Quote:
Originally Posted by stickyfingerz
That chart looks pretty bad till you see its less than 1 degree for the whole chart. Then you take into account the accuracy and frequency of record keeping prior to the 50s and 60's. Then you take into account that urban sprawl and massive amounts of concrete might just tend to increase slightly the average median temperature.
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Well... most of the action on the chart is after the 1960's, if you'll take note of that, too.
We're also talking about ecological time here... epochs take a long time. The spaces between epochs can last millions of years... the idea is that we might be speeding that up by a half million per cent via our interaction with our environment.
As far as the anomaly variance, again - it only takes a degree or two to dramatically affect certain species - like the coral that are dying after remaining bleached for a week due to warming temperature variance of less than a degree in their local ecosystem.
I think it stands to reason that continuing down this road would possible cause such effects to march right up the evolutionary chain.
Don't get me wrong, I'm of the belief that life will persist no matter what... and us humans have a pretty solid chance no matter what goes down due to our ability to reason, use symbolic logic, and shape our environment... and ya, I believe that warming and cooling periods are part of the natural progession, personally...
(And, honestly, I've yet to have the opportunity to watch Mr. Gore's documentary, though I do look forward to it when I find the time)
But I also believe that all this shit we're throwing around affects something. Opposite and Equal reaction, and all that jazz...
Maybe it's just the way of things... species go extinct all the time. But if _we_ are the ones responsible for this change, maybe we owe it to our environment to correct for the consequences... take out our own trash, ya know.