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Comment by gitaarik | Hacker News Reader

Ok, what do you mean exactly?

* Records of fossil fuel extraction volumes and knowledge of by products.

Yes, ok, humans have been extracting resources, but how are we sure this is driving climate change?

* Atmospheric "libraries" that have documented the increase in greenhouse gases, coupled with proxy trapped atmospheric samples.

Yeah, the climate is changing, but how are we sure this is driven by humans?

I guess you think that if they happen at the same time, one must be the cause for the other, which is a logical way of thinking, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. Just like there are many variables that drive the weather, there are many variables that drive climate change. And we just don't really have good data to know if the human variable is significantly high that we can easily influence it.

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> but how are we sure this is driving climate change

Because we have released enough to substantially alter an approx 200K year gas balance.

Our current yearly release of of carbon dioxide is ~35 billion tonnes. The mean annual release from (say) volcanos is 180 - 440 million tonnes per year.

The human release is additional over and above the standard land|air carbon cycle that's been globally stable for millenia.

This is substantial additional insulation which traps more heat energy.

We have released as much GHG in a century as was released in the Siberian Traps.

* https://skepticalscience.com/climate-change-little-ice-age-m...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Traps

* https://eos.org/articles/how-modern-emissions-compare-to-anc...

* https://www.csiro.au/en/news/all/articles/2016/november/cape...

> Yeah, the climate is changing, but are we sure this is driven by humans?

Yes. Absolutely.

> I guess you think that if they happen at the same time, one must be the cause for the other

You guess wrong. I look for a mechanism that connects events, a lever if you will. In this case the laws of thermodynamics, heat equations, and the balance between incoming solar energy and radiated outwards heat energy.

This has been covered extensively in geophysical literature.

> And we just don't really have good data to know ..

We have excellent data. More than sufficient.

Seriously, exert some effort, learn something of the sunject domain before spouting all this unfounded nonsense.

Maybe read the IPCC report in full or even just start with something basic like Syukuro Manabe's 1967 Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Given Distribution of Relative Humidity

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/

https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/24/3/1520-04...

It's a good paper, I read it back in 1980 when I was first interested in geophysical exploration and modelling, which I did for two decades for oil, gas, and mineral exploration.

Well yeah there seems to be a corrolation to CO2 and temperature in many studies, and I do certainly believe it is related in some way. But at the same time there are many conflicting study results and I don't think the science on this is set at all.

I do think a lot of measurements (as in "actions") being taken are very positive, I just think it's for the wrong reasons. The thing about CO2 is that you can easily measure it and tax it. But I think the real issue is our use of exhaustible and polluting resources. We should move to renewable and inexhaustible resources for the reason that we don't pollute our environment any further so we can keep living. If taxing CO2 does the trick that's fine with me, but to be honest I think there's a lot of weird political games going on. I also think there have been many scientific discoveries that have been held back by the ones who are profiting from the current setup, and don't want new innovations to revolutionize our industry. But I also believe that with the global interconnected world it won't be possible to hold these things back and we will soon get new revelations about energy solutions.

Let's say we'll see what happens. Thanks for willing to discuss these issues with me :)

> and I don't think the science on this is set at all.

It absolutely is.

There are also a number of denialist blogs funded by Heritage Foundation et al that spend a great deal of effort confusing people and putting out the false message that the science isn't set.

I spent two decades in exploration geophysics mapping global mineral and energy resources for major resource companies. I also spent some time on a global scale volumetric "spreadsheet" application (ERMapper) for stitching raw data, mosaicing sat imagery, performing earth scale magnetic, gravitational, radiometric, et al computations.

What is your background in earth sciences?

> to be honest I think there's a lot of weird political games going on.

More driven by corporate lobbyists than political positions.

Those onside with large corporate entities want to either ignore climate action or to support ineffective policy (of which there are many shades) - CO2 credits are ripe for abuse, companies can continue emmitting in exchange for kicking small sums towards ineffective programs (planting trees cut down last year, sequesting a tiny amount of carbon down boreholes that are extracting vast amounts, etc).

There are also many people that feel overwhelmed and will back bad policy because they want to do something, anything, and either don't recognise bad policy for what it is or feel that any action is better than no action.

Relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41962750

Also relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41964639

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