15 hours Ago
Letters to the editor regularly appear here declaring that nothing need be done about our rapidly warming planet. The writers no longer deny the reality of a warming planet. Instead, they argue that it isn’t our doing.
The verbal jujitsu goes as follows: “Yes the climate is changing ...
and it always has.” This is meant to be a compelling argument that the carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases we are adding to the atmosphere at an ever-increasing rate can’t be the reason for global warming-induced climate disruption we are experiencing now. What I can’t understand is why these writers think that their observation the climate has changed in the past is an argument in their favor.
When we examine the evidence from our geological past, we find that periods of rapid warming were either instigated by the rapid release of carbon dioxide or greatly accelerated by its release. Why then would we conclude that the result would be different if we do now as nature has done in the past? Physicists have long known that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will lead to a warming planet, why it will do so, and have seen that it is doing so. That large releases in the geologic past have led to accelerated warming and climate instability is an argument in favor of lowering emissions now, not an argument against it.
Increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has always led to an accelerated warming of the planet ...
and always will! Nat Fortune Whately Article continues after...
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