The Greta Thunberg Debate

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Post Ice Age, circa 10,000 BC, the earth definitely warmed up on its own. Humans had as much influence over their environment as any other living being.

So in conclusion then. We do not know whether it was meant to cool or heat. However, we do not want to see it heating at this rate as though many animals and plants can survive the heat, they cannot adapt quick enough at the rate we are going now due to climate change happening too fast due to humans...

And so we would much rather lower the rate of climate change as it is and this be done via the fossil fuels being reduced amongst other things?

Of course. Earth's climate does naturally oscillate- over tens of thousands of years, its rotations around the sun slowly change, leading to variations in everything from seasons to sunlight.

Its what causes Ice Ages (of which theres been 5 major ones throughout history) Within an ice age are multiple shorter-term periods of warmer temperatures when glaciers retreat (interglacials) and colder temperatures when glaciers advance (glacials).
The most recent one began approximately 3 million years ago and continues today (yes, we live in an ice age! Its called Quaternary). Currently, we are in a warm interglacial that began about 12,000 years ago. The last period of glaciation, which is often informally called the “Ice Age,” (ironic now that u know) peaked about 20,000 years ago.

So yes, the Earth was naturally warming on its own as it came out of a glacial cycle. We have simply expedited the process. And thats why I said scientists believe the Earth was supposed to be cooling. Bc cooling is the natural pattern of the Earth and since most interglacials only last 10-30 thousand years the Earth shouldve started cooling down in the future in preparation for another glacial cycle (which lasts significantly longer).
Remember, temperatures have been hotter and cooler and will continue to shift and change. It's humans’ self-perception of omnipotence that remains the same.

Last edited by graceksjp on 27 Sep 2019, 11:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

We believe (with not 100% certainty) that it was supposed to cool down in the future.
(The fact that the Earth has polar ice caps is evidence that we are still in the middle of a major Ice Age and the amount of time since the last glacial cycle prompts belief that the Earth shouldve been heading towards another in the near future)
But, I still think that the Earth is stronger than a bunch of measly mammals. It will correct itself and get back on track eventually and this will all be absorbed into the long history of Planet Earth.

We had a "little ice age" which lasted from approximately 1400 to 1700 AD.

Between, say, 900 and 1200 AD, animals which are now African were living in Europe. The weather was considerably warmer than it is now.

Back in the 1970s, at the height of fossil fuel usage--juxtaposed with little regulation in the United States--we had some very snowy and cold winters. The 1976-1977 winter in NYC was the coldest in over 50 years. Certain bays around the Atlantic Ocean (but not the Atlantic Ocean itself) froze. The next year wasn't as cold----but the snowfall was massive. In January, 1977, Miami, Florida went down to 32 degrees, and had snow flurries one day.

See? Totally normal. For Earth that is. I dont get why people seem to believe the Earth should always stay a certain temperature and have certain weather patterns and season etc? It doesnt make any sense.

(This does not mean I think its okay to keep ruining the environment the way we are. Just because its natural for the climate to gradually change, DOES NOT give us permission to go against nature to do terrible harm to the environment and spark global warming and other such things)

Well, yes, if you took humans out of the equation entirely that might be true, but at the moment the amount of CO2 we're pumping out exceeds the uptake capacity, and extra plant growth is not going to balance that out.

Apologies if I seem to be arguing with you, it just bugs me to see misinformation like that spread around, and I think it needs to be corrected.

With regard to sea level rise, polar bears etc, you need to be careful with basing action on current impacts of climate change, because of the 'locked in' temperature rise. This means that the effects of the CO2 emissions in the next two decades or so are going to have the greatest impact later, in the latter half of the century.

So for instance, with 2 C warming the 2014 report predicted that "many species and systems with limited adaptive capacity are subject to very high risks, particularly Arctic sea ice and coral-reef systems." My understanding is that 2 C is the expected result, by between 2030 and 2050, if we meet Paris Agreement targets - so that's probably why Greta and the climate strikers think we should be doing more.

When we get to 3 C, the predictions include "extensive biodiversity loss with associated loss of ecosystem goods and services" and a high risk of tipping points, whereby some physical systems or ecosystems may be at risk of abrupt and irreversible changes. That's when things get pretty scary. And that's what we're probably looking at if we don't meet the targets.

I think the above risks (and others) may be why some people are now thinking we should be cutting emissions faster and aiming for a 1.5 C warming instead of 2 C.

It is true that the Arctic's temperatures are rising at an accelerated rate as compared with non-Arctic regions.

And that there has been considerable melting of glaciers in that region.

It is said that Trump wanted to buy Greenland because he thought the ice cap there would thin out rapidly, and thereby allow its natural resources to be exploited.

Tokatekika, the following comments are in response to your comments. I would have quoted your comments but I have received around 20 CAPTCHA rejections in a row. So rather than quote your comments, this is your comments:

I have read the points and agree with some and don't agree with others, however for a start we cannot go off just one webpage for information as they may have bias or wrong information, instead it must be compared to other research to heed its accuracy.

Lands may be getting greener and more crops growing (in certain areas, due to heat rise of course) however, if the heat rises too much and rain ceases, instead of flourishing, there will be famine and burnt crops which are not of use..it may seem good now, but would be it in the future?

Forest fires may not have changed in the US, but this is not the only place forest fires are happening. In counties that were already hot, such as Australia, forest fires have been increasingly bad and on that note, heat rise in countries that are cooler such as England, its not such a problem, but when heat rises in countries that are already struggling and suffering such as Africa, problems are posed, also certain times of year in Africa there are rains that make lakes that supply water at important times for animals that will be there at this time such as flamingo flocks... However rising temperatures means this is less likely to happen and water dries up faster... Which puts species at risk

Again other animals such as polar bears have been in decline and are endangered along with penguins and other antarctic animals... The ice, you are right. We cannot stop it melting, however we can slow the process if we don't allow temperatures to keep rising at the rate they are and keep the climate stable

Other sites claim, sea. Level has risen 5 to 8 inches since 1900 when it had pretty much not changed at all since 2000 years before

Co2 is needed of course, however with forest fires and deforestation, there is more than the atmosphere can handle as it is not all going into photosynthesis and plants, it's going into the atmosphere, luckily with works done so far the o zone layer has been steadily decreasing, but more needs to. Be done so that it doesn't increase again and so that we don't get locked in

I wouldn't say there was an existential threat, right at this moment, perhaps the numbers are off.. However it will be a threat in the future and it is best to ensure we take care of the planet before it becomes even more difficult than it is now, as we don't know if we can control it, essentially, as it will be in the future if we do nothing. We know that the earth and climate works at the temperature it is/was not too long ago and its safer to try and preserve it than try and change with it if that can even be done

So, you have some valid points but this is just a few statements that would disagree with them.

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Since you are from the U.K. and the U.K. has a well documented historical data concerning climate, I thought it might be interesting to frame the discussion from a U.K. perspective. The following analysis is from Paul Homewood. This is a summary.

Using the recently published UK Met Office “State of the UK Climate 2018”, along with other Met Office data, this paper examines UK climatic trends and assesses the truth of climate emergency claims.

The analysis finds that:

* There was a step up in temperatures between the 1980s and early 2000s, since when temperatures have stabilised. This increase is closely associated with a rise in sea surface temperatures around the same time, itself connected to the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, a natural cycle, which is currently in its warm phase.

* The temperature data provides no evidence that temperatures will resume their upward trend in the foreseeable future.

* Seasonal temperatures follow a similar pattern.

* In particular, summer temperatures have still not exceeded those of 1976, despite last year's long heatwave.

* Based on the Central England Temperature series (CET) daily temperatures, the heatwaves of 1975 and 1976 were much more intense than anything since, including last summer, with daily temperatures peaking at higher levels and for longer. For instance, in 1975 and 1976, there were four and nine days respectively with temperatures over 30C. By contrast, last summer there was only one.

* Whilst daily temperature extremes are not rising at the top end of the scale, extremely cold days have become much less common. In short, UK temperatures have become less extreme, contrary to common belief.

* Although the UK Met Office claimed that last summer in the UK tied with 1976 as the hottest on record, the well respected CET tells a different story. In fact, it shows the summer of 2018 as only 5th warmest, not even as hot as 1826. This casts doubt on the Met Office's UK gridded temperature network, which provides its official climate data, but which relies on many UHI affected sites, such as Heathrow.

* Although there has been a clearly increasing trend in UK precipitation since the 1970s, this is largely due to increasing totals in Scotland. In the rest of the UK, there appear to be little in the way of long term changes.

* The long running England & Wales Precipitation series (EWP), which begins in 1766, offers a longer perspective, and shows that the higher levels of rainfall experienced in the last two decades are not unprecedented.

* Seasonal analysis of the EWP shows little trends in winter or summer rainfall since 1900, nor for that matter spring or autumn. This runs counter to regular claims of “wetter winters” and “drier summers”.

* Analysis of EWP also provides no evidence that rainfall is becoming more extreme, whether on a decadal, monthly or daily basis. There is, however, evidence that extremely dry years have become less common.

* Sea levels have been rising at around 1.4mm a year, after correcting for vertical land movement. Recent rates of sea level rise are similar to those in the first half of the 20thC. There is no evidence that sea level has been accelerating.

* There is little long term data for storms, but limited data from the UK Met Office indicates that storms have not become more frequent or stronger in the last five decades.

In short, although it is slightly warmer than it used to be, the UK climate has actually changed very little. In particular, there is no evidence that weather has become more extreme.

Heatwaves have not become more severe, nor droughts. Rainfall data offers no evidence that floods have become worse either.

Neither is there any evidence from past trends that the climate will become significantly hotter, wetter or drier. Nor that sea level rise will accelerate.

Source: The UK climate in 2018

I feel like some people dont realize how impactful just a couple degrees can be. It only took 4-degrees celsius to tip us into the last "ice age"

she's 16 and living in 2019, probably having had access to the Internet since she was 6. She is eloquent and shows intelligence in her conversations and I simply think she's a smart kid who has been deeply affected by what is happening in our world and because she has a "black and white" way of looking at things she is able to tell everyone that their "counter arguments" are BS because climate change IS a black and white issue. You either believe it's an existential threat or you don't. And if you do and you care, you should do something about it. simple, really.

exactly! and as far as I know changes over the course of earth geological history have always been more gradual without outside interference

he clearly believe in climate change then - even if just in terms of profit. he's truly a lunatic!

Since as probably was inevitable the conversation has ended up as a debate about the "climate emergency". The following is a post I made to a regional weather forum. Discussion in that forum usually sticks to the local weather and stays away from climate and politics but the other day in response to unseasonable warmth for several consecutive years at this time of the year in our region the topic came up.

The warming is not an illusion. We have enough readings to say that.

The scientific consensus of human produced CO2 is going to cause the end of the world as we know it COULD be wrong. The climatologists are relying on limited and questionable data of 150 years or so. Weather stations showing warming trends are affected by urbanization among other issues. The climatologists are relying too much on models. All the time on here we go nuts with the changing and often wrong short term models. There seems to be too many factors and not known factors involved for reliability. There are many many more factors that going into climate models. It is oft said that weather is not climate. That is partially misleading. Climate is weather in many locations over a lengthy period of time. So why not be skeptical of science that at least is partially relying on models?

Another thing that raises red flags is the emotional hysteria surrounding the issue. It is gotten to a point where an earnest caring teenager is being elevated to sainthood for saying what teenagers often say, our parents generations screwed us and we are different. Emotion usually makes for bad decisions.

A big mistake skeptics/deniers of the scientific consensus make is advocating for doing nothing. By doing that they have made it easy for scientific consensus supporters to say skeptics are on the payroll or sheepie to people on the payroll of big oil.

Swallow our American exceptional pride and send our best people over to Holland to see what they are doing right. We can stop subsidizing people to go back to oceanfront property after it has been destroyed by storm surge. Raising your house is fine and dandy until you become disabled for some reason. Stop building glass towers that will turn into death traps in strong enough hurricanes and tornadoes.

All the time, money and research and emotion that is going into the “settled” human CO2 theory takes away from looking into other areas. That includes other human caused warming such as the heat island effect.

You mean like urban heat islands? Cities are always warmer than rural areas. But the Urban Heat Effect has no significant influence on the record of global temperature trends. Plus scientists have already accounted for it in their measurements.
But you are right that more people should know and look into them. There are several negative effects. Did you know the UN predicts that by 2030 2/3 of the worlds population will be living in urban areas? Cities are only continuing to grow and expand. So we should definitely be making efforts to make them safer and healthier areas.