5. Climate Change -- isn't it natural?

More urban myths about climate change are busted as I look at the Earth's climate over the last 500 million years. What causes it to change? Since carbon dioxide was much higher in the past, why do climatologists say higher CO2 now poses a problem? And of course there's the familiar myth that CO2 can't influence temperatures because the climate was much colder in the past when carbon dioxide levels were much higher.
REFERENCES
"CO2-forced climate thresholds during the Phanerozoic" -- D.L. Royer, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Dec 2006

"Celestial driver of Phanerozoic climate?" -- N. Shaviv and J. Veizer, GSA Today, 2003

"Bathymetric and isotopic evidence for a short-lived late Ordovician glaciation in a greenhouse period" -- Brenchley et al, Geology; April 1994

"Reconciling Late Ordovician (440 Ma) glaciation with very
high (14X) CO2 levels" -- CROWLEY T. J. ; BAUM S. K., Journal of Geophysical Research 1995

"An atmospheric pCO2 threshold for glaciation in the Late Ordovician"
-- M. T. Gibbs et. al, Geology; May 1997

"A weathering hypothesis for glaciation at high atmospheric
pCO2 during the Late Ordovician." -- L.R. Kump et al, Palaeoclimatology alaeogeography
Palaeoecology 1999

"Long-lived glaciation in the Late Ordovician? Isotopic and se-
quence-stratigraphic evidence from western Laurentia" -- M. R. Saltzman,S. A. Young, Geology; February 2005

Graph at 2:28 showing increasing solar output taken from James Imamura at the University of Oregon Dept of Physics, http://jersey.uoregon.edu/~imamura/122/lecture-1/lecture-1.html

"Solar Activity Over the Last 1150 Years: Does it Correlate with Climate?" -- I. Usoskin et.al, Proceedings of The 13th Cool Stars Workshop, 2004 If you have a problem with any of the research that has been done into climate change, please do not waste your time discussing it on YouTube. Write a paper and have it published in a respected, peer-reviewed journal. And no use complaining to me if you think you have found flaws in the work of a particular researcher, write to them and let them know. They will be absolutely delighted to hear from you.

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[1noen1]

Wow. The whole series is good but this one was particularly so.

[bannor99]

@sicktoaster Any mitigation effect that the oceans could have would already be happening so as time goes on their effect would be lessened. A greater concern are the huge stores of clathrates / methane hydrates, much of which is under (melting) permafrost as well as at varying depths in the oceans.

Anything that triggers a rapid and irreversible release of that stored methane would tip us over the edge into runaway warming.

[sicktoaster]

@bannor99

Doesn't that mean as the sea level rises the greater volume of ocean will slow down global warming?

[bannor99]

@sicktoaster The largest and quickest carbon "vacuums" are the oceans, not vegetation, and most of the plants that grow quickly or absorb the most carbon in a short time are typically undesirable.

It's also been shown that many plants grown in high CO2 concentrations have lowered resistance to pests and, of course, still need water and soil so it's not like the deserts will suddenly turn green.

[sicktoaster]

@dwkjo

...on average the resulting starvation and chaos dwindles its population down to 10%.

But in all those cases studied the animal didn't have the reasoning skills to anticipate that problem. We do, and we are using them, even if it's not as efficiently or as well as we should. Plus we notice the little disasters(which some say are warning signs) and as we get more and more more people are interested in doing something about climate change.

[sicktoaster]

@dwkjo

Might plant life itself evolve to absorb more CO2 when it is plentiful in the atmosphere? It would make sense if not just so the plants could have more energy to increase reproduction.

But then we have to actually allow them to actually reproduce, so you have a point.

In a way Earth as a single ecosystem is becoming like an island where humans dominate. The scary thing is when an island ecosystem reaches about 90% saturation for a species that species runs out of resources and...

[dwkjo]

@sicktoaster Deforestation may retard this "catch-up". Admittedly, I don't have any data, but it is a factor to consider.

[sicktoaster]

Humans are natural. Humans are part of an interacting ecosystem.

What if the ecosystem has natural ways of reacting when there is too much carbon dioxide?

Lots of carbon dioxide means more air for plants to breathe and churn out Oxygen.

What if global warming is real, but the environment will naturally correct for it, it just can't correct that fast so we see temporary effects but the environment(plant life) will catch up and vacuum the CO2 out of the atmosphere by breathing it in.

[ffletcherr]

Lol chipster sounded smart until I saw the bit about the blog. If you REALLY want real science, look in scientific archives. The creator has done a great job at presenting information in a non-biased way. It seems as though he disagrees with everyone :p

[devildogmre]

Great series so far.