Climate Change is Real!

This week's eSkeptic featured an article by Dr. Donald Prothero in which he discusses climate change; how we know it occurring, how we know we are causing it, and why people try to deny it. It is overall a good article and he presents many facts so I recommend you read it in its entirety (this link will skip the heading portion of this week's eSkeptic) but I wanted to focus on one thing he said.

“I agree that climate is changing, but I’m skeptical that humans are the main cause, so we shouldn’t do anything.” This is just fence sitting. A lot of reasonable skeptics deplore the “climate denialism” of the right wing, but still want to be skeptical about the cause. If they want proof, they can examine the huge array of data that directly points to humans causing global warming.²⁰ We can directly measure the amount of carbon dioxide humans are producing, and it tracks exactly with the amount of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Through carbon isotope analysis, we can show that this carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is coming directly from our burning of fossil fuels, not from natural sources. We can also measure oxygen levels that drop as we produce more carbon that then combines with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide. We have satellites in space that are measuring the heat released from the planet and can actually see the atmosphere get warmer. The most crucial proof emerged only in the past few years: climate models of the greenhouse effect predict that there should be cooling in the stratosphere (the upper layer of the atmosphere above 10 km (6 miles) in elevation, but warming in the troposphere (the bottom layer of the atmosphere below 10 km (6 miles), and that’s exactly what our space probes have measured. Finally, we can rule out any other culprits (see above): solar heat is decreasing since 1940, not increasing, and there are no measurable increases in cosmic radiation, methane, volcanic gases, or any other potential cause. Face it—it’s our problem.

I will admit I was at this point for a few years as well but it is the combination of all the evidence that he mentions, along with other pieces of evidence, that eventually made me realize I was wrong. That is how science works and that is why people who are ignoring the science of climate change are wrong.

Religion forces evolution?

The answer is yes at least to some fish in Southern Mexico at least according to a study published recently in Biology Letters. Apparently a religion that predated Columbus' discovery of North America used to more or less create a poison to the fish while praying for a good year rain wise. Well this apparently has created some fish that have become immune to the poison. An article about the paper in ScienceDaily also had this to say:

"The cool thing is that this ceremony has gone on a long time and that the fish responded to it evolutionarily," Tobler says. "Lots of species couldn't live with these changes. It highlights how nature is affected by human activity."

Rosenthal contends that the idea of imposing evolutionary divergence on a species at an extremely localized spatial scale is not a new concept. In fact, he says, it's been happening since the beginning of humankind and that the idea of the "noble savage" is passé.

"We tend to have this wonderful Pocahontas idea that before Europeans came in, everything was pristine and in harmony with nature and that all of the changes in our environment have been post-industrialization," he explains. "No. People have been changing the environment forever."

Whether we want to admit it or not we are part of this planet and we can effect it in many different ways. This is something we must all understand because too often we look at ourselves as better than other animals when we are in fact just another animal. This gets forgotten about especially when it comes to climate change.

Paper Reference
M. Tobler, Z. W. Culumber, M. Plath, K. O. Winemiller, G. G. Rosenthal. An indigenous religious ritual selects for resistance to a toxicant in a livebearing fish. Biology Letters, 2010; DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2010.0663