Could the Earth's Record Hot Streak Signal a New Climate Era? (msn.com) 170
South America's Amazon River has reached its lowest level since measurements began, according to the Washington Post, while temperatures "hovered above 110 degrees Fahrenheit" for nearly a week as April began in the capital of Mali. "Nights offered little relief, with temperatures often staying above 90 degrees..."
"An overtaxed electrical grid sputtered and shut down," they add, and "dehydration and heat stroke became epidemic... At the city's main hospital, doctors recorded a month's worth of deaths in just four days. Local cemeteries were overwhelmed." The historic heat wave that besieged Mali and other parts of West Africa this month — which scientists say would have been "virtually impossible" in a world without human-caused climate change — is just the latest manifestation of a sudden and worrying surge in global temperatures. Fueled by decades of uncontrolled fossil fuel burning and an El Niño climate pattern that emerged last June, the planet this year breached a feared warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Nearly 19,000 weather stations have notched record high temperatures since January 1. Each of the last ten months has been the hottest of its kind.
The scale and intensity of this hot streak is extraordinary even considering the unprecedented amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, researchers say. Scientists are still struggling to explain how the planet could have exceeded previous temperature records by as much as half a degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) last fall. What happens in the next few months, said Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, could indicate whether Earth's climate has undergone a fundamental shift — a quantum leap in warming that is confounding climate models and stoking ever more dangerous weather extremes.
But even if the world returns to a more predictable warming trajectory, it will only be a temporary reprieve from the conditions that humanity must soon confront, Schmidt said. "Global warming continues apace."
Will this summer's La Niña cool things off? More atmospheric research is underway, and "Schmidt says it's too soon to know how worried the world should be," according to the article. But he does raise this possibility. "What if the statistical connections that we are basing our predictions on are no longer valid?"
"It's niggling at the back of my brain that it could be that the past is no longer a guide to the future."
"An overtaxed electrical grid sputtered and shut down," they add, and "dehydration and heat stroke became epidemic... At the city's main hospital, doctors recorded a month's worth of deaths in just four days. Local cemeteries were overwhelmed." The historic heat wave that besieged Mali and other parts of West Africa this month — which scientists say would have been "virtually impossible" in a world without human-caused climate change — is just the latest manifestation of a sudden and worrying surge in global temperatures. Fueled by decades of uncontrolled fossil fuel burning and an El Niño climate pattern that emerged last June, the planet this year breached a feared warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Nearly 19,000 weather stations have notched record high temperatures since January 1. Each of the last ten months has been the hottest of its kind.
The scale and intensity of this hot streak is extraordinary even considering the unprecedented amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, researchers say. Scientists are still struggling to explain how the planet could have exceeded previous temperature records by as much as half a degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) last fall. What happens in the next few months, said Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, could indicate whether Earth's climate has undergone a fundamental shift — a quantum leap in warming that is confounding climate models and stoking ever more dangerous weather extremes.
But even if the world returns to a more predictable warming trajectory, it will only be a temporary reprieve from the conditions that humanity must soon confront, Schmidt said. "Global warming continues apace."
Will this summer's La Niña cool things off? More atmospheric research is underway, and "Schmidt says it's too soon to know how worried the world should be," according to the article. But he does raise this possibility. "What if the statistical connections that we are basing our predictions on are no longer valid?"
"It's niggling at the back of my brain that it could be that the past is no longer a guide to the future."
Mali (Score:2, Insightful)
Mali struggles to keep its generators running. This is a corruption and dictator problem.
I've long said the biggest problem for humanity is death, as it has been since we've been humans, and the biggest problem with death is dictatorship and corruption slowing progress.
Putting it in terms of gw because that's the current concern in the west, puts the cart before the horse for major problems of humanity by several orders of magnitude.
Re:Mali (Score:5, Insightful)
Mali struggles to keep its generators running. This is a corruption and dictator problem.
For them, yes. But as with anything, nothing is 100%. Give enough warmth and it won't matter how amazing your electrical grid is, it'll always win.
the biggest problem with death is dictatorship and corruption slowing progress
Oh absolutely. But the solution isn't power grids and generators, the solution is stopping our unbounded disposal of CO2 directly into the environment. We either need to reduce the CO2 being released altogether or find some means to stop dumping it directly into the air.
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> Oh absolutely. But the solution isn't power grids and generators, the solution is stopping our unbounded disposal of CO2 directly into the environment. We either need to reduce the CO2 being released altogether or find some means to stop dumping it directly into the air.
Incorrect, the solution is certainly power grid improvement.
Your solution is for the far long term and will do nothing to solve the issues within anyones lifetimes.
It's like trying to address the number of fatalities on a road by workin
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Oh absolutely. But the solution isn't power grids and generators, the solution is stopping our unbounded disposal of CO2 directly into the environment.
Bro, they were talking about shit like this in Mother Earth News almost 50 years ago. If nothing was done by now, what makes you think anything will be done until we are literally dying by the millions or billions?
(Holy shit, the magazine still exists. Likely only online at this point.)
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It not only puts the cart before the horse, but gw efforts are rife with corruption and a lack of accountability. They're basically government slush funds for corruption and spending malfeasance. If you're looking for cost effective energy, pre-subsidized cost of "green" technology power (batteries, wind, and solar) isn't it.
If you have to ask then the answer must be no. (Score:1, Redundant)
I recall some rule about questions in news headlines, that if there is a question then the answer is most likely no. I believe this rule applies here.
Extreme heat is undoubtedly deadly but even more deadly is cold. Humans are a tropical species, we tolerate heat much better than cold. What makes headlines though is that heat often kills quickly with heat stroke and such while cold kills slowly by wearing on the immune system and such so people die of pneumonia or such at relatively random intervals. Wit
Re:If you have to ask then the answer must be no. (Score:5, Insightful)
>Humans are a tropical species, we tolerate heat much better than cold.
The majority of our population centres were in no danger of becoming so cold as to be uninhabitable. We're looking at a lot of currently inhabited areas that will have extended periods of fatal wet bulb temperatures.
> Is a warmer planet all that bad?
We lose our existing coastal infrastructure (which will create new pollution problems). We will see climate zone shifts causing mass population migrations which will likely lead to wars. With more energy available, storms will become stronger. Given the climate change is happening more rapidly than evolution can generally produce adaptations, we can expect a fairly long period where mass extinctions outnumber migrating species or new species filling abandoned niches, which will almost certainly mean fewer food options for us. The elevated CO2 levels will impair human cognition indoors where concentrations are higher and more difficult to dilute to safe levels due to the external elevated levels.
Yes, a warmer planet is 'all that bad'.
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Ice ages don't freeze the entire planet. The last 'snowball Earth' was 635 million years ago. Since then it's north of 37deg N in the northern hemisphere and barely touches the southern outside of Antarctica itself.
Ice ages aren't accompanied by higher CO2 levels than the human brain is evolved to tolerate.
The next glacial period won't happen for another 50,000 years while we're dealing with heating issues right now.
But you are correct, it's not up for debate - AGW is a far greater threat than an ice age.
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You're either stupid or a liar if you claim to not understand ice ages are more dangerous to life.
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> I didn't say they freeze the entire planet. I didn't say they are accompanied by higher CO2. Nice strawmen. All your irrelevant blabbing doesn't change the fact that humanity was almost wiped out in the last ice age approximately 70K years ago.
I find it amazing that around that time, we all agree that Humans started wearing clothes.
I wonder why ;)
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People are stupid yes.
(obviously poster is missing a badly needed comma)
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I searched; I didn't find anything to support your claim with regards to humans. Are you referring to some ancestor of humanity?
Also I don't think Ice ages are considered the greater threat. The rate of change for the next predicted ice age is slow enough that it's easier to modify society. 50,000 years for an ice age gives us more time than 100 or so years for large changes we will see with hu
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> I searched; I didn't find anything to support your claim with regards to humans
Really?
It's very easy to find. BUt the date/time given is incorrect.
https://www.history.com/news/p... [history.com]
> Also I don't think Ice ages are considered the greater threat.
Well seeing as there were just about 1000 humans left alive because of it I say they are the greater threat.
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That's what I orginally found, but the date matters. 900,000 years ago those couldn't be "humans" since we currently believe Homo sapiens showed up around around 300,000 years ago.
We don't really know the capabilities of those ancestors, so it's not great evidence. The rate of change, not the mention the technology advances over a lo
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This is probably true, but completely irrelevant to the current discussion. An ice age is not happening any time in the near future, whereas abnormal warming is happening now and needs to be dealt with. This is like when someone is attacked by a pitbull, and you say that if they were instead attacked by a tiger, or a t-rex, that would be more dangerous. Probably true, but a tiger or t-rex attack is a pure hypothetical, whereas the pitbull attack is happening and needs to be dealt with now.
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Yes, a warmer planet is 'all that bad'.
Evidently, nobody fucking cares. They will care when they are gasping for breath, but until then, we will continue blowing CO2 into the atmosphere unabated. The only thing many people will be gasping with their last breath is, "we made lots of profit!".
"You dead bitch. You dead. Why are you still breathing?"
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You know what's new? Climate shifting so that large populations will starve or die from heat if they stay where they are.
You can insulate yourself if you go out in the cold, maybe wear an electrically heated vest or gloves. In the heat you drink and sweat, and try to stay in the shade. If it's too hot and/or humid for sweating to keep you cool enough, you die.
Not to mention that increase in heat is going to change where food grows.
The idea that we should be OK with global warming because people die in co
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We can adapt to the new climate like humans have done since humans were human
The thing is this kind of warmth. If it continues at the pace it is going, there isn't an adapt. We just simply cannot adapt to where this is heading and no technology will change that. We can leave the planet maybe, but we don't even have that technology. We can visit space, maybe another planet, but we have zero ability to *live* in space. So if this continues, and maybe it won't who knows, but if it *does* continue at the rate we are seeing, dying is the only outcome. There are 0% chances of any ot
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What economic or political barrier is so high that we'd rather face extinction than overcome?
You seem to be a fan of short answers that leave lots open, so here you go. Short term profits.
Also you should stop playing to be so obtuse in order to find some sort of splitting hairs argument. You know exactly the various barriers that exist, you are insulting yourself with this question.
I miss the days when replies on Slashdot were actually thought provoking. This is just a cop-out of a reply.
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Are you for real?
How can you farm in places that don't even have soil?
Are you also going to tilt the earth more so they get similar amounts of sunlight to the places we're losing?
When going through a bad patch the key is to keep going, not turn around and try to go back because you get stuck in the worst part of it.
So you're 5m into a 100m minefield, you just plow on through? That's braindead thinking.
Right now we are having localized heating but soon the extra rain from warmer oceans will make Mali much more habitable.
Oh, you're even stupider.
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Just make a uBlock filter for it.
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it's much easier to heat the cold then it is to cool the heat.
Not being able to burn anything reduces that spread considerably.
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So many environmentally friendly ways to heat the cold. Fire is barbaric way to keep warm.
My point exactly. Most of them as technologically complex as cooling the heat. It used to be heating was easier than cooling, even a cave man could do it. Can't say cooling is harder anymore.
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> Adapting to heat: impossible.
I find it easy, in winter we wear better clothing. In summer, remove the clothing. All of it if need be.
Ah but many societies are not mature enough to remove clothing :D
Just Have A Nuclear War (Score:2, Funny)
Then we will have a nuclear winter and cool this hot rock down. Just thinking outside the box.
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We don't even need that. Just have another major volcanic eruption at least on the scale of Mount Tambora (there are several volcanoes in Indonesia capable of this right now) and watch Earth's climate drop by over one degree Celsius and Europe wondering why it froze over in winter.
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Just thinking outside the box.
Not successfully. That would be even more deadly.
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Nuclear winter would only last a year or so.
Yes (Score:2)
Signal a New Climate Era?
But we shouldn't do anything different about this one then we did with the last.
Kind of nonsense (Score:2)
Mali is in the center of Africa.
El Ninho is a ocean current pattern in the pacific. It hardly has any influence on the other side of the planet.
This current El Ninho is roughly one year old.
It is completely implausible that this summer already an La Ninja pops up.
That will take 5 to 7 years. And there is no guarantee that after an El Ninho you get La Ninja. You easily get 2 in a row.
I can answer this (Score:3)
... in about 5,000 years.
Fracking Methane (Score:2)
Re:Betteridges Law (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: Recent studies... (Score:5, Funny)
A lethal dose of potassium cyanide is about 250mg for a healthy adult male human.
But hang on ! A healthy male human is wayyyyy bigger than 250mg. They're like, I dunno...80 kg or so. That's like, so much bigger than 250mg !
Ergo..shooting up potassium cyanide sgould be harmless.
Your logic is impeccable sir !
Re: Recent studies... (Score:2)
Modded as a -1 troll ???
Have the mods all lost their fucking minds ? Or are they just retarded ?
Re: Recent studies... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Recent studies... (Score:5, Insightful)
I will. 250 million is 2.5 x 10^8. 7.6 sextillion is 7.6 x 10^21.
250 mg is 2.5 x 10^2 * 10^-6 kg = 2.5 x 10^-4 kg. 80 kg is 8 x 10^1 kg.
The difference in the first case is 21-8 = 13 orders of magnitude. The difference in the second case is 6-1 = 5 orders of magnitude, for a total difference of differences between examples of 13-5 = 8 orders of mangitude.
Your claim was "50,000 - 100,000 orders of magnitude off". Assuming the "-" is "to", that's 5 x 10^4 to 1 x 10^5 orders of magnitude.
I think it's safe to say you don't know what "order of magnitude" means.
Re: Recent studies... (Score:4, Informative)
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Did you respond to the wrong comment? I am indeed unsure how "long wave transparency windows" are related to the definition of "order of magnitude."
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I agree that you not knowing what you're talking about is unlikely to affect much.
I do hope nobody takes my post about your knowledge of scientific notation as some kind of support for your inane belief that the Earth being massive means we can't affect the climate.
Re: Recent studies... (Score:2)
Re:Recent studies... (Score:4, Informative)
You're welcome.
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Climate change skeptics aren't interested in evidence or facts though, they have made their opinions about this stuff a major part of their identities and the oil corporations that produce the propaganda they consume know exactly how to push their buttons.
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Ok lets get a couple of things straight.
1) Climate deniers aren't "Skeptics". Science Skepticism is about applying the scientific method to scientific claim. Climate denialism is about applying political convictions to scientific claims.
2) The term your looking for isn't "Alarmist", its "Scientist".
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Anyway, care to refute my point?
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Wait hold up, what about "Valentina Zharkova" and her report is so credible that you post it as evidence of a certain outcome yet all those similar scientists at NASA and the NOAA and the IPCC, those guys are all bullshit, but this, this is real right?
So when said little ice age hits and global temperatures start to fall as you say and those same scientists report it as such, why would be believe them then? Wouldn't they still be lying to you as they are lying now?
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That wasn't my question for the OP, i don't care about the science here, I want thought process.
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vs 7.6 sextillion tons of Earth under your feet, and another 2-4 sextillion tons of atmosphere weighing down on top of that.
Uh.. NO. there is not twice as much Earth as Atmosphere. What the hell are you smoking? The Earth is 8,000 miles in diameter. The atmosphere is, at best, maybe 20 miles thick.
Want a visual aid? Take a basketball & wrap a sheet of paper around it.. The ball is the Earth and the paper is the atmosphere.
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That's just the decomposition heating her up...
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Dude, I've heard about coffin-jumpers, but doing it in a cremation is really fucked up.
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Our species survived past warming and cooling cycles because they happened slowly enough that we had plenty of time to adapt.
Obligatory xkcd. [xkcd.com]
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Actually some changes were very rapid indeed. No need for dumb cartoons. The Bronze Age Collapse was huge and rapid. We even know the year it happened! 1177 BC! There were several factors but a rapid change to a cooler and drier climate was a huge one.
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Our species will survive past this one too.
Many of our civilizations did not survive past warming and cooling cycles, even though they often had more time to adapt than we're likely to get. The go-to explanation for "why did X civilization disappear" is "environmental factors."
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This is true. Some civilisations perished or were profoundly diminished. Others were damaged but weathered the storm (speaking metaphorically, not atmospherically!). And others emerged and prospered. Yes, a changing climate is disruptive but it is not a danger to humanity as a species, or even to modern urban norms. It will not threaten the establishment of urban civilisation. It might force a redistribution of populations, of areas of agricultural abundance. It is no threat at all to us as a species.
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Oh, climate change is best at fucking up cities. They can't move, and they're dependent on a regular supply of food.
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This is a common claim. People like to expand it into things like, well, more CO2 and warmer climates means a lusher Earth and more food!
That's probably true. Most of the land is in the northern hemisphere, fairly far from the equator. Deserts will expand with warmer temperatures, but likely even more land will become arable in the north. I'm Canadian, and my countrymen often quip that global warming sounds pretty good.
The problem is that cities need a *constant* supply of food. I grew up in a farming commu
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Hahahaha, no. If (and that is a big if) some humans survive, they will be nomads with short, brutish lives.
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And if you thought Waterworld was a crappy movie, you ain't seen nothing yet when you have to do it as a LARP.
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He is talking about his fantasy that there is no problem. You know, the kind of abysmal stupidity that got us this catastrophe in the first place.
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I'm not sure how you get "there is no problem" from the species will survive but civilization is fucked. Admittedly, that is the direction climate change deniers are heading: "oh, *some* humans will survive, so we don't have to do anything!"
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Pick one. Look up a vanished civilization and you've got a decent chance of finding one.
I googled "vanished civilizations" and the first hit is this:
https://www.britannica.com/lis... [britannica.com]
First on the list is the Maya:
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And some civilisations did survive through all this, and others emerged from the shadows cast by their forebears. It's also worth considering our mastery of agriculture, genetics, desalination, cloud seeding, logistics and so on is truly awesome and is only going to improve. We are not at the mercy of relatively mild fluctuations nature in quite the same way as were our ancestors. A river changing course no longer renders a city state untenable. A three year regional drought is not enough to bring down
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Wet bulb temps are already killing people at little more than 100 degrees.
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Good day
Re: Record Hot Streak based on.... (Score:2)
Always great to have a conversation and exchange.....but you ran away. Surprise.
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Erh... no.
Locally, sometimes, for a few decades, maybe centuries, the temperatures were higher. Due to various local events, from eruptions to various weather phenomena we still encounter today.
Global temperatures were definitely not higher in the past.
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Is that an attempt to cram as much bullshit into a few sentences as possible? There wasn't a single sentence that actually contained anything remotely correct.
Maybe that modern humans have been around for 100k years. That's the only one I'd have to look up to debunk.
Re:Why didn't COVID drop CO2 levels? (Score:4, Informative)
> trying to explain why atmospheric CO2 didn't drop when emissions plummeted
Emissions did not go negative and CO2 takes several hundred years to be naturally sequestered.
>why the earth got warmer when atmospheric pollution levels droped
Because reflective particulate pollution dropped, allowing more sunlight to reach the surface.
> the effect of the sun on the earth's temps
In terms of annual differentials, effectively zero on human timescales. The long term heating of the Sun will eventually sterilize and probably evapourate the planet, but that will take billions of years.
>Environmental "scientists" using "math" and calculating with "equations." Sure. Keep doing that math thing.
You are a complete moron, but you're confident about it, I'll give you that.
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I think the biggest flaw with your worldview is you think the average person has money for the politicians and financials to steal in the first place.
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I have read multiple articles in "peer reviewed" journals, trying to explain why atmospheric CO2 didn't drop when emissions plummeted, and why the earth got warmer when atmospheric pollution levels droped. The articles are gibberish.
Atmospheric CO2 takes a very long time to drop (and we're still adding more) and when pollution dropped more sunlight got through and raised temps slightly.
Sorry if that's too complicated for you.
I do remember that the environmental "science" classes I peeked at, then immediately dropped, when course shopping undergrad, contained the stupidist collection of humans I have ever run across.
Don't worry, the average intelligence jumped way up after you dropped.
I remember discussing the effect of the sun on the earth's temps with some enviro science professor, long ago. He said the sun had "no effect."
The prof was assuming you were smart enough to understand that everyone would know the sun warms the earth.
He was saying that sun's output was constant enough to have no effect.
Since I've finally realized how dumb the average person on earth really is, I don't care any more.
The midwit phenomenon is the great truth of our age.
I hope you can take some solace in the fact that the average person i
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The issue here is that you are not smart enough to understand what is going on and what is being written, and at the same time have excessive arrogance that prevents you from understanding your own limitations. This is known as the "Dunning - Kruger Effect".
Incidentally, denying Science is a common, irrational defense mechanism that dumb people use when Science has results they do not like. You know, like a small child screaming "No! No! No!" while holding their hands over their ears and about as mature.
Re:Why didn't COVID drop CO2 levels? (Score:4, Informative)
Umm... they did [umweltbundesamt.at]?
Well, at least in countries that actually had a lockdown and didn't just fake it.
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I'm not saying anything about changing temperatures are man fault or not, blah blah blah, but when has anything in nature stayed the same? It's in constant change. Some are slow, other can be quick, but it's nature. Stuff changes.
I'm just baffled by the statement "the past is no longer a guide to the future." It never has been. Just like investing.
I'm baffled by people who insist on taking statements completely literally when it's obvious that's not what the speaker meant. Especially when the person in question actually explains what the statement means!
"What if the statistical connections that we are basing our predictions on are no longer valid?"
ie, the scientist who obviously understands that nature changes, is worried because this current change isn't really predicted by current models. If the warming keeps up that means the models are wrong in t
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"this current change isn't really predicted by current models."
Huh? Then what are all those models alarmists have been screaming about?
The models have errors and uncertainties, including about when we might hit various tipping points.
The fear is that the "alarmists" were wrong, and the climate is warming faster than they thought.
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Oh, sure. Bu the thing that has made Humans and human civilization possible in the first place is _slow_ change. Only somebody completely and utterly dumb would call what is coming and what is man-made "slow".
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It's not that the earth's climate never changed in the past. What matters here is the speed it does it. What used to take millennia takes years now.
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Yep, do so. Like any dumb person would do. Bask in the safety to non-understanding.
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Well, if direct, massive lies give you comfort, go for it. Just do not expect to be mistaken for an adult.
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> tedious ignorant people are pathetic.
Yes, they certainly are. Why you need to tell us such people are pathetic I dont know.
(poster again missing a much needed comma)
Ha (Score:2)
That was such a well-reasoned argument you made.
Expletives are the cheapest form of "I admit it, I'm wrong and have no argument." I note that you did not even have the courtesy to use your account to make your drive-by response and went [appropriately in this case] as "anonymous coward" but probably logged in and worked to down-mod the post to "Troll". The Ad Hominem [wikipedia.org] attack constitutes a bright neon sign flashing a warning that you have nothing of value to contribute.
If your religion is so weak it cannot be