Topic: Message #652820

[abnormaltoy]

The current accepted age of the earth is approximately 4.5 billion years (plus of minus about 1%-45 million years). Science believes the first evidence of humanoid creatures (“Lucy”) developed approximately 3.6 million years ago. If that is that case, humans have existed on the planet for 0.08% of the planets existence. (Less than 1/10 of 1 percent). In 1709, Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the first alcohol thermometer, and in 1714 the mercury thermometer; the modern thermometer. This means that we have been able to fairly accurately measure temperature for 299 years. This is about 0.00000664% of the planets existence. The industrial revolution, which is arguably the beginning of when man was capable of creating the greenhouse gasses that are claimed to be responsible for “man made global warming” occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830. Most would agree that it was in full swing by 1830, which means that it occurred about 175 years ago. That means that we have had the capacity to create these gasses for 0.00000389% of the planets existence.

Scientists are capable of looking at evidence found in the natural world, and thru technologies like carbon dating feel that they can fairly accurately measure certain conditions that will give approximate ideas of what the global temperatures were like. According to the EPA’s website on global warming, they believe the accuracy of their estimations is pretty close up to about 900 A.D., and the accuracy deteriorates significantly after that due to lack of reliable data. If we make the assumption that our data and associated estimates are accurate, we can extrapolate that we have a “pretty good idea” of what the climate was like for 1108 years. If we look at this as a percent of the planets existence, we “know” what the earth’s climate has been for 0.00002462% of the planets history.

Now, lets look at it in terms that are a bit easier to grasp. If we break the entire existence of the planet into 1 calendar year, we can get a timeline of when we showed up and when our activities began to influence the planet. Doing the math, there are 31,557,600 seconds in a year. Dividing 4.5 billion by the seconds in a year, we find that 1 second is roughly 142.5962 years. Now, again, assuming we have accurate data and have made accurate estimates, we “know” what the world was like for about 7.7702 seconds, or put another way, since Dec 31st at 11:59:52.230. Humanoid existence would be the equivalent of 25246.08 seconds, or 7.0128 days. The first humanoid essentially showed up on December 24th. Taking it a bit further, we discovered how to measure temperature about 2 seconds before the year ends, which would be Dec 31st at 11:59:58. We have been in the industrial revolution for just over 1 second, which puts us at Dec 31st at 11:59:59.

Based on this model, we have populated the earth for about 7 days, and can probably explain what the earth’s climate was like for just over 7 seconds. We can accurately describe the world’s climate for 2 seconds. We have only been able to influence the global climate for just over 1 second. Does it make any sense that we are capable of completely altering the world’s climate in 1/31557600 of a year? I’d argue that it is pretty presumptuous of us to believe that we have that much power.

Lets not confuse pollution with global warming. We have been absolutely horrible stewards of our natural resources and beauty. There are very few places that do not show evidence of human activity, and as such are to some degree or another are polluted. Pollution does not equal global warming.

Over the eons...the trend overall, is toward cooling. We've gone from a molten surface to the present conditions.

I'm more concerned about the possibility/probability of future ice ages...historically, there has been much more suffering associated with cold climes than during more temperate times (even today, more people die from cold weather exposure than from exposure to heat...not counting deaths in fires).