Now the Earth has had wide variations in atmospheric CO2-level throughout its long history before the evolution of humans and certainly before the Industrial Revolutions.In terms of the oceans and the Earth’s whole history then could you find information to support the coal and oil industry’s claims that we’re NOT the cause of climate change? Do some research and cite other factors in climate besides CO2 levels that would support your claims. Also read the attached article about the controversy. Remember too that there is a lot of money and certainly politics involved in this issue. Some scientists have built their whole careers on trying to prove or disprove the human connections to global warming.
As you’ll see when you do your research the figures for sea-level rise are all over the place. That’s because they’re based on models that are even more complex than hurricane tracking models (they drive even supercomputers nuts).
Now the term “sea-level” is relative. If you check a geologic map you’ll see that just about every piece of land on Earth has been underwater at least once. That’s why sedimentary rocks are the most common type of land surface rock. Sea-level has been up and down thousands of times in the Earth’s long history. We’re just living on the “latest edition” of our planet. Also the one thing that I want everybody to learn from this course: we live on the Earth and we certainly affect it but we DO NOT control it even though we like to think we do. We’re just riding this wet rock through space.
As for the continuing scientific controversy check out this recent article:
Climate panel: warming ‘extremely likely’ man-made
