Engineering360: "Counterpoint: The data is clear - climate change is real and happening"

Any of these claims can be refuted with logic...While it is clear there is a gradual warming trend since the last ice age, it is not anywhere near the claims being made today....It is still not clear what the future holds that could be deemed reliable information...The Earth may still balance out the effects of increasing co2, we are a lot closer to the minimum level that keeps plants growing at around 180 ppm than we are to any known maximum level....Only a few years ago scientists were predicting an ice age, then they were saying NY city would be under water by 2000...yet nothing has changed...I live at the edge of the ocean and I see no sea rise in the last 65 years...If the sea were rising don't you think beachside properties would be plunging in value? If you ask me this hoopla, like hoopla of the past, will be forgotten and a new threat will be in the news....because there's always some threat being touted...If you ask me the biggest threat is scientists predicting doom....now that's something you can always count on ...

Although I agree with the basic assertion that humans are causing undesirable deviations in the earth's climate, I wish to point out an unsupported statement at the beginning of this paper: "Figure 1 illustrates strong correlation between the burning of fossil fuels and carbon dioxide levels in the environment." The figure and the underlying paper linked to it give the quantity of CO₂ released by fossil fuel burning but do not give the easily-made correlation of this with actual CO₂ levels in the atmosphere (the Mauna Loa data). Shame on you for this elementary error that a qualified scientist would have avoided. Put up a graph showing these two data curves together!

--JMM

Concerning droughts and history, The Chinese famine in 1907 lost 25 million people, the Northwest Chinese famine (1928-1930) lost 3-10 million, The Russian famine in 1921 lost 5 million, the Indian famine/drought (1896-1897) lost 1 million, the Northern Chinese drought/famine (1876-1879) lost 9-13 million, etc.

Concerning sea level rise - it should be taken in perspective. According to Wikipedia, "Over geologic time sea level has fluctuated by more than 300 metres, possibly more than 400 metres... The current sea level is about 130 metres higher than the historical minimum."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level

This says we are on the low end of a naturally occurring cycle. Instead of trying to stop it, we should be trying to adapt to it. Adaptation has been the key to survival for millions of years.

I can remember as a youth, riding and later driving the coast highway in California and seeing the very clear evidence of much higher sea levels. Now how much of that was due to earthquake movement and how much to sea level changes I don't know.

--JMM