So I’m not a climate denier I’m just wondering if the world warming was inevitable. I thought I remembered from school that “winter” is left over from the last ice age. If true wouldn’t the world be warming anyway? With or without human interference? Or is it just we are helping it along at a much quicker rate?
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Earths temperature is in a constant state of flux and is never consistent. With Climate Change its a problem because the amount of Carbon that is being released into the environment is way more than what is considered natural. I forget the whole chemistry behind it but the largest green house gas is CO2 (78%). Green house gasses trap the UV rays and prevent them from escaping back into the space.
It can get pretty difficult to explain because there are paleontologists as well as geochemists who study this in detail and have ways of analyzing and obtaining data about temperature that I am unaware of. One of the oldest ways we can get solid data on carbon emissions are ice cores, I think the oldest one is something like 2 million years ago but we can get temperature readings from models before then. Another common data point that is referenced is called the Keeling Curve which started recording atmospheric CO2 since 1960. There is a strong correlation with CO2 and temperature rising.
There was a mass extinction event called the Permian Mass Extinction and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) which happened millions of years ago. The situation is different from today but parallels can be drawn. The PTEM was when there was the formation of geothermal vents in the ocean (think of places like Iceland and the Ring of Fire in the pacific). These vents spewed out massive amounts of a Green house gas (this was methane, not CO2) and this had a dramatic effect on the temperature where it rose steadily and it stayed at max temperature for 100,000 years (It takes time for Green house gasses to diffuse out). Methane was able to have such a strong effect because more methane was being released than it could be re-absorbed
In todays world we are seeing something similar although its not as rapid, with the global release of carbon emissions. Essentially we are warming the temperature faster than normal because the carbon that is being released isn’t being re-absorbed. Carbon sinks are a natural process in which carbon gas is removed from the atmosphere and stored. Plants are big on this (think photosynthesis, CO2 in its gas state is converted into solid matter). The ocean is the biggest carbon sink, and this is where most of the carbon goes. Most of the photosynthesis happens here too. The problem is that when there’s too much carbon it decreases photosynthesis because of things like ocean acidification. It doesn’t help that forests are being destroyed so land plants are going away too. Alot of carbon sinks are being destroyed on top of more carbon being released, this leads to more carbon staying in the atmosphere. There are other factors such as ice coverage. Ice and glaciers reflect the UV rays back into space, with less ice those UV rays don’t get reflected back and stay inside, now couple that with more green house gasses, that extra heat gets trapped (this is called a positive feedback loop). It is a compounding issue.
I am a marine biologist, and studied climate change and how it related to the ocean so I don’t know the full details of everything as it is a complex subject. Some people think we should completely reduce CO2, but I believe that we need to increase our sustainability by protecting our oceans and not destroying our carbon sinks, but this can get very political quickly. In theory if we increased the production of Carbon sinks the temperature wouldn’t rise so quickly but that would require the world to work together.
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