Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Andrew Dessler's avatar

I’m deleting all of the comments that say “CO2 can’t be controlling the climate because, during ice ages, temperature change first.” This completely misunderstands the issue. I’ll let chatGPT explain it: https://chatgpt.com/share/67e2d889-cb1c-8004-9356-d5ed151ee465

If people want to push back on these posts, that’s fine, but please do more research before peddling ideas that have been debunked many, many times in the past.

Expand full comment
Michael MacCracken's avatar

Very nice presentation. What is not also pointed out that matters to society today is how much sea level has changed as a result of persistent temperature change. If one goes into the paleo record, the sensitivity is of order 15-20 meters of sea level change per degree change in the reconstructed temperature change in the past. For example, 20,000 years ago at the peak of the last glacial period, sea level was about 120 meters below its present value and global average temperature is estimated to have been 6 C or so below preindustrial. For the next 12,000 years, sea level rose at an average rate of a meter per century as global average temperature increased about 1 C every 20 centuries. This warming melted about 2/3 of the ice present on Earth at that time--present ice holds the equivalent of about 60 meters of sea level rise (~200 feet). Global average temperature increased about 1 C in the last 100 years and sea level rise to date was about .2 meters, and we are headed to another 2 C or so of warming this coming hundred years, suggesting that by the time we get to a new equilibrium, most of the present ice on land will be melted and sea level will be up by an amount that will flood virtually all coastal and near coastal areas--a huge impact on civilization.

Expand full comment
139 more comments...

No posts