Climate change is real, and has been since the earth's formation.
Short-term/daily/weekly drastic swings are real too, and have been happening since the earth's formation.
Exactly! The Earths climate has been in a constant state of change since the Earth's formation. To say that it is now primarily due to man's existence, is to discount the previous eon's in which man had not effect yet the climate still changed. According to scientists, 100,000 years ago the spot which I am currently sitting, was covered by a mile thick sheet of ice. That would indicate a climate cold enough to support it. However, this past year, I remember green grass and trees with leaves with temperatures in the 80's and 90's. This is considerably different than the climate that must have been present 100,000 years ago. What caused that? Cave men driving SUV's?
Yes, climate has been changing for all of Earth's history on its own. We get that.
That *DOES NOT* mean that anthropogenic climate change isn't real, or isn't damaging. And one can't claim that human effect is insignificant. We can do things to this planet that far outweigh the impact of any other animal due to our technology. After all, if Trump and Rocket Man decided to start lobbing nukes at each other and started a nuclear winter, would you say man has no effect?
Climate is an extraordinarily complex system, but two aspects of climate change theory seem to be relatively well-established:
- Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas and greenhouse gases will trap heat in the atmosphere, causing some warming to the planet.
- Some, but not likely all, of the warming that is evident since we have had the technology to measure this, is due to human industry.
The earth has been in a warming cycle since the end of the little ice age, around 1850. CO2 concentrations didn't really start to take off until after 1950 or so. But coincident with that rapid increase in CO2 concentration, the warming trend seemed to accelerate. As a result, even most people who would be labeled "skeptics" as it relates to the climate change debate concede the above two points.
Just as when the other side denounces you for "denying science", to belittle the climate change alarmists with the caveat that it's cold outside today, or with the statement that climate has been changing for all of Earth's history, doesn't help.
The question is whether humans are changing it NOW, and what will be the impact on modern life from that change?And the answer is yes, humans are changing it now. We don't exactly know how much, as all we really have to rely on is computer models of climate [so far most alarmist models have generally over-predicted warming]. We also don't have very good ways to model the economic or lifestyle impacts at this time [the alarmists assume they must be terribly bad, but we don't know--many effects could possibly even be beneficial].
But ridiculing the other side doesn't advance the debate.
