Quote:
Originally Posted by OLD BOY
You just suck it all up, don't you, Mr K?
We have already established that both carbon and temperatures have been higher than they are now in the past. So how come it was not irreversible then and yet it is irreversible now?
Don't just repeat what the climate extremists are saying - think before you make your pronouncements.
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Climate change occurs naturally in geological time, OB - fundamental changes occur over millions of years, oscillations within an overall climate pattern may occur on a scale of 10-100,000 years (recent ice ages are oscillations within an overall climate pattern, not wholesale climate change in themselves). The reason the scientific consensus is that the climate change we are now seeing is anthropogenic is that it is happening so fast.
It will naturally ebb and flow in geological time as it always has, but we know of no mechanism by which the human race could reverse in the next 100 years what it has done over the last 100. That's what K means by irreversible. *we* can't reverse it. The best we could hope for would be another ice age to occur naturally and take the edge off (before CAGW became a thing, a new ice age was the nightmare scenario climate scientists worried about, until they realised everything was getting warmer, not cooler).
A re-advance of the ice could conceivably begin within my lifetime but it is more likely not to occur for tens of thousands of years. I don't know about you, but I don't expect to be around by then. As far as everyone alive today is concerned, and all their descendants for thousands of generations, what we do, or fail to do, over the next 25 years, may cause climate change that is irreversible.