harp on "scientists are overhyping something that is not proved".
Hypotheses which are, in fact, not proven beyond a reasonable doubt are not presented by scientists as likely, and so the IPCC reports do not include such positive feedbacks as the release of methane from the permafrost as it thaws and the increased absorbance of solar energy as the highly reflective snow and ice cover disappears from the poles, even though the evidence is increasing that both are occurring. The result? "See, the models are wrong".
Anyway, tying up some loose ends:
The person who complains about ad hominems dismisses the work of thousands of climate scientists because it's "government FUNDED (key word here) eggheads with too much book knowledge and too little practical knowledge extrapolating huge data sets from two or three datapoints then painting a colorful Apocalyptic scenario to get others excited about their stool sample."? Which brings up the additional point: you don't get funding by proving something that everybody already believes. Might as well argue that scientists are getting funded to prove gravity exists. At this point, the major outcry for more research to prove anthropogenic climate change is, in fact, all the skeptics who demand more evidence; then argue that the people providing it on request are just doing it because that's where the money is.
"So IF they are saying the world's oceans will rise at exactly the same rate as the melting ice (couldn't find it in the article) that is not correct."
Yeah, good catch there anonymous, I can't believe "more than 2,000 of the world's top scientists" didn't think of that. Me, I actually looked up the quantity of ice in the ice caps and the surface area of the oceans, and did a rough calculation to check it out; you, are too busy coming up with these deep thoughts to even look up the IPCC report to check whether or not the aggregate wisdom of modern climate science might be as bright as you are in your spare time. See also all the genius skeptics: "Hey, maybe it's the sun heating up? Wonder if anybody's thought of that?"