Climate Change, Talk about the effects of long-term weather changes on the planet, along with the good work being done to counteract this trend.

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Climate Change is Natural, Carbon Emissions are Not

Juan Carlo Pascua | Thursday 15th October 2009

The earth's global temperature has and will fluctuate

The history of our blue orb has more question marks in its past than anyone can possibly imagine. Some facts we do know: the earth is 4.65 Billion years old. We are currently in an ice age (by definition, an age when there is ice on the poles) and there have been a total of 4 ice ages. Global temperatures above 5C have existed in the past, about 54.8 million years before our existence. Considering the larger timeline, we humans are a new occurrence for the earth, fact.It becomes humbling to know how much damage we're capable of in such little time.

In the past, the earth has seen global temperatures fluctuate above 8C and below -2C. This fluctuation can be seen as natural - on a scale of millions of years! These temperature changes occur for reasons we don't fully understand, be it volcanic eruptions that spewed ash that blocked the sun, meteors that kicked up dirt with the same effect, or a chemical process in the ocean. We know nothing of any life during these extreme temperatures. It's speculation with the best tools and methods, but speculation nonetheless. Problems occur when the natural history of climate change is related to the current human caused climate change problem.

There is no doubt about it, what we are doing- throwing enormous amounts of carbon into the atmosphere- is unnaturally increasing greenhouse gases thus warming the planet. In pre-industrial times the atmosphere had 280 ppm of carbon and its equivalents. Currently, we're at 430 ppm. In 2050 there will be 9 billion people and 8 billion of them poor, hoping to gain the standards of living the other 1 billion are enjoying. Those standards of energy use, transportation, and manufacturing all emit carbon. We are looking at a geometrically increasing production of carbon emissions leading to higher temperatures.

There are possibilities that we may be wrong on climate change effects. The planet's temperature will go up 2C, by then we might have a problem and we might not. Alarmingly, there are possibilities of global warming exceeding that 2C. For example the Stern Review (2007), considers if we continue with business as usual we will reach 780 ppm by 2050, by then there's a 53% chance that we don't exceed 5C. That's a 50/50 chance of keeping temperature increase just at 5C, and at this point we know as much about the future of the world at this temperature as we do about the past, very little. By keeping on doing what we're doing we are flipping a coin on the environment: We either increase our temperature to 5C, or we increase our temperature past 5C. Heads we lose a little, tails we may lose it all.In our very limited understanding of geologic history and our improbable skills at predicting the future we are left with a choice to act to prevent the worse case scenario (hopefully at a manageable 550 ppm) or play the odds (at 780 ppm) and hope for the best.

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