Here is another graph showing roughly the same thing, except that it’s comparing two different ice cores and “ice volume” (and I’m not quite sure just what that’s referring to).

Ruddiman’s thesis is that the “Anthropocene” is responsible for the temperature not rapidly decreasing as it has done previously, but, due to human activities, has maintained itself (due in large part to that great rise in greenhouse gases, which is evident from the spike in CO2).

I don’t mean to imply that human activities are 100% the cause of anything climate related. Obviously they are not. And you’re right to say that we cannot predict the future. Permafrost, etc., however, has covered much, much larger parts of the planet (like, the bulk of Europe) during other fairly recent epochs, and its disappearance does not seem to have caused any catastrophic effects.

The offset of a cooling period by human intervention via Industrialization or whatever is an interesting theory though!

If he’s right, it would also suggest that some level of anthropogenic greenhouse emissions are actually beneficial for maintaining a climate suitable for agriculture and living. The interesting question then becomes “how to we strike that balance”?

What I find ironic in this sort of thing is how positions flip around.

When people want to cut down trees in a section of forest, liberal arguments tend to focus on the inability of science and statistics to accurately portray what happens across scales in an ecosystem. Conservative (read: pro-business of tree cutting) arguments tend to point to statistical analysis and science to support what they say will happen when the trees are cut.

When it comes to Global Warming the opposite occurs. Liberals point to the science and computers and Conservatives point to their inability to show what is going on at different levels and then draw causative connections between inputs, outputs, et al.

There are A LOT of things that inform the debate on global warming. This is good. Where people go wrong is when they use these things to feed their speculation. Also, nearly every time you read about Global Warming the predictions that are covered are the WORST possible scenarios yet they are discussed as if they’re exactly what’s going to happen….next week.

Human involvement in the situation is obvious with the increase in gases since Industrialization. However, what is often neglected is that it’s no longer human actions that are causing the most trouble. Rather, we have likely warmed things up ‘enough’ so that natural processes have taken over and now massive carbon sinks (i.e. permafrost) are releasing gases at rates that mankind can only dream of.

Lastly, and more importantly for me, is this notion that humankind is somehow separate from nature. That because we are more able to manage our environment than almost any other creature on the planet, we are somehow ‘not’ natural. I would argue that the opposite could be and likely is true. Namely, what humans do is indeed natural and nature responds to it as it would any other actor. Of course, as I said, we have more power to influence the environment. So, if people want to argue that we’ve got more responsibility to act responsibly as well, I’m cool with that.

There’s a warming lag at play though. We could stop emitting greenhouse gases completely and ‘nature’ would still be emitting millions of metric tons of methane, CO2, etc.

There’s also the old adage: “There is your side of the story, my side of the story and then there’s the truth” Although, that saying is a bit inconvenient…OOOOH….yeah, I just made a bad pun. Whatever.