There are many one sided views on Climate Change but this one I disagree with completely. What is the best way to answer this very recent post so the light at the end of the tunnel provokes change?
I say the poster is more an investor that must have an interest in AGW. I meet so many of these people who believe they are armed with AGW bullets and won't see the fact from fiction.
"Climate is the composite of average stable atmospheric conditions across the planet that "nature" is used to. Climate here being global. Equator and poles. Oceans and atmosphere. Climate change is all about the global average climate changing. Our atmosphere is currently trapping more of the heat that enters it from the sun because CO2 levels are increasing, as a direct result of burning fossil fuels. A fairly constant level of solar energy enters the atmosphere from the very top down, and that heat comes into it, top to bottom. A fraction is re-radiated away depending on the transparency of the atmosphere to heat. CO2 is a greenhouse gas and traps heat energy, controlling how much heat is re-radiated away into space. At the bottom of the atmosphere the heat enters the land and ocean. The atmosphere and the oceans both warm and all that heat is redistributed by various mechanisms (conduction, stirring, circulation) from hotter places (tropics) to cooler places (poles). The mechanism for this is circulation, and a lot of this air circulation is commonly known as wind. More heat trapping leads to more and faster circulation. More wind leads to more water evaporation from warmer water. This leads to more storms, and more precipitation. I.e. storms, floods, extensive erosion, nutrients from soil will be washed from land into oceans, ice melting, sea level rise, etc. When water vapour falls to earth as liquid water its latent heat content is then released again back into the air, feeding more circulation. Global recirculation of this additional energy results in a changing average global air temperature. This is the basis for climate change. Clouds are a definitely a limiting modifier, but they are transient and do not change the basic problem: namely that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, from cloudless top to cloudy bottom, makes the atmosphere retain more heat as a whole. CO2 is the climate thermostat for the atmosphere. While the climate changes globally over geological timescales to accommodate natural CO2 changes, we (humanity - and that is mainly the technological nations) are causing a large and relatively sudden change in CO2 levels. As a result we are beginning to see a relatively sudden change in temperatures, particularly at the poles. Our ecosystems cannot accomodate to this quickly enough, and we can expect to see relatively massive shifts in our planetary patterns of flora and fauna in response. To put this into cruder language we are allowing ourselves to turn the thermostat up several notches and this will make life intolerable for many of our plants and animals. In a fairly short timescale our planet will not look anything like it does today.
But nature has mechanisms to deal with this very situation.
One consequence of this warming is that many species find these warmer conditions very agreeable and are able to prosper happily. One of these is algae, and in particular blue green algae. So long as an excess of phosphorus is available BG algae will thrive under warmer conditions, and will spread widely. As the world warms BG algae will spread wherever they can. Most other species in those places will suffer and be wiped out. Our lakes, rivers, beaches and even oceans are rapidly seeing this occurring with increasing frequency and extent. Having gobbled up all available nutrients (including CO2) from the land and oceans these algae will grow and die and will ultimately settle to the ocean floor where they accumulate all their carbon into what will ultimately become coal and oil after a few million years. But we will have disappeared long before we can dig that up and burn it.
