Except...that it's not.
Excpet that the current warming trend, which started in 1650, wasn't triggered by CO2 levels, and since we don't know what caused that to change, we really can't be saying that particular cause still isn't active, now can we?
Incorrect! The earth was in a steady temperature/slight
cooling trend until ~1850. The cause was most certainly CO2. This is standard skepticism - "Oh we don't know we have no idea what could possibly have done this!" Well, that's wrong. We know a lot about the various climate forcings: the earth's cycle of orbital change, the greenhouse effect, volcanic activity, solar output, and continental configuration, to name the primary drivers.
We can state, categorically, that the current warming cycle is not as warm as even recent cycles. Not to mention that the previous long interstadial period, the one without any people at all, was warmer and had higher sea levels all by it's little lonesome before it was gone.
Depends on your definition of "recent." (if you are referring to the medieval warm period, that was a regional effect. it is currently warmer than it was 1000 years ago, globally speaking) Yes, it has been warmer in the past. That doesn't make us incapable of causing a warming trend, nor does it make us incapable of determining why it was warmer before. The atmosphere changes, the continents change position, and probably the most important driver of the earth's regular cycle of large scale glaciation periods is the orbit.
Milankovitch cycles - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
That there Hockey Stick graph was proven bogus. The IPCC was caught with it's little pinko panties down when it was revealed it was using unsourced articles from Climbing Magazine as it's primary reference for the retreat of the Himilayan glaciers. The global warming gurus were caught plotting to ensure only the right peers, their peers, were on the boards of journals publishing climate propaganda. The world's sea levels ARE NOT rising, that's indisputable. The world's climate runs in cycles long and short, and the causes of the shorter cycles aren't clear at all.
See the other thread on "Climategate." The hockey stick was not proven bogus. Several independent investigations have cleared the CRU and Mann's group of data manipulation. The allegations are based on two out of context emails mined from more than a decade's worth of emails. Yet somehow you skeptics take it as gospel while not even understanding the scope of the allegations. Even if it was, the hockey stick is not at all important to the big picture. It's just
one temperature reconstruction out of many done used
one of several methods. See that graph above. I don't think Mann's "hockey stick" work is even on that one, come to think of it. (edit: looked it up. Mann's work is the blue line)
So, the basic prediction for the future is that...in the long term, within less than ten millenia, the corrupt city of Chicago will yet again be under a mile or two of ice.
Yes, the earth's orbital shift will put that particular forcing into a downward trend. The earth will cool. About 7000 years from now. Personally, I think we should worry more about the forcings we are affecting now and less about the ones we can't affect 7000 years from now.
The other prediction is that politically motivated hoaxes like Anthropogenic Global Warming, even when they achieve cult status and become formal religions, are still hoaxes.
The oil industry has a financial motive to prevent us from switching off fossil fuels. They fund skeptics' research. If AGW is a hoax, it's the biggest one in the history of the planet. Thousands of scientists, dozens of fields, more than a century, dozens of countries, millions of data points.
We don't.
Humans don't control the sun.
But we can measure it. The sun is not responsible for the current warming trend. When temperature goes up while solar output goes down, claiming the sun did it is foolish.
Humans don't understand the climate cycles.
There's nothing we can do, since what's happening isn't caused by humans nor under human control.
Head in sand.
There's also the uncomfortable fact that a warrmer Earth is actually more beneficial for humans. Something about longer growing seasons and the fact that increased atmospheric CO2 leads to better crop yields, not to mention the expansion of arable land as the northern areas warm up.
This has been disproven. Higher temperatures lead to higher instances of crop failure, and more CO2 only has a slight increase in crop yields. (and that increase has a sort of cap. Beyond a certain point the benefits stop because the plant is not adapted to drawing in that much carbon) Several mass extinction events coincide with rapid changes in global temperature. There's a limit to how fast the world can adapt, and we're exceeding it.
Explain why 1950 has suddenly become the Year of Optimum Climate in the eyes of the Left.
It hasn't. It was agreed that the average temperature in a certain time period would be used as a baseline, because if you don't have a baseline none of the numbers will match eachother and you get chaos. If I remember right (off the top of my head,) the period chosen was 1951-1980, and the average temperature in that time was ~14.7C. Nobody has suggested that this temperature is somehow optimal. What we do know is that the world adapts most easily to a slow change, and right now it's changing really, really fast.
Scarecrow, you're saying we don't know anything about past cycles because the research is proven false while simultaneously relying on that research for one of your arguments. (it was warmer in the past) Where do you think that information came from? Your entire argument boils down to "we don't know," but you need to ask yourself whether it's "We" not knowing or
you not knowing. You should take the personal responsibility to educate yourself on the subject, and find out just how much we actually do know. Nuclear physics is extraordinarily complicated, just because MY understanding of it is poor doesn't mean nobody understands it. Of course, we both know you're not going to do that. You pre-judged a scientific argument without bothering to educate yourself on the science. It's a pretty normal psychological reaction to the idea that our lifestyle might be harmful and have to change. We don't want that, so we resist it.
There's some fundamental physics that skeptics can't get around: The exact spectrum of energy that CO2 absorbs is escaping the planet in smaller and smaller amounts. It's being trapped in the atmosphere. This decrease in outgoing radiation corresponds to the increase in CO2 levels. We're measuring this directly via satellite. Compared to the incoming solar energy, the outgoing energy is decrease. In exactly the spectrum that is absorbed by CO2 and other greenhouse gases that mankind emits. (for a bit more detail on this, see my other thread "Some basic, empirical evidence..." in this same subforum)
Physics 101 leads to the question: What is happening to all that energy?
You should also check out this website:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?f=taxonomy
Any skeptical argument you can think of, they probably have it. Complete with links to scientific research supporting what they say. They also do a pretty good job explaining it in layman's terms, which is good for people like you and me.
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