I think most people talk a lot about what they do not understand, but are too lazy to look for evidence of all kinds and in all directions, themselves.
Much easier to talk and have an, if basically unfounded, "opinion".

Certainly a pre-existing bias lets people search for arguments and things that support their point of view, and sometimes even unconsciously overlooking deviating evidence.


What cannot be doubted is, that there is a rise of CO2 content, in the atmosphere. But it is not surprising. The question is, should we worry about it, and if, can we do anything about it at all?
As Oberon said, a problem that cannot be solved, ceases to be one.

But before you throw all this overboard and claim to your opinion, you should read the following to at least know what you are talking about :yep:



This is how it started:

If you want to know a little background, much simplified (wrote this for simple museum texts and schoolchildren some time ago):

The oxygen we have in the air today, was a lethal poison when the first developing green plants began to produce it as a metabolic waste product (or just: waste) while producing sugars (carbon stuff) to conserve energy for bad times, and stuff to reproduce themselves.
At that time the earth's atmosphere was quite hot, which supported all kinds of chemical reactions.

Oxygen is a stuff that likes to react and go together with other atoms, building molecules (several atoms together in a stable relation), so e.g. beforehand pure iron began at some point to oxidize. Also, free CO2 was used to build up gigantic reefs, consisting of Calcium-carbonate = CaCO3.
You see, a lot of the former free CO2 is stored in those rocks - billions of tons worldwide.

After some time all that could be oxidized was more or less used up, so oxygen began to become abundant, in the atmosphere.

Also, the former free CO2 which had been cracked up by the plants, was diminishing, leading to a cooling of the atmosphere - sunlight could now easier escape, through the (for visible light) clearer atmosphere.



Oxygen in the atmosphere

But a lot of other non-green-plant-life life died by this new toxic stuff "Oxygen", that had not been there initially. Those oxygen-producing plants were basically primitive algae, but unbelievable amounts of them, and taking some million years to produce more and more poisonous oxygen. This of course was long ago.

Over the course of millions of years, some organisms began to adapt to the abundant oxygen, at some point even needed it to survive. Most animal life today is like that.



Oxidising = burning

When you burn a flame within the earth's atmosphere, this act will reduce the amount of oxygen in it, while producing CO2, or Carbon di-oxyde, a gas. One Carbon atom, and two oxygen ones, a molecule. The oxygen is trapped in this new gas together with Carbon, which cannot be used for breathing by those newish animals.

Back to the plants: They use CO2 gas to build C into their structure while producing oxygen as waste during daytime, and use it up, at night. A tiny amount of C(arbon) is being stored in their bodies, like sugar.

Now when these plants die, they give away all the stored Carbon into the atmosphere, using up oxygen, producing CO2 again while decaying. There is no rest left. All the oxygen they produced, is being used up when decaying.

BUT: There are other plants, e.g. the offspring of the now decaying parent plants, and they also produce oxygen again. So it is a game of taking and giving oxygen all the time.



But we have so much oxygen in the atmosphere, you might ask - if the plants use it all up again, why ?

When a plant decays losing its Carbon, it needs Oxygen for this to happen.
However at some places, like in the abysses of oceans, and in stagnating undisturbed water, there is not always enough Oxygen present.
So these plants (again, we are talking of masses of algae) cannot decay - at least they cannot be oxidized. There is not enough oxygen.

So they stay where they are, dead, and are being covered by sediments. Pressure and time convert these "dead bodies" into: crude oil.

The Carbon stuff stored there has been taken out ouf the circle of de-oxidation, and oxidation. The surplus oxygen is free in the atmosphere.

In a way it is a kind of battery, sunlight and oxygen has been used by green plants to crack CO2 gas into C, and O.
We can use the carbon stuff to release its energy again, by oxidising it, and unload the battery.

While we do that, we of course take away Oxygen out of the atmosphere, and convert it together with Carbon, to CO2 or Carbon-di-oxyde.



The problem:

We are filling up the atmosphere with CO2 while burning oil. And if you think about that a lot of the earth's crude oil resources will be exhausted at some time, we know how much CO2 will be in the atmosphere, again.


Maybe someone understands what the problem is about ?

I have read such concepts, too. Catfish. In fact you remind me of myself ten years ago.

To make it short, CO2 is not all. And amongst the active agents in the atmosphere now, it is not even the most important or most dangerous.

CO2 is not all, but it is the major problem.

Because there is so much stored in what we call 'buffers', like in calcium-carbonates.
The amount of CO2 we pump into the atmosphere, makes it a bit more warm. Not too much, but just enough to enable those buffers to release some more, which fuels the whole process.

Next step is the release of methane hydrates, which are e.g. trapped in permafrost soils, and the mexican gulf.



If we used Ethanol or Hydrogen instead of oil, there would be no problem.
Normal car piston engines like they are used now are perfectly able to use both, without major rebuilding or design changes.

So why not ?

CO2 is not the major problem. We do not know what the major problem is, and whether there is such a single factor worth to be called the "major problem".

We can no longer avoid climate change (if ever we could, that is: if man really ever made a sufficiently significant difference - and that is not clear). As I said, what it is about is not prevention, but adaptation.

The question whether or not man is responsible for climate warming, is academical only by now. Whether man can adapt while there still may be time (who knows...) - that is the question.

If global warming would ever, for whatever reasons and causal causes, turn into an ELE, it does not matter then anyway.

Triple-A-qudruple-plus rated refrigerators and electric cars do not make any differendce there. Even more so,m when it is clear for many people looking behind the stage of environmental business (yes, it is a business by now) that the real ecological costs of these "alternative" products are miscalculated and that their real costs are much higher regarding their environmental balance then people believe. Too many active costs ruining their ecological balance get ignored and get faded out.

Its exactly like what I said earlier. People do not really care for "saving the planet". They only want the subjective feeling of having done something "green", checking out whether it really is that green at all is not what people care for. Doing so would cripple many illusions. And business profits. And elections.

I have presented some well-studied facts, i yet have to see something from you that states the contrary. If you want to ignore facts and studies, and what the Perm crisis tells us about go on.
I have enough of "opinions" that ignore science, just because bashing of common sense is à la mode for the time being.

Because the oil companies would have to make expensive changes to their production facilities and they prefer not to spend that money when they can continue to squeeze money out of its without that spend.

If you go back in the forum index by maybe 5-6 years, you will find some threads in which I have held the same lecture like you now - and several times, and in more detail! ;) Obviously, since then something has happened that made me no longer doing so and no longer buying this stuff so uncritically anymore.

To draw parallels between the Perm crisis, which I also know (I have even read a whole book on just those early eras of constant dramatic climate changes - and their multi-factorial origins), and the present, is something that is en vogue currently. Whether scientific soberness allows to draw such parallels, is something very difficult to decide in the hysterically upheated atmosphere of the contemporary debates Especially before climate conferences. Before conferences, where all those multi-billion dollar redistribution policies should get signed, usually the threats from global warming climb in severity, the oceans could climb even higher than at the last conference, the total warming could result in higher temperatures then previously assumed, and all happens faster and more dramatic and more sensationally and and and.

I have said earlier already that I think the climate gets warmer indeed by general trend. But I do not repeat my mistakes from past years to just beleive any doomsday scenario claims that the propaganda media spread amongst the wide public. I have learned to look at what show runs behi8nd the stage for the public: I have learned to also look at where the money goes, and who profiteers from the climate of panic and constant alertness. The nonsense we do in Germany with all our idiotic policies that in the end just increase the power and control of the central government and channels immense profits from the income of private households into the pockets of the producing industries for all those ecology gadgets. We kill billions and billions of taxpayers' money - for effects that do not translate into even a tenth of a percent on global climate, and we ignore the many contradictions in our stupid "Aktionismus".

I strongly recommend to you personally to read this book by Edgar L. Gärtner, a former icon of the German environment movement who has turned very critically against it now, and will give you some tough challenges to your intellectual self-conviction. You will not find many more German-tongued insiders of the environment show buz who are more distinguished on these matters, and who have such an interesting journey behind themselves,. like this man of deep thinking and sharp intellect and profound knowledge of details: And he knows the scene from several angles, because he has been a conservative Catholic student, then a Marxist, then a green activist, and today an independent and courageous critic of Greenpeace and the lobbyistic economy politics run in Germany that are insane, in vein, a huge manipulation of public opinion and a giant waste of money. The title sounds sensational, but the book is intellectually extremely sober, and rocksolid.

LINK

For the instant amusement of this night, this little text, that illustrates what I mean by "theatre" when I said that I have enough of this "Ökowahn". There is too much freakshow like this going on. And thgat includes the UN climate summits.

LINK

An d now please finally get what I say, I repeat it for the third of fourth time now: our measurements are un likely to limit the global warming effect. By trend, the climate looks as if becoming warmer. I say so since a ver ylong time, since all time I'm on this board. But what needs to be done now is not to waste biblical ammounts of resources for measurements that are in vein (we cannot dictate a limit for global wartming), but to learn how to adapot best to that chnaging world that means.

As long as that exyslcudes the understanding that we are too many people, far too many people on this globe and so for hundreds of millions this will mean "bad luck", we try iun vein again,l and try to swim against a stream which is far too strong for us.

Either we adapt, or we break. Preventing it we cannot. Never could, cannot anymore - I do not know,l but it is not important anyway. Adapting is the word to watch out for. And our policies and infantile greeny idealism is not helpful there. Even if we would not suffer from that, I have strong doubts that we could adapt - with 7 billion people on this globe. If it all spirals out of boundary and into an ELE, then that is what will happen, I cannot help it, and could also not help it by putting ugly insulating wall panels onto my house or buying a AAA++++ refrigerator or using LED lights. That is all fine for the petrochemical industry, the craftsman mounting and moving that stuff, for Samsung and Philipps. But it makes by far not a biog enough difference to limit or influence climate warming now. Read that damn book by Gärtner. Then you maybe understand why I said I have enough of this Affentheater. The latest acts of this stageplay get broadcasted daily by now.

Interesting way of illustrating the predicted change:
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-J...MujW.png-large

Climate Change
 

Seeing a lot of debates on climate change, science, deniers, etc. No doubt CO2 levels are rising. Some of my liberal friends are nuts about this subject and we have to do something now. They basically want massive regulation.
It seems to me massive regulation, like in the US, has done nothing but move
our manufacturing and the energy to run it to nations that have lil to no regulation, say China. So in that, it's made the situation worse, but I guess it feels good.

My argument is this, yes it's happening and nothing we can do about it. We have no energy/economic model in the works to sustain humanity. The upcoming world, Asia, India, China, Russia to a degree, are becoming the big polluters and aren't going to change in decades.

Your opinion?

For what its worth, the Chinese government has actually started to make noises about tackling the issue: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-29334807

How serious they are is difficult to judge - though given the horrendous (and highly visible) air pollution problems endemic in parts of China, they may have come to the conclusion that regardless of broader concerns over climate change, they can't carry on as they are - it has had a detrimental effect on crop production, (see http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...ter-scientists), and the one thing the government can't risk is endangering the food supply. That would bring back too many bad memories, and put the whole political establishment at risk.

Two words; Milankovitch cycle.

I agree not much we can do about it. Earth has and will continue to warm and cool with or with us. In fact ice sheets some 4km thick once covered 30% of the continents. The water locked up in that ice began melting around 18,000 years ago and ocean levels have since risen 150 meters. If the polar caps continue to melt ocean levels are projected to rise another 60 to 70 meters.

My solution? I'm buying cheap land up in the Appalachians. My great great great children will have a wonderful oceanview.

This sums up how I feel about it pretty well.
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/73...97d49ea75c.jpg

What if human caused global warming is all that is staving off the next ice age? :hmmm:

That would be cool. Uh huh huh huh huh. Heh heh, heh heh.

On cold days in the winter I spray hairspay out the window.