Ron Paul - Wait, what?

[thetonestarr]

scottie said:

 

I'm from Australia, I finish my Bachelor of Science (Physics) and Engineering (Renewable Energy) in June. Currently working for an environmental consulting firm in the holidays.

 

I'm still trying to understand what you believe. Putting aside the issue of cause for a minute. Consider the graph below. Note that in very recent times, there is an increase in temperature of around 5 degrees, in such a short time as the line appears vertical. The current point on this graph, is approximately 6.5 degrees celsius warmer than the warmest (pre industrial revolution) temperature on record. as I said, ignore the chemistry behind it. Do you think that this vertical section of the graph is

a) The result of human activity

b) Faked. Those who gathered ice core data simply drew the graph, and discarded all of their data.

c) A co-incidence.

 

graph is from Petit et al. - Nature, 1999

 

So I'm going to assume you picked a), the other two are both indefensible points so I won't bother addressing them. Now, as we have established that it is humans causing this warming, we must do two things. The first is determine what we are doing to cause the warming, and the 2nd is to stop it. This is of course a much more complex process, so I'll pause here to make sure you agree with this post.

Besides the problem that's already been brought up of "correlation does not equal causation", your argument has various other problems. Among them:

One, you can clearly see at 390,000 BC, 330,000 BC, 220,000 BC, and 110,000 BC times when the CO2 concentration was higher than the temperature variation. And there are a variety of other points on the graph that it looks like it might venture beyond as well. How would you account for those in your argument?

Two, since the situation of "higher CO2 than temperature flux" has happened a plethora of times before, how CAN you honestly say without hesitation that it's not happening again? Perhaps maybe the fact that it's happening at the peak of a temperature flux is the only reason it's fluctuating so much higher than normal. And even so, it's NOT any higher above the temperature fluctuation than it was in 110,000 BC, so I still fail to see how your graph helps your argument.