Climate Change, Natural and Un

Climate change is natural and constantly occurring.

That statement, or something like it, is frequently heard from the mouths of various proponents of the drill-baby-drill school. It has the merit of being at least partially true. It may also create the illusion that climate change, being natural, is relatively harmless.

Humans first occupied the land that is now England at least 800,000 years ago. More than once since then, climate change has completely scoured that country of humans. Such catastrophes were common and widespread during the Pleistocene. The last 12,000 years or so, the Holocene, has been much more beneficent, with a great moderation of the rapid and drastic changes that dominated the early days of our species.

It's quite plausible that it was this moderation which permitted the development of agriculture and civilization. The Holocene, until recently, has been characterized by relative stability in the second most important regulator (after insolation) of climate, the CO2 content of the atmosphere. At the end of the Pleistocene, the atmospheric CO2 rose from about 200 ppm to 280 ppm and stayed close to that until the industrial revolution and widespread fossil fuel burning started increasing it. That increase was slow at first, reaching 300 ppm about 80 years ago, but has accelerated, and now has breached the 400 ppm level.

Current CO2 levels have not been seen in several million years - a time when the climate was much different than today - and, at present rates, seem likely to have doubled the Holocene levels by mid-century.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec...
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st...
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more