CO2 and Climate Change
The BBC News website has an article linking climate change to CO2 levels today. Their claim is that high levels of CO2 20 million years ago caused major climate change. This is problematic for two reasons: first of all if there was no industry 20 million years ago then increasing and decreasing levels of CO2 is natural. Secondly, if changing levels of CO2 isn’t natural then maybe it was the climate change that caused the increase in CO2 and not the other way round.
The global temperature has been increasing over the past 15 years, not decreasing. Whilst CO2 levels may cause climate change, we can only really expect it to change in one direction – it can’t do one thing 20 million years ago and then do something different now unless there are other factors.