A Quora - Can we really stop global warming at this point?

Interesting enough views, with some facts and opinions.
The really long time periods, fit best
with astronomy.
Go to the original Quora for charts and graphs

David Miller
Former Former Faculty, Department Chair and Advisor at Various Colleges 
and Universities (1982–2015) Updated Oct 31

Can we really stop global warming at this point, after all of the damage 
we've done?
Remember back when we were in an ice age and most of the upper US and 
Canada were covered with ice? Well, granted it was before your time, but 
it really wasn’t that long ago, only 20,000 years ago. Do you want to 
return to that time? Do you REALLY? Why? That period wasn’t very good 
for animals, nor plants. Mammals including humans evolved during warmer 
periods in Earth’s history, not colder periods. So too the tropical rain 
forests.

Take a good look at a chart of earth’s temperatures over the past 18,000 
years as we emerged from the ice age. Look at the very sharp rise in 
temperatures at around 11,000 and 8,000 BC and the overall rise from 
16,000 BC to 4,000 BC. Funny thing about that, isn’t it? It all happened 
WITHOUT humans burning any fossil fuels, no cars, no power plants.


Now lets look at an even longer period of time, the past 500 MILLION 
years. What you should notice on the chart is that Earth’s temperature 
has gone up and down CONSTANTLY over this period and indeed for the 
entire 4.5 Billion years it has existed. If you really want to stop 
warming, cooling and change, you’d have to stop the earth’s rotation, 
stop its orbit… you’d literally necessarily destroy the earth in the 
process.


It’s popular among envirotrolls and the media to blame humanity for the 
warming of the earth, but even if you kill every human on earth TODAY, 
CO2 levels will STILL fluctuate due to such things as wobbles in earth’s 
orbit, forest fires caused by lightning, volcanoes, permafrost warming, 
animal respiration and many other factors, and the warming trend that 
started 20,000 years ago will do its own thing as the earth has seen so 
many times before. And if you WERE successful in stopping all the 
sources of CO2, I’ll remind you that all the plants would consequently 
die; that’s what they breathe and need in order to live.

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5 comments from
Anthony Caputo
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Anthony Caputo
September 29
It is also worth noting that prior to human activity earth was 
perilously close to a mass extinction event as one of the primary 
methods of plant photosynthesis was nearing its minimum CO2 
concentration point. If we had gone much lower many plant species that 
used that method (the majority, in fact) would have died off as they 
would have had no way to produce enough biomass to sustain themselves.

Human activity boosted CO2 concentration up well above the danger zone, 
but notably not up to a level that achieves maximum production rates for 
plant biomass in those species. This means that there is still room for 
growth -as in literal plant growth- as CO2 concentrations continue to 
rise. More CO2 means a more productive biosphere, and we are seeing this 
wherever we care to look.

I am not sure about everyone else here, but suffering through another 
mass extinction nearly on par with the great oxidation event is not my 
idea of a good time.

David Miller
October 2
Yes indeed. Why aren’t “environmentalists” crying for the many species 
that died out during that last cold period BEFORE human activity, that 
mass extinction event that killed off most large mammals including 
Mastodons and Saber-Toothed Tigers? What a selective memory.

Old Buzzard Keith
September 30
First you need to understand that there is no such thing as man made 
Global Warming. The idea that if I send in more money to Politicians and 
Government so they can control weather is stupid.

But follow the money. The cash for colleges goes to those that sell this 
story. I’m 70, I can go to the ocean and see the places I played where I 
was 5. They are the same today. No freezing, No fiery death, nothing, 
just weather.