jwarner

First, the pleistocene ended about 11,700 years BP (Before Present), apparently for everyone except you. During that time, Wooly Mammoths still roamed Spain. Maybe @Ekdog can chime in on how many of these he sees running around.

We are currently in the holocene. This will likely be replaced by the anthropocene (which we would already be in -- these names like all science, are based on repeatable observation -- which, despite what "all the scientists you know" have told you, is how real science is done). This issue is being studied by Geologic Societies of London and America, but is likely to be accepted (and in-fact is in common use -- go here for example --> 2011 GSA Annual Meeting - 9-12 October, Minneapolis, MN) due to the human-caused changes to our environment that have occurred since the rise of the industrial revolution. Of course this is far away from the my field of study, which is complex biological and chemical systems, so they may have reverted back in time and not told me.

Second, "every scientist you know blah... blah... blah." Are these researches still in the Pleistocene too? Do they work out their mom's basement? Does she slide a plate of mammoth through the saber-tooth tiger cat door to them because they are too busy dreaming up unsupported and unpublishable work to come to the supper table? If they are accredited researchers, they are certainly a huge draw at society conferences, if for no other reason than the tragic comedy they provide.

I pretty much quit reading and skimmed at this point because this is a complete waste of my time, and off the OP's topic. I'm not going to be able to give you a basic education in the scientific method here, or summarize the millions of peer-reviewed scholarly works published on this subject. I doubt you are a willing audience anyway as you seem to have some firmly set, unsupported, misinformed, and incorrect notions on this and many topics. It is unfortunate that a such a small (and incorrect) minority driven by greed, ignorance, or pig-headed ideology manages to yell so loudly, that we are still debating the existence of things like human-driven climate change, evolution, etc... despite overwhelming evidence gathered by people who have devoted their lives trying to gain a deeper understanding of the world around them and how it works. These are not opinions. These are things supported by substantial and significant repeatable observations, experiments, and evidence, as well as agreement by the overwhelming majority of the scientific community across many disciplines.

As for how to "fix" things, as you seem to think I should have some kind of answer to "fixing" the climate. Your questions really does nothing more than highlight your ignorance on this matter. The climate and the interrelated ecosystems it supports aren't a 1964 Buick. You don't go out and replace the thermostat and flush the radiator when "she starts running a little warm." In short, we aren't "fixing," anything as there is no going back. This an extremely complex system with evolutionary properties. Any given state at any point of time is the result of multiple inputs that developed throughout geologic time. It exists with multiple potential set-points. It is also a non-linear system, meaning that it doesn't plot as a nice straight line.

Now before you run off saying "we don't know what happened or will happen and this is just normal," I'm going to stop you. We do have a good record of what has happened, can see trends in many, many, many (times a big number) indicators such as ice cores, sea temperatures, species composition and range, the fossil record, bore hole samples, tree cores, this list is pretty huge. We can also draw significant correlations between events such as the well recorded rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other pollutants, and changing global temperatures. Rates of change are also very important, but I think it might take awhile to get you to that concept.

Sticking with the simple, we can measure how carbon dioxide behaves under different conditions (i.e., what happens when you add heat, or increase the level in seawater -- this really should be middle school chemistry), and how this affects long-term global weather patterns and climactic conditions (a bit more advanced than middle school, but should not be beyond the grasp of an advanced high school student with a little work and competent instruction). We can also use the basic physiochemical properties of the atmospheric and environmental constituents to to model how they react, and extrapolate how these interrelated systems will react and respond in the future (need some math for this one, might need some advanced study). I agree, we don't know exactly what will happen, as no-one can see the future, but we can make some pretty realistic predictions about some of the effects based on past events and current knowledge.

As for "catastrophic destruction of the earth" or however you turned the phrase to suit your silly arguments. No, the earth isn't likely to burst into a ball of flame. Pretty sure I've never said or written that. What will happen is that it will be less able to support life, and we will see multiple ecosystem service failures. This isn't a term you are likely to find familiar. Please feel free to look it up in a basic ecology textbook.

With this, I am done with you. Normally I will agree to disagree on many things. This is not one of them. Quite simply, you are wrong, and your dogged adherence to unsupported ideas that fly in the face of widely accepted empirical knowledge is harming the rest of the human race, not to mention every other species on the planet as they exist now. Your arguments string together concepts and ideas you obviously have very little understanding of, in order to prop up and present unsupportable theories as facts or reasonable possibilities. They are not facts or reasonable possibilities. You are presenting thinly-veiled dogma masquerading as tenable ideas to convince poorly informed or educated people that unsustainable behavior providing short-term benefit to very few people is a reasonable course of action.

As for me being "emotional." Yes, pissed is an emotion. In addition to being someone who uses well-established critical and analytical methods to better understand complex systems, I am also a human being, one is quite tired of this incredibly stupid argument, and the small vocal minority of people that are keep the human race from developing a reasonable course of action to mitigate the affects of a problem we have caused as much as possible. Please look up the word mitigate. Looking at the above exchange, you have had problems with that word in the past.


I've now wasted far more time than I wanted to on this utter stupidity. Good day.

Edit to add: as I think visuals are important, I'm going to add this (warning for the thin skinned -- there are a few F* and S* words):