What's Really Warming the World? Nice Bloomberg graph
 

I like Dilbert cartoons and visit the site regularly.

On the side Scott Adams runs a blog on a variety of topics like this take on global warming.

The gem in that story is the link to this Bloomberg graph interactively investigating possible causes of global warming.

Now I did not need to be convinced, but if I weren't I might be... if just for the nice way the graphs move in ;)

I think it is obvious that the earth is getting warmer. I also think there are far more variables at play than simply blaming co2. It is a very weak greenhouse gas.

Has anyone taken into account the direct thermal energy from burning fossil fuels? Thats A LOT of btu's.

Another question/point is the amount of water created from burning fossil fuels.

My point is, there are a lot of variables and the blame should not be placed so pre-maturely.

Why is everyone in such a fuss over a temperature rise of only 1.4 degrees ??

It's not like we can even feel that ! LOL



* sarcasm

and the biggest elephant in the room, population growth.

People are not fat, they are just fluffily-boned!

Some issues...

Bloomberg global warming chart proves nothing | Daily Maverick

It is slowing.

Slowed growth is still growth, and because of the size of our population, we're still growing faster in real numbers than at almost any time in the past, just under what we were at our peak in the late 80s--this despite our growth rate having fallen by nearly half since the 1960s.

The problem is... as pointed out in one of the comments in Arragonis' link, population growth is slowing to a complete stalemate... and may possibly reach zero growth before the end of the century.

Many industrialized nations are either stable or in decline, already.

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And there are assumptions made in the worst case scenarios (that posit high temperature changes) that most likely won't hold true. For one thing, we definitely won't be burning the same amount of coal by 2100 as we are now. We don't have enough of it.

The actual replenishing reproductive rate has fallen by even more than that .. it's just 'concealed' a bit by the simultaneous increase (~30%) of average life expectancy.

-__% Average Replenishing Reproduction Rate + 30% Average Life Expectancy of those already alive = That -1/2 net growth rate you wrote about above.

That is effectively a very rapid (and fundamental) .. change in less than one average life time of the species ... and without any obvious major external driver causing it.