dottedmint

With all this talk about global warming I had to ask a couple of very simple questions.

What is the "normal" temp for the planet?

What is the "normal" size of the glaciers on the planet?

What is the "normal" sea level of our oceans?

I know these questions might sound trivial but I think they are important to try to get a "baseline".

15,000 years ago where I am sitting now would be under a glacier.

Now it is a mix of some farmland and a sprawling urban area.

What is "normal" for my area?

The glaciers?

The farmland and city life?

In another 15,000 years will this area be sitting under another glacier?

This planet has had cold spells...

This planet has had warm spells...

This planet has had spells that were warmer than our current temps.

And NONE of these fluctuations between cold and warm were caused by man and yet they still happened.

So I'll ask again.....

What is the "normal" temp for the planet???

jfuh

The questions in of themselves are missing some key points. #1 all the above are irrelevent to the planet. What they are relevant to is human civilization as is.
Hence normal would be the blue portion in this graph

Normal size of glaciers and ocean sea levels would be what the blue would allow for. In other words there being a frozen arctic ocean as opposed to an open waterway.

All of which are moot, the only relevant question is what is normal for humans and what have we done to create a climate outside of the 650,000 year norm.
Right now we have the highest concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere than at any point in the last 650,000 years all of which started at the beginning of the industrial revolution. There is no question any longer that we are the ones that are contributing to the global warming phenomena. Any variation from what the climate is today would not be good for humans in the future, aka, our decedents.
What's the optimum level of ozone in the atmosphere for the planet? Irrelevant, what is relevant is what is best for humans, our contribution of chlorofluorocarbons in freon gases contribute to the break down of ozone letting in carcinogenic uv radiation. Does it matter to the planet? No, does it matter to human and the current ecological system? Absolutely. Same with greenhouse gases and global warming.

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dottedmint

But this only goes back to what 1890??? It doesn't really answer the bigger question of what is the "norm" for this planet.

Except for the fact that in the past there hasn't always been a frozen arctic.

650,000 year norm?????

As I said in my article. Just a short 15,000 years ago there was a glacier sitting over my head. So how exactly can you suggest that the current climate is the 650,000 NORM????

Of course there are still questions.

Such as what the "norm" temp of the planet is.

The planet had cold spells and warm spells all before man was ever an issue. Why exactly can't this be just another natural cycle?


This is true. And it is just as true if this was a natural cycle. IF in 15,000 years there was another glacier sitting over my head (as there was 15,000 years ago) then yes it would be bad for my decedents.

Except this seems to be assuming that we can take steps to ensure that natural climatic cycles will never happen.

IF we wake up tomorrow and we were able to reduce mans influence on the climate to 0% what is to say that we still would not have global warming? or global cooling?

There were fluctuations BEFORE man ever became an issue so why are we so certain that fluctuations won't happen now?

So can you tell me what the "norm" temp of the planet is?

Sauwan

Again. Google

jfuh

Oh contrare. The graph shows that the current temps are not "norm" or at least, un-natural. You don't need to go back past 1890.

How far in the past, were there humans that far back? Hell in the past North America wasn't where it is today either.

Norm does not suggest that it is constant, but within a range. For the last 650,000 years we've been within this range. Greenland's glaciers melting is indicative that we are now outside of this range. Otherwise, as I also stated, there is no planetary norm.

See the graph. The black portion is what is happening now. The blue is what should be, the red is what it would be with the addition of human intervention. Right now you can clearly see that the black and red overlap each other quite well. Hence we can say with good confidence that what is happening now is not the norm.
Otherwise as I've asked. What's natural about the divergence?

Yes this would be true whether it be natural or un-natural. However as I posted in that graph, there's nothing natural about this current trend.

If we stopped all contributions tomorrow, we will still not be able to "stop" the current warmings, there is simply too much CO2 in the atmosphere already, higher than at any level in the last 650,000 years.
But instead of an acceleration we should get a constant. Currently CO2 increases exponentially, if we continue on the current trend things will get much much worse, much much sooner, that is an absolute. Halting our current trend gives science and in turn technology to catch up to have the ability, hopefully, to reverse the trend.
As I've answered many times already, there is no planetary norm; what the planet was like 4 billion, 3 billion, 2 billion, 1 billion 1 million half a million years ago is clearly very different than what it is like today.
Today we also don't have giant insects or T-Rex's roaming the planet. Hence discussing the "norm" of the planet is quite irrelevant.

dottedmint

Actually your graph does NOT show that. In order for you to say that something is "un-natural" you need to go back farther than just 1890.

No there were not humans that far back and yet we had periods of global warming. Of course we also had ice ages.

No we have NOT been within this range for the last 650,000 years. As I said before just a SHORT 15,000 years ago there was a glacier sitting over my head. So why did the glaciers melt 15,000 years ago? SUVs???

The problem is that you are not basing that claim on anything. Just because you say the "blue is what should be" does NOT mean that is what "should be". Especially if your graph only goes back to 1890. Show me a graph that goes back 15,000 years and shows the glaciers sitting over my head and then MAYBE we can start talking about what "should be" because then we would have a longer history to compare to.

The same thing that was natural when the glacier melted 15,000 years ago.

A "constant"? Until when ? Until the next natural fluctuation starts? Until we have the next ice age? Until we have even more warming?

So if we were on the way to an ice age like we had just 15,000 years ago what would technology do to prevent it? Pump CO2 into the atmosphere??

I'm only looking back a SHORT 15,000 years ago.

I'm basically trying to figure out what keeps the planet from shifting into conditions that are similar to those 15,000 years ago.


OF COURSE it is relevant. You claim that the current conditions are "norm" and yet you don't base that on anything other than a graph that only goes back to 1890. That is not a very long history to base what is or is not "norm".

Kandahar

What does it matter? Most people are primarily interested in how climate change will affect us as a civilization, not in how much it deviates from the "norm" of the earth.

There haven't always been enormous cities built on the coastlines either.

Actually, glacial periods (commonly but erroneously called Ice Ages) are the "norm" for the past several hundred thousand years. Warming periods tend to be brief, lasting only for 10,000 years or so. We currently live in such a warming period.

Technically, we're still in an "Ice Age," and have been for 40 million years. In the grand scheme of things, the earth is quite cool by geological standards. However, that is hardly relevant to the consequences to human civilization of climate change.

Nothing. In fact, we almost certainly WOULD still have climate change. But it almost certainly wouldn't be happening at the current rate. If there was no global warming, we would probably enter another glacial period within the next thousand years or so (because we're overdue for one). However, that would happen over a much longer time scale by human standards. And it's also very likely that we'll have the technology to control our climate sooner than that.

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dottedmint

This is true. Most people don't care what the climate has been in the past or what it would naturally become in the future. We are on this global warming blitz and ignore any possibility that this current warming is completely natural.


True. Nor have we had cities built where the next glaciers will form. As I said earlier 15,000 years ago there was a glacier sitting over my head. Curious what it would be like to see each night on the news how much closer the glacier has gotten to my house......

"Ooops...... There goes Mike's house......"

That's right. The planet has had cold spells and warm spells and no matter what we do will continue to have these cycles into the future.

True. Between 1500 and 1700 AD we had a "Little Ice Age" and the Thames River in England was froze solid.

We don't know if any "shift" in the climate would be happening at the current rate or not.

Kandahar

Nor do they need to, apart from scientific curiosity. What the climate would "naturally" become is irrelevant; we're interested in minimizing the damage to human civilization.

No we're not. That possibility is simply very, very slim. Global temperatures normally move in tandem with carbon dioxide levels. Human emissions are responsible for a big chunk of the carbon dioxide currently in our atmosphere. Logic would indicate that human emissions are therefore responsible for the change in temperature.

Glaciers move very slowly. Even if a new glacial period started tomorrow, you'd have plenty of time (hundreds of years) to move to a new location...unless your home is currently right on the edge of the glacier.

Many of the cities on the coastline, in contrast, will be flooded within 50-100 years as a result of global warming.

Irrelevant. By that same logic: Asteroids "naturally" hit the earth from time to time...so it shouldn't matter if we humans start steering enormous space rocks into the earth.

This is a misnomer. The temperature change NOW is much more significant than that ever was.

Yes we do. See above re: carbon dioxide levels and global temperature.