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Old 02-19-2012, 10:47 PM   #130 (permalink)
NeilBlanchard
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So, how is it that you accept plate tectonics, which is a "younger" science than climate change? Do you think you get to pick and choose among various fields of science, and accept some but not others? There is actually a lot of overlap between climate change science and many other areas of science. If geologists or biologists or chemists or vulcanologists or oceanographers or dendrochronologists or astrophysicists had an issue with those overlapping areas of the science -- then they would certainly say so.

We know that when India was still an island moving across the southern ocean towards Asia that there was a lot of volcanic activity and the carbon dioxide level rose to about 1,000ppm, and there was no ice anywhere on the globe. There were alligators in what is now Alaska. Then when India bumped up against Asia and started forming the Himalayas, the level of carbon dioxide started dropping slowly, mostly through a weathering process. If I recall correctly, the rate of increase due to volcanoes was about 100ppm per million years.



As the level dropped to about 450ppm, that is about when the ice on Antarctica started to form. It kept dropping and about when it reached 350ppm, the Arctic ice started forming, and then it ultimately got down to ~270ppm where it stabilized for about 650,000 years.

And now in about 150 years we have raised the level of carbon dioxide to over 390ppm.

Now, so much ice has formed on Antarctica that it is pressing the land under it down almost 1/2 a MILE. This "warps" the gravitational pull of the earth as a whole, and changes sea level quite a bit. It also affects the tectonic plate movement, too; both by the displacement and the change in gravity.

Because the earth is spinning, the shape deforms from being a sphere to an oblate spheroid. And the huge mass of ice on Antarctica further distorts the shape pulling the bulge in the ocean level south of the equator.

There is a mountain in Ecuador called Mount Chimborazo that is closer to the moon and stars than Mount Everest.

The 'Highest' Spot on Earth? : Krulwich Wonders... : NPR

So, the bottom line is that if you think that you are better qualified to make serious conclusions about the climate than the scientists who have multiple PhD's and know an staggering amount about isotopes and astrophysics and plate tectonics and geology and chemistry and biology and satellites and gravity and the oceans and paleontology -- then please show them your analysis of all the data and show them how wrong they are.

If you cannot show a better analysis than they have, then you cannot dismiss their conclusions any more than you can dismiss atomic theory or DNA or gravity or the Big Bang or medical surgery or evolution.

You just can't ignore the best understanding that we humans have of our earth's climate. There is no Planet B.
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Last edited by NeilBlanchard; 02-19-2012 at 11:05 PM..
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