Quote:
Originally Posted by OneHungLo
Mark I've asked you to break it down in layman's terms as to why the CO2 and Temperature was MUCH MUCH higher thousands of years ago when the population was 1/1000 of today's and there wasnt any cars or fossil fuels being burned.
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That is a good question honestly, and it is hard to answer, especially for me, a non scientist.
Here's what I do know.
- "Millions of years ago" is not specific. The CO2 Bump you are taking about was the Late Ordovician era, about 400 Million years ago. The guy who discovered this is named Robert Berner. He also said somewhere that because it was so long ago that the exact values reported may not be correct. But it doesn't matter for this argument, lets say that it was.
- CO2 is not the only gas blamed for climate change. Besides increased CO2, there is also increases in Methane (released by cattle farming, waste dumps, rice farming and the production of oil and gas), and Nitrous oxide, released by chemical fertilizers and burning fossil fuels. The last one is something like 300 times worse than CO2 when it comes to its ability to trap heat.
Regardless of what your chart shows, and what the CO2 Level was 400 Million years ago, the fact is is that the earth is warming up. Many people, myself included, blame human activity for this, but you don't have to believe that if you don't want to. Robbie for example, believes it to be a natural state of the Earth. Regardless of what you believe though, we should all take it seriously and explore steps to do what we can to help cool it off.