““I don’t want anyone to leave thinking that this is evidence that CO2 doesn’t affect climate,” Stott cautioned. “It does, but the important point is that CO2 is not the beginning and end of climate change.””
This isn’t anything particularly revolutionary - other particulates like methane, Milankovitch cycles and continental plate movement have all played roles in ice age models.
Unlike other conservatives here, I do believe that man-made carbon output is accelerating climate change. An increased greenhouse effect and a change in the Gulf Stream could very well bring an early-onset ice age. Of course, I’m open to all interpretations and scientific criticism. That’s the way science works. I just hate it when people dismiss man’s effect on climate with prima facia B.S..
Man, and his penchant for changing things in his local environment, does have some effect on overall climate. Witness the Three Gorges Dam project in China, an environmental disaster bomb just waiting to go off. But the global effects on long range climate changes that produce great ice sheets and alternatively great warm spells is yet to be determined, in that, man has never had the amount of population that exists now, nor the advanced technology that he possesses now. IOW, we’ve never done it before, so it remains to be seen whether we are, or even can effect the global climate machine. It may just prove out to be that it is way beyond anything that we could actually pull off if we were of a mind to..................
The initial assertion that increased CO2 heats the earth through increasing the greenhouse effect seems logical. But so does saying that a bug splat on the windshield will decrease your mileage on a particular trip. Logical, but there are hundreds of variables. What if the bug splat cuts visibility and you reduce speed by 5mph?
If historical CO2 levels are the result of previous warming and not the cause, which the function of the carbon cycle and research suggests. Then the man-made CO2 input cannot be equated to a rise in temperature in a linear fashion.
Indeed, although increasing the greenhouse would appear to increase temperature, not even that is proven. Increased precipitation and cloud reflectivity might indeed cancel it out.
It would all make for a very interesting read on a Sunday afternoon, if one side of the discussion weren't attempting to ruin my standard of living to further their unproven cause.