Is Fossil fuel saving the earth from a mass extinction?

Look at this graph of the last 600 million years.

What would have happened if man had not started burning fossil fuels? From graphs it’s looks like CO2 levels would have continued down. Plants can’t grow well without CO2. Plants need at least 150 ppm to survive. We were barely above that during the 1800’s.

So,the answer is an obvious yes. We are saving the planet from mass extinction by producing co2. Carbon is the staff of life, and a carbon drought would cause a mass extinction…

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If mankind is warming the planet, we’re saving human lives.

The Industrial Revolution started right as the Little Ice Age was ending. Convenient. lol

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So you agree that CO2 is warming the planet. Well said!

It’s like only on these forums is it a question whether burning he carbon stores of the planet is leading to warming.

Society and order as we understand it now is will soon be a thing of the past. This is essentially the best of what’s left.

Isn’t it so precious that deniers don’t think scientists have studied historical warming and compared it to the warming today to determine whether or not it’s a natural cycle or man made?

You need to get out more, it’s not just on this board. If, and if so Anthropomorphic Global warming is occurring there is no undisputed scientific consensus as to how much or whether we can do anything about it.

Demonstrate that the current warming is in any way substantially different than the warming of previous inter glacial cycles.

Not capable to ascertain the signiicance man has on climate change yet certitude that it is insignificant.

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Urban heat island effect is behind the last decade having the hottest years ever recorded. The opening of the Northwest passage. Multi-year record low sea ice. Behind record melting of Greenland. The retreat of glaciers worldwide. The warming of the oceans and coral decimation. The permafrost melting. Someone needs to really look at this urban heat island deal. Until it’s pointed out that urban is a man-made creation so the extent of its effect on climate change is diddly squat.

Anthropogenic

Science has uncertainty, or it’s not science, it’s faith and thus a religion. Denier = blasphemer. Not allowing opposites views in govt is a state religion.

Many Dems think we should basically scourge ourselves like the superstitious did during the black plague… Except a warm planet is good, and plentiful!..

Nope.

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The planet has been in an ice age with much higher CO2 levels. My point is not that CO2 is causing warming, but that it’s wonderful levels of CO2 are increasing as Plants don’t grown below 150 ppm. So what would happen if plants died? what happens to the animal life? Mass extinction!

Also notice the earth went from massive animals like Dinosaurs, then megafauna mammals took over but are not as big as dinosaurs, and then as CO2 levels fell even further they go extinct and then small mammals take over.

Also notice that C02 peaks in the cambrian era. That’s when life evolved at it’s most rapid pace and into the great diversity we see now. Life loves CO2. Carbon chains are literally the staff of all life. See biochem 101!

Technically, for the last couple of million years, Earth has been in an age of ice ages. The climate has been dominated by long (80-100 k years) periods of glaciation with relatively short (10-20 k years) interglacial periods. We are currently within the probability that another glacial period is nigh. The OP premise is correct … if CO2 and other “warming” gasses that man produces are causing the climate to warm, it very well could stave off that inevitable and disastrous (to humans) event.

It’s just so interesting that, looking through a different lens, that AGW is now accepted and encouraged. Humans have survived both glacials and interglacials. But with modern agriculture, sedentism, urbanization, and massive population growth, humans are less adaptable, and changes in climate and environment have more severe consequences. Another ice age will surely occur, even if (possibly) delayed for a thousand years or so by some transient CO2. Bring it on. I like it cold.

Yes, humans survived previous glaciated eras, but there were very few of them. Estimates of world population at the end of the last ice age vary from one to ten million people. During the previous ice age, there is evidence that human population fell to as low as 10,000 people, surviving in two separate groups in northern and southern Africa. People survived because there were few of them and they lived in the areas that were not glaciated or affected significantly by the cold. Now, a good many of the areas that were uninhabitable are occupied with billions of people. Where do you think they will go to survive? Do you think the people who live in those livable areas might have something to say about it? Seriously, if you want to discuss a global climate catastrophe, talk about an ice age.

If you like the cold, why do you live where it is warm?

Nope, animals don’t like it.

Animals don’t dislike it. Animals like to eat many of the things that love it, and they are not adversely affected until it reaches around 5000 ppm and its not lethal until it is over 8,000 ppm. So don’t worry your silly head about it. We are barely over 400 ppm. It will not be CO2 in the air you breath that kills you.

Second question first. I was born in New Orleans. Parent’s met as surgical residents. They are (were) both orthopedic surgeons. Moved to Kansas when they accepted positions at a new medical center. Family vacationed to Colorado every year. Learned mountaineering. Returned to New Orleans as an undergraduate at Tulane. Climbed Denali in 1973. PhD from UW-Madison with 4 years spent overseas doing my research.

Returned to New Orleans for celebration of my degree and my sister’s MD. Found a job. Great job. Been at it for 33 years. Directed a hiking and climbing camp for high school kids in Rocky Mountain National Park during the 1990s. I love my job and my work, but wish the school was in Antarctica, or least Colorado. I now teach the kids whose parents I taught. You would recognize some of their names, but I am not at liberty to publicize.

My specialty as an archaeologist was the Middle Stone Age (Mesolithic) of Western Europe. My doctoral dissertation was published in Oxford, England, and is still cited today.

As for the first issue, I agree. There are too many people living off of finite resources. And there is a reason for that. And I also agree that a new ice age would not be cool, so to speak. But eventually, it will happen.

My parents were physicians. And so are my sister and my two brothers. We grew up in a liberal household. In high school, I participated and was a leader in the Moratorium against the war in Vietnam. I later learned that the KBI (Kansas Bureau of Investigation) had taken photos of us at the Capitol Building and that they had a file on me.

What I learned in the end is that the USA is basically a right-leaning country (although that has a very different meaning today). I have never held out hope that this will change. I have every expectation that Trump will be reelected. So it goes.

Seems like if you like the cold, you should have specialized in Middle Stone Age Inuits. :wink: