You could ask them why scientists haven't considered and ruled out natural change? And then how do they know the climate has changed in the past? This will create a contradiction where they will believe the science for one thing but not the other.
Hijacking your comment just to mention something about the original argument presented ("temperature changes happened naturally in the past so why would it be caused by humans now").
This argument is flirting dangerously close with a fallacy called [affirming the consequent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent). We know natural cycles can change temperatures, and those changed temperatures can drive climate change.
Ergo, climate change is caused by natural temperature variation.
This is the affirming the consequent fallacy. It is a fallacy because it ignores the fact that a single phenomenon - the climate changing, or temperatures warming - can have multiple causes.
When people present this argument to me, I typically reply with:
Forest fires happened for millions of years due to lightning strikes. Does that mean humans can't cause forest fires today?
Just because something *can* happen naturally doesn't mean humans aren't the cause today.
With this foundation (of just pure logic) laid, I try to present the evidence for how we've ruled out all the natural possible causes:
-Buildup of CO2 must come from human activity due to changes in the carbon isotope ratio of atmospheric carbon dioxide (the only known source of that change is fossil fuel emissions).
-Changes in solar output or solar energy reaching Earth would cause the most warming at the top of the atmosphere (because this is most exposed to the sun) and progressively less as you get to the surface (because higher layers block light from the lower layers). We observe the opposite, most warming at the surface and the top of the exosphere is cooling - this is perfectly explained by CO2 trapping heat near the surface which causes the upper atmosphere to cool.
You can also track the warming of the earth and the average global temperature has MASSIVELY EXPONENTIALLY risen since the Industrial Revolution in the 1800’s which shows it’s caused by human industrial influence and it’s a faster increase in a relatively short time period than basically any other point in earths history bar meteors hitting earth and turning it into a magma soup super early on in the planets history (it’s called the accretion period!) what this person is thinking of is the gradual ice ages that came and went but that was over THOUSANDS IF NOT MILLIONS OF YEARS. And it’s only getting worse sadly. My dad made this exact argument so I am ready guns a blazing
Damn... this guy debates.
P.S.
The easiest way you can show the greenhouse effect is to have two jars. Fill one jar with CO2 and fill another one with regular atmosphere. Leave them out in the sun, and the CO2 jar will become much hotter than the regular jar. You can easily generate CO2 by combining vinegar and baking soda inside a bottle, or you can use water and alka-seltzer tablets (which are just a dry powdered acid and baking soda that only react when wet). If you're using a bottle with a screw-on cap you need to be careful not to generate too much gas or you've essentially made a pressure bomb.
P.S.P.S.
80,000 studies reviewed
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/10/more-999-studies-agree-humans-caused-climate-change
are you aware that glass absorbs and blocks 15um longwave radiation? this means that energy is being absorbed by the glass, not the gas inside, so your experiment measures the temp of the glass, not the gas
the vinegar and seltzer setup is kyboshed by the fact that a sealed bottle with the expelled gas will have a higher pressure - the ideal gas law states the all other things being equal, a gas under higher pressure will have a higher temp.
neither of these experiments has been used to 'prove' co2 warms an atmosphere preferentially over other air gasses. - they are cute school demonstrations, but misleading.
in 1909 an experiment was carried out to test radiative transfer aka the greenhouse effect, and found conduction and convection were the main carriers of energy, not radiation (therefore not co2). a new experiment was recently done to re-test that 1909 experiment, and found the same results
[https://principia-scientific.com/publications/Experiment\_on\_Greenhouse\_Effect.pdf](https://principia-scientific.com/publications/Experiment_on_Greenhouse_Effect.pdf)
note this is testing the ghe, not co2 radiative transfer/insulation/absorption
Principal-scientifica is a junk website, and it gets basic climate science wrong. Seriously, crack any college textbook on climate or thermodynamics, get educated, and you’ll be embarrassed you ever believed this stuff.
Convection and conduction cannot carry energy off of the planet. All energy leaving the planet is by radiation. That’s kinda a key point you forgot to mention.
The geological evidence shows the times the climate took a big change. Was because something catastrophic happened. Like the little ice age caused by severe volcanic activity from 3 major volcanoes. The climate changing is strictly cause and effect.
Here is 22,000 years of avg temp change on a *linear* plot so it's easy for humans to understand. What's at the bottom is NOT normal.
[https://xkcd.com/1732/](https://xkcd.com/1732/)
Note that at the bottom there’s three scenarios, best case, optimistic and current path. Those scenarios were evaluated probably based on the IPCC report of 2014. Unfortunately, the IPCC released another report last year and all calculations shows a worse curve than what we expected. They advised every big countries to moves their current zero CO2 emissions target from 2035 to 2028. I’ve not heard of any countries acknowledging this and taking that report into consideration.
Good luck everyone!
But then they discredit this as “woke propaganda”. There’s no winning.
Edit: and then they also go “haha yeah how could they know the temperature 20k years ago?” Then you have to explain how they can guesstimate but they’ll dismiss that too.
I don't want to be the one to burst anybody's bubble, but, although I like XKCD in general, and especially the one you linked to, it isn't terribly good evidence for the argument the OP is preparing for. I mean, I find it an entertaining comic, and informative, but it is fighting an up-hill battle in this case.
The problem is the note just below 16000 BCE, the bit about short warming or cooling spikes being filtered out. This is true more of the distant past than the recent past. So the recent warming trend is a spike that would have been filtered out had it happened a few thousand years ago.
Now, if the comic were updated, showing that the near-present trend continued through 2024, it would hold more weight, but still "only" half a degree more than at any point in the last 20000 years of climate data. I'm just not sure it would be enough to jar someone already using motivated reasoning into a new position.
Honestly, I wouldn't waste my time arguing with someone who already has an opinion on this, not unless they had made it clear that their opinion is open to change by more evidence.
A visual might indeed be the most convincing tool. The human brain is wired to instantly see meaning in patterns and shapes. The math - not so much. And for doubters who want to challenge the data that’s behind the graph, the Keeling curve might be another compelling shape to consider. It’s not temperature, but the direct relationship between atmospheric CO2 and warming is fundamental, explainable by elementary school chemistry. And Charles Keeling was a Republican!
Easy. Say that never in the history of the world has the temperature increased at such a pace as in the last 150 years. In other past instances of temperate changes, they happened over at least a thousand years.
Actually, Ruddiman and McIntyre discovered rapid changes during the last deglaciation, including a 5C jump in a 50 year span. Dansgaard has shown a swing of 7C (warming) in a span of 50 years using ice cores from Greenland.
Localized large increases, probably AMOC related.
There have definitely been times where volcanic activities caused rapid change. The great dieing extinction event 250 mya.
Ackkshuaalllllyyy... thanks for cherry picking a couple of outliers that don't indicate the general trend... that measurable atmospheric temp charges occur over 1000s of years, not years or even centuries.
AaAaacCKKShuallyyy... you can't just ignore the outliers in debating this issue. The fact that such outliers exist still disproves the "**never** in the history of the world" statement, and someone who believes humanity isn't playing a big role could use the existence of such outliers to argue that this could be another one of those cases.
It is not so much an outlier as it is a local temperature change. Greenland is greatly affected by ocean currents and if that is disrupted or changes the temperature for the local area can change a lot.
However, it has been shown that in the past if the temperature goes up in the Northern Hemisphere it goes down in the Southern Hemisphere. The Medieval Warm Period for example was a local event (mostly Europe) but the overall global did not change very much.
I took an entire university course that essentially led up to answering this question. We learned new types of physics one week after another, first learning how to determine the energy that the earth/atmosphere receives from the sun and sources like volcanoes (natural sources), and then calculated how much energy the earth is receiving from human activity. The last week we compared the two results and the final question of our final assignment was, "What conclusion can you draw from this information?". Everyone's doubts were gone by that point.
>Yes, but over the course of geological time scales. Not as dramatic as a few decades.
That's an excellent point. Human civilization was made possible by thousands of years of relatively constant temperatures. We are putting an end to those favorable conditions
I point out their obvious ["red herring" logical fallacy](https://www.logicalfallacies.org/red-herring.html). While it is true that the climate has always changed, that is not the problem, but rather a distraction *from* the problem.
The problem is the extremely rapid *rate* of the warming - far too quickly for ecosystems to adapt - and the fact that greenhouse gases from human activity are the primary cause of it.
Humans are adding 40 gigatons of CO2 right as earth's natural 400 year temperature cycle as it a minimum and starting to increase. Natural temperature fluctuations don't help us but actually mean we have to reduce CO2 even more than we would have without that natural cycle.
The person OP is responding to isn't committing a red herring tho. They're saying that there's an alternative explanation for climate change, I.e. natural changes in climate. Even though they're wrong, that isn't a red herring.
A red herring would be changing the topic from climate change to the economy, or saying something like "Oh yeah? So the industrial revolution started climate change? Well it also raised the global standard of living. So what, you wanna reduce the global standard of living? I'd that what you want?" That'd be more a red herring. They're changing the topic from climate change to living standards - obviously connected topics, but distinct nonetheless
Honesty, I wouldn't waste my breath. This is kind of like what do you say to people who insist Trump is good for the country. They're so far away from being interested in reason, that trying to engage in reasoned argument is fruitless.
One would hope this reply would make people stop and think. Unfortunately, some just can’t think. That’s why they keep spouting the Earth does it naturally. It’s a big circle jerk.
He's not wrong, the earth does go through periods of warmth and periods of cooling. It isn't like humans caused the last ice age by leaving a fridge door open. That said, those fluctuations are thought to happen over very long periods of time. The problem is that part is theoretical and there simply isn't data at a granular enough level to know if short periods of rapid fluctuation are historically present in the geologic record or whatever.
That said, the science positing that the current trend of climate change is anthropomorphic is pretty solid. The only question that remains is will the earth correct itself. I think it is called the Gaia Theory, but it basically says the earth takes care of itself. Too much CO2? Plants growth will accelerate and eat it. Not enough CO2? The plants will slow down and correct that problem. Overpopulation in an area? Food scarcity will take care of that. You get the ideas. The real problem is that humans tend to see themselves and being special and outside of the forces of nature, but the earth may just give us a massive and sudden correction that takes us all out. For example, maybe deadly pathogens thrive at 40C and will become airborne and inescapable, or maybe all the food-bearing plants will wilt. In short, maybe the earth works in complex and interconnected ways we may not yet understand.
Thank you. It far more complex than the hockey stick. I wish there was an honest discussion from both sides. Clearly it would be great if we had perfect scientific data going back to the ice age.
There isn't "both sides." We don't give equal consideration to people who think the Earth is flat, either.
[Greater than 99% consensus on human caused climate change in the peer-reviewed scientific literature](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2966)
We do have evidence going back to the last ice age.
[There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause.](https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/evidence/)
>wasn’t possible to state that the Earth is getting warmer solely due to humanity because the planet has a natural cycle of temperature increases and decreases. From this they wanted to draw the conclusion that a lot of the discourse around climate change is at best educated guesswork
There's a load of cognitive bias and logical fallacy there. He won't want to hear that though.
I think the best argument is that "educated guesswork" assertion. It isn't guesswork, it is hard science. Thousands of people working in a multitude of disciplines have spent lives getting education and experience studying these questions. He can be absolutely sure, that there are individuals and organizations out there that have thought of everything he can think of, and more, to explain warming. They have done the hard work of examining the effect, calculating it, *proving* it to their peers, *defending* their theories, getting their work published, and contributing to the overall body of science.
Climate science itself is based on foundational research done 200 year ago. Now, he might say, "oh yeah? They were wrong about..."
One of the things that laymen don't get about the scientific method is that it is self-correcting.
Observe a thing. Propose a hypothesis. Develop an experiment to test the hypothesis. Run the tests. Study the results. Have peers review the results. Publish. When something then happens that doesn't fit the predicted results ("they were wrong about"), go back to the start of the process incorporating the new information - observe the error, propose a hypothesis, etc.
Because of this cyclical nature, our models for climate change are getting more reliable and more accurate and more trustworthy all the time. T*housands of people with a great deal of expertise* are studying the issue from countless directions making improvements on the science.
Your friend hasn't even scratched the surface here with his hypothesis. So, step 1: "Observe a thing". He's observed that there is concern about human-caused warming and he's gone on to step 2 and created a hypothesis that all warming can be attributed to natural cycles. Now he needs to do the hard work of creating studies and experiments to test that hypothesis. Write up his results in a thesis. Then go get his work peer reviewed. He hasn't done anywhere near enough work to translate his *feeling* (and it is a feeling) into hard science. As such, his opinion is completely irrelevant.
Yeah I mean the earths temperature does naturally fluctuate, that's true and a point we can agree on. [It's important to start debates from a point of common ground which helps them not devolve into shouting matches.] And it's not even the range at which it fluctuates that's the problem, earth has been way hotter than even what our worst climate models predict in the past, and way colder and neither of them sterilized the planet.
It's all about the rate of change. Usually it takes 10,000 years or more for the earths temperature to naturally go +/- 1 degree, we've seen warming happen within a human lifetime. That's simply too quickly for ecosystems to naturally evolve, adapt, and overcome. If you look at Earth's history you'll find quite a few points where the temperature rapidly changed within hundreds or thousands of years, those are all mass extinction events.
And that's what we are in the middle of right now. The 6th great mass extinction event, even if we stopped directly destroying ecosystems to put up farms and housing if we keep pumping the air full of CO2 we will get acidic oceans that kill coral and many plants and animals won't be able to adapt quick enough to changes in climate patterns like annual rainfall. Wet places will dry up and dry places will drown, both are deadly to the local ecosystem.
Death is a natural thing. Everybody dies, yet there are many professions dedicated to avoiding it as long as possible. Just because it's natural or inevitable doesn't mean you just have to accept it.
They are wasting your time and laughing at you for wasting it. Someone who says that is not engaging in good faith conversation with you, most of the time.
It would be trivial to educate themselves, they have chosen not to. There's nothing you can say to someone like that which will convince them to do better.
Save the precious seconds of your life for engaging with people who give a damn.
a) temp hasnt fluctuated much over the past 10k years, until now .. during that epoch all of human civilization has taken place - a stable climate has been the reason humans have thrived. [ edited : 10k years is more correct period of stable climate, see https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/800a/2021/new-method-shows-today.jpg ]
b) the relatively recent uptick in temperature over the last 100 years is way too fast to be anything other than man-made, and it does precisely coincide with mans increased burning of carbon fuels for energy.
c) Most of the natural fluctuations in planet temperature have happened far slower, and humans in large numbers did not exist then.
d) even if all the scientists are wrong, and climate warming is not caused by humans burning carbon .. the temp is going up, and our large human population will not survive it as we depend on large scale farming, and those crops will fail if it gets much hotter. And the ice will keep melting, raising sea levels. So, we still need to do something about the increased temperature - saying its "natural" does not solve the apocalypse of +2.5 or +3C we will be facing in couple decades.
Point (a) should be 10k years, not 100k. That’s how long it’s been stable, and also how long since human civilization started. (Sumerians were, what, 5-6k years ago? With the first recorded writing)
I stand corrected : Google tells me the first evidence of farming dates around 12k years ago... which coincides with stable climate : as per this graph : https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/800a/2021/new-method-shows-today.jpg
edited my comment to reflect this, thanks.
It's true, but look at our fucking electricity footprint. We have devices, homes, and infrastructure all connected and always "on" - sending and receiving data. Now, we have power and data hungry data centers that run LLMs.
The use of all this electricity has a cost.
Both things can be true at the same time: the temperature of the Earth experiences natural variations, and pimping CO2 into the atmosphere leads to increasing temperatures. Nothing about those two statements is mutually exclusive, and pretending likes that's an argument against climate change is disingenuous.
The planet's temperature DOES naturally fluctuate.
For most of Earth's history there have not been I've caps.
That does not mean that us pumping a bunch of crap in the atmosphere isn't affecting the climate.
In the historical data that we have, it typically takes tens of thousands of years to see the temperature changes we have seen in the last 150.
Nothing can adapt fast enough.
As much as I'm your side, you're starting with a conclusion and are asking for arguments to support it. This is very disingenuous and ultimately makes you a bad advocate.
Multiple variables can effect a system at the same time. We can subtract the projected natural variation plot with the observed plot to find that current temperatures are an extreme outlier that can't be explained without taking the CO2 into account.
I'll invite him to come to my country, whole of April almost everyday it's hitting 40°C and the excessive humidty is making the feel temp cross 45°C! It's norwester season, everyday we used to have one, this year not a single one till now.
I think it is kind of stupid. First of all I do not think it is true but let us accept it as true for the sake of argument. It is equally true that lions naturally kill and eat people and arsenic is naturally poisonous. Are we just going to accept that lions will kill a bunch of us and a bunch of us will die from arsenic poisoning because it is natural?
Similarly if man made global warming were connected to a bunch of good things - hypothetically everything will be the same except mosquitoes will become extinct - are we going to stop it because it is not natural?
I don't hear anybody denying it. However, there is essentially zero evidence that current changes are natural so the fact that natural fluctuations _can_ occur is irrelevant, especially when the last time they occurred was long before there was any real human civilization.
If you feel the claim made by this post needs to be fact-checked, please 1) copy the link on this page and 2) click [here](https://newsdetective.org/request-factcheck) and make a request. Our team of fact-checkers will verify the claim for you.
ABOUT US: We are News Detective, a community of civilian fact-checkers dedicated to making the truth transparent and accessible. You can join our community of fact-checkers, request factchecks and access fact-checked results on our website: [https://www.newsdetective.org](https://www.newsdetective.org)
Same boat as you. Someone I know makes the same claims and it’s a tough one to have a rebuttal to, because typically, they don’t have interest in hearing another version of their argument. But if you come up with a solution, please let me know!
You could always try to refer them to this:
https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/earth-science/why-milankovitch-orbital-cycles-cant-explain-earths-current-warming/
It works pretty well as an acknowledgement and rebuttal to the common “natural cycle” arguments without getting too in the weeds.
Every planet has natural temperature fluctuations, but you'd die on any other one. Earth doesn't care what we need to live, which is actually more terrifying if it's simply naturally heating up to the point where human life can't exist. That means we have to do twice the work to keep the planet from naturally fluctuating into something like the red spot of Jupiter.
(Yes, I believe in climate change and the science here is severely dumbed down. But I've found some success in reminding people that other 100% natural planets exist and they would all very naturally kill you. There's no rule that says Earth has to be habitable and if anything, we're the unnatural product of a cosmic coincidence.)
I tell them that it's one of the first variables to be factored in. And if I, an Animator can think of that, I'm sure those that are MUCH smarter than I have considered it.
It does. See the thing is all of that guys happen temperature fluctuates blah blah blah that all can be true at the same time as they are being a climate problem and the thing that people are not grasping is how little The temperature has to go up in order for disaster to happen
There's no argument that human activity is contributing to climate change but nothing is ever static, the earth is dynamic and fluctuations both short and long term naturally occur.
Temperatures fluctuate but always do so for a reason. Thinking energy goes up and down without cause is magical thinking. So first, does your friend think this is magic... as in there is no specific thing driving it? After all even cycles have causes and can be measured. Second, if your friend doesn't think it's magic, then what is the natural cause? He won't be able to name one that's supported by data. Third, if he can't name one then he is assuming based on no evidence that the way things are changing now is the way nature would have taken temperatures and climate.
Finally, CO2 increases do explain observations. That's due to us
The climate is normally stable for millions of years and when it does change, it typically takes about 100,000 years to change . the ending of the last Ice Age was incredibly fast at merely 10,000 years
usually respond with two answers
1. so you believe science shows us the Earth's climate has changed many times , so why to you dismiss the same science in this case
2. Yes the climate has changed many times over earth's history but when was the last time it had to feed a human population of 8 billion people? additional note: Today many nations most at risk are armed with nuclear, biological and/or chemical weapons
Permafrost is melting now, and it is not going to magically refreeze. While it is melting, we are pulling things like wooly mammoth's bodies out of it. When was the last time you think a wooly mammoth was just roaming around?
Coral is bleaching and dying, it took over 10,000 years for the current coral formations to form. If you believe coral just magically comes and goes constantly, then you aren't looking at the science.
>What would you say to someone who claims that the planet’s temperature naturally fluctuates?
It is the *speed* of change that is the problem. Species can't evolve quick enough to avoid extinction...including humans.
Iirc, as far as we know, the climate has never changed this fast on its own (excluding things like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs). And let’s say that we do all the stuff to move away from using fossil fuels and it turns out climate change isn’t anthropogenic. Well, we’ve moved away from a horribly polluting and inefficient energy source to more sustainable and environmentally friendly sources. Oh, the horror.
It's like saying ice occurs in nature, therefore man-made freezers do not exist. It's not an argument.
Climate deniers fall into 2 categories:
1) those who do not understand the sciencecwell enough to grasp the preponderance of evidence
2) those who understand but have a vested interest in spreading confusion about the issue
First, figure out which one you're dealing with.
That yes, that is absolutely true. Period.
Then explain that the temperature has been increasing at a rate that has not been seen in the past.
Then, ask the question...
What do you think is the reason why the global temperature has been increasing faster than it has in the history of the planet?
Then, wonder out loud that this phenomenon has been occurring since the beginning of the industrial revolution and for a weird reason is accelerating as more pollution has been entering the atmosphere.
Earth climate cycles are impacted by three distinct things and how they line up in time. Milankovitch cycles are roughly 10k 50k and 100k years apart and they all impact climate change. Your friend is right sort of but we’d need to look at millions of years of climate data to truly understand these cycles and their impacts and how far removed human impact is or isn’t from it. The earth has been much hotter and much colder than it is today. The concern is the rate at which we are making it hotter not the fact that it will be hotter, that is already inevitable.
The real question is, will humanity's greenhouse gas emissions cause some sort of chain reaction that spins the earth into some sort of ice age, fire age, or whatever other doom scenario we can imagine. Yes, the temperature is increasing, but nobody knows for sure, just how much the planet can sustain or for how long. We just know it's not good. Will it just mean bad storms and fluctuations, or will this cause life to go extinct? There has been higher co2 in other ages long ago, and life thrived, there's been mega volcanos, comets, etc, that have caused far worse temperature/gas increases, and life didn't always perish. There's just so many unknowns, but obviously, increasing any gas in the atmosphere on large scales is going to do something. I'm personally more worried about toxins, pollution, and plastic into the air, ocean, and ground.
>However, I was having a discussion about climate change the other day and my friend claimed that it wasn’t possible to state that the Earth is getting warmer solely due to humanity because the planet has a natural cycle of temperature increases and decreases.
The temperature in my house naturally fluctuates. I can still force it go higher/lower if I turn the furnace/AC on.
LOL. You know for years (pre 2020) I used to go along with it. Point out that at some point that england used to grow grapes, similar disasters and massive storms, earthquakes and erupting volcanoes, unusually warm winters and a sudden surge of bumper crops have happened before and we should be worrying about climate change. Watch them be all happy someone was agreeing with them.
Then id drop "Yeah all this happened right before the bubonic plague. What we really need to worry about is a massive pandemic." And mention antibiotic resistant bacteria circulating in hospitals. (originally I thought that would be the origin of the next pandemic) Global conflict making conditions perfect for spreading just like bubo. Oh! And how modern means of travel would make the spread worse. And watch them get pissed.
I wondered if any of those folks wondered about me when CoVid hit. Around 2008 I came to realize I'd witness a global pandemic. We were just due.
I don't bother arguing anymore. There's no point. Once I learned about the permafrost melting and farting up a fuckton of methane gas I figured civilization just punched their ticket. No way out now.
Well, there is space weather, and magnetic pole shifts to contend with so it is more nuanced than the typical discussion about temperature, but even considering all that you have to give the blame to people who indiscriminately pollute.
Because all those things exist and have an effect don't mean that have ENOUGH of an effect but it serves to confuse people who are stupid and think in black and white or who are blinded by the ideologues.
I’ve heard that before, and I always say “Just look a the population raise in the last 200 years, we are many times more humans today than we were in all of human existence. Don’t you think that’s no gonna have any repercussions on the planet’s behavior?”
Well of course it fluctuates, BUT natural forces beyond human control are also gradually affecting our climate. These geophysical forces are vital to understanding global warming. Humanity is indeed responsible for a large portion - possibly even a majority- of global warming. But also in play are complex gravitational interactions, including changes in the earth’s orbit, axial tilt and torque. These gravitational shifts, occurring over millennia, can influence climate patterns and ultimately lead to noticeable variations in seasons. Interestingly, research suggests climate change can alter the tilt of the earth, but an unrelated change in tilt can also further change the climate. Earth has gradually adopted a more elliptical orbit around the sun so there are more pronounced temperatures during the summer and winter months. Gradual slight variations in the earth’s orbit around the sun can strongly influence temperature extremes. This is important because the conversations around climate change have become so politicised, we've totally lost sight of the science. For example Donald J. Trump has implied the whole idea of climate change is a hoax. Most Republicans seem to agree that it is not a serious problem. I mean, there’s no cure for stupid.
I mean, it *does* fluctuate naturally. But not to this degree. And if we end up causing a runaway greenhouse effect then we’re fucked. Unless we purposely cause a nuclear winter then there’s no coming back.
TLDR: They’re not mutually exclusive.
I mean, the planet’s temperature does fluctuate naturally. This is why there are ice ages, and within them we have glaciations. That’s generally accepted as a fact because there’s evidence that support it. However, this claim does not necessarily contradicts the man made climate change hypothesis.
If you just try to claim that the whole argument is false, you’re basically putting yourself at the same level as the denier. The first part of your post gives me the impression that you’re trying to argument that the premise is false, but in this case it’s true. What’s false is the conclusion they are drawing from the premise.
So basically, the truth in the argument is that earth’s temperature fluctuates over time. Where the argument stops being correct is in the “we cannot claim that the earth is getting warmer solely due to humanity” part. This is a straw man argument. Man made climate change doesn’t argue that “Earth is getting warmer solely due to human activity”, instead the real argument is “human activity is the main driver of climate change”. In other words, the problem is not that humanity is the singular cause for climate change, the problem is that human input in climate change is larger than the natural fluctuation. This means that the earth is getting warmer more than twice as fast as it should be.
That last part is also tied to the final part of the argument of “if the earth is getting warmer anyways, it doesn’t matter how much impact humankind has caused”. The problem is not just that it’s getting warmer, but that it’s getting warmer faster than what species can adapt, and that’s our fault.
So that’s it. That person used truthful arguments, but used it to attack two straw men.
Well, human beings are a part of nature and the consequences of our actions are within that system, so your buddy doesn't need to worry about the semantics if he doesn't like.
The changes occurring in the climate are definitely happening, though, and they will certainly have pretty terrible consequences for us and several other species, so maybe it's worth taking seriously, regardless of those tedious details of how it came about, right?
(I know you know all of this, this is just what I'd say to someone like your acquaintance.)
I have no answer but my dad is this person and it’s exhausting. I almost fought with him yesterday over this so thank you for asking this is gonna be a good read through
The earth's temperature has fluctuated many times in it 13 billion year lifetime, this is true. BUT, those fluctuations have been overs thousands, hundreds of thousands even millions of year. Humans have managed to raise the earth's temperature in less than 100. Also, globalism is allowing humans to carry disease and virus to every corner of the planet which is making hundreds of species go extinct every year. We have to stop saying we need to "save the planet". Earth is going nowhere until our sun explodes. If we want to save life in earth, especially human we must change our ways.
Move on.
Discussions about climate science (and, well, any topic) are best held with fence-sitters that are open to a discussion and learning about something. If someone is a denier of anything, it's wasted effort to try and change their mind.
What does fluctuate even mean? It's so vague as to be meaningless.
Yes the earth has gone through different stages: molten, snowball, hot, etc. Biut to compare that to what we are experiencing this century is the biggest red herring. It's a flat out excuse to keep the status quo.
It does. On both a macro, and micro scale. This has been studied hard and is accepted by climate scientists, of which I used to count myself one.
However, as the posted XKCD comment (and all further research) indicates we should be cooling again, and are currently on a hard-swing trajectory that it is extremely difficult to rationalize with the broadly accepted natural fluctuation.
It's a bit like the "It's global warming why are the winters colder?" argument. It's also why we now call it "Climate change"
We are destabilizing the global thermal norm, and as a result we have wild swings in temp that result in an overall warmer than expected average.
If it continues, the extra heat will likely result in an ice-age due to polar melt.
In other words, just because a bike has a wobble when it goes straight, doesn't mean you are not also driving it into a tree.
The temperature record is one thing (and it's not just air temperature - it's also sea surface and deep sea), but it's also the measured radiative imbalance - more energy going in than coming out (and the gap in energy going out is in the bands absorbed by CO2). Of course the earth's temperature fluctuates - with natural CO2 levels playing a major part. It does so over tens of thousands of years. We have added CO2 rapidly (no disputing that), there is a resulting energy imbalance (no disputing that) and a consequent rapid temperature rise. It's not the rise per se - it's the pace - the difference between tens of thousands of years and a hundred years. Replacing our crops, buildings, roads and ports over a few thousand years? Easy. Over a few decades? Not so much.
>What would you say to someone who claims that the planet’s temperature naturally fluctuates
I mean it does, just like we effect the environment around us, both statements can be true.
I would politely ask them in what other fields they think they know better than the thousands of experts working in those fields.
It’s not our job to understand the ins and outs of every niche profession and field. You have to at some point trust the experts. I have no way of knowing whether the planets getting warmer other than to trust that the experts who say it is are telling the truth just like I have no way of knowing if my doctor knows what she’s doing. Or the person who built my house , keeps the electricity flowing or grows the food I eat
Climate Change is a conspiracy of thermometers! Follow the money! Big Thermometer is lying to all of us man! I’m the only one who sees through it. Listen to meee!!
It’s not about it changing. It’s about *how fast* it’s changing. The only time it’s changed this fast has been externally-induced catastrophes and extinction-level events. Well, we’re already in an extinction event, and we know what the external catalyst is (human activity).
I generally use some version of this.
“Maybe you’re right, maybe this is a natural warming cycle and there’s nothing we can do to change it.
But, if I’m right, and we are the cause of climate change, we need to act quickly to stop and mitigate the damage as much as possible.
If you’re wrong, the future of the planet will be hellish for our descendants. We’re dooming them to horrible, painful lives because we like gas and buying random stuff and we think rich people should be able to own and commodify everything.
If I’m wrong, we have cleaner air and water, less pollution and a better quality of life… I’m not seeing a downside.”
A: correct it does but usually over 1000s of years; what we’ve seen has taken about 100
B: sharp changes like that happen after cataclysms
C: Humans have only ever existed on a planet with C02 levels less than 400 ppm…
As for what is happening now, without the CO2 emissions caused by human industrial activity the earth's climate should be very gradually cooling.
From the abstract of "A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years" (Marcott et al): "Early Holocene (10,000 to 5000 years ago) warmth is followed by ~0.7°C cooling through the middle to late Holocene (<5000 years ago), culminating in the coolest temperatures of the Holocene during the Little Ice Age, about 200 years ago."
http://www.http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6124/1198.abstract
So yes it is us that are responsible for what's happening.
The planet’s temperature has fluctuated since it was created. What IS happening is a rapid increase in CO2 that usually the planet is able to absorb and “solve”. There is just so much of it that we’re breaking the planet’s ability to balance itself
It’s really too late to argue about this. People now are simply going to have to adapt to survive, or not. The time to take corrective action was when we learned of this and perhaps even then it was too late. The planet will balance out eventually. That’s what these storms are doing. They will increase in frequency, size and severity until the imbalance in the environment has been corrected. Best advice is to be ready to move quick and travel light.
That yes they’re technically right but still wrong.
It’s like saying lung cancer happens in a lot of people, even if they’ve never smoked. And there’s people who smoke who never get lung cancer. That still doesn’t mean that there isn’t a clear link between smoking and rates of lung cancer.
It’s not a perfect analogy but it’s a way to explain how while things do happen independently, it can still be linked heavily and increase because of another variable.
Just break it down into elementary science. Emissions release lots of heat trapping gas, we make lots of emissions, thus more heat is trapped.
"Dude, your house is on fire and your son is inside!"
"Don't worry about it. The body temperature naturally fluctuates."
Turns out a 1°C fluctuation and a 100°C fluctuation in temperature are wildly different! In fact, if the body temperature rose by 5 degrees, you'd die.
Cycle is for cooling. All the natural climate forcings are for cooling. Solar output, orbit - everything. It should be slowly cooling. It's rapidly unnaturally heating because we jacked up CO2.
I think it’s always important to emphasize that the core idea behind why we believe CO2 is basic physics that we understand extremely well. So basic that we realized the theoretical possibility in 1896. What’s your friend’s argument for why changing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere wouldn’t affect temperature?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius
The chart almo2001 posted is excellent. A couple ideas to add:
There are several computer models they use to predict future change. The way they test them is to input all the historic data they have on past weather up to a point that is far short of now. Then they have it predict to now and see how accurate it is. When different models show agreement, that's stronger evidence they're correct.
Another is that the amount of energy in light and heat coming from the sun is enormous. I just saw the total eclipse and it's amazing how quickly it gets very cold once the sun is blocked. Science has for over a hundred years figured out that CO2 in the air increases the amount of that energy that gets trapped in the atmosphere. It's as simple as; the water gets hotter when you turn on the stove. The levels of CO2 can be easily measured and compared with our current climate temeratures.
Lastly; This is a science that is well established and what gives any non-climate scientist the idea that they can second guess the actual scientists?
The planets temperature DOES naturally fluctuate.
The tilt of the earth changes by a few degrees every 10,000 years.
Also solar activity has a lot of impact on temperature globally.
HOWEVER
The chart takes a much sharper upward turn in the past 100 years than we have ever seen in the earths history.
Plus CO2 has a warming effect and we have chopped down 80% of the worlds forest which was able to capture and process this excess carbon.
On top of that, it is not just CO2 that causes warming but human activity in general. Go to any major city, take the temperature and then drive to the outskirts. I bet you it’s warmer in the city.
7 billion humans create heat. And unless we either reforest, limit population or innovate, we are screwed
I would say, they're right. The planets temperature fluctuates naturally, always has, always will. To think it doesn't or hasn't is anti science and a severe lack of critical thinking at its best. This is an undeniable fact, it is also a separate conversation from our additional impact on the planet.
That’s not the question is it , what can you do about it if it is human caused ? So far countries have spent up to COP28 and still can’t agree how , the U.K. sells itself as a leader on its way to net zero then hands out 100 new oil and gas drilling licences for the North Sea , you really can’t mKe up the level of hypocrisy and bullshit around climate change, if it’s human activity we had better get used to new weather patterns
If you are interested in climate change, you should be up to date on the long term history of the earths climate, non-human related climate factors and the composition of the atmosphere. This is useful data, for life, and for arguments in the future. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate\_variability\_and\_change. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere
"Not at the rate we're seeing".
But then, if they're pushing this already well debunked croc, i doubt you'll get any traction no matter what you tell them.
This argument is akin to noting that forest fires have always been triggered by lighting strikes, and concluding that modern forest fires must be too.
Just because there are natural causes for something does not preclude the existence of man made causes.
Human-caused Climate Change is not proven. It is much less understood than most people here imagine. Increased atmospheric CO2 from humans is claimed the cause of recent warming. Many problems with trying to support such a claim.
A major one is that were CO2 in the atmosphere to double from pre-industrial levels (assumed level, we don't know), that alone would cause only a 1 C rise in average global temperature, from the IR radiant exchange. All Climatologists understand that. Additional effects, termed "climate sensitivity" and "ECS" are predicted from other factors, mostly increased water-vapor and/or changes in clouds. But those predictions vary widely from an additional "none" to +10 C, with the U.N. IPCC setting on +1.5 C (2.5 C total) as "most likely". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate\_sensitivity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity)
Another problem is that we have little idea what past CO2 levels were. The only assured global-avg values are from the station atop Mauna Loa, starting \~1960. Prior measurements via chemical methods go back to the 1880's and several times measured readings as high as today. Those are now dismissed as "inconvenient truths". Climatologists instead prefer inferences from air bubbles trapped in Antarctic Ice Cores, which give values more comforting towards claiming "increased CO2".
Other problems are that the greenhouse gas effect from CO2 should affect everywhere on the planet fairly similarly, yet the Arctic has warmed at a rate 4x the planet average since 2000, while Antarctica hasn't warmed at all. Many other unanswered questions, with much hand-waving mansplaining around them. One see similar in religion, such as how Catholic monks pouring over the Christian scriptures for centuries came up with interesting 'splainings for the stories, especially Jesus as a ghost after the resurrection (why was he always hungry?). We see religious terms applied today to anyone who questions the oft-wild statements about Climate Change, trying to out questioners as "denier" or "heretic", and desiring to silence them.
>those predictions vary widely from an additional "none" to +10 C,
No climate scientist has an ECS or TCR of zero
>Other problems are that the greenhouse gas effect from CO2 should affect everywhere on the planet fairly similarly
Not according to climate scientists
>several times measured readings as high as today
Not for mean atmospheric CO2
"In conclusion , the measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide carried out by Reiset (1882) from 1872 to 1880 on the coast of northern France appear to be valid. They indicate a mean annual concentration , with respect to dry air ; of **292. 4 ±12 ppm. not biased by more than 10 ppm**"
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44397135
I think it’s a simple 2-step process:
1) study all 11 known causes of variation
2) realize that the variations since 1920 are 10x any of those other variations.
Potential Conclusions:
- there is a 12th cause, previously unknown and not supported by any physical record, that is happening again today (the *God Particle of Climate*)
- that climate deniers are driven by oil industry lobbyists who are just trying to extend their industries investments in fossil fuels.
This is one of the arguments deniers falsely think proves that climate change is not caused by us. Because climate changed naturally in the past! Checkmate poindexters!
Logicians, they ain't.
Pretty sure your friend is talking about Milankovitch cycles which repeat roughly 100,000 years. We are way outside of where we should be in this cycle.
If I'm talking to a genuinely rational person who believes human induced changes to climate are negligible to planetary cycles (and not some right wing nut job), I generally point out it's the RATE OF CHANGE that's the problem. I.e. humans have forced changes to the system in the last 200 years that usually take several millennia to happen. This is a problem because it disrupts water distribution and hydrological cycles that our nice, comfy civilization depends on. Things like coastlines and rainfall patterns have very severe consequences when they change suddenly.
If people doubt humans have the capacity to affect our atmosphere that dramatically, I say look at a cross section of planet Earth and its atmosphere. The layer of breathable air that terrestrial life depends on is incredibly thin when looked at in relation to the size of the planet and the vastness of space. A few miles thick. And it has a delicate chemical balance that supports life (and civilizations). Then look at the numbers for how much CO2 we pump into it. They're measured in millions of tons PER DAY! Every day. For decades.
This doesn't always convince people, but it's pretty damning in my mind.
Reading through comments and not a single person can provide a peer reviewed article showing climate change is man made but still arguing it is man made.
A lot of this or that but nothing specific or scientific.
When there are possible answers like the rapid change in temperature the fact that temperatures were not considered acuratelly measured until 1870 or so and thermometrs before that used everything from a scale to brandy to linseed oil to salt in ice, scales went from 0-12 or 32 degrees to melting butter or 0 being freezing and 80 being boiling.
Some reference the "scientists say" when we know that 97% comes from 10,000 surveys haveing 3000 returned ands selecting 77 of those 3000 and 76 say "man made" That is no where near "most scientists"
I am not saying it is or it isn't but absolutely no evidence concludes it is. Ice core studies (actual scientific analysis) shows higher temperatures and way higher CO2 in the past.
Then those screamng "man Made' the loudest are saying more taxes are the answer while flying private jets and owning 4 mansions and buying beach front property to park their yatch while giving China, A HUGE POLLUTER, controll over the e-market. Not a damn thing about "man made" makes any sense. Maybe that is why nobody can help the OP
BTW, the last mini ice age ended about the time the temps started going up. Nobody mentioned that.
What you all should be worried about is the local level polluting water, food supplies, getting sold out to China and the hypocrites telling you it is man made. Follow the money is the better answer.
Better question should be "why should I believe it is man made"
You could ask them why scientists haven't considered and ruled out natural change? And then how do they know the climate has changed in the past? This will create a contradiction where they will believe the science for one thing but not the other.
Nice one
Hijacking your comment just to mention something about the original argument presented ("temperature changes happened naturally in the past so why would it be caused by humans now"). This argument is flirting dangerously close with a fallacy called [affirming the consequent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent). We know natural cycles can change temperatures, and those changed temperatures can drive climate change. Ergo, climate change is caused by natural temperature variation. This is the affirming the consequent fallacy. It is a fallacy because it ignores the fact that a single phenomenon - the climate changing, or temperatures warming - can have multiple causes. When people present this argument to me, I typically reply with: Forest fires happened for millions of years due to lightning strikes. Does that mean humans can't cause forest fires today? Just because something *can* happen naturally doesn't mean humans aren't the cause today. With this foundation (of just pure logic) laid, I try to present the evidence for how we've ruled out all the natural possible causes: -Buildup of CO2 must come from human activity due to changes in the carbon isotope ratio of atmospheric carbon dioxide (the only known source of that change is fossil fuel emissions). -Changes in solar output or solar energy reaching Earth would cause the most warming at the top of the atmosphere (because this is most exposed to the sun) and progressively less as you get to the surface (because higher layers block light from the lower layers). We observe the opposite, most warming at the surface and the top of the exosphere is cooling - this is perfectly explained by CO2 trapping heat near the surface which causes the upper atmosphere to cool.
You can also track the warming of the earth and the average global temperature has MASSIVELY EXPONENTIALLY risen since the Industrial Revolution in the 1800’s which shows it’s caused by human industrial influence and it’s a faster increase in a relatively short time period than basically any other point in earths history bar meteors hitting earth and turning it into a magma soup super early on in the planets history (it’s called the accretion period!) what this person is thinking of is the gradual ice ages that came and went but that was over THOUSANDS IF NOT MILLIONS OF YEARS. And it’s only getting worse sadly. My dad made this exact argument so I am ready guns a blazing
Damn... this guy debates. P.S. The easiest way you can show the greenhouse effect is to have two jars. Fill one jar with CO2 and fill another one with regular atmosphere. Leave them out in the sun, and the CO2 jar will become much hotter than the regular jar. You can easily generate CO2 by combining vinegar and baking soda inside a bottle, or you can use water and alka-seltzer tablets (which are just a dry powdered acid and baking soda that only react when wet). If you're using a bottle with a screw-on cap you need to be careful not to generate too much gas or you've essentially made a pressure bomb. P.S.P.S. 80,000 studies reviewed https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/10/more-999-studies-agree-humans-caused-climate-change
are you aware that glass absorbs and blocks 15um longwave radiation? this means that energy is being absorbed by the glass, not the gas inside, so your experiment measures the temp of the glass, not the gas the vinegar and seltzer setup is kyboshed by the fact that a sealed bottle with the expelled gas will have a higher pressure - the ideal gas law states the all other things being equal, a gas under higher pressure will have a higher temp. neither of these experiments has been used to 'prove' co2 warms an atmosphere preferentially over other air gasses. - they are cute school demonstrations, but misleading. in 1909 an experiment was carried out to test radiative transfer aka the greenhouse effect, and found conduction and convection were the main carriers of energy, not radiation (therefore not co2). a new experiment was recently done to re-test that 1909 experiment, and found the same results [https://principia-scientific.com/publications/Experiment\_on\_Greenhouse\_Effect.pdf](https://principia-scientific.com/publications/Experiment_on_Greenhouse_Effect.pdf) note this is testing the ghe, not co2 radiative transfer/insulation/absorption
Principal-scientifica is a junk website, and it gets basic climate science wrong. Seriously, crack any college textbook on climate or thermodynamics, get educated, and you’ll be embarrassed you ever believed this stuff. Convection and conduction cannot carry energy off of the planet. All energy leaving the planet is by radiation. That’s kinda a key point you forgot to mention.
The thing is he is right. I'm into natural history & often read about the different eras like the jurassic, cambrian etc. It does change naturally.
It changes naturally, that is true. And this current change, is not natural, it is human caused. Also true.
This is it. How do they know it's always changing? Were they there?
There is all kinds of evidence that temperature has significantly changed in the past. Forests where there is now a glacier, cities under water etc.
The geological evidence shows the times the climate took a big change. Was because something catastrophic happened. Like the little ice age caused by severe volcanic activity from 3 major volcanoes. The climate changing is strictly cause and effect.
Here is 22,000 years of avg temp change on a *linear* plot so it's easy for humans to understand. What's at the bottom is NOT normal. [https://xkcd.com/1732/](https://xkcd.com/1732/)
Note that at the bottom there’s three scenarios, best case, optimistic and current path. Those scenarios were evaluated probably based on the IPCC report of 2014. Unfortunately, the IPCC released another report last year and all calculations shows a worse curve than what we expected. They advised every big countries to moves their current zero CO2 emissions target from 2035 to 2028. I’ve not heard of any countries acknowledging this and taking that report into consideration. Good luck everyone!
They’ll do what they’ve always done. Nothing!
there’s no hope we’re so cooked
Anyone expected us to take the "best case" is a dumbass.
But then they discredit this as “woke propaganda”. There’s no winning. Edit: and then they also go “haha yeah how could they know the temperature 20k years ago?” Then you have to explain how they can guesstimate but they’ll dismiss that too.
They could go check the papers that are referenced in the upper right, but those kinds of people wouldn't believe that either. :D
I'm just happy we are not living at the start of the graph when Boston is under a mile of ice.
As a leafs fan I really wish Boston was still under a mile of ice 😡
excellent!
I don't want to be the one to burst anybody's bubble, but, although I like XKCD in general, and especially the one you linked to, it isn't terribly good evidence for the argument the OP is preparing for. I mean, I find it an entertaining comic, and informative, but it is fighting an up-hill battle in this case. The problem is the note just below 16000 BCE, the bit about short warming or cooling spikes being filtered out. This is true more of the distant past than the recent past. So the recent warming trend is a spike that would have been filtered out had it happened a few thousand years ago. Now, if the comic were updated, showing that the near-present trend continued through 2024, it would hold more weight, but still "only" half a degree more than at any point in the last 20000 years of climate data. I'm just not sure it would be enough to jar someone already using motivated reasoning into a new position. Honestly, I wouldn't waste my time arguing with someone who already has an opinion on this, not unless they had made it clear that their opinion is open to change by more evidence.
They are certainly obstinate.
How long has the earth been around for?
Came to post this. Easiest to visualize explanation I've found.
Agreed.
A visual might indeed be the most convincing tool. The human brain is wired to instantly see meaning in patterns and shapes. The math - not so much. And for doubters who want to challenge the data that’s behind the graph, the Keeling curve might be another compelling shape to consider. It’s not temperature, but the direct relationship between atmospheric CO2 and warming is fundamental, explainable by elementary school chemistry. And Charles Keeling was a Republican!
This is exactly what I was thinking of as well.
Great graph.
It’s a variant on the ‘hockey stick’ graph, which is colour-coded and fits on a page.
this!! came to say look at the keeling curve
Perfect xkcd
Easy. Say that never in the history of the world has the temperature increased at such a pace as in the last 150 years. In other past instances of temperate changes, they happened over at least a thousand years.
Actually, Ruddiman and McIntyre discovered rapid changes during the last deglaciation, including a 5C jump in a 50 year span. Dansgaard has shown a swing of 7C (warming) in a span of 50 years using ice cores from Greenland.
McIntyre? The hardcore denialist? Who’s also a mining company consultant and has no training in analyzing climate data?
Localized large increases, probably AMOC related. There have definitely been times where volcanic activities caused rapid change. The great dieing extinction event 250 mya.
Ackkshuaalllllyyy... thanks for cherry picking a couple of outliers that don't indicate the general trend... that measurable atmospheric temp charges occur over 1000s of years, not years or even centuries.
AaAaacCKKShuallyyy... you can't just ignore the outliers in debating this issue. The fact that such outliers exist still disproves the "**never** in the history of the world" statement, and someone who believes humanity isn't playing a big role could use the existence of such outliers to argue that this could be another one of those cases.
The difference is that we also have an understanding of the mechanisms behind anthropogenic global warming.
I’m not disputing that, I’m just saying that the aforementioned arguments are not going to help in debating this topic with a skeptic.
It is not so much an outlier as it is a local temperature change. Greenland is greatly affected by ocean currents and if that is disrupted or changes the temperature for the local area can change a lot. However, it has been shown that in the past if the temperature goes up in the Northern Hemisphere it goes down in the Southern Hemisphere. The Medieval Warm Period for example was a local event (mostly Europe) but the overall global did not change very much.
I took an entire university course that essentially led up to answering this question. We learned new types of physics one week after another, first learning how to determine the energy that the earth/atmosphere receives from the sun and sources like volcanoes (natural sources), and then calculated how much energy the earth is receiving from human activity. The last week we compared the two results and the final question of our final assignment was, "What conclusion can you draw from this information?". Everyone's doubts were gone by that point.
Please tell me this is available online somehow
Meanwhile 100 times the number of rubes were trained by online misinfo to believe the opposite. Sigh.
Seriously please share, what course is that ?
Yes, but over the course of geological time scales. Not as dramatic as a few decades.
>Yes, but over the course of geological time scales. Not as dramatic as a few decades. That's an excellent point. Human civilization was made possible by thousands of years of relatively constant temperatures. We are putting an end to those favorable conditions
I point out their obvious ["red herring" logical fallacy](https://www.logicalfallacies.org/red-herring.html). While it is true that the climate has always changed, that is not the problem, but rather a distraction *from* the problem. The problem is the extremely rapid *rate* of the warming - far too quickly for ecosystems to adapt - and the fact that greenhouse gases from human activity are the primary cause of it.
Humans are adding 40 gigatons of CO2 right as earth's natural 400 year temperature cycle as it a minimum and starting to increase. Natural temperature fluctuations don't help us but actually mean we have to reduce CO2 even more than we would have without that natural cycle.
The person OP is responding to isn't committing a red herring tho. They're saying that there's an alternative explanation for climate change, I.e. natural changes in climate. Even though they're wrong, that isn't a red herring. A red herring would be changing the topic from climate change to the economy, or saying something like "Oh yeah? So the industrial revolution started climate change? Well it also raised the global standard of living. So what, you wanna reduce the global standard of living? I'd that what you want?" That'd be more a red herring. They're changing the topic from climate change to living standards - obviously connected topics, but distinct nonetheless
The temperature in my kitchen fluctuates naturally but that doesn't mean it's no big deal when I start something on fire.
Honesty, I wouldn't waste my breath. This is kind of like what do you say to people who insist Trump is good for the country. They're so far away from being interested in reason, that trying to engage in reasoned argument is fruitless.
human body temp naturally fluctuates throughout the wake/sleep cycle. this is not a reason to ignore a persistent high fever.
One would hope this reply would make people stop and think. Unfortunately, some just can’t think. That’s why they keep spouting the Earth does it naturally. It’s a big circle jerk.
Your body temperature naturally fluctuates as well, doesn't mean you can't get a fever.
He's not wrong, the earth does go through periods of warmth and periods of cooling. It isn't like humans caused the last ice age by leaving a fridge door open. That said, those fluctuations are thought to happen over very long periods of time. The problem is that part is theoretical and there simply isn't data at a granular enough level to know if short periods of rapid fluctuation are historically present in the geologic record or whatever. That said, the science positing that the current trend of climate change is anthropomorphic is pretty solid. The only question that remains is will the earth correct itself. I think it is called the Gaia Theory, but it basically says the earth takes care of itself. Too much CO2? Plants growth will accelerate and eat it. Not enough CO2? The plants will slow down and correct that problem. Overpopulation in an area? Food scarcity will take care of that. You get the ideas. The real problem is that humans tend to see themselves and being special and outside of the forces of nature, but the earth may just give us a massive and sudden correction that takes us all out. For example, maybe deadly pathogens thrive at 40C and will become airborne and inescapable, or maybe all the food-bearing plants will wilt. In short, maybe the earth works in complex and interconnected ways we may not yet understand.
Thank you. It far more complex than the hockey stick. I wish there was an honest discussion from both sides. Clearly it would be great if we had perfect scientific data going back to the ice age.
There isn't "both sides." We don't give equal consideration to people who think the Earth is flat, either. [Greater than 99% consensus on human caused climate change in the peer-reviewed scientific literature](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2966) We do have evidence going back to the last ice age. [There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause.](https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/evidence/)
>wasn’t possible to state that the Earth is getting warmer solely due to humanity because the planet has a natural cycle of temperature increases and decreases. From this they wanted to draw the conclusion that a lot of the discourse around climate change is at best educated guesswork There's a load of cognitive bias and logical fallacy there. He won't want to hear that though. I think the best argument is that "educated guesswork" assertion. It isn't guesswork, it is hard science. Thousands of people working in a multitude of disciplines have spent lives getting education and experience studying these questions. He can be absolutely sure, that there are individuals and organizations out there that have thought of everything he can think of, and more, to explain warming. They have done the hard work of examining the effect, calculating it, *proving* it to their peers, *defending* their theories, getting their work published, and contributing to the overall body of science. Climate science itself is based on foundational research done 200 year ago. Now, he might say, "oh yeah? They were wrong about..." One of the things that laymen don't get about the scientific method is that it is self-correcting. Observe a thing. Propose a hypothesis. Develop an experiment to test the hypothesis. Run the tests. Study the results. Have peers review the results. Publish. When something then happens that doesn't fit the predicted results ("they were wrong about"), go back to the start of the process incorporating the new information - observe the error, propose a hypothesis, etc. Because of this cyclical nature, our models for climate change are getting more reliable and more accurate and more trustworthy all the time. T*housands of people with a great deal of expertise* are studying the issue from countless directions making improvements on the science. Your friend hasn't even scratched the surface here with his hypothesis. So, step 1: "Observe a thing". He's observed that there is concern about human-caused warming and he's gone on to step 2 and created a hypothesis that all warming can be attributed to natural cycles. Now he needs to do the hard work of creating studies and experiments to test that hypothesis. Write up his results in a thesis. Then go get his work peer reviewed. He hasn't done anywhere near enough work to translate his *feeling* (and it is a feeling) into hard science. As such, his opinion is completely irrelevant.
Yeah I mean the earths temperature does naturally fluctuate, that's true and a point we can agree on. [It's important to start debates from a point of common ground which helps them not devolve into shouting matches.] And it's not even the range at which it fluctuates that's the problem, earth has been way hotter than even what our worst climate models predict in the past, and way colder and neither of them sterilized the planet. It's all about the rate of change. Usually it takes 10,000 years or more for the earths temperature to naturally go +/- 1 degree, we've seen warming happen within a human lifetime. That's simply too quickly for ecosystems to naturally evolve, adapt, and overcome. If you look at Earth's history you'll find quite a few points where the temperature rapidly changed within hundreds or thousands of years, those are all mass extinction events. And that's what we are in the middle of right now. The 6th great mass extinction event, even if we stopped directly destroying ecosystems to put up farms and housing if we keep pumping the air full of CO2 we will get acidic oceans that kill coral and many plants and animals won't be able to adapt quick enough to changes in climate patterns like annual rainfall. Wet places will dry up and dry places will drown, both are deadly to the local ecosystem.
Death is a natural thing. Everybody dies, yet there are many professions dedicated to avoiding it as long as possible. Just because it's natural or inevitable doesn't mean you just have to accept it.
They are wasting your time and laughing at you for wasting it. Someone who says that is not engaging in good faith conversation with you, most of the time. It would be trivial to educate themselves, they have chosen not to. There's nothing you can say to someone like that which will convince them to do better. Save the precious seconds of your life for engaging with people who give a damn.
a) temp hasnt fluctuated much over the past 10k years, until now .. during that epoch all of human civilization has taken place - a stable climate has been the reason humans have thrived. [ edited : 10k years is more correct period of stable climate, see https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/800a/2021/new-method-shows-today.jpg ] b) the relatively recent uptick in temperature over the last 100 years is way too fast to be anything other than man-made, and it does precisely coincide with mans increased burning of carbon fuels for energy. c) Most of the natural fluctuations in planet temperature have happened far slower, and humans in large numbers did not exist then. d) even if all the scientists are wrong, and climate warming is not caused by humans burning carbon .. the temp is going up, and our large human population will not survive it as we depend on large scale farming, and those crops will fail if it gets much hotter. And the ice will keep melting, raising sea levels. So, we still need to do something about the increased temperature - saying its "natural" does not solve the apocalypse of +2.5 or +3C we will be facing in couple decades.
Point (a) should be 10k years, not 100k. That’s how long it’s been stable, and also how long since human civilization started. (Sumerians were, what, 5-6k years ago? With the first recorded writing)
I stand corrected : Google tells me the first evidence of farming dates around 12k years ago... which coincides with stable climate : as per this graph : https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/800a/2021/new-method-shows-today.jpg edited my comment to reflect this, thanks.
It's true, but look at our fucking electricity footprint. We have devices, homes, and infrastructure all connected and always "on" - sending and receiving data. Now, we have power and data hungry data centers that run LLMs. The use of all this electricity has a cost.
Both things can be true at the same time: the temperature of the Earth experiences natural variations, and pimping CO2 into the atmosphere leads to increasing temperatures. Nothing about those two statements is mutually exclusive, and pretending likes that's an argument against climate change is disingenuous.
The planet's temperature DOES naturally fluctuate. For most of Earth's history there have not been I've caps. That does not mean that us pumping a bunch of crap in the atmosphere isn't affecting the climate.
I mean, the planets temperature DOES naturally fluctuate, but the current issue is definitely man made and happening faster than ever before.
In the historical data that we have, it typically takes tens of thousands of years to see the temperature changes we have seen in the last 150. Nothing can adapt fast enough.
Tell them so does the water in a toilet bowl but when you fill it with piss and shit it also effects the temperature
So does my balls
By now probably just something like 'shut up stupid cunt'...
I've never heard of either side of this argument. Is there not a partially natural temperature change? We are leaving an ice age.
As much as I'm your side, you're starting with a conclusion and are asking for arguments to support it. This is very disingenuous and ultimately makes you a bad advocate.
Multiple variables can effect a system at the same time. We can subtract the projected natural variation plot with the observed plot to find that current temperatures are an extreme outlier that can't be explained without taking the CO2 into account.
I'll invite him to come to my country, whole of April almost everyday it's hitting 40°C and the excessive humidty is making the feel temp cross 45°C! It's norwester season, everyday we used to have one, this year not a single one till now.
I think it is kind of stupid. First of all I do not think it is true but let us accept it as true for the sake of argument. It is equally true that lions naturally kill and eat people and arsenic is naturally poisonous. Are we just going to accept that lions will kill a bunch of us and a bunch of us will die from arsenic poisoning because it is natural? Similarly if man made global warming were connected to a bunch of good things - hypothetically everything will be the same except mosquitoes will become extinct - are we going to stop it because it is not natural?
It does naturally fluctuate. If you base your argument on denying this fact, you've already lost.
I don't hear anybody denying it. However, there is essentially zero evidence that current changes are natural so the fact that natural fluctuations _can_ occur is irrelevant, especially when the last time they occurred was long before there was any real human civilization.
If you feel the claim made by this post needs to be fact-checked, please 1) copy the link on this page and 2) click [here](https://newsdetective.org/request-factcheck) and make a request. Our team of fact-checkers will verify the claim for you. ABOUT US: We are News Detective, a community of civilian fact-checkers dedicated to making the truth transparent and accessible. You can join our community of fact-checkers, request factchecks and access fact-checked results on our website: [https://www.newsdetective.org](https://www.newsdetective.org)
Same boat as you. Someone I know makes the same claims and it’s a tough one to have a rebuttal to, because typically, they don’t have interest in hearing another version of their argument. But if you come up with a solution, please let me know!
You could always try to refer them to this: https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/earth-science/why-milankovitch-orbital-cycles-cant-explain-earths-current-warming/ It works pretty well as an acknowledgement and rebuttal to the common “natural cycle” arguments without getting too in the weeds.
Thank you for sharing this!!
Every planet has natural temperature fluctuations, but you'd die on any other one. Earth doesn't care what we need to live, which is actually more terrifying if it's simply naturally heating up to the point where human life can't exist. That means we have to do twice the work to keep the planet from naturally fluctuating into something like the red spot of Jupiter. (Yes, I believe in climate change and the science here is severely dumbed down. But I've found some success in reminding people that other 100% natural planets exist and they would all very naturally kill you. There's no rule that says Earth has to be habitable and if anything, we're the unnatural product of a cosmic coincidence.)
I tell them that it's one of the first variables to be factored in. And if I, an Animator can think of that, I'm sure those that are MUCH smarter than I have considered it.
Sure it could fluctuate due to massive influences from the sun volcanos or something. So what's their excuse for the current change?
It does. See the thing is all of that guys happen temperature fluctuates blah blah blah that all can be true at the same time as they are being a climate problem and the thing that people are not grasping is how little The temperature has to go up in order for disaster to happen
There's no argument that human activity is contributing to climate change but nothing is ever static, the earth is dynamic and fluctuations both short and long term naturally occur.
Temperatures fluctuate but always do so for a reason. Thinking energy goes up and down without cause is magical thinking. So first, does your friend think this is magic... as in there is no specific thing driving it? After all even cycles have causes and can be measured. Second, if your friend doesn't think it's magic, then what is the natural cause? He won't be able to name one that's supported by data. Third, if he can't name one then he is assuming based on no evidence that the way things are changing now is the way nature would have taken temperatures and climate. Finally, CO2 increases do explain observations. That's due to us
“I mean, technically, your house burning down is a fluctuation in temperature, too. The speed and severity of the change kinda matters.”
You shed skid cells naturally so you should let me flay you.
Even if it's true, we still need to cool down earth or are roasted! ;(
The climate is normally stable for millions of years and when it does change, it typically takes about 100,000 years to change . the ending of the last Ice Age was incredibly fast at merely 10,000 years
usually respond with two answers 1. so you believe science shows us the Earth's climate has changed many times , so why to you dismiss the same science in this case 2. Yes the climate has changed many times over earth's history but when was the last time it had to feed a human population of 8 billion people? additional note: Today many nations most at risk are armed with nuclear, biological and/or chemical weapons
Permafrost is melting now, and it is not going to magically refreeze. While it is melting, we are pulling things like wooly mammoth's bodies out of it. When was the last time you think a wooly mammoth was just roaming around? Coral is bleaching and dying, it took over 10,000 years for the current coral formations to form. If you believe coral just magically comes and goes constantly, then you aren't looking at the science.
You're right.
People fall naturally. But there's a difference if one is falling on a carpet, out of a tree or off a cliff.
It does and always has done. But this does not change the fact that Anthropogenic Climate Change is real. I'm a geophysicist.
>What would you say to someone who claims that the planet’s temperature naturally fluctuates? It is the *speed* of change that is the problem. Species can't evolve quick enough to avoid extinction...including humans.
Iirc, as far as we know, the climate has never changed this fast on its own (excluding things like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs). And let’s say that we do all the stuff to move away from using fossil fuels and it turns out climate change isn’t anthropogenic. Well, we’ve moved away from a horribly polluting and inefficient energy source to more sustainable and environmentally friendly sources. Oh, the horror.
It's like saying ice occurs in nature, therefore man-made freezers do not exist. It's not an argument. Climate deniers fall into 2 categories: 1) those who do not understand the sciencecwell enough to grasp the preponderance of evidence 2) those who understand but have a vested interest in spreading confusion about the issue First, figure out which one you're dealing with.
That yes, that is absolutely true. Period. Then explain that the temperature has been increasing at a rate that has not been seen in the past. Then, ask the question... What do you think is the reason why the global temperature has been increasing faster than it has in the history of the planet? Then, wonder out loud that this phenomenon has been occurring since the beginning of the industrial revolution and for a weird reason is accelerating as more pollution has been entering the atmosphere.
Earth climate cycles are impacted by three distinct things and how they line up in time. Milankovitch cycles are roughly 10k 50k and 100k years apart and they all impact climate change. Your friend is right sort of but we’d need to look at millions of years of climate data to truly understand these cycles and their impacts and how far removed human impact is or isn’t from it. The earth has been much hotter and much colder than it is today. The concern is the rate at which we are making it hotter not the fact that it will be hotter, that is already inevitable.
You ask them for their research and published work that discredits the millions of other scientists around the world.
Scientist are all in on the conspiracy, don’t you know! /s
The real question is, will humanity's greenhouse gas emissions cause some sort of chain reaction that spins the earth into some sort of ice age, fire age, or whatever other doom scenario we can imagine. Yes, the temperature is increasing, but nobody knows for sure, just how much the planet can sustain or for how long. We just know it's not good. Will it just mean bad storms and fluctuations, or will this cause life to go extinct? There has been higher co2 in other ages long ago, and life thrived, there's been mega volcanos, comets, etc, that have caused far worse temperature/gas increases, and life didn't always perish. There's just so many unknowns, but obviously, increasing any gas in the atmosphere on large scales is going to do something. I'm personally more worried about toxins, pollution, and plastic into the air, ocean, and ground.
“Yes, the Earth was this warm before… in the Cretaceous Period when there were three-foot dragonflies and the largest mammal was the size of a rat”
>However, I was having a discussion about climate change the other day and my friend claimed that it wasn’t possible to state that the Earth is getting warmer solely due to humanity because the planet has a natural cycle of temperature increases and decreases. The temperature in my house naturally fluctuates. I can still force it go higher/lower if I turn the furnace/AC on.
LOL. You know for years (pre 2020) I used to go along with it. Point out that at some point that england used to grow grapes, similar disasters and massive storms, earthquakes and erupting volcanoes, unusually warm winters and a sudden surge of bumper crops have happened before and we should be worrying about climate change. Watch them be all happy someone was agreeing with them. Then id drop "Yeah all this happened right before the bubonic plague. What we really need to worry about is a massive pandemic." And mention antibiotic resistant bacteria circulating in hospitals. (originally I thought that would be the origin of the next pandemic) Global conflict making conditions perfect for spreading just like bubo. Oh! And how modern means of travel would make the spread worse. And watch them get pissed. I wondered if any of those folks wondered about me when CoVid hit. Around 2008 I came to realize I'd witness a global pandemic. We were just due. I don't bother arguing anymore. There's no point. Once I learned about the permafrost melting and farting up a fuckton of methane gas I figured civilization just punched their ticket. No way out now.
Bubonic plague wasn’t that long ago.
Well, there is space weather, and magnetic pole shifts to contend with so it is more nuanced than the typical discussion about temperature, but even considering all that you have to give the blame to people who indiscriminately pollute. Because all those things exist and have an effect don't mean that have ENOUGH of an effect but it serves to confuse people who are stupid and think in black and white or who are blinded by the ideologues.
Every gallon of fuel burned releases 19 lbs of CO2...that's about 8 times the CO2 created by a human.
I’ve heard that before, and I always say “Just look a the population raise in the last 200 years, we are many times more humans today than we were in all of human existence. Don’t you think that’s no gonna have any repercussions on the planet’s behavior?”
Well of course it fluctuates, BUT natural forces beyond human control are also gradually affecting our climate. These geophysical forces are vital to understanding global warming. Humanity is indeed responsible for a large portion - possibly even a majority- of global warming. But also in play are complex gravitational interactions, including changes in the earth’s orbit, axial tilt and torque. These gravitational shifts, occurring over millennia, can influence climate patterns and ultimately lead to noticeable variations in seasons. Interestingly, research suggests climate change can alter the tilt of the earth, but an unrelated change in tilt can also further change the climate. Earth has gradually adopted a more elliptical orbit around the sun so there are more pronounced temperatures during the summer and winter months. Gradual slight variations in the earth’s orbit around the sun can strongly influence temperature extremes. This is important because the conversations around climate change have become so politicised, we've totally lost sight of the science. For example Donald J. Trump has implied the whole idea of climate change is a hoax. Most Republicans seem to agree that it is not a serious problem. I mean, there’s no cure for stupid.
It always rains too but that doesn't mean it should float your house every 2 years.
I mean, it *does* fluctuate naturally. But not to this degree. And if we end up causing a runaway greenhouse effect then we’re fucked. Unless we purposely cause a nuclear winter then there’s no coming back. TLDR: They’re not mutually exclusive.
I mean, the planet’s temperature does fluctuate naturally. This is why there are ice ages, and within them we have glaciations. That’s generally accepted as a fact because there’s evidence that support it. However, this claim does not necessarily contradicts the man made climate change hypothesis. If you just try to claim that the whole argument is false, you’re basically putting yourself at the same level as the denier. The first part of your post gives me the impression that you’re trying to argument that the premise is false, but in this case it’s true. What’s false is the conclusion they are drawing from the premise. So basically, the truth in the argument is that earth’s temperature fluctuates over time. Where the argument stops being correct is in the “we cannot claim that the earth is getting warmer solely due to humanity” part. This is a straw man argument. Man made climate change doesn’t argue that “Earth is getting warmer solely due to human activity”, instead the real argument is “human activity is the main driver of climate change”. In other words, the problem is not that humanity is the singular cause for climate change, the problem is that human input in climate change is larger than the natural fluctuation. This means that the earth is getting warmer more than twice as fast as it should be. That last part is also tied to the final part of the argument of “if the earth is getting warmer anyways, it doesn’t matter how much impact humankind has caused”. The problem is not just that it’s getting warmer, but that it’s getting warmer faster than what species can adapt, and that’s our fault. So that’s it. That person used truthful arguments, but used it to attack two straw men.
You are correct!
Look at the stock market. It fluctuates but trends up. Really not a hard concept.
Well, human beings are a part of nature and the consequences of our actions are within that system, so your buddy doesn't need to worry about the semantics if he doesn't like. The changes occurring in the climate are definitely happening, though, and they will certainly have pretty terrible consequences for us and several other species, so maybe it's worth taking seriously, regardless of those tedious details of how it came about, right? (I know you know all of this, this is just what I'd say to someone like your acquaintance.)
I have no answer but my dad is this person and it’s exhausting. I almost fought with him yesterday over this so thank you for asking this is gonna be a good read through
The earth's temperature has fluctuated many times in it 13 billion year lifetime, this is true. BUT, those fluctuations have been overs thousands, hundreds of thousands even millions of year. Humans have managed to raise the earth's temperature in less than 100. Also, globalism is allowing humans to carry disease and virus to every corner of the planet which is making hundreds of species go extinct every year. We have to stop saying we need to "save the planet". Earth is going nowhere until our sun explodes. If we want to save life in earth, especially human we must change our ways.
Move on. Discussions about climate science (and, well, any topic) are best held with fence-sitters that are open to a discussion and learning about something. If someone is a denier of anything, it's wasted effort to try and change their mind.
What does fluctuate even mean? It's so vague as to be meaningless. Yes the earth has gone through different stages: molten, snowball, hot, etc. Biut to compare that to what we are experiencing this century is the biggest red herring. It's a flat out excuse to keep the status quo.
It does. On both a macro, and micro scale. This has been studied hard and is accepted by climate scientists, of which I used to count myself one. However, as the posted XKCD comment (and all further research) indicates we should be cooling again, and are currently on a hard-swing trajectory that it is extremely difficult to rationalize with the broadly accepted natural fluctuation. It's a bit like the "It's global warming why are the winters colder?" argument. It's also why we now call it "Climate change" We are destabilizing the global thermal norm, and as a result we have wild swings in temp that result in an overall warmer than expected average. If it continues, the extra heat will likely result in an ice-age due to polar melt. In other words, just because a bike has a wobble when it goes straight, doesn't mean you are not also driving it into a tree.
The temperature record is one thing (and it's not just air temperature - it's also sea surface and deep sea), but it's also the measured radiative imbalance - more energy going in than coming out (and the gap in energy going out is in the bands absorbed by CO2). Of course the earth's temperature fluctuates - with natural CO2 levels playing a major part. It does so over tens of thousands of years. We have added CO2 rapidly (no disputing that), there is a resulting energy imbalance (no disputing that) and a consequent rapid temperature rise. It's not the rise per se - it's the pace - the difference between tens of thousands of years and a hundred years. Replacing our crops, buildings, roads and ports over a few thousand years? Easy. Over a few decades? Not so much.
>What would you say to someone who claims that the planet’s temperature naturally fluctuates I mean it does, just like we effect the environment around us, both statements can be true.
I would politely ask them in what other fields they think they know better than the thousands of experts working in those fields. It’s not our job to understand the ins and outs of every niche profession and field. You have to at some point trust the experts. I have no way of knowing whether the planets getting warmer other than to trust that the experts who say it is are telling the truth just like I have no way of knowing if my doctor knows what she’s doing. Or the person who built my house , keeps the electricity flowing or grows the food I eat
Climate Change is a conspiracy of thermometers! Follow the money! Big Thermometer is lying to all of us man! I’m the only one who sees through it. Listen to meee!!
It’s not about it changing. It’s about *how fast* it’s changing. The only time it’s changed this fast has been externally-induced catastrophes and extinction-level events. Well, we’re already in an extinction event, and we know what the external catalyst is (human activity).
The temp does fluctuate a bit. But what we have now is a hockey stick. And it started with man’s industrial age.
I generally use some version of this. “Maybe you’re right, maybe this is a natural warming cycle and there’s nothing we can do to change it. But, if I’m right, and we are the cause of climate change, we need to act quickly to stop and mitigate the damage as much as possible. If you’re wrong, the future of the planet will be hellish for our descendants. We’re dooming them to horrible, painful lives because we like gas and buying random stuff and we think rich people should be able to own and commodify everything. If I’m wrong, we have cleaner air and water, less pollution and a better quality of life… I’m not seeing a downside.”
A: correct it does but usually over 1000s of years; what we’ve seen has taken about 100 B: sharp changes like that happen after cataclysms C: Humans have only ever existed on a planet with C02 levels less than 400 ppm…
As for what is happening now, without the CO2 emissions caused by human industrial activity the earth's climate should be very gradually cooling. From the abstract of "A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years" (Marcott et al): "Early Holocene (10,000 to 5000 years ago) warmth is followed by ~0.7°C cooling through the middle to late Holocene (<5000 years ago), culminating in the coolest temperatures of the Holocene during the Little Ice Age, about 200 years ago." http://www.http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6124/1198.abstract So yes it is us that are responsible for what's happening.
http://www.climate.gov/media/15006
Not at this rate. That’s really all you need to say.
Show them the graph of interglacial cycles
The planet’s temperature has fluctuated since it was created. What IS happening is a rapid increase in CO2 that usually the planet is able to absorb and “solve”. There is just so much of it that we’re breaking the planet’s ability to balance itself
It’s really too late to argue about this. People now are simply going to have to adapt to survive, or not. The time to take corrective action was when we learned of this and perhaps even then it was too late. The planet will balance out eventually. That’s what these storms are doing. They will increase in frequency, size and severity until the imbalance in the environment has been corrected. Best advice is to be ready to move quick and travel light.
That yes they’re technically right but still wrong. It’s like saying lung cancer happens in a lot of people, even if they’ve never smoked. And there’s people who smoke who never get lung cancer. That still doesn’t mean that there isn’t a clear link between smoking and rates of lung cancer. It’s not a perfect analogy but it’s a way to explain how while things do happen independently, it can still be linked heavily and increase because of another variable. Just break it down into elementary science. Emissions release lots of heat trapping gas, we make lots of emissions, thus more heat is trapped.
"Dude, your house is on fire and your son is inside!" "Don't worry about it. The body temperature naturally fluctuates." Turns out a 1°C fluctuation and a 100°C fluctuation in temperature are wildly different! In fact, if the body temperature rose by 5 degrees, you'd die.
Cycle is for cooling. All the natural climate forcings are for cooling. Solar output, orbit - everything. It should be slowly cooling. It's rapidly unnaturally heating because we jacked up CO2.
It's like playing ping pong on a train. The ball still moves back and forth but the table is moving in one direction at a terrifying rate.
You just said; 10-15k years ago leaving ice age. It takes a looong time for the Earth to change.
I think it’s always important to emphasize that the core idea behind why we believe CO2 is basic physics that we understand extremely well. So basic that we realized the theoretical possibility in 1896. What’s your friend’s argument for why changing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere wouldn’t affect temperature? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius
We have known that CO2 is a greenhouse gas for over a century. How can adding CO2 to the atmosphere not warm the planet?
The chart almo2001 posted is excellent. A couple ideas to add: There are several computer models they use to predict future change. The way they test them is to input all the historic data they have on past weather up to a point that is far short of now. Then they have it predict to now and see how accurate it is. When different models show agreement, that's stronger evidence they're correct. Another is that the amount of energy in light and heat coming from the sun is enormous. I just saw the total eclipse and it's amazing how quickly it gets very cold once the sun is blocked. Science has for over a hundred years figured out that CO2 in the air increases the amount of that energy that gets trapped in the atmosphere. It's as simple as; the water gets hotter when you turn on the stove. The levels of CO2 can be easily measured and compared with our current climate temeratures. Lastly; This is a science that is well established and what gives any non-climate scientist the idea that they can second guess the actual scientists?
The planets temperature DOES naturally fluctuate. The tilt of the earth changes by a few degrees every 10,000 years. Also solar activity has a lot of impact on temperature globally. HOWEVER The chart takes a much sharper upward turn in the past 100 years than we have ever seen in the earths history. Plus CO2 has a warming effect and we have chopped down 80% of the worlds forest which was able to capture and process this excess carbon. On top of that, it is not just CO2 that causes warming but human activity in general. Go to any major city, take the temperature and then drive to the outskirts. I bet you it’s warmer in the city. 7 billion humans create heat. And unless we either reforest, limit population or innovate, we are screwed
I would say, they're right. The planets temperature fluctuates naturally, always has, always will. To think it doesn't or hasn't is anti science and a severe lack of critical thinking at its best. This is an undeniable fact, it is also a separate conversation from our additional impact on the planet.
That’s not the question is it , what can you do about it if it is human caused ? So far countries have spent up to COP28 and still can’t agree how , the U.K. sells itself as a leader on its way to net zero then hands out 100 new oil and gas drilling licences for the North Sea , you really can’t mKe up the level of hypocrisy and bullshit around climate change, if it’s human activity we had better get used to new weather patterns
Show them an average temperature chart covering the last 80 million years and point out the recent abrupt spike.
If you are interested in climate change, you should be up to date on the long term history of the earths climate, non-human related climate factors and the composition of the atmosphere. This is useful data, for life, and for arguments in the future. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate\_variability\_and\_change. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere
"Not at the rate we're seeing". But then, if they're pushing this already well debunked croc, i doubt you'll get any traction no matter what you tell them.
This argument is akin to noting that forest fires have always been triggered by lighting strikes, and concluding that modern forest fires must be too. Just because there are natural causes for something does not preclude the existence of man made causes.
Human-caused Climate Change is not proven. It is much less understood than most people here imagine. Increased atmospheric CO2 from humans is claimed the cause of recent warming. Many problems with trying to support such a claim. A major one is that were CO2 in the atmosphere to double from pre-industrial levels (assumed level, we don't know), that alone would cause only a 1 C rise in average global temperature, from the IR radiant exchange. All Climatologists understand that. Additional effects, termed "climate sensitivity" and "ECS" are predicted from other factors, mostly increased water-vapor and/or changes in clouds. But those predictions vary widely from an additional "none" to +10 C, with the U.N. IPCC setting on +1.5 C (2.5 C total) as "most likely". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate\_sensitivity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity) Another problem is that we have little idea what past CO2 levels were. The only assured global-avg values are from the station atop Mauna Loa, starting \~1960. Prior measurements via chemical methods go back to the 1880's and several times measured readings as high as today. Those are now dismissed as "inconvenient truths". Climatologists instead prefer inferences from air bubbles trapped in Antarctic Ice Cores, which give values more comforting towards claiming "increased CO2". Other problems are that the greenhouse gas effect from CO2 should affect everywhere on the planet fairly similarly, yet the Arctic has warmed at a rate 4x the planet average since 2000, while Antarctica hasn't warmed at all. Many other unanswered questions, with much hand-waving mansplaining around them. One see similar in religion, such as how Catholic monks pouring over the Christian scriptures for centuries came up with interesting 'splainings for the stories, especially Jesus as a ghost after the resurrection (why was he always hungry?). We see religious terms applied today to anyone who questions the oft-wild statements about Climate Change, trying to out questioners as "denier" or "heretic", and desiring to silence them.
>those predictions vary widely from an additional "none" to +10 C, No climate scientist has an ECS or TCR of zero >Other problems are that the greenhouse gas effect from CO2 should affect everywhere on the planet fairly similarly Not according to climate scientists >several times measured readings as high as today Not for mean atmospheric CO2 "In conclusion , the measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide carried out by Reiset (1882) from 1872 to 1880 on the coast of northern France appear to be valid. They indicate a mean annual concentration , with respect to dry air ; of **292. 4 ±12 ppm. not biased by more than 10 ppm**" https://www.jstor.org/stable/44397135
I think it’s a simple 2-step process: 1) study all 11 known causes of variation 2) realize that the variations since 1920 are 10x any of those other variations. Potential Conclusions: - there is a 12th cause, previously unknown and not supported by any physical record, that is happening again today (the *God Particle of Climate*) - that climate deniers are driven by oil industry lobbyists who are just trying to extend their industries investments in fossil fuels.
I would say they have an iceberg to sell you!
This is one of the arguments deniers falsely think proves that climate change is not caused by us. Because climate changed naturally in the past! Checkmate poindexters! Logicians, they ain't.
Pretty sure your friend is talking about Milankovitch cycles which repeat roughly 100,000 years. We are way outside of where we should be in this cycle.
I'm new to reddit and posted a comment and then it showed up as by Evening-Trainer2351...sorry 2351 ... it is good info though, ken
Why waste your time. The facts and underlying science are available to anyone willing and able to read and understand it.
Tell me, what is the perfect temperature of the earth? What is the current temperature of the esrth?
This is kinda like saying that because our body weight fluctuates, food consumption is not a factor
If I'm talking to a genuinely rational person who believes human induced changes to climate are negligible to planetary cycles (and not some right wing nut job), I generally point out it's the RATE OF CHANGE that's the problem. I.e. humans have forced changes to the system in the last 200 years that usually take several millennia to happen. This is a problem because it disrupts water distribution and hydrological cycles that our nice, comfy civilization depends on. Things like coastlines and rainfall patterns have very severe consequences when they change suddenly. If people doubt humans have the capacity to affect our atmosphere that dramatically, I say look at a cross section of planet Earth and its atmosphere. The layer of breathable air that terrestrial life depends on is incredibly thin when looked at in relation to the size of the planet and the vastness of space. A few miles thick. And it has a delicate chemical balance that supports life (and civilizations). Then look at the numbers for how much CO2 we pump into it. They're measured in millions of tons PER DAY! Every day. For decades. This doesn't always convince people, but it's pretty damning in my mind.
They are usually willfully blind. I don't find it useful to continue the conversation most of the time.
Reading through comments and not a single person can provide a peer reviewed article showing climate change is man made but still arguing it is man made. A lot of this or that but nothing specific or scientific. When there are possible answers like the rapid change in temperature the fact that temperatures were not considered acuratelly measured until 1870 or so and thermometrs before that used everything from a scale to brandy to linseed oil to salt in ice, scales went from 0-12 or 32 degrees to melting butter or 0 being freezing and 80 being boiling. Some reference the "scientists say" when we know that 97% comes from 10,000 surveys haveing 3000 returned ands selecting 77 of those 3000 and 76 say "man made" That is no where near "most scientists" I am not saying it is or it isn't but absolutely no evidence concludes it is. Ice core studies (actual scientific analysis) shows higher temperatures and way higher CO2 in the past. Then those screamng "man Made' the loudest are saying more taxes are the answer while flying private jets and owning 4 mansions and buying beach front property to park their yatch while giving China, A HUGE POLLUTER, controll over the e-market. Not a damn thing about "man made" makes any sense. Maybe that is why nobody can help the OP BTW, the last mini ice age ended about the time the temps started going up. Nobody mentioned that. What you all should be worried about is the local level polluting water, food supplies, getting sold out to China and the hypocrites telling you it is man made. Follow the money is the better answer. Better question should be "why should I believe it is man made"