Quote:
Originally Posted by ottopilot
If greenhouse gases (if you feel like including CO2) are your largest concern, then focus on the largest contributor. Fossil fuels are (by far) not the largest generator of greenhouse gases.
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That's not how it works. Long before us puny humans came along, there was a relative balance of greenhouse gasses. Some greenhouse gasses are necessary, you see, and throughout the history of our planet life has adapted to deal with the various climates that have come and gone. The changes in climate before the industrial revolution were quite slow, taking thousands of years or more. If the next climate change took 3600 years, humans would likely have time to adapt as necessary.
The problem is when the cycle is artificially changed. We don't know if the introduction of gasses like CO2 from artificial sources will speed up any change. If we only have 150 years to deal with a change of a dozen degrees, we could face a global catastrophe. I think we can agree it would be bad if a third of the population of the planet died in the course of maybe 40 years because we can't either supply necessary heat or relocation to everything north of Oklahoma and Turkey. And that's not alarmist because it falls in line with several of the worst-case scenarios being put fourth by real experts in the field.