A Hellish 'Hothouse Earth' Getting Closer, Scientists Say (theguardian.com) 341
The world is closer than thought to a "point of no return" after which runaway global heating cannot be stopped, scientists have said. From a report: Continued global heating could trigger climate tipping points, leading to a cascade of further tipping points and feedback loops, they said. This would lock the world into a new and hellish "hothouse Earth" climate far worse than the 2-3C temperature rise the world is on track to reach.
The climate would also be very different to the benign conditions of the past 11,000 years, during which the whole of human civilisation developed. At just 1.3C of global heating in recent years, extreme weather is already taking lives and destroying livelihoods across the globe. At 3-4C, "the economy and society will cease to function as we know it," scientists said last week, but a hothouse Earth would be even more fiery. The public and politicians were largely unaware of the risk of passing the point of no return, the researchers said.
The group said they were issuing their warning because while rapid and immediate cuts to fossil fuel burning were challenging, reversing course was likely to be impossible once on the path to a hothouse Earth, even if emissions were eventually slashed. It was difficult to predict when climate tipping points would be triggered, making precaution vital, said Dr Christopher Wolf, a scientist at Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Associates in the US. Wolf is a member of a study team that includes Prof Johan Rockstrom at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and Prof Hans Joachim Schellnhuber at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria.
The climate would also be very different to the benign conditions of the past 11,000 years, during which the whole of human civilisation developed. At just 1.3C of global heating in recent years, extreme weather is already taking lives and destroying livelihoods across the globe. At 3-4C, "the economy and society will cease to function as we know it," scientists said last week, but a hothouse Earth would be even more fiery. The public and politicians were largely unaware of the risk of passing the point of no return, the researchers said.
The group said they were issuing their warning because while rapid and immediate cuts to fossil fuel burning were challenging, reversing course was likely to be impossible once on the path to a hothouse Earth, even if emissions were eventually slashed. It was difficult to predict when climate tipping points would be triggered, making precaution vital, said Dr Christopher Wolf, a scientist at Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Associates in the US. Wolf is a member of a study team that includes Prof Johan Rockstrom at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and Prof Hans Joachim Schellnhuber at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria.
Well (Score:2, Funny)
Just move away.
Re:Well (Score:5, Informative)
I'd rather have Musk just move away.
"Scientists thought they understood global warming. Then the past three years happened."
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Yes, we are fucked in the ass. The worst case scenarios are likely if not optimistic.
Re: (Score:3)
The paywall really puts a damper on the doomsaying, though. Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Stargate:
Dr. Rodney McKay: Why wait? Why does the guy show up a day-and-a-half after this all starts to do his whole "Prepare to meet your doom" thing?
Major Samantha Carter: I don't know. Maybe he wanted to make sure it was gonna work.
Dr. Rodney McKay: Yeah, that would be embarrassing, wouldn't it? "Nothing can stop the destruction that I bring upon you!" Then the gate shuts down. "Oops, sorry. Never mind."
Re: (Score:2)
I'd rather have Musk just move away.
And take the most successful line of EVs with him?
Re:Well (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe? It's arguable that his support of this admin helped them win power and that has offset much of the good hos EVs have done at this point. Probably not true but it's also not zero, he's burned through a lot of his goodwill and the admin is setting the issue backwards by some amount.
Teslas cratering sales in Europe, the mediocrity of the Cybertruck, the paring down of their product lines, they continue to lose self driving ground to Waymo, Tesla isn't failing but it isn't doing great either and I think Musk himself eats a lot of that. My prediction is that Tesla is sticking around with within the next 5 years they will have squandered their enormous first mover advantage. Once the other car companies are able to produce affordable battery packs Tesla will have to compete on more than price and they will lose that fight
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He just got the right timing and the right product for that moment.
And the right marketing. He leaned heavily on aspects of performance, coolness and luxury. He's (or was) god at marketing. He's still good at hype.
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BYD passed them in 2025.
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And your priority for the $20,000 price differential is to spend it on a luxury vehicle? I would prioritize rent, land, or retirement.
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So, you would rather drive a Chinese EV than a Tesla? I do not know where you are from, but I still think you have some wrong priorities.
If you are implying that Tesla is a better option because China is not trustworthy, then sure - there are reasons to be suspicious about China, but I wouldn't trust Musk as far as I could throw him.
Re: (Score:2)
"Currently driving a Chinese EV in the USA"
Which?
They're considered road legal?
You imported it?
Re: Well (Score:5, Funny)
We did get fucked. Millions of people died. What's your point?
Re: (Score:2)
You gonna move to another planet bucko?
What's not really said in a lot of alarmist climate change stories is that this stuff doesn't happen all at once. It's not like we cross 2 degrees and then we're in a perpetual 300 degree oven. No. What actually happens is the areas that are already deserts, cook, and that self-perpetuating cooking starts spreading northward and southward as the doldrums widen and change density. So everywhere that's currently a tropical climate becomes impossible to live in, and place
No where to run (Score:2)
Easiest planetary body in our Solar System to terraform would be the Earth. Even after a climate catastrophe, nuclear winter, and asteroid impact all at once.
There's no where to run. The only choice is how expensive y'all want to make Earth's recovery.
Real question (Score:5, Funny)
Is this going to happen before, or after I retire?
Re:Real question (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yep, gerontocracy has consequences. Ignoring global warming, a failing economic system, and other problems that should be tolerable to the comfortably retired for a few more decades are among them.
Re:Real question (Score:4, Insightful)
While this may seem logical on the surface, real-life older people do actually care about the future of their own children and grandchildren.
Re:Real question (Score:5, Insightful)
You would think so, and if you ask them they'll certainly claim they do, but this claim is not supported by the voting data.
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Based on my own older family members who voted for Trump, I don't believe they did so because they didn't care, but because they were deceived.
Re:Real question (Score:5, Insightful)
Based on my own older family members who voted for Trump, I don't believe they did so because they didn't care, but because they were deceived.
The thing is, they wanted to be deceived -- that gave them an out. Now they can go to their graves with a clear conscience, because they "know" global warming is a myth and therefore they didn't really doom their grandchildren. That's all they wanted, is some comforting lies that would give them permission to not worry about it.
Re: (Score:3)
Indeed.
We all lie to ourselves to make ourselves feel better, do we not?
Re: Real question (Score:2)
No, we don't. Don't judge everyone by your ways.
Re:Real question (Score:4, Funny)
As with all things it's a question of degree and who's affected. There's a difference between complaining about the tumble drier shrinking my waistband and destroying the habitable world.
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Oh don't get on your high horse, we are all susceptible to deception. We're just susceptible to different *kinds* of deception.
Re: Real question (Score:3)
I disagree. Are you ready to make a real difference and ban personal automobiles?
Itâ(TM)s easy to attack other peopleâ(TM)s choices when you donâ(TM)t have to make a sacrifice yourself. Me? I sold my car in 2008 and havenâ(TM)t replaced it. One of the best things I ever did.
Re: Real question (Score:3)
Something tells me you don't live 12km from the nearest grocery store.
Time to address the real problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Time to address the real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize they'll never "eat" those costs, right? They'll pass them on to you the consumer and maintain their profits and bonuses. I dislike being that cynical, but the tariffs have shown us extra costs are passed on.
Re: Time to address the real problem (Score:3)
We (for a value which does not include maggots) already knew that about tariffs and also about everything else.
Re: Time to address the real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I do not understand why people see the concept of costs being passed on to consumers as controversial. If a corporation ceases to make a profit, it ceases to exist. If a corporation is taxed into oblivion and cannot meet the payroll, people stop working there and it stops creating goods and services. Their only existential option is to pass new costs onto consumers.Why is this difficult for people to understand?
Re: Time to address the real problem (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Time to address the real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize they'll never "eat" those costs, right? They'll pass them on to you the consumer and maintain their profits and bonuses. I dislike being that cynical, but the tariffs have shown us extra costs are passed on.
You are indeed being overly cynical. You're right that they don't want to eat those costs, but you're missing that they also don't want to lose market share (and therefore sales) to a competitor who is able to charge less because the competitor doesn't incur those costs.
Which is to say, if there is an alternative way to provide the same (or similar) product cheaper by reducing/avoiding expensive CO2 emissions, they'll switch to that, as a way to remain competitive. Which is the desired outcome.
Re: (Score:2)
>> so that the ice caps do not melt for a third time in the last 20 years?
You're still blabbering?
Re:Time to address the real problem (Score:4)
Change so that the ice caps do not melt for a third time in the last 20 years?
ok, now you're just lying.
You are well aware of the concept of "point of no return" (or tipping point, as they should be called), because you quoted them above.
You're now conflating those with claims that the ice caps would be melted within the last 20 years.
The climate doomsayers have been more than wrong every time.
Probably*. But also, that's not as clear anyway. Tipping points are constantly evolving. Critically- they could already be passed. It's not like Earth throws up a flag and says, "yup- in 85 years, you are fucking done, morons."
* as long as we define "climate doomsayer" to be the specific group of people you have a problem with.
Not a little off. Completely, not even in the ballpark WRONG.
This claim cannot be grounded in fact.
Why push the third world deeper into poverty because of what people that have never been close to right predict?
lol- you don't give a fuck about the third world, and you know it. What an intellectually dishonest piece of shit you are.
Re: (Score:3)
The climate doomsayers have been more than wrong every time.
You keep making that claim. And I keep linking you to analysis of how accurate the climate models have been.
Do you mind me asking where you got the idea that they've been wrong from?
Because it's not from the science. It's from the poltics, and it's been factchecked as false. [politifact.com]
Why push the third world deeper into poverty because of what people that have never been close to right predict?
You've got that arse-backwards too. The third world suffers from the impacts of climate change, because to deal with it requires pretty much the same goals as development goals. Education (Of how to adapt agricultural practises and
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I am sure that India and Africa will forgo cheap energy (Which is what has pulled all first world countries out of poverty) and stay poor because of the environment.
Is there any evidence that you base this confidence on?
Are you as sure as you were that "The climate doomsayers have been more than wrong every time"?
And have you managed to follow any of the links that show that that is wrong?
Another moment of greatness (Score:2, Insightful)
History is well populated by traces of civilizations brought low by climate change, possibly including the moment when the entire human population was reduced to perhaps 1000 individuals (i.e., we almost didn't make it). So it is interesting thatthere was much rejoicing that almost the entire collection of climate change efforts, such as they were, have been eliminated by the current administration. Strange that -- almost as though MAGA meant 'make america go away'. Now I have never been one to think that a
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The species will survive but civilization as we know it most certainly will not survive. A small subset (read rich people) will have the money to build secure, self-sustaining and very likely fully autonomous areas. Some already own islands large enough for purpose.
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For a short while, sure. But who will be available to replenish their wine cellars?
A good Nuclear Winter is always an option? (Score:2)
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Should drop worldwide temperatures by 10-20 degrees. Will also help depopulate and deindustrialize the world a bit. It's a win/win.
I wouldn't describe the deaths of billions as "win/win". More like "lose/lose/lose/lose/lose/lose/win/lose/lose/lose/lose", maybe.
Will this cause the ocean level to rise or not? (Score:2)
USA Will do the right thing. (Score:2)
After every other option is exhausted, and there is a massive crisis.
Got bad news for y'all (Score:2)
Will it be this utter hell some are predicting? Probably not. But it will be toasty. An odd thing is some places will get colder.
There will be increased rainfall, there will be a bit of a wildcard as pent-up subsoil methane is released. The big wild card is if oceanic methane clathrates somehow get released.
Re:Got bad news for y'all (Score:5, Insightful)
Will it be this utter hell some are predicting? Probably not. But it will be toasty. An odd thing is some places will get colder.
If you consider only the climate itself, then it probably won't be utter hell -- large portions of the Earth will still be perfectly livable.
But at the same time -- large, currently highly populated portions of the Earth will no longer be livable, and all of those dispossessed people are going to have to go somewhere else, and compete for the remaining resources of the places that remain livable... which means refugee flows, and famine, and xenophobia, and violence, and war. That's where the utter hell is going to come from. Too many mouths chasing not enough grain.
Earth will survive. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
There were events in the last half million years that changed the temperature by up to 16 degrees C in fairly short time periods.
Well, about 12 degrees [researchgate.net], but that aside, every species that exists, evolved with the current inter-glacial, glaciation cycle of the past couple and a half million years.
The current warming is different in two ways.
One: The warming is from the top of an interglacial. Many ecosystems that could move to address a cooling from the top of an interglacial will not be able to move in the other direction, because they will hit the top of mountains of the edge of continents.
Two: This warming is much faster. You
Re: (Score:2)
I keep in my heart Carl Sagans monologue about how every petty little human being who ever lived, lived on this tiny blue dot, while showing the picture of earth as shown by Voyager millions of miles away from earth. The end of his Cosmos show.
It breaks my heart how we are pissing it all away now. It seems to be a "battle" between people who want to cooperate, and people who want to destroy.
Re: (Score:3)
The one that gives me goosebumps is his concerns of the fall of science in The Demon Haunted World:
“I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about
Who cares.. (Score:4, Funny)
I'm moving to Mars. Well the moon first.
devil is in the details (Score:5, Interesting)
2012 was the record minimum for Artic sea ice. So someone's model seemed to be onto something.
Now the journalist that wrote the science piece dumbed down so that you could understand it likely did a poor job of explaining it.
But there are so many models and theories that offer up different specifics but similar generalities that it can be frustrating for laypeople to make sense of it all.
Re: (Score:3)
2012 was the record minimum for Artic sea ice.
For extent, yes it was. For volume, it may have been 2018 [uw.edu].
Re: Again (Score:2)
Do you have a citation for that prediction?
I'm going to go out on a limb, and guess (Score:2)
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>> like they were supposed to in 2012
No cite of course.
>> They have been CATASTROPHICALLY wrong every single time.
Utter bullshit.
Re:Again (Score:5, Informative)
So, the ice caps will again disappear like they were supposed to in 2012?
That was one prediction by Dr Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School in California. And not for either ice cap. Nor for 2012. It was for the northern summer sea ice, and was based on the 28% drop in minimum extent between summer 2006 and summer 2007 being a tipping point rather than, as it turned out, a bad year.
And the prediction was "inside five to seven years" which was about 2013-2014 not 2012.
And while the denialiosphere will use one paper and claim that it discredits the entire fields of thermodynamics, optics and earth science, it doesn't.
But even then they don't usually claim that it was a prediction of total ice loss of Greenland (Which would raise sea levels about 7 metres), much less Antarctica (Which would raise sea levels a further 58 metres).
Congratulations. You've managed to hit a whole new level of wrong.
When are people going to stop falling for this
Oh, the irony.
They have been CATASTROPHICALLY wrong every single time.
Wrong again.
The models have been improving, but even Hansen's 1981 model is pretty close, if a little conservate. Since the late 80s, they've been pretty much bang on the nose. [realclimate.org]
Re:Again (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
They actually found that antarctic ice (as a whole) is increasing due to increased water-vapor in the atmosphere and more snow falling.
Are you sure? The measurements are showing a pretty heavy mass loss in Antarctica [nasa.gov].
I think you might have just made that up yourself.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't have politics, I think both parties are equally crazy and try and distance myself from both.
Re: Again (Score:2)
This is of course bullshit designed to keep us not making changes so you don't have to be inconvenienced
Re:Again (Score:5, Insightful)
Mars is already a completely unlivable hellscape of a planet. Economically and technologically speaking, it's far easier to just not screw up Earth any worse than it already is than terraform Mars.
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Mars is already a completely unlivable hellscape of a planet. Economically and technologically speaking, it's far easier to just not screw up Earth any worse than it already is than terraform Mars.
All you have to do is place a hand on the button.
Re: (Score:2)
We should terraform mars anyway.
It lost its atmosphere once already. Even if you could pipe in a new one, how are you going to stop it blowing away? You can't glue it down.
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It lost its atmosphere once already. Even if you could pipe in a new one, how are you going to stop it blowing away? You can't glue it down.
A new atmosphere would take millions of years to dissipate. Such an atmosphere could "easily" be protected indefinitely from erosion by installation of a handful of superconducting rings around the planet. Only a few GW of power would be required to power the rings.
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I take it back, you can glue it down.
You still need to pipe it in the first place. You'll need a long hose if you're going to take it from Venus.
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We should terraform mars anyway.
I'll give you we should. Just not now. Even people in favour of Mars colonisation recognise it will take thousand of years, using thousand of factories, presumably needing thousand of workers, using technology we don't have and don't even know if it will one day exist. This is discussed in "The Economic Viability of Mars Colonization" by Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-... [doi.org]
We're as close to terraforming Mars by using our technology than the Neanderthals to inventing
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Again (Score:4, Informative)
While the science is nowhere near good enough to give "X happens at year Y", make no fucking mistake, we're in free-fall, and they can see the ground coming at us below.
Denying that is so fucking stupid there almost aren't words for it.
Here are actual scientific facts about known and suspected tipping points. [wikipedia.org]
There is real scientific discussion to be had about this if you actually give a shit. Searching for political or scientific communicator talking points as a way to disrepute any particular claim is fallacious, and stupid. Don't be stupid.
Re:Again (Score:5, Informative)
Name one climate prediction over the last 40 years that came close to truth.
Here's an analysis of how the major models have preformed [realclimate.org], with respect to global mean surface temperature predictions.
The one from the early 80s was a bit conservative, but they've all been pretty close since then.
Perhaps you can link to a few of these papers you think got it wrong?
In 2006, former vice-president Al Gore projected that unless drastic measures were implemented, the planet would hit an irreversible “point of no return” by 2016. Game over.
We've past 350 ppm of CO2, which is the level that will come with the high-cost high casualty impacts of greater than 1.5C of warming. Currently we're at 427 ppm.
So Gore hasn't been shown to be wrong. Perhaps the problems is that you don't understand that it takes decades for half the warming from an increase in CO2 to have occurred. Ice-albedo feedback in particular takes centuries.
Nor Pachuri.
James Hansen, drew a line in the sand testifying before Congress in June 2008, on the dangers of greenhouse gases: “We’re toast if we don’t get on a very different path. This is the last chance.”
Do you have any evidence that he was wrong? Or are you hoping, without basing that hope on any facts that you can point to?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Or, are you advocating still for change thinking that while still dire, 10 - 15 years later action is fine?
We are almost 20 years after the 2008 James Hansen call. Ice sheets are growing. We really do not have a smidgen of understanding how green house gasses work.
As for Nor, you named him but typed nothing. Because probably he was
Re:Again (Score:5, Informative)
We are 10 years past Al Gores, "Point of no return". So, are you saying that you think that there is no longer any action we can take that would avoid a complete disaster?
Every kilogram of CO2 makes it worse. But the opportunity to keep the earth below 1.5 degrees of warming, passed about the time Gore was speaking of. 8 degrees of warming is worse than 7.5 degrees of warming.
Ice sheets are growing.
It blows me away that you can post in a thread with multiple links to how much the ice sheets are shedding mass, and claim that the Ice sheets are growing.
[B]etween 2002 and 2025, Antarctica shed approximately 135 gigatons of ice per year [nasa.gov].
[B]etween 2002 and 2025, Greenland shed approximately 264 gigatons of ice per year [nasa.gov].
As for Nor, you named him but typed nothing.
Nor Pachuri, as in neither Pachuri. As in "you haven't provided evidence that he was wrong either".
Because probably he was the head of the UN climate panel, supposedly an EXPERT, and he stated that the point of no return was 4 years earlier than Gore.
That's not from his work. His background is engineering and economics. The IPCC is half a dozen people. The EXPERTS are the thousands of scientists who volunteer their time to the working groups.
But he's wasn't wrong either.
X year passes, same statements made, only change is now it is Y year!
Can you please link me to a couple or few instances of where the same statements have been published by a scientific body, but the year backdated?
Because a lot of the other stuff you've said here has been opposite to the facts, so I worry that you're mistaken about this too.
Look at what they implement if you want to know why they yell. Massive, dirty lithium mines, and other heavy metal mining operations stripping the earth for electric car batteries.
Oh, good to see you're concerned about the environment. Is it only the impact of lithium mines that concerns you, and those heavy metals that are used for batteries? Because Humanity uses many resources for many things.
A single 3 Megawatt (MW) wind turbine requires 335 tons of steel, 4.7 tons of copper, 3 tons of aluminum, 2 tons of rare earths and 1,200 tons of concrete.
Infrastructure takes resources. Roads. Coal Plants. Bridges. Wind Turbines. Wind turbines produce the cheapest electricity there is with no fuel costs, no fuel logistics, and without greenhouse emissions during operation. You're welcome to be a luddite, but if you're concerned about concrete, shouldn't you start complaining about roads?
They cost more in energy, created mostly by fossil fuels to create than they will ever offset.
Nope.
The embodied energy in a wind turbine, that is, the energy used in its manufacture, transport, erection and operation is generally paid back within 6-12 months of operation. [todayshomeowner.com]
Those massive composite blades last 20 -25 years and to this date they have no idea how to recycle any of the blade.
Carbon fibre and fibreglass aren't easy to recycle, but:
1) Not impossible: Carbon Rivers Makes Wind Turbine Blade Recycling and Upcycling a Reality With Support From DOE [energy.gov]
2) Represent nearly no part of the mass of the turbine 90% or so of which can be recycled
We are regulating heavily, subsidizing and diverting energy to, "Green Technologies" that kill the environment.
No mate. That's fossil fuels
Re: (Score:3)
Ok. You win. They were right.
Yeah, I know. There's a lot of science that's been done on this.
No use doing anything. All the coastlines world wide will be underwater soon.
Nope. It's still useful to do everything we can. While we've obviously overshot 1.5C, as I point out explicitly in the post to which you're replying, and which is also prima-facie obvious, 8 degrees of warming is worse than 7.5 degrees of warming.
The sea ice will all melt.
Yeah, that's probably the closest high-cost, high-casualty tipping points. If by all, you mean the northern summer sea ice. The Antarctic sea ice is fed by glaciers, so won't be entirely lose until tho
Re: Yawn (Score:2)
How exactly did you shit that out? Are those OCR errors?
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Re: This is so incredibly much bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody gives a fuck whether the climate before we existed would have supported us. What matters is now and this is an unprecedented situation with previously unseen rates of change.
Re: This is so incredibly much bullshit (Score:2)
Okey dokey coward. Run along and let the adults have a conversation now, I hear your mom calling me.
Re: (Score:2)
Is it warming? Probably (hard to tell with all the 'smoothing' and 'adjusting' of data going on, but I'd agree it probably is.)
No, it's not hard to tell at all.
Is it driven by humans? Utterly not, though almost certainly we're aggravating it.
The current trend line's deviation from the long term cyclical glacial periods of the Quaternary ice age is 100% driven by human activity. Period.
Is it faster than ever, historically speaking? Utterly not.
That's actually hard to say, but also not relevant.
In times when it may have, we simply do not have decade-resolution temperature data.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] = 90% of the last 500m years has been warmer than today.
Absolutely true. Humans evolved, basically in whole, during the Quaternary. It's not clear we will even be able to survive when Earth leaves it.
This has nothing to do with climate change right now
Re:Benign? (Score:5, Insightful)
Rate of change matters. Just because I can use the brakes in my car to reduce speed slowly doesn't mean stopping by hitting a brick wall at full speed is at all safe.
Ecosystems need time to adjust to new temperatures, so they don't collapse.
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The last ice age has been retreating for the last 20k years. There was a bit of a cooling period from 13,500 to 12,500 years ago, and another form but nothing like a real ice age.
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The glaciers began retreating ~20kya, and the last glacial period officially ended ~11kya.
We are in an interglacial period of the Quaternary Ice Age now. We call it the Holocene.
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The world has been in an ice age for several million years.
It's not clear that mankind would survive even as a species on a world without ice on it.
The temperatures during the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum were mind-boggling.
The temperature of the ocean at low latitudes we ~100F/38C.
Most of the large ocean-dwelling dinosaurs (plesiosaurs, etc) were wiped out.
Human crops would grow only in the top 10 degrees of latitu
Re: Look, just bottom line this for me (Score:2)
The oil and gas companies you mean? All of it, and all of our lives as well.
Re: (Score:2)
>> The usual state for the Earth is tropical all over, with no ice at the poles.
Show evidence.
Re:Imaginary Problems (Score:4, Insightful)
That isn't a point for or against climate denial.
It's simply a fact that mankind evolved during an ice age, one that has been going on for several million years, and is still going on today.
It's not clear that mankind would be able to survive a hothouse Earth state. But they're right- one is coming no matter what, probably sometime in the next few million years. Which has precisely fucking nothing to do with our problems today.
Re: (Score:2)
>> Eh. They're right. You will find that evidence yourself if you go look.
According to wikipedia;
"Throughout Earth's climate history (Paleoclimate) its climate has fluctuated between two primary states: greenhouse and icehouse Earth. Both climate states last for millions of years "
So, not usually "tropical all over, with no ice at the poles".
Re: (Score:2)
So, not usually "tropical all over, with no ice at the poles".
Yes, it is.
Nothing in your quote stated the equivalence of the time periods past "last for millions of years".
I.e., the quote was correct. You just read what you wanted to read into it.
What I find most bizarre, is that there's literally a graph directly under where you copy-pasted that showing where, and how long, the Ice Ages lasted.
If you had gone down even further, it would have literally listed them for you, and then you could simply do the math showing that 4160 > 609.
When you go reading som
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It is not a panic, and it is not a zero sum game. Certainly you agree on the trends of CO2 in the atmosphere, and the increase in Temperatures? Yes?
Build "all of the above" energy sources, I think. Let the market win.
PS. I suspect the coal plants China is building is a hedge against a nuclear war.
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I guess weather is separate from climate, or something.
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Yeah, like the negative temperatures across the entire midwest and upper midwest as well as the mid-atlantic region to New England.
I guess climate for a region is different than for weather in one area.
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Highs in the 70s at my parents' place in Arkansas
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That being said, there are known tipping points, where a set amount of warming will be effectively inevitable even if we were to stop emissions today, once crossed.
Those are what they're referring to "runaway".
Since most people associate "runaway" with "literally no way to stop until there's no water left on the planet", a la Venus, it's definitely not a term that should be used by Scientists. Which is why it isn't. The article is referring to tipping points
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I think that is partially true. The gulf stream may stop in the next 50 years. I think that even this POSSIBILITY is cause for alarm.
The boomers thought pattern is that they got theirs, and screw everybody else.
As part of: "Everybody Else", I don't agree, even if you are a Tyrannical Majority.
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No, it proves AMERICANS are so corrupt as a group they are beyond redemption and will continue spiral downward taking everybody down with them as they drown. Distance yourself or we'll panic and pull you under near the end. You're helping fuel the stupid, so you need to cut us off like stupid is contagious.
The human species has a chance if not allowed to become too decadent, gaming all it's animal drives until it's brain is overcome with desires and like every other animal ruins it's environment leading t