/sci/ - Science & Math

>>3223972

>if people lived during the Holocene Temperature Optimum which lasted for 3,000 years or so

The Holocene Climate Optimum was unlikely to be more than 1 degree Celsius warmer than today. And yes, humans survived through ice ages and megadroughts, that's completely true. Humans will almost certainly survive anything but the most extreme climate changes, but we don't just want to survive. We are not hunter-gatherers; we live in cities and towns and farms that can't be moved as soon as local conditions get bad, and we need to support billions more people too. The goal is to preserve the standard of living that are currently enjoying. not preventing human extinction.

>I've been an anthropomorphic global warming skeptic for years now

You mean anthropogenic

Anthropomorphic = furries

>What about the fact that Water vapor is the largest greenhouse gas by volume.

Water vapour is the most abundant GHG, but it is not the most powerful. And what matters to us is not the absolute concentration, but how it changes over time. Water vapour is dependent on temperature; increase the temperature and you get a higher specific humidity. Unlike CO2 it cannot accumulate in the atmosphere on its own without temperature increasing first.

>>3145000

Bitches don't know about my carbon cycle

>>2455669

>never established an equilibrium nor will they ever establish an equilibrium

You never learned about the carbon cycle? Dude, that's grade school shit

The carbon cycle is in rough equilibrium, assuming all factors remain the same. <span class="math">This~will~not~change~absent~of~outside~forcing.[/spoiler] In the past, it was Milankovitch Cycles, rock weathering, solar irradiance, and continental drift. As the previous anon mentioned, these do not operate on the decadal timescale and thus do not explain current warming. Now that we've added CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, halocarbons, and synthetic gases to the atmosphere, the factors have changed in response to our emissions, so has the equilibrium has changed too.

ALRIGHT ASSHOLES HERE'S THE THREAD WHERE YOU DISCUSS THE SCIENCE

Keep the politics and the Wikileaks shit back in the /new/ thread

Economic discussion is permitted as long as you're not a fucktarded teabagger or anarcho-capitalist or some crazy VHEMT motherfucker

So, ask me anything

>>1919486

Bitches don't know about my carbon cycle

Which is odd, because I learned this shit in elementary school

Basically, natural output of carbon is nearly equal to natural uptake. Anthropogenic emissions are IN ADDITION to that. The magnitude of natural carbon flows compared to anthropogenic emission is irrelevant. Also, human emissions > volcanic by a factor of about a hundred, so I'm not sure why you bothered mentioning it.

>>1836885

Someone's never heard of the carbon cycle

Protip: natural co2 emissions are nearly equal to natural co2 uptake

>>1038658

Responding to

>>1038620

Moving on...

>>1038624

Oh? Please explain. I was under the impression that water vapour, while essential to maintaining greenhouse warming, is driven by temperature rather than the other way around. When you listen to the weather report and they mention humidity, think about this: doesn't the air have a greater capacity to hold water when the temperature is higher rather than if the temperature is lower?

>>1038630

Tyndall experimentally confirmed CO2 warming properties in 1859, working off of Fourier's hypothesis from a few decades earlier. In the later half of the 19th and early half of the 20th century, scientists such as Arrhenius and Gilbert Plass all but confirmed the warming properties of CO2. This is not an arguable point. It's physics, dude.

>>1038620

The biosphere, left to its own devices, is carbon neutral. For plant decomposition to have a severe impact on atmospheric CO2, a lot of it would have to die all at once. Since this only occurs during certain kinds of mass extinction events, some of which are driven by changes in climate, this does not detract from my (admittedly slightly revised) claim that <span class="math"> under normal circumstances [/spoiler] there is nothing that could cause massive CO2 outgassing except during come kinds of supervolcanism. Nor does it detract from concerns about present-day global warming. In fact, it probably heightens it.