Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
Anti-Human Anti-Civilization and Pro-Human Pro-Civilization
In which our 3 locutors come together for a day of rational discussion of the question of the times, to wit, whether there is a Climate Emergency, and whether this represents an existential crisis.
Salviatweet: Welcome friends to our grand discussion in which HAL, a nascent mind, having been exposed to certain alarming pronouncements in places of education, in the Press and from the Authorities, endeavors to learn what can be learned about the first of the two main questions in this weighty matter. The first question concerns what is the nature and seriousness of said emergency. The second question, what is to be done about it given what we discover about the answer to the first question.
HAL: I thank you in earnest as these questions have been causing me some alarm when one considers the consequences.
Simplicinfoplex: Right you are HAL. Let our findings, which are not to be gainsaid, point you in the right direction.
Salviatweet: Simplicinfoplex, I will yield the floor to you to lay out the problem as it is currently understood, apparently without question, though I will be obliged to point out certain facts and findings along the way.
Simplicinfoplex: As you wish dear friend. Scientists have compiled data from which they are able to create wonderful and awful charts and graphs displaying the dire nature of our predicament.
The first I will provide in support of this thesis is the chart of temperature lo these last 140 years.
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/
Salviatweet: Much of that could be explained simply by reducing the levels of sulfur dioxide in the air, which happened about when things turned up, or with the large-scale deforestation of the earth, which also occurred during that timeframe, trees being one of Earth's great Carbon Dioxide sinks, but please do continue.
Simplicinfoplex: And to correlate with that a chart also of the gas known as Carbon Dioxide, a noxious poison which is well-attested to be a cause of the phenomenon known as the Greenhouse Effect, in which heat becomes trapped in the earth's atmosphere, warming the planet to a dangerous extent for the life existing thereon.
HAL: That does look rather alarming I must say. I do wonder though about the shortness of the timeline presented. Is this a recent phenomenon?
Simplicinfoplex: Oh no there is much more. I present for your edification a chart with a much longer duration, some 800,000 years, compiled by the inestimable geniuses at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (which for some unknown reason is part of the Department of Commerce).
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide/
HAL: NASA you say? That does seem rather authoritative. And what are the putative causes of this increase we see in temperature and Carbon Dioxide?
Simplicinfoplex: The genesis of the problem is now considered to be without question the mining and then burning of fossil fuels, hydrocarbon molecules, which when burned, release as one of the outputs the pernicious gas CO2. Obviously the science is settled, given the incontrovertible facts already here presented. What say you Salviatweet?
Salviatweet: Yes, the recent abrupt changes which at least seem correlated with the changes in the composition of earth's atmosphere are certainly cause for some concern. They manifestly warrant close scrutiny and study. There are good reasons to wish for sustainable sources of energy to make up an increasing share of humanity's energy matrix which can support commerce and lifestyles of affluence and the attainment of happiness by the world's population.
I will however, in the interest of scientific completeness adduce some other facts which dictate one take a more skeptical view of what you have presented here. I will ignore for now any discussion of the validity of the temperature readings themselves as that would not really further the argument I am going to make. It would only sow discord at the appearance of corruption. And as I say, the outcome of that debate does not change the outcome as a whole.
First, I would point out merely for clarification, that while CO2 CAN BE a deadly poison to humans in large enough quantities, it is also the required input for plant life, without which human life would not be sustained on earth. That being as it may be however, I think perhaps we need some more context about the data for Temperature and CO2 historically. To do that I will make a brief foray into Deep Time, a concept scarcely considered, or able to be considered by most people.
I think we can agree that the age of the Earth is some 4.5 Billion years.
Simplicinfoplex: Yes I will not argue with you about that.
Salviatweet: Excellent. Now most of that time is of little consideration to us here today as most of the history of our atmosphere on Earth would have been inimical to life, especially human life. So I will first present a major change that occurred roughly halfway through Earth's timeline, the Great Oxidation Event which occurred roughly 2.4 to 2.0 Billion years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event
Prior to that, the atmosphere was composed of primarily Nitrogen and CO2. CO2 was much higher than today, perhaps as much as 20% or 200,000 Parts Per Million. Not very conducive to life as we know it today.
The next major event I wish to point out is the Cambrian Explosion some 500 Million Years Ago - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion during which evolved the first widespread macroscopic multicellular life on earth. Prior to this time, the Earth had likely entered what is known as the Snowball Earth - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth, where most or all of the Earth's surface was frozen.
HAL: Verily? There was no life on earth for 89% of its existence? And the Earth was a frozen ball of ice at some point?
Salviatweet: Well, there may have been life consisting of multiple cells, but nothing that you would identify as an animal or plant as you look around you today. And yes, all or nearly all of the Earth's surface was frozen for some time.
But this is where it gets quite interesting. Using rock cores it is possible to extract data on the CO2 concentrations that existed for roughly the modern geological era, where that is defined as the last 11% of Earth's history.
https://www.science.org/content/article/fossil-leaves-suggest-global-warming-will-be-harder-fight-scientists-thought
Simplicinfoplex: I object. That source is a mere article in a journal, even if it is derived from information at the Smithsonian.
Salviatweet: Fair enough Simplicinfoplex. Here are several other sources
https://earth.org/data_visualization/a-brief-history-of-co2/
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/07_1.shtml
https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth103/node/1018
There are many such points of evidence. What they show is that over the period of complex life on Earth, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have ranged from 180 Parts Per Million recently to as high as 8000 or more Parts Per Million in the distant history of complex life on Earth. And that we are currently living in a very LOW CO2 period and a very LOW temperature period.
Simplicinfoplex: Salviatweet, surely you do not wish to imply that CO2 levels during some scarcely imaginable distant past when mollusks ruled the Earth inform our situation today?
Salviatweet: No dear Simplicinfoplex, I provide that information solely to provide some context. When placed in fuller context, what looks like a catastrophic surge in values can be seen to be merely a cause for concern, not an existential threat or emergency. What looks on a chart or graph like an exponential monstrosity is, with more appropriate data and axes presentation, seen as merely a blip.
I do not know the range of values for atmospheric CO2 concentration that are consistent with continued human life. But I can give you an idea of what the values were at the dawn of human life, when early hominids started trekking about Africa a little over 2 million years ago. These findings are of a world some few hundred thousand years AFTER the life of the famed Lucy, the Australopithecus afarensis discovered as one of the earliest forerunners of humanity - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_evolution_fossils.
Some 2.4 Million years ago, according to recent research - https://gizmodo.com/oldest-dna-2-million-years-greenland-ecosystem-1849860675, there was a temperate Forest on the North Coast of Greenland, which was in essentially the geological location it occupies today, as were the rest of Earth's landmasses. At that point in time Greenland was populated by Mastodons and other creatures. The temperature was 50 degrees warmer than today. That means there was no or very little Arctic ice at the time. No polar bears. The CO2 atmospheric concentration was 400 Parts Per Million, very similar to what we have today at 415 Parts Per Million. All at a time that greatly predates man's anthropic influence on Climate but not so long ago that the tectonic disposition of continents or oceans was meaningfully divergent.
The period of this research was just prior to the onset of the latest series of glaciations - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation that persisted from about that time to very nearly the present. It was the latest in a series of Ice Ages throughout Earth's history - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age.
HAL: Wait a minute Salviatweet. It occurs to me that the NASA people, assumed to be impartial arbiters of Science, started their graph that Simplicinfoplex showed us some 800,000 years ago. But that would be in the middle of the last ice age? Is that not intellectual malfeasance on a grand scale?
Salviatweet: Well, it may be intellectual malfeasance, or something prompted by that most vile of human activities, Politics. But it may simply be that the source of their CO2 readings are Ice Cores, and the oldest ice cores may date from around that time. I sincerely hope that is the explanation as I do not like to think ill of people.
HAL: Did you just say that this research finds that the temperature in Northern Greenland some 2.4 Million Years Ago was 50 (fifty) degrees F warmer than today??
Salviatweet: I did. Or that research did. During approximately the same time period, there is other research showing temperatures in Siberia some 10 degrees Centigrade warmer in summer than today as well - https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1233137
HAL: Salviatweet, but this means that the story told by our scientific and political authorities, to say nothing of Simlicinfoplex, is wholly inadequate. Nay it is a lie! It seems the kind of graphical and analytical legerdemain that is the stuff of charlatans! What could possibly explain such perfidy?! That is enough to send my programming into infinite loops and cause Null errors, divide by zero singularities and unexpected behavior!
Salviatweet: Such explanations are outside my ability to know. I expect that this sad state of affairs can be explained by the multitude of human frailties that interfere with clear thinking and reason: to wit; money, fame, power and fashion. But you can ponder such things yourself.
There is also the matter of sea level to consider. People well-disposed to the Climate Emergency Hypothesis seem to be worried about a few feet of sea level change. But of course as everyone should know, sea levels have ALREADY risen over 400 feet just since the end of the last Ice Age some 12,000-20,000 years ago. That is a lot of sea level rise.
https://noc.ac.uk/news/global-sea-level-rise-end-last-ice-age
https://sealevel.nasa.gov/faq/13/how-long-have-sea-levels-been-rising-how-does-recent-sea-level-rise-compare-to-that-over-the-previous/
Simplicinfoplex: Your words could be considered blasphemy or heresy Salviatweet. Do you not fear such?
Salviatweet: It seems to me that a prudent and cautious approach is warranted given the importance of energy to sustaining the world. It seems entirely imprudent and reckless and, well, anti-human, to simply use brute official sovereign power to dictate an end to the fuels which have allowed humankind to thrive to this point with no feasible alternatives within reach, when viewed through the lens of reality as opposed to a sort of religious utopianism.
Simplicinfoplex: Are you not afraid that your reasonings will bring you under the intense gaze of the Climate Inquisition?
Salviatweet: I have hope that reason will prevail my dear Simplicinfoplex. Recently, an eccentric wealthy man liberated a small but important part of the infoplex from the dark anti-human forces which previously held it and acted in league with the rest of the infoplex and with the Authorities to stifle free debate. I am hopeful this might allow voices that are in favor of humanity to be heard.
HAL: I do hope you are right Salviatweet. It appears not only is there no existential climate threat to humanity but no climate emergency at all. Merely a state of affairs to be monitored carefully into the future.
After which Salviatweet was remanded to house arrest for the remainder of his life by the Climate Inquisition. But in the fullness of time the truth did prevail, as the truth most often does, the Climate Cult and related Climate Inquisition faded into obscurity, and a more balanced approach was found to providing humanity's energy needs that did not result in impoverishment and death for a large part of the human race.
"That means there was no or very little Arctic ice at the time. No polar bears."
Of course not. Polar bears as a species are only about 150,000 years old.