OneSpaceTwo

OneSpaceTwo t1_ivnpqnm wrote

You seem to be arguing against things I never said. Of course we can't dismiss solar forcing, it has a major influence on the system. But you want to reduce everything to it. Humans also aren't solely responsible for a great deal of historical climate change (many other natural factors are at play, some of which I mentioned before). However, if we rely on "the known" as you prefer, like basic chemistry and physics of energy transfer, we can predict the effects of dumping a crap load of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (capturing more energy, i.e. heating the atmosphere, on average). You accuse me of oversimplifying things, yet that's what you're doing. You accuse me of being an armchair commentator that hasn't studied enough, yet why do I have the feeling that it is you who are basing your beliefs solely on internet articles and hearsay?

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OneSpaceTwo t1_iv4igf9 wrote

Word soup? How do you know what I've studied?

No, regular processes shouldn't be ignored, but regular earth-solar cycles aren't the only game in town. There are the oceans, land masses, soil chemistry, ice cover, flora and fauna, and all the interactions and feedbacks associated with these things. Climate cycles change and even break for different reasons. Continents reorganize the face of the earth. Organisms evolve that produce oxygen. Over-evolved apes dig fossil fuels from hundreds of millions of years ago out of the ground and dump it in the atmosphere. The geological record is full of interesting, baffling changes. Predictable cycles are always shifting subtly for a period of time then radically reorganizing. You can't just point to the most basic earth-sun cycles and assume everything is caused by them. If you read a climate science textbook you will discover this. Ruddimans Earth's Climate Past and Future is a pretty awesome and accessible overview.

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OneSpaceTwo t1_iuzwr2e wrote

We certainly don't "control" the climate in the Congo. But it's not as simple as "it gets wet and it gets dry". Even though there are approximately repeating cycles at a certain timescales (and you're only mentioning some of earth's cycles of solar insolation), the impact of humans on the face of the earth and its land-sea-air balances over the last hundreds and even thousands of years has been huge and continues to expand. When certain boundary thresholds are crossed, some of those cycles shift into new behaviors because it's a system with many different points of stability to settle into, not just one. It is a mistake to assume the system is so stable and predictable that new widespread events on the surface of the earth can't change it. The geological record is littered with traumatic climate shifting events and the explosion of humans will certainly be one of them.

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