Would you say there's no consensus on the earth being approximately an oblate spheroid because of flat-earthers? No consensus on evolution because of young-earth creationists?

Perhaps you are using the word "consensus" differently than most people understand it.

What is your opinion on the source of the excess CO2 concentration in the atmosphere?

This question you pose in response to my statement have nothing to do with each other.

Try again.

E] To be fair, I'll help you out.

I was going to say the same thing then I realized if you consider "theory" to be the key word there, he's not that incorrect, assuming he's using a definition of "a theory" that's closer to what you and I would call "a hypothesis".

If we rephrase his statement - hopefully we can all agree that there is extremely often consensus on many things in science (i.e. all the established, proven science), while pretty much by definition, there's not going to be consensus yet on a mere hypothesis.

"Human activity is what caused the meteoric rise in CO2 levels over the past few decades", you agree or disagree with this one as written?

The scientists who study the climate are in almost total agreement that humans ARE the cause of it. You may not think humans are the cause of it, but climate scientists DO agree that we are the cause of it.

I get that. We had a good rapport though like I said(before the class). That's actually why after only about 10 minutes of questions(the class is 1.5 hours long) in a class that was dedicated 100% to us asking questions I felt bad for him and wanted to get the conversation going.

Climate change is starting to...change climates. Today it's big effects in the arctic for example, and smaller effects in most of the world. As the effects grow, entire cultures will find themselves moving...the Floridas of the second and third worlds in particular.

This is not new.

This is how people got to Australia and Indonesian islands and the entire Western Hemisphere.

E] Sundaland:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundaland

That I can agree with. ;)

There is very little reason to doubt that the earth is spherical base don evidence provided. (although people do)

Statements that human caused climate change are "consensus" are not accurate. Many scientists think that humans are the cause of increased carbon dioxide. But some think that humans are not the primary cause only a contributory cause, some dont think humans have an impact at all.

And that's just what is causing increased greenhouse gas emissions, the easiest of the questions. The far more complicated and important stuff comes with what that actually will do do the climate, if anything at all, if we can or even should do something to stop it. If greenhouse gasses will ultimately lead to our worst case extrapolations and inferences or not.

People throw out the consensus on humans creating more CO2 (and other gasses) and use that shut down any debate on what can or should be done.

For example, Sun Belt can come in here throwing out his claims about climate change and what its effects will be, and it has been quickly countered with "Scientists all agree its happening" That isn't a point nor an argument its an appeal to authority, an inaccurate statement and an attempt to shut down debate without addressing what he is arguing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...n_the_Holocene

If only we had carbon taxes on the continent, 13,000 years ago, we would still have all these wonderful animals --maybe with Quantitative Easing and negative interest rates too, because that's going to literally stop today's Climate Change cold in it's tracks from here on out.

Were early humans migrating to Oceania and the Americas because of the climate change or were they simply migrating to explore/ establish new territory?

Probably both. Perhaps they left a drought stricken area that existed back then because of the glaciation of the northern hemisphere -- perhaps Green Sahara was beginning to dry out.

The fact remains that the Earth has gone through massive changes to the climate in a relatively short period of geological time. The Earth will continue to experience changes in the climate. This is not new.

And taxes aren't going to stop Climate Change, why? Because of the wild swings in climate [a few thousand years ago] before we had nonphysical stuff like digits in bank accounts to move around.

I would suspect most people in pre history migrated to follow animals, or in search of better places to live.

So, im sure changing climates over thousands of years did make people move, but you are talking about migration patterns that took thousands of years. If an unsettled tribe of people even spent several centuries (blink of an eye) in a valley, island, or coastal area before changes to rain patterns or animal migrations spurned them to move, it wouldn't feel like they were "fleeing" or what have you, it would have been a generations long continuum with things like war, illness and natural disasters causing populations to up and move rapidly.

8th grade Earth science:

We know that Earth's atmosphere regulates energy flows to create a delicate energy balance which maintains Earth surface temperatures and allows current planetary life to exist.

We know that within this energy regulation process the "greenhouse effect" is characterized by naturally-occurring atmospheric gases (like CO2, CH4, NO2, H2O vapor) which absorb longwave energy (i.e., infrared/heat) that is re-radiated from the Earth's surface and trap it in the lower atmosphere, thereby allowing less energy (heat) to escape back to space.

This energy equation warms our planet and allows us to live, much in the same way glass traps re-radiated infrared radiation (heat) inside a greenhouse and allows plants to live inside of it in the winter; or why your car gets so damn hot when it's sitting in the sun with the windows closed. Shorter wave radiation (visible, UV) can pass thru the glass and warm interior surfaces... longer wave radiation (infrared, aka heat) radiates off the warmed surfaces and cannot pass back through the glass... thus warming the interior of the greenhouse or car two-fold, to the point where it is much warmer than the exterior. Think of the greenhouse or car interior as the Earth's surface and the glass as the Earth's atmosphere.

We know that the left side of an equation must equal the right side of the equation.
Increasing a value on the left results in a corresponding increase on the right. An input into a system results in an increase in output.

Highly simplified for purpose of demonstration... there are definitely other factors at play which also influence atmosphere temp. Let's just use CO2 and H2O vapor for example as two contributing GHGs (you could put any of them for x and y and add many many more variable, the output z would still have to reflect the inputs):

x+y = z

x = tons of atmospheric CO2
y = tons of atmospheric H2O vapor
z = atmospheric temperature

Increase x and/or y... you increase z.


We know that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases have been rising as global population has rapidly increased and resulting human emissions of greenhouse gases have rapidly increased.

We have increased x, we have increased y... therefore we have increased z.

We have added CO2, H20 vapor, CH4, NO2, etc. to the atmospheric system therefore we have increased the atmospheric temperature.

Wow I didn't realize an entire group of science disciplines can be summed up as 8th grade earth science.

Thank you for clearing that up

Never claimed anything was summed up.

But the above is basic 8th grade Earth science. You can choose to understand/learn/question or not. That's up to you.

The one thing on which you and I disagree is that this "relatively short" of yours is only going to remain true for a limited amount of time now; those same changes will sooner or later be considered incredibly slow in comparison to the ones that will be following the recent, utterly meteoric rise in greenhouse gas levels.

There are lots of advanced things that can be soundly summed up to 8th graders (in a simplified manner, of course, but which still conserves the basic science and is still perfectly accurate).