Comment by toss1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by toss1 | Hacker News Reader

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>>Finding fault is part of Science

Finding RELEVANT Fault is part of Science

Of course the rate has changed, but that level of precision is irrelevant to this question. If it was a steady change to this level, then it is off by 50% (straight-line-average), which is irrelevant; if it is a hockey-stick curve that only makes the point stronger, i.e., humans are super-rapidly producing that scale of greenhouse gasses.

The entire point is a very rough estimate that humans are outputting greenhouse gasses APPROACHING THE SCALE OF the greatest climate disaster in the 4.5 billion year history of the planet.

Despite the ordinary expectation that the Siberian Traps' gigantic volcanic activity for more than a quarter-million years dwarfs anything humans could ever do in a few centuries, the fact is that the scale of our output is now in the same playing field as that disaster.

I'm pointing out that we do not have a gnat in the room, we have an elephant. Yet you want to argue that I didn't specify Asian vs African elephant.

I'm not trying to weigh the elephant to the gram, I'm pointing out that we need to do something before it tears down the house.

Your comments about the minutiae, whether or not they might be technically correct, are not science; they are a distraction.

Have a good evening. I'm done here.

I know I shouldn’t, but … your in the wrong here.

A bit off topic - picture of co2 history is available here: https://skepticalscience.com/EmmissionsAcceleration.html

Thanks for providing that data.

This shows the acceleration of CO2 emissions is more than 2-3X the rate of simple assumption in my original post; i.e., it is more of a straight line up from 1950 vs 1850.

So, while my original simplified calculation overstates a static relationship of human output vs Siberian Traps Permian Extinction output by the same 2-3X, it also shows that we're accelerating into the meaningful danger zone at a far faster rate.

Accelerating into the danger zone at a far faster rate — a steeper slope — will cause far more damage sooner than accelerating more slowly from a high Y-intercept point.

Moreover, despite multiple "Climate Agreements", there is no significant decrease in the slope of fossil fuel consumption or CO2/CH4 outputs (except for a dip in the pandemic).

The original point, that human greenhouse gas outputs relative to that of the greatest extinction in the 4.5 billion year history of the planet, is NOT some trivial 6 orders of magnitute lower as we'd expect from "a quarter million years of volcanic belching". Human output rates are in fact coming within two orders of magnitude the extinction rates, definitely on the same scope and scale, and are rising crazy fast.

The fact that it is mostly in the last 7 decades is not comforting, it is far worse

So, thanks for pointing that out.

> This shows the acceleration of CO2

Thanks for the explanation of what I provided.

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