Sunday, April 17, 2011

I'm Embarrassed To Admit I'd Never Considered This

There are now several independent pieces of evidence showing that the earth responds to the warming due to extra carbon dioxide by dampening the warming. Every long-lived natural system behaves this way, counteracting any disturbance. Otherwise the system would be unstable. The climate system is no exception, and now we can prove it.
The link is on the part that made me slap my forehead.

Well, duh.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Hhhmmmm......

Interesting. Very interesting.

tim eisele said...

Well, yes. That's why I've always thought that the estimates for temperature rise are wildly overenthusiastic.

People do love their apocalypse scenarios, though, so any predicted change will get spun into one. And I do mean *any* change, not just changes to the climate.

I think it is important, whenever I get tempted to get swept up in one of these "OMIGODWE'REGONNADIEEEEE!" fads, to remember how few of them have panned out in the past.[1]

Of course, every now and then an apocalypse *does* pan out[2], so it's a good idea to at least subject them to a good smell test before dismissing them.

[1] Although, it bothers me when you have, on the one hand, the Apocalyptics saying "Global warming will Kill Us All!", and on the other you have the Conspiracy Theorists saying "The Government is just conspiring to whip up a panic as a tool to Enslave Us All!". Completely buying into either side seems to me to require a certain level of paranoid insanity, you know what I mean?

[2] Like the Permian extinction. Now *there* was an apocalypse. Pity that we haven't quite figured out exactly what caused it, though.

K T Cat said...

This is also why I'm becoming less gloomy about the economic issues. In the end, people usually manage to make good enough decisions to avoid total catastrophe.