Because the short term is irrelevant that is the point, are we warmer then we were 200 years ago, sure we are, can we attribute that to the increase in CO2 levels caused by the industrial era we live in, of course we can. But short term comparison is minimalistic at best when discussing the human influence on climate change currently we are still about 2 degrees cooler than we were 300,000 years ago at its peak, and the trend over the last 10,000-20,000 years is relative stability in the climate. The earth has been warming for the past 5 million years, humans have been around for about 140,000 of those years.
Again thank you for the links but they are not really related to what I am talking about, well at least the first two are not (I am not disputing the CO2 levels compared to the past I am disputing the impact of them on the climate), the last one (I read the more indepth version via the link at the end) is. Again all this shows is that we have entered an age of relative stability, the last age of similar effect lasted for 30,000 years, currently we are about halfway through that in the present stabilization of the climate. Does this mean we are delaying the cooling process or are we simply experiencing this extended length of temperature stability like we saw in ice cores from 400,000 years ago.
The overall data shows that for the last 5 million years the earth has been gradually warming, 300,000 years ago the earth was warmer than it is today, 400,000 years ago there was a 30,000 year period where temperature was more or less stable. Currently our temperature is more or less stable just as it was 400,000 years ago, for around 30,000 years.
Personally I find the geological study of this stuff to be fascinating, and if it turns out that some study comes along and shows we have seriously @#%^ed sh*t up, I think it would be an awesome read. But presently everything we have unearthed shows the same relative trends as other points in history. Thanks again for the read Joph good links were good.
(i noticed Gbaji has hi-jacked this thread in the name of redundancy so this will be my last post that is relative to the original discussion.)
Edited, Oct 26th 2011 11:58pm by rdmcandie