[kkielhofner]

I'd like to say politics could be avoided on this but not knowing anything about the science, historical stats, etc I've always had a simple nagging question on this issue that hopefully someone can help me understand. Elementary school science classes teach basic cause and effect.

My question is: How is it possible the planet can be billions of years old, then all of a sudden we discover fossil fuels in the past few hundreds years and start extracting and burning them at incredible rates, releasing them into the atmosphere.

Isn't it safe to assume there would be a basic cause-effect relationship here with /some/ kind of consequence? It just strikes me as a "no free lunch" scenario - I don't fundamentally understand how you could all of a sudden start burning all of this stuff and argue against there being negative effects for the overall atmosphere, ecosystem, etc.

Can someone help me understand how/why this wouldn't be the case?

[TheOtherHobbes]

No one can because it's clearly not true.

The only people arguing it isn't true are the various think tanks, foundations, coalitions, online PR bots, and the rest funded by the fossil fuel industry - working to persuade those who don't understand the issue, but are sure their opinion is very important.

Atmospheric CO2 science has been researched since the 19th century.

In the 70s Exxon/Mobil had its own climate scientists making shockingly accurate predictions of what would happen.

The IPCC climate change models - produced from 1990 onwards - have usually been conservative.

That is the objective reality. Everything else is spin, FUD, and noise.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-a...

[majesticglue]

those think tanks really did a number. the climate denialists, have made moving goal of going from denial to climate change is not man made.

The amount of americans who can't stand that fact that they were wrong on the matter is incredible.

[nojvek]

https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m

This book goes into good detail in human population growth, growth in energy use, and growth in use of coal, oil and other energy sources.

Highly recommended. Lots of stats, charts and math.

It’s not about climate change, the book is about understanding human growth and energy (across its various forms) and their implications.

[nerdchum]

Everyone is so sensational about climate change but never looks at Earth's history.

Were at the tail end of an ice age.

For most of Earth's history, there were no polar ice caps.

For 400 out of 500 million years the earth was warmer than it is now.

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/whats-hotte...

https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_widt...

[ShellfishMeme]

The earth is 4.5 billion years old so I don't understand what you mean with "400 out of 500 million years".

Also for a lot of that time earth was a hellishly hot place with little life.

[nerdchum]

The past 500 million years have been rich with life.

[austinjp]

That's disingenuous misdirection. The current change is a threat to humanity of our own making.

[nerdchum]

> threat to humanity of our own making.

How? Do you have concrete examples or just fear based conjecture?