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//**Criticism of Global Warming:**// Hundreds of millions of years ago, carbon dioxide (CO2) levels and temperatures were much higher than they are today. Changes in carbon dioxide levels and temperatures are natural occurrences and should not be blamed on humans. 

Can Humans be Blamed for Changes in Carbon Dioxide Levels and Temperatures?


|| || || History of Hundreds of Millions of Years?  || Levels and Temperature in the Past?  ||
 * ~ Table of Contents
 * Overview ||
 * Support of Criticism of Global Warming 
 * Tim Patterson
 * Jan Veizer and Nir Shaviv
 * Not Much Criticism Available
 * Support of Global Warming 
 * <span style="color: rgb(128,0,0);">NASA
 * <span style="color: rgb(128,0,0);">Facts
 * <span style="font-size: 140%; color: rgb(128,0,0); font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">How Does the Carbon Cycle Work Over a
 * <span style="color: rgb(128,0,0);">Reference Table of Geological Time
 * <span style="color: rgb(128,0,0);">Long-Term Carbon Cycle
 * <span style="font-size: 140%; color: rgb(128,0,0); font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">What is the Relation Between Carbon
 * <span style="color: rgb(128,0,0);">What the Critics Say
 * <span style="color: rgb(128,0,0);">More Accurate Information
 * <span style="font-size: 140%; color: rgb(128,0,0); font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Conclusion & Summary ||

<span style="display: block; font-size: 120%; color: #800000; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: left;"> <span style="color: rgb(26,162,52);">Overview

It seems that all or at least most legitimate scientists acknowledge that humans are currently contributing carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Most of the speculation occurs over whether humans are contributing a significant enough amount, in order to truly affect climate change. Hence, the question remains: what effect will humans have in the scope of things looking back over the last era? First of all, it is fairly evident that humans are contributing to the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because our daily activities, from manufacturing goods to cutting down forests, release the gas as a product. Also, looking back over around 500 million years, there have been many things that have changed levels of carbon dioxide, none of which plausibly explain the modern increase. We attempt to disclaim the critics. <span style="font-size: 120%; color: rgb(26,162,52);">Support of Criticism of Global Warming <span style="color: rgb(26,162,52);">a) Tim Patterson: <span style="color: rgb(26,56,153);"> One scientist supporting the above criticism is paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson. He is well credentialed with a B.S. in biology and a B.A. in geology from Dalhousie University in Halifax as well as a doctorate in geology from UCLA. Currently, he is a professor of geology at Carleton University in Ottowa. This video is from Citytv with Tim Patterson voicing his views about what causes climate change (please excuse the initial commercial). <span style="color: rgb(255,255,255);">- media type="youtube" key="x_vHTHnAa1s" height="344" width="425" <span style="font-size: 126%; color: rgb(58,51,163); font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Helvetica, sans-serif;"> According to an interview with Tim Patterson published in // 21st Century Science & Technology //, Patterson explains why he became interested in challenging common beliefs about climate change. While he was investigating reasons that could explain severe sudden changes in fish populations that were periodically troubling fisheries, he looked at sediment in inlets along the western coast. The sediments in these inlets were well preserved up to around 6,000 years ago. As he looked at the layers in the sediment, Patterson noticed that variations in the thickness of the layers most closely matched the sun-spot cycle, not the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. He pinpoints the Ordovician period as a time when carbon dioxide levels were, as he says, sixteen times greater than current levels, yet the Earth was going through an ice age. Patterson finishes the interview by predicting that the temperature will actually drop as the earth experiences a weak sun cycle, and that the increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere would be benificial because it would help plant growth. ([]). <span style="color: rgb(4,159,23);">b) Jan Veizer and Nir Shaviv <span style="color: #1aa234; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Helvetica, sans-serif;"> During his interview, Tim Patterson refered to a study done by Jan Veizer and Nir Shaviv. The study, Patterson said, was supposed to prove that carbon dioxide does not correlate well with global temperature. These scientists do not try to disprove anthropogenic contributions to atmospheric carbon dioxide, though, either. They only try to prove that climate change occures naturally with celestial forcing from the sun. ([]) c) Not Much Criticism Available While the above scientists argue that change in climate is cyclical, they also claim that carbon dioxide does __not__ have a major effect on climate change. Rather, they believe, climate is caused by celestial forcings. There does not appear to be any major, wide-spread criticism claiming that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are cyclical, and that there is no anthropogenic effect on CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Even from the global warming-skeptical website www.junkscience.com, it is admitted that 3.4% of the carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere annually. Source: [] <span style="color: #1a3899; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Helvetica, sans-serif;">The carbon cycle is generally in balance with about the same amount of carbon going into carbon sinks as are being released into the atmosphere annually. It is still that part that humans contribute to the atmosphere that puts the system, the atmosphere, out of equilibrium. The 3.4% matters. Source: <span style="color: #1a3899; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Helvetica, sans-serif;">This graph shows that the atmospheric carbon has indeed risen since the 1960s. Since humans are the ones creating a net imbalance in atmospheric carbon dioxide, we should be the ones blamed for the increase. Without much criticism, we may assume that increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are generally accepeted to have anthropogenic causes.

<span style="font-size: 130%; color: rgb(26,162,52);">Support of Global Warming <span style="color: rgb(26,162,52);">a) NASA <span style="color: rgb(26,56,153);">According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), humans are a cause of carbon dioxide emissions: <span style="color: rgb(26,162,52);"> media type="youtube" key="rDYqlTsZfgw" height="344" width="425" b) Facts <span style="color: rgb(26,56,153);">It is widely acknowledged that humans contribute directly to CO2 emissions through: cars, buildings, home appliances, burning fossil fuels, etc. Humans also indirectly contribute to these emissions through deforestation. By decimating the amount of plants on earth, we are removing a major resource that takes in CO2, which in turn, increases the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere. <span style="color: rgb(26,162,52);">

<span style="font-size: 130%; color: rgb(26,162,52);">How Does the Carbon Cycle Work Over Hundreds of Millions of Years? <span style="color: rgb(4,159,23);">a) Reference Table of Geological Time Source: <span style="display: inline! important; text-align: center;">[] <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Helvetica, sans-serif;">  <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Helvetica, sans-serif;"> b) The Long-Term Carbon Cycle <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Helvetica, sans-serif;">While the short-term carbon cycle mainly consists of carbon cycling through the plants, ocean, and atmosphere, the long-term carbon cycle involves carbon cycling into rock. Two ways in which carbon is buried are the silicate-carbonate subcycle and the burial of organic matter. In the silicate-carbonate subcycle carbon goes through chemical changes to eventually end up in limestone form (CaCO3). More importantly to recent years, carbon is also buried when organic matter is buried. With a large amount of heat, pressure and time fossil fuels are created. While these cycles of burial and weathering generally take time on scales much greater than is easily comprensible to humans, on the order of millions of years, humans "have accelerated this cycle by the burning of organic carbon in sedimentary rocks that otherwise would oxidize only very slowly by weathering" ([]). <span style="color: #1aa234; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Helvetica, sans-serif;">c) Causes for Fluctuation in Atmospheric Carbon Through the Phanerozoic Eon (542 Mya to Present) Levels of carbon in the atmosphere in this period of time range from around 280 ppm to 6000 ppm. First of all, how are number like these measured? There are many different meathods, all of which have fairly large uncertainties. Scienists have done calculations from the amount of carbon-13 in the soil and fossil plant remains to looking at boron isotopes in ocean surface pH. One of the most accurate methods involves taking ice cores and testing to see what gasses are present in air bubbles relative to how deep the bubble was found. But then what natural causes are there for changes in the level of atmospheric carbon? Some natural processes are the venting of volcanic CO2, the weathering of silicon rocks, the sedimentation of carbonate sediments in oceans, and the burial of organic matter. Some hypotheses for reasons of why large jumps in atmospheric CO2 include orbital forcing implying a change in radiation from the sun to the effects of plate tectonics. Some biological explanations are that the increase in plant-life as life evolved decreased CO2 such as in the Devonian Period when deeply rooted plants might have increased silicate weathering ([]). All of the things listed take many thousands of years to change carbon dioxide, and none of them seem to pertain to modern carbon dioxide changes. That only leaves us humans as the culprits.

<span style="font-size: 130%; color: rgb(26,162,52);"> 4. What is the Relation Between Carbon Levels and Temperature in the Past? <span style="font-size: 91%; color: rgb(26,162,52); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Helvetica, sans-serif;">a) What the Critics Say <span style="color: rgb(26, 56, 153); font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the claim goes, carbon levels were much higher hundreds of millions of years ago, and the correlation between the temperature and carbon dioxide levels, as we can see below, is relatively non existent. Source: [] <span style="color: rgb(26,56,153);"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, the graphs that such claims refer to, such as the one above, relate atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to the average global temperature. What exactly does average global temperature describe? Effectively, nothing. This concept is succinctly summarized by Bjarne Andresen, a highly qualified physics professor at the University of Copenhagen, who has conducted extensive research in finite thermodynamics: //"It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth. A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate".// <span style="color: rgb(26,162,52); font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Helvetica, sans-serif;">b) More Accurate Information <span style="color: rgb(26,56,153);"> Source: <span style="display: inline! important; text-align: center;">[] <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: rgb(26,56,153);">From this graph, we see that carbon dioxide levels do, in fact, very closely relate to the temperature changes.

<span style="color: rgb(26, 162, 52); font-size: 130%;">Conclusion & Summary Overall, it appears that the criticism concerning the increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere recorded clearly at Mauna Loa is unfounded in scientific evidence. Although it is plausible that higher levels of CO2 is a natural cycle, humans are unequivocally expediting the process. Therefore, regardless of whether or not carbon emissions are a natural process, it does not undermine the human effect through carbon emissions. Humans can be held accountable for changes in carbon dioxide levels and temperatures (as they have a direct correlation) to a certain extent, and hence, it is in human power to induce a more positive change as well.



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Works Cited Berner, Robert A. "A New Look at the Long-Term Carbon Cycle." __GSA Today__ 9 (1999): 1-6. Geological Society of America. 23 Mar. 2009 [].

Doney, Scott C., and David S. Schimel. "Carbon and Climate System Coupling on Timescales from the Precambian to the Anthropocene." __Annual Review of Environment and Resources__ (2007). Marine Biology Laboratory. 23 Mar. 2009 [].

Patterson, Timothy. "There's No Correlation Between CO2 and Climate Change." Interview with Gregory Murphy. __21st Century Science__ Winter 2007-2008: 43-47.

Shaviv, Nir J., and Jan Veizer. "Celestial Driver of Phanerozoic Climate?" __GSA Today__ July 2003. Geological Society of America. 23 Mar. 2009 [].

Milloy, Steven. __JunkScience.com__. 23 Mar 2009. Junk Science. 23 Mar 2009 [].

University of Copenhagen. "Researchers Question Validity Of A 'Global Temperature'."__ScienceDaily__ 18 March 2007. 23 March 2009 []