Context/Earth

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Wednesday, December 7, 2011

The basic algorithm

A statement was made by a climate change skeptic:
"The existence of fossil fuels is due to the greater plant productivity in a warm world with lots more CO2."

That is what is so bizarre and surreal about the skeptical AGW discussions. They tend to devolve into either elliptical contradictions or else reveal self-consistent and circular truths.
  1. We have low-levels of CO2 now
  2. Levels of CO2 seem to be rising.
  3. This will lead to a warmer climate due to the GHG effect
  4. Wait a second ! --- heat and extra CO2 may be good after all.
  5. That will promote more plant growth
  6. It also might explain why we have lots of fossil fuels.
  7. Millions of years for the plants to get buried by sedimentation and tectonic activity
  8. That's how much of the CO2 was sequestered, lowering atmospheric concentration
  9. But now we are digging it all up
  10. And burning it, releasing CO2 back into the air
  11. Go to step #2

Now we have to believe in the theory of CO2 assisted climate change. The algorithmic (or is that AlGoreRythmic?) steps have already been laid out. The problem is that the skeptics can't argue their way out of this basic trickbox.

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