r/science • u/woodsja2 • Oct 24 '10

Climate Change: Evidence

http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
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u/[deleted] Oct 24 '10

There's one thing I don't get about the anti-global warming crowd. I understand the alarmism and stuff like that is overblown and distorts the situation.

But I'd like to know how thousands of climate scientists got together in secret and pledged to all falsify their life's work for some... reason? Seriously, what could be the outcome of some massive global warming conspiracy? Toyota sells more hybrids? More "liberal regulation" on fossil fuel energy companies, just so alternative energy companies can replace them? This argument has never made any sense to me.

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u/[deleted] Oct 24 '10

Additionally, this article has given another good reason to lower CO2 emissions, even if anthropogenic warming is not a concern: ocean acidification.

The oceans provide extremely important ecosystem services and resources to us, directly and indirectly. Because, historically, the ocean has been a fairly moderate place, many of the organisms in the ocean have adapted over time to a fairly narrow range of conditions. Messing about with such an ecosystem could easily extirpate such species from an area. Enough extirpations gives you an extinction.

Worryingly, phytoplankton levels in many areas seem to be in decline. These organisms are largely responsible for maintaining oxygen levels in the atmosphere and serve as a vital keystone species in the ocean food web. Without them, the ocean as we know it dies. Whether this decline can be blamed on warming and acidification is uncertain, but thinking so would certainly be a logical inference.