(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . A calming voice in the climate-change age [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-14 I’ve pleaded my case time and time again when it comes to defending my position on this, that and the other. Sometimes I am able to change minds; most times I am not. The one area that I am most unable to get people to side with what I have to offer has to do with climate change. I remember the time I got absolutely nowhere when I attempted to explain to one person why I believed the average air temperature at the earth’s surface is warming. It’s actually due to a combination of factors. (More on this in a moment). In fact, immediately after I posted my comment, this person (whose name I will keep private for reasons that should not be too difficult to understand), posted one of their own in response to mine. And, it was a terse one at that. In it the blog site administrator that this person was also, besides being a blogger only, curtly explained that the criteria for commenting was to change. I could tell by this individual’s response that they were livid, infuriated, hot — pick whatever adjective you like. I have to believe, now thanks to my one comment, that no longer permitted are commenter pseudonyms. Anyone who intended to comment now had to provide their actual name. So, what is it I wrote that seemed to infuriate this person so? If I can correctly recall, it was probably my insistence that the global surface temperature average will never run away due to human contributing action(s); that is; if we’re smart about this and make all of the right moves and none of the wrong ones. As I’ve explained in the past, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the surface temperature of the earth had to be much hotter. Think about all of the vegetation that would have to be there in order to satisfy the voracious appetites of all of the herbivore dinosaurs. That just wouldn’t be possible if the earth was plunged into a deep-freeze (otherwise known as an ice age) state. Something was obviously responsible for temperature being at the place it is currently — things like natural variation, the earth’s orbit around the sun relative to those of nearby planets like Jupiter and Saturn and what influencing gravitational pull these at times have on the earth as well as changes in the position of the earth’s axis relative to position and distance of the sun to earth, etc. The point is, as hot as the temperature on earth then was, it didn’t run away. It is also important to understand that in going hundreds of thousands of years back as determined by analysis of ice-core samples and other collected data, that the earth has experienced multiple temperature and/or climate reversal cycles. (See graph at top). All during this time, the global mean surface temperature or GMST was never higher than +3 degrees Celsius from the zero-degrees Celsius baseline. What is evident is that between the high and low temperature extremes or peaks, the temperature hasn’t varied by more than 10 degrees Celsius. During each cycle, there were spots where the temperature was at baseline. You’ll also notice that consistent with the change in temperature are corresponding changes in carbon dioxide and methane air-content as well as a relative period of climate and temperature stability or calm experienced over the last 10,000 or so years. Temperature today, compared to the zero-degrees-Celsius baseline, is 1.2 degrees C above that normalization reference point and still well within that 10 degrees Celsius swing. So, the question is what is responsible for this 1.2 degrees C gain we see today, the most rapid increase of that happening in the last 50 years? Through the burning of fossil fuels due to human activity, this has been a definite influence. There are other contributing factors as well, like those that I have pointed out above. And, keep in mind that of the 120 billion tons of carbon dioxide that is in the air annually, only about a third of that is as a result of anthropogenic activity.* And, consider this: That human-contributed amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide, I have heard, is now leveling off, which is a good thing. It is obvious to me that the temperature trajectory that we have been on over the last 10,000 or so years (what is responsible for enabling civilization to take root and flourish) cannot be indefinitely sustained. What we do as a world order will invariably have a contributing influence in terms of us shaping our climate and temperature futures. We need to get this right. *Elizabeth Kolbert, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future, 2021, Crown Publishing. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/14/2199390/-A-calming-voice-in-the-climate-change-age?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/