Cutting through the elegant verbosity in Al Fonzi’s piece “What makes a skeptic?” I seized upon what appeared to be a statement of fact: “During the ‘Roman Warm Period’ 2,000 years ago, it was considerably warmer and CO2 considerably greater, at 1,000 ppm.” Astounding!
As someone who is horrified that we have reached 400 ppm (parts per million), I seized upon Fonzi’s words like a drowning man thrown a life preserver: 1,000 ppm! If we survived that, surely we can survive this!
Now to fact check.
When I searched “Roman warm period + 1000ppm,” there were 311 results, most of which were blogs and opinion pieces. I dismissed all of these.
Historic levels of 1,000 ppm is news, a big story, so I searched the under news tab.
There are nine results under news: Several right-wing opinion pieces, and Mr. Fonzi’s own. No major journalistic outlet, the kind that would seize upon this story to sell advertising in our good old free market system, has published the claim.
Well, so, to hell with the news. I would go straight to the science! I searched historic CO2 levels chart.
NASA was the first result. NASA seems like a safe bet to me. There are lots of scientists working at NASA. They have a nice budget, and the best equipment and brains in the world.
The first sentence of the NASA page read as follows: “In 2013, CO2 levels surpassed 400 ppm for the first time in recorded history.”
I am having a hard time reconciling “skeptic” with “gullible.”
Sean Shealy
San Luis Obispo
This article appears in Jul 27 – Aug 6, 2017.
Since NASA ‘s version of recorded history starts after this era I would not get to cocky about who is gullible.
Proxies for earlier periods are not “recorded history. If you look at CO2 over a much longer period you will find many earlier epochs where CO2 was way higher. To remain a “useful idiot” you must limit your sources and your time periods.
NASA has a science side and since Obama they have a political side….you are quoting the political. The science side was real clear when they said all the other planets were warming approximately the same as the earth……..guess you missed that fact. Looking at long term temperature records also shows nothing special is going on……….if you would only look without a predetermined conclusion. Tripling the CO2 level would result in a large net gain for all plant matter on the planet, not a temperature disaster!
I think the whole lot of you need to back up your statements: Fonzi, Shealy, and Amos. What does “recorded history” mean, since 1880? What do you use for proxies for time before recorded history, shells at the bottom of the ocean or glacier cores? Who cares if there is a net gain for all plant matter if CO2 triples if I’ve been burnt up already and can’t have a salad?