Some have wondered where I stand ...

[lionkingcmsl]

on Global Climate Change.

Here is my position, and I'm sure it will irritate those in both "camps": Climate change is occurring, but it has been changing for the past 4 billion plus years.

The climate has been changing ever since this planet was formed; it is a natural occurrence. Those that say, "Man is the reason and we must stop it."; I say you're wrong and you can't stop climate change.

You will be very hard pressed to prove to me that over .1% to 1% of climate change is anthropocentric in origin. Those that quote ice core samples forget that the ice core only go back, if you are extremely lucky, 1 million years. There is no data for earlier times. Not only that ice core data only shows what was occurring at that site. Yes, you can get multiple samples from multiple sites and get a general idea what was occurring, but you can never get a planet wide view.

To those that bring up CO2 as a greenhouse gas; you are correct when CO2 is at high altitudes. At lower altitudes there are very efficient CO2 scrubbers that provide O2 as a by-product. They are known as plants. So low altitude CO2 is actually beneficial to the environment, as it helps plants grow.

The planet's atmosphere and climate are very complicated and large systems with many variables, some of which we don't know about, or have a very limited knowledge of how they influence the climate.

In my opinion it is the height of human hubris to say, or think, that we are powerful enough to change greatly such vast and complex systems.

In closing I will make one thing very clear: We do have to be better stewards of the planet Earth, as it is the only place the entire human race calls home.

Comments

[makovette.livejournal.com]

In my opinion it is the height of human hubris to say, or think, that we are powerful enough to change greatly such vast and complex systems.

This.

In closing I will make one thing very clear: We do have to be better stewards of the planet Earth, as it is the only place the entire human race calls home.

Than this too.

Well said!

[hallan.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU! Thankyouthankyouthankyou! You've taken every single word right out of my mouth!

[sci.livejournal.com]

I agree that climate change is largely happening on it's own accord. The ice-caps of Mars melting at the same time as those on Earth suggests an influence beyond that of this world alone.
However I do suspect human activity to be pushing change outside of natural transition boundaries. The increasing yearly climatic swings of the recent decade has the feel of a closed control loop attempting to stabilise but alternately over and under attenuating. I am concerned that continued human contribution to this could build a sympathetic ressonance in that control loop, increasing the extremes of the swing each time. It doesn't take much additional input to screw up a feedback loop.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

If this is true:

"... it is the height of human hubris to say, or think, that we are powerful enough to change greatly such vast and complex systems."

Then this is utterly meaningless:

"We do have to be better stewards of the planet Earth, as it is the only place the entire human race calls home."

If the world is too large and complex for us to have any measurable affect on it, why should we change anything that we do?

[lowen-kind.livejournal.com]

They are not mutually exclusive.

While we may not be able to effect things globally we can effect things locally. Look at slash and burn farming in South America. While it may have a negligible effect on global climate, locally it effects the species that live in the jungles and the plants themselves. So, my comment is valid.