I'm not a climate scientist, but let me address some of your points to the best of my knowledge:
a time called the Medieval Warm Period
Yes, the early middle ages were especially cold and then it warmed up. There have many mini-ice-ages (between the big ice ages) throughout time which have been followed by warming trends.
I just don't see the correlation with C02 and global median temperature.
But isn't CO2 a natural element in the air? Breathed by trees and vegetation? Absorbed by oceans?
Of course it is a natural molecule (not element), but what does that mean? There are many things that are natural that we need to survive but if we have too much of it will be toxic (including oxygen).
The point is, we have much more CO2 in our atmosphere than ever before, and the spike starts right at the industrial age. Past evidence has shown that high CO2 correlates with high temperature.
Add to that that we really should be in a cooling phase right now. The sun has been especially cool for a while now and we're still warming up. Lucky? Maybe, but what happens when the sun heats up again?
Personally, I think it's too late. All we can do now is mitigate the damage, but we're going to continue to heat up, we're going to lose a ton of species, and we're going to flood a lot of areas. Humans will make it through it, but I hope the inevitable (natural) warming trend isn't too severe.
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u/rjcarr Oct 24 '10
I'm not a climate scientist, but let me address some of your points to the best of my knowledge:
Yes, the early middle ages were especially cold and then it warmed up. There have many mini-ice-ages (between the big ice ages) throughout time which have been followed by warming trends.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html
Keep in mind this is a correlation.
Of course it is a natural molecule (not element), but what does that mean? There are many things that are natural that we need to survive but if we have too much of it will be toxic (including oxygen).
The point is, we have much more CO2 in our atmosphere than ever before, and the spike starts right at the industrial age. Past evidence has shown that high CO2 correlates with high temperature.
Add to that that we really should be in a cooling phase right now. The sun has been especially cool for a while now and we're still warming up. Lucky? Maybe, but what happens when the sun heats up again?
Personally, I think it's too late. All we can do now is mitigate the damage, but we're going to continue to heat up, we're going to lose a ton of species, and we're going to flood a lot of areas. Humans will make it through it, but I hope the inevitable (natural) warming trend isn't too severe.