since 2007
I was a climate change skeptic until sometime in 2007. Back then I said things like, "The climate has always been changing, we just didn't have the instrumentation to measure climate change until now. So calm down."
Which, yeah, the climate has always been changing ... but then I would also say I was skeptical that humans were changing the climate when the climate was always changing anyway.
Then I started to study the problem, and I changed my mind, there is ample evidence that humans are changing the climate faster than most natural causes do, and we're doing it in ways that will take thousands of years to recover from. Whereas an asteroid strike or a supervolcano can change the climate (by cooling it abruptly) for about 10 years or so from all the dust/ash thrown into the atmosphere, the amount of CO2 we're emitting is going to hang around for much longer than that. We're pumping out excess CO2 about 1,000 times faster than any natural process has ever done, and this excess CO2 will take thousands of years to remove completely.
But I do remain skeptical that humans will do anything about our greenhouse gas emissions. So far we keep emitting more and more each year, so I have zero faith in any scenario that involves humans limiting or reducing our emissions. As I've said before, scientists shouldn't invest much energy in creating climate models that presume humans will do what they've never done before, which is reduce our collective emissions.
I've made personal decisions on a 30-year timetable for reducing my own annual emissions to a negligible amount, and I fund carbon offsets that more than make up for my own total lifetime emissions. But I have zero faith that enough other people will follow my example, or that we'll ever have binding global limits on emissions. I think the most likely scenario is that we'll burn it all.
But I changed my mind in 2007, maybe I'll change my mind again in 2024 and start believing in humanity LOL. If we stopped all emissions now, we've already baked in 75 feet of sea level rise and an additional temperature rise of 2-3 more degrees Celsius. But we aren't stopping now, so, what's the point of even modeling such a thing.
I've also written before that I think the only practical way to stop global warming is to simulate asteroid strikes and supervolcanic eruptions by spewing artificial silicon dioxide dust into the upper atmosphere. But so far nobody is doing this either.
Well ... time to get off my butt, finish chores, run errands, and hop in the hot tub.
Which, yeah, the climate has always been changing ... but then I would also say I was skeptical that humans were changing the climate when the climate was always changing anyway.
Then I started to study the problem, and I changed my mind, there is ample evidence that humans are changing the climate faster than most natural causes do, and we're doing it in ways that will take thousands of years to recover from. Whereas an asteroid strike or a supervolcano can change the climate (by cooling it abruptly) for about 10 years or so from all the dust/ash thrown into the atmosphere, the amount of CO2 we're emitting is going to hang around for much longer than that. We're pumping out excess CO2 about 1,000 times faster than any natural process has ever done, and this excess CO2 will take thousands of years to remove completely.
But I do remain skeptical that humans will do anything about our greenhouse gas emissions. So far we keep emitting more and more each year, so I have zero faith in any scenario that involves humans limiting or reducing our emissions. As I've said before, scientists shouldn't invest much energy in creating climate models that presume humans will do what they've never done before, which is reduce our collective emissions.
I've made personal decisions on a 30-year timetable for reducing my own annual emissions to a negligible amount, and I fund carbon offsets that more than make up for my own total lifetime emissions. But I have zero faith that enough other people will follow my example, or that we'll ever have binding global limits on emissions. I think the most likely scenario is that we'll burn it all.
But I changed my mind in 2007, maybe I'll change my mind again in 2024 and start believing in humanity LOL. If we stopped all emissions now, we've already baked in 75 feet of sea level rise and an additional temperature rise of 2-3 more degrees Celsius. But we aren't stopping now, so, what's the point of even modeling such a thing.
I've also written before that I think the only practical way to stop global warming is to simulate asteroid strikes and supervolcanic eruptions by spewing artificial silicon dioxide dust into the upper atmosphere. But so far nobody is doing this either.
Well ... time to get off my butt, finish chores, run errands, and hop in the hot tub.