The world has warmed 1.5 °C, according to 300-year-old sponges(nature.com)
nature.com
The world has warmed 1.5 °C, according to 300-year-old sponges
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00281-8
77 comments
Global warming is real, but I wish we paid more attention to biodiversity and set goals there instead of fixating on temperature. I understand why temperature is there. It is easy to measure and an easy number to campaign around, but biodiversity, to me, is the actual point and focusing on temperature, while a major factor, diminishes the many other issues attacking it.
If the message that "Climate change is happening, it will cause starvation, large scale displacement, and regional conflicts, and significant economic disruption" isn't enough to make people take notice, why would "Here is a list of creatures you have never seen in real life and might live on a different continent from you" would have any impact?
It won't, because many of today's children are already growing up used to the lack of biodiversity . If you're living in a large city, wildlife and insects are things you see on Netflix and in video games and sort of abstractly know are somewhere out there. Maybe.
WWII was something most Americans only read about in the news. They were still willing to die for the cause.
richrichie(1)
We’re already doing piss poor responding to a simple number that’s super easy to measure and evaluate predictions against. Do you think a harder to measure more argumentative measure would make global warming easier to tackle?
Yes.
It is a really hard problem to survive. The only somewhat successful, so far, long term strategy I know of is the one we see in nature, diversity. Healthy ecosystems are always diverse. Diversity helps absorb shocks and exploit nitches that enable growth. But here is the kicker, diversity is helpful in every system to keep it alive, including the diversity of arguments we use in educating people. By focusing on just one argument we are making a mistake. I'm not saying we throw out temp targets and discussing them, but we need more valid discussions to increase the diversity of the discussion so that it survives and thrives.
I would say that the rising level of oceans must be pretty significant for a lot of people, because most people live near a coast. Building a wall to protect NYC or Tokyo from flooding would be quite noticeable and expensive. Flooding a city that fails to handle the rise of the oceans would be even more noticeable.
Biodiversity may eventually become higher with a warmer overall climate, as it has occurred in the past.
Biodiversity may eventually become higher with a warmer overall climate, as it has occurred in the past.
So we have already surpassed 1.5C by this measure, and will pass 2C earlier than predicted. Does that mean the various events predicted to occur around 2C will also occur earlier? Or not, because this paper measures from an early date?
It's not so simple. 1.5C was decided on after assuming 2C would be fine after (warranted) political pressure from more at risk countries.
What are the risks is really more about climate sensitivity than a specific temperature, think of it as how much can change given a warming of X degrees. Recently there is growing scientific evidence that dangers we thought were only possible at high temp scenarios, say 3-4C, are possible at 2C or might even be underway. Meaning that the climate is more sensitive than had been projected. This means that not only according to the study linked above are we closer 1.5C + 2C, but we also have more to fear from passing those temps because more can go wrong at lower levels of warming.
Every tenth of a degree matters and we should stop obsessing over 1.5C or 2C and work on mitigating as much as possible and preparing for whats coming and slow emissions and pollution as much as possible
What are the risks is really more about climate sensitivity than a specific temperature, think of it as how much can change given a warming of X degrees. Recently there is growing scientific evidence that dangers we thought were only possible at high temp scenarios, say 3-4C, are possible at 2C or might even be underway. Meaning that the climate is more sensitive than had been projected. This means that not only according to the study linked above are we closer 1.5C + 2C, but we also have more to fear from passing those temps because more can go wrong at lower levels of warming.
Every tenth of a degree matters and we should stop obsessing over 1.5C or 2C and work on mitigating as much as possible and preparing for whats coming and slow emissions and pollution as much as possible
Earlier date, different baseline. Doesn't really change anything.
Why is warming 1.5C from a prior date not as bad as warming 1.5C from the more referenced date?
We were in an ice age 300 years ago.
The climate has changed a lot compared to an ice age. Is it really going to change even more in the next 0.5C?
We were in an ice age 300 years ago.
The climate has changed a lot compared to an ice age. Is it really going to change even more in the next 0.5C?
The impacts of climate change are nonlinear. For example 100 year storms become 10 year storms, weather anomalies like polar vortices become much more common, and in general climactic extremes become both more extreme and more common. More concerningly, tipping points are reached (in order to rebuild the polar ice caps we won't need to go back -1.5C, but -4C), and tipping point events cause cascades that lock in climate change.
Worse yet, we're exiting the stable climactic conditions that civilization assumes is present. Assumptions regarding maximum temperatures, precipitation, ground water are baked into our reservoirs, power transmission lines, asphalt roads, train tracks, et cetera. Increased extreme weather compromises our ability to maintain society; look no further than the heat domes in the Pacific Northwest or the cold snaps in Texas to see how those assumptions compromise basic societal functions.
0.5C doesn't imply slightly worse weather, it means the additions of staggering amounts of heat to our land, water, and seas -- and the resulting amplifications of storms.
Worse yet, we're exiting the stable climactic conditions that civilization assumes is present. Assumptions regarding maximum temperatures, precipitation, ground water are baked into our reservoirs, power transmission lines, asphalt roads, train tracks, et cetera. Increased extreme weather compromises our ability to maintain society; look no further than the heat domes in the Pacific Northwest or the cold snaps in Texas to see how those assumptions compromise basic societal functions.
0.5C doesn't imply slightly worse weather, it means the additions of staggering amounts of heat to our land, water, and seas -- and the resulting amplifications of storms.
> Why is warming 1.5C from a prior date not as bad as warming 1.5C from the more referenced date?
For the same reason that -2°C + 1.5°C is below freezing and -1°C + 1.5°C isn't.
> We were in an ice age 300 years ago.
No, we weren't. Not unless you're using the term in a way that includes the Late Cenozoic Ice Age that began 34 million years ago and which is ongoing. Mostly people use the term to refer to glacial periods, the last of which ended between 19000 and 12000 years ago — that's not the date being vague, it's how long it took — when the area now called Boston lost its roughly one mile deep ice sheet.
That was a 4.3°C temperature difference.
What did happen from roughly the 16th to the 19th centuries that's sometimes called the "Little Ice Age" only affected the North Atlantic region; locally by about 1°C, but even given the size of the North Atlantic, the global difference was less than 0.16-0.25°C, small enough that year-to-year differences exceeded this.
For the same reason that -2°C + 1.5°C is below freezing and -1°C + 1.5°C isn't.
> We were in an ice age 300 years ago.
No, we weren't. Not unless you're using the term in a way that includes the Late Cenozoic Ice Age that began 34 million years ago and which is ongoing. Mostly people use the term to refer to glacial periods, the last of which ended between 19000 and 12000 years ago — that's not the date being vague, it's how long it took — when the area now called Boston lost its roughly one mile deep ice sheet.
That was a 4.3°C temperature difference.
What did happen from roughly the 16th to the 19th centuries that's sometimes called the "Little Ice Age" only affected the North Atlantic region; locally by about 1°C, but even given the size of the North Atlantic, the global difference was less than 0.16-0.25°C, small enough that year-to-year differences exceeded this.
The last ice age ended over 10,000 years ago [1].
Parent might have been referring to the Little Ice Age [2], which according to the IPCC was
> ...a multi-centennial period of relatively low temperature beginning around the 15th century, with GMST averaging –0.03 [–0.30 to 0.06] °C between 1450 and 1850 relative to 1850–1900.
GMST = global mean surface temperature
Hardly, counts as valid given that we are talking about 1.5C/0.03 = 50x bigger change right now.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
Parent might have been referring to the Little Ice Age [2], which according to the IPCC was
> ...a multi-centennial period of relatively low temperature beginning around the 15th century, with GMST averaging –0.03 [–0.30 to 0.06] °C between 1450 and 1850 relative to 1850–1900.
GMST = global mean surface temperature
Hardly, counts as valid given that we are talking about 1.5C/0.03 = 50x bigger change right now.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
Third sentence from the source you listed:
Ice ages occur when the various Milankovitch cycles[1] and the locations of the Earth’s various tectonic plates line up just so. There needs to be a large polar continent on which large ice sheets can form to create a positive feedback loop where the ice increases the Earth’s albedo resulting in further cooling, and even more ice, &c. There also need to be at least two oceans to slow heat transfer. So even with a polar supercontinent there’s no ice age.
As you can see, currently all the conditions necessary for an ice age obtain, which is why geologists say we’re in one. Currently a glaciation is theoretically possible, but we don’t really know what gets that particular snowball rolling.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
[2] Note the complete lack of Shannon entropy in the first child. Followed by dismissing scientific knowledge about the Earth’s climate as “moot” no less!
Earth is currently in the ice age called Quaternary glaciation.
Ice ages occur when the various Milankovitch cycles[1] and the locations of the Earth’s various tectonic plates line up just so. There needs to be a large polar continent on which large ice sheets can form to create a positive feedback loop where the ice increases the Earth’s albedo resulting in further cooling, and even more ice, &c. There also need to be at least two oceans to slow heat transfer. So even with a polar supercontinent there’s no ice age.
As you can see, currently all the conditions necessary for an ice age obtain, which is why geologists say we’re in one. Currently a glaciation is theoretically possible, but we don’t really know what gets that particular snowball rolling.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
[2] Note the complete lack of Shannon entropy in the first child. Followed by dismissing scientific knowledge about the Earth’s climate as “moot” no less!
That is such a pedantic discussion. Soon, we will be requiring multi-year studies to confirm that, because there is ice on the freezers that still run after the rolling blackouts, we are still on an ice age.
Meanwhile, emitting another 37GT of carbon to the atmosphere is preapproved.
That is how inaction is enforced.
Meanwhile, emitting another 37GT of carbon to the atmosphere is preapproved.
That is how inaction is enforced.
As long as there is any large amounts of ice on the planet, it will be called an ice age by geologists. So yes, we are in an ice age by that pedantic technical definition.
What's relevant in this discussion, is when was the last time temperature and climate were significantly lower on the Earth, coupled with much larger amounts of ice on the planet. This was over 10k years ago.
Of course, this whole discussion is moot, because natural causes have never in scientifically measurably history, caused GMST to change at the rate it is now - about 2C in 150 years, caused by humans dumping CO2 into the atmosphere.
What's relevant in this discussion, is when was the last time temperature and climate were significantly lower on the Earth, coupled with much larger amounts of ice on the planet. This was over 10k years ago.
Of course, this whole discussion is moot, because natural causes have never in scientifically measurably history, caused GMST to change at the rate it is now - about 2C in 150 years, caused by humans dumping CO2 into the atmosphere.
> Why is warming 1.5C from a prior date not as bad as warming 1.5C from the more referenced date?
You've probably put on a couple hundred pounds of weight over your lifetime. Do you think it would be negligible to put on another couple hundred pounds?
You've probably put on a couple hundred pounds of weight over your lifetime. Do you think it would be negligible to put on another couple hundred pounds?
One problem is the speed of change, check https://xkcd.com/1732/ to have an idea. Adaptation needs time, else you get extinction. Very fast changes on global average temperature are correlated with big extinction events. And we depend on the ecosystem to be more or less as it is, for example to keep having agriculture.
Besides that, temperature just doesn't rise without affecting everything else. There are multiple (positive) feedback loops that increase the rate of warming directly (like ice melting reflecting less sunlight) or indirectly (i.e. permafrost thawing do their own carbon emissions) that get triggered once we get past some limits. Once the ball gets rolling things will get much faster, even without our intervention.
Besides that, temperature just doesn't rise without affecting everything else. There are multiple (positive) feedback loops that increase the rate of warming directly (like ice melting reflecting less sunlight) or indirectly (i.e. permafrost thawing do their own carbon emissions) that get triggered once we get past some limits. Once the ball gets rolling things will get much faster, even without our intervention.
Montreal is particularly warm but dry this winter -- actually in many days warmer than Shanghai, China. I hope we don't have a super cold March this year.
Dry? It's been raining like crazy this year...
For the Americans layman like myself, that's a warming of 2.7 °F
Incredible sample size for an incredible error rate.
why is an article from Nature flagged?
And yet we are doing better than ever, almost like we can adapt. Maybe the apocalyptic predictions are overblown.
zx8080(1)
clarada(2)
Meh, don't care.
Seriously, we had ice ages. Temperatures go up and down.
I can't bring myself to care about 86 instead of 83 degrees F in the summer and 23 instead of 20 in the winter. It's like moving a few hundred miles south. People get by fine.
I mean, I'm worried about all the weird chemicals in my food. That seems kinda wacky. I'm worried about all the biodiversity disappearing. Extreme-weather-itis would be scary, if it's actually a thing. I'm worried about breathing more CO2, and especially about the same in water (ocean acidification). I'm worried about many of the other impacts on climate.
"Climate change" was a step forward in terminology from "global warming," but we need about five more steps before it's something people care about.
We also need to acknowledge how much we don't know. Most of our models from 20 years ago didn't play out, which was obvious if you read the papers instead of listening to Al Gore. Bad things happened, but not the ones we thought would happen. It's a chaotic system. It doesn't work predictably.
Seriously, we had ice ages. Temperatures go up and down.
I can't bring myself to care about 86 instead of 83 degrees F in the summer and 23 instead of 20 in the winter. It's like moving a few hundred miles south. People get by fine.
I mean, I'm worried about all the weird chemicals in my food. That seems kinda wacky. I'm worried about all the biodiversity disappearing. Extreme-weather-itis would be scary, if it's actually a thing. I'm worried about breathing more CO2, and especially about the same in water (ocean acidification). I'm worried about many of the other impacts on climate.
"Climate change" was a step forward in terminology from "global warming," but we need about five more steps before it's something people care about.
We also need to acknowledge how much we don't know. Most of our models from 20 years ago didn't play out, which was obvious if you read the papers instead of listening to Al Gore. Bad things happened, but not the ones we thought would happen. It's a chaotic system. It doesn't work predictably.
Ice ages occurred over the span of thousands to tens of thousands of years. The current change is happening in the order of decades to centuries. Not only will plants and animals have a hard time adapting to change that rapid, it will cause huge amounts of misery.
Maybe where you live 83 vs 86 degrees doesn't matter, but there are hundreds of millions of people that are living on the edge already. Once a century droughts are becoming common. When people are fighting for their lives and the lives of their children, they will move anywhere where things are marginally better ... causing economic chaos, and even war. But that doesn't seem to affect you in your air conditioned house.
> Most of our models from 20 years ago didn't play out,
That is false. The IPCC reports of 20-25 years ago are wrong only in that they undershot the severity. All of them, for political reasons, knowingly under reported the severity. I agree, don't listen to Al Gore, listen to the climate scientists. BTW, why do you think the paper you are reading is any more informed about climate change than Al Gore?
Maybe where you live 83 vs 86 degrees doesn't matter, but there are hundreds of millions of people that are living on the edge already. Once a century droughts are becoming common. When people are fighting for their lives and the lives of their children, they will move anywhere where things are marginally better ... causing economic chaos, and even war. But that doesn't seem to affect you in your air conditioned house.
> Most of our models from 20 years ago didn't play out,
That is false. The IPCC reports of 20-25 years ago are wrong only in that they undershot the severity. All of them, for political reasons, knowingly under reported the severity. I agree, don't listen to Al Gore, listen to the climate scientists. BTW, why do you think the paper you are reading is any more informed about climate change than Al Gore?
> Ice ages occurred over the span of thousands to tens of thousands of years
See "Little Ice Age" and it's effects.
> Once a century droughts are becoming common
"Climate change" not "global warming." On the whole, global warming makes for more rain. You can see another post here about rising atmospheric humidity.
> I agree, don't listen to Al Gore, listen to the climate scientists. BTW, why do you think the paper you are reading is any more informed about climate change than Al Gore?
A key difference are things like error bars.
With /proper/ error bars (accounting for all possible sources of error), right-wing media would have a hard time playing back false predictions.
See "Little Ice Age" and it's effects.
> Once a century droughts are becoming common
"Climate change" not "global warming." On the whole, global warming makes for more rain. You can see another post here about rising atmospheric humidity.
> I agree, don't listen to Al Gore, listen to the climate scientists. BTW, why do you think the paper you are reading is any more informed about climate change than Al Gore?
A key difference are things like error bars.
With /proper/ error bars (accounting for all possible sources of error), right-wing media would have a hard time playing back false predictions.
Both terms have been in use for at least 50 years. It is a complex topic so no matter which two word moniker you coin to represent it, you can always poke a hole in it.
The people who think "climate change" is a fig leaf to cover up the fact that the globe didn't warm monotonically are simply ignorant. The models have always shown that some places will get drier, some will get wetter, some places cooler.
One of the things deniers always cherry pick is when some study mentions higher snowfall or rainfall in some particular region of the world. Odd that they believe the scientist when when they thing the datum supports their claim, but then will dismiss the same person who wrote the paper they cited as being in the pocket of George Soros or someone when the researcher doesn't support their preferred conclusion.
The people who think "climate change" is a fig leaf to cover up the fact that the globe didn't warm monotonically are simply ignorant. The models have always shown that some places will get drier, some will get wetter, some places cooler.
One of the things deniers always cherry pick is when some study mentions higher snowfall or rainfall in some particular region of the world. Odd that they believe the scientist when when they thing the datum supports their claim, but then will dismiss the same person who wrote the paper they cited as being in the pocket of George Soros or someone when the researcher doesn't support their preferred conclusion.
In my original post, I wrote:
"'Climate change' was a step forward in terminology from 'global warming,' but we need about five more steps before it's something people care about."
Yes, words do matter, and "climate change" is a huge step forward from "global warming" in terms of convincing people and affecting change.
"'Climate change' was a step forward in terminology from 'global warming,' but we need about five more steps before it's something people care about."
Yes, words do matter, and "climate change" is a huge step forward from "global warming" in terms of convincing people and affecting change.
> I can't bring myself to care about 86 instead of 83 degrees F in the summer and 23 instead of 20 in the winter.
Respectfully, you've not understood the measure and the meaning of global average.
For most of the past 200K years, most of human 'advanced' existance there's been little change in the global mean and all the seasons have changed as per written history and your recollection.
Lifting the global mean introduces more energy to the climate cells about the globe, driving more extreme changes, intoducing greater storms, setting us up for even more change as water vapor and methane levels rise which themselves are greater insulators that trap more heat than CO2.
Respectfully, you've not understood the measure and the meaning of global average.
For most of the past 200K years, most of human 'advanced' existance there's been little change in the global mean and all the seasons have changed as per written history and your recollection.
Lifting the global mean introduces more energy to the climate cells about the globe, driving more extreme changes, intoducing greater storms, setting us up for even more change as water vapor and methane levels rise which themselves are greater insulators that trap more heat than CO2.
> driving more extreme changes, intoducing [sp] greater storms
Respectfully, the mean temperature is the wrong measure for that. You want to look at measures like variance / std. div. -- the second moment and not the first.
That's why I listed under "Extreme-weather-itis" under things I care about.
> setting us up for even more change as water vapor and methane levels rise which themselves are greater insulators that trap more heat than CO2
Respectfully, you don't know that. The phrase should be "setting ourselves up for something possibly very bad." Extrapolation works worse than interpolation, and it's a chaotic system.
Respectfully, the level of imprecision and propaganda here is a root cause of scepticism.
People can understand why we don't want to play Russian Roulette, especially when most of the barrels are loaded, each with a different munition. That's more honest and likely leads to the outcome you want.
Respectfully, the mean temperature is the wrong measure for that. You want to look at measures like variance / std. div. -- the second moment and not the first.
That's why I listed under "Extreme-weather-itis" under things I care about.
> setting us up for even more change as water vapor and methane levels rise which themselves are greater insulators that trap more heat than CO2
Respectfully, you don't know that. The phrase should be "setting ourselves up for something possibly very bad." Extrapolation works worse than interpolation, and it's a chaotic system.
Respectfully, the level of imprecision and propaganda here is a root cause of scepticism.
People can understand why we don't want to play Russian Roulette, especially when most of the barrels are loaded, each with a different munition. That's more honest and likely leads to the outcome you want.
> You want to look at measures like variance / std. div. -- the second moment and not the first.
Possible concrete impacts of climate are discussed in detail in IPCC reports [1, 2]. For instance,
> Climate change will make some current food production areas unsuitable (high confidence). Current global crop and livestock areas will increasingly become climatically unsuitable under a high- emission scenario (high confidence) (e.g., 10% by 2050, over 30% by 2100 under SSP-8.5 versus below 8% by 2100 under SSP1-2.6). Increased, potentially concurrent climate extremes will periodically increase simultaneous losses in major food-producing regions.
[1] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-cycle/
[2] Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/
Possible concrete impacts of climate are discussed in detail in IPCC reports [1, 2]. For instance,
> Climate change will make some current food production areas unsuitable (high confidence). Current global crop and livestock areas will increasingly become climatically unsuitable under a high- emission scenario (high confidence) (e.g., 10% by 2050, over 30% by 2100 under SSP-8.5 versus below 8% by 2100 under SSP1-2.6). Increased, potentially concurrent climate extremes will periodically increase simultaneous losses in major food-producing regions.
[1] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-cycle/
[2] Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/
> Climate change will make some current food production areas unsuitable (high confidence). Current global crop and livestock areas will increasingly become climatically unsuitable under a high- emission scenario (high confidence) (e.g., 10% by 2050, over 30% by 2100 under SSP-8.5 versus below 8% by 2100 under SSP1-2.6). Increased, potentially concurrent climate extremes will periodically increase simultaneous losses in major food-producing regions.
I believe that's simply expanding on my list of things in the "care about" bucket in my original post.
Also, notice the first two words in your quote: "climate change." Not "global warming." Global warming doesn't show up there.
The fixation on degrees C is making everyone miss the forest from the trees.
I believe that's simply expanding on my list of things in the "care about" bucket in my original post.
Also, notice the first two words in your quote: "climate change." Not "global warming." Global warming doesn't show up there.
The fixation on degrees C is making everyone miss the forest from the trees.
> You want to look at measures like variance / std. div. -- the second moment and not the first.
That's what I mean by driving more extreme changes - more variations per unit time and greater variance in those variations.
I did a little math once, it backed a few decades in global exploration geophysics for energy and mineral exploration.
>> as water vapor and methane levels rise
> Respectfully, you don't know that.
I'll defer to NASA and many many others then: https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/3143/steam...
AGU: Global Changes in Water Vapor 1979–2020 (2022) https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/202...
> Respectfully, the level of imprecision and propaganda here is a root cause of scepticism.
There is great certainty in the knowledge that a train will derail given certain conditions.
There is immense imprecision and a fundemental inability to predict where the cut glass vase in the dining car will come to rest.
This is baked into the nonlinear dynamics at play and seen as a simplest example in the Dzhanibekov effect | Tennis Racket Theorem where the centre of mass trajectory arc of a simple body is predictable whereas the tumblings about that projected arc are chaotic and unpredictable.
Those that demand certainty wrt small details fail to understand the physics of the big picture.
That's what I mean by driving more extreme changes - more variations per unit time and greater variance in those variations.
I did a little math once, it backed a few decades in global exploration geophysics for energy and mineral exploration.
>> as water vapor and methane levels rise
> Respectfully, you don't know that.
I'll defer to NASA and many many others then: https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/3143/steam...
AGU: Global Changes in Water Vapor 1979–2020 (2022) https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/202...
> Respectfully, the level of imprecision and propaganda here is a root cause of scepticism.
There is great certainty in the knowledge that a train will derail given certain conditions.
There is immense imprecision and a fundemental inability to predict where the cut glass vase in the dining car will come to rest.
This is baked into the nonlinear dynamics at play and seen as a simplest example in the Dzhanibekov effect | Tennis Racket Theorem where the centre of mass trajectory arc of a simple body is predictable whereas the tumblings about that projected arc are chaotic and unpredictable.
Those that demand certainty wrt small details fail to understand the physics of the big picture.
>There is great certainty in the knowledge that a train will derail given certain conditions.
>
> There is immense imprecision and a fundemental inability to predict where the cut glass vase in the dining car will come to rest.
That's the root of the communications problem. What we know, to your analogy, is that a train wheel is incorrectly attached and will fall off at some point.
What predictions are stating -- in media communicated to the general public from (and not just trash journalism; popular science journals, figures like Al Gore) -- is where the vase will land, when we don't even know where the train will derail.
Climate change deniers cite failed prediction after failed prediction. They couldn't do that if the predictions had error bars.
People can handle uncertainty just fine. However, if you tell someone a train is crashing in 100 meters over and over, they'll start to ignore you after a kilometer or two of failed predictions. If it derails 5 kilometers out, it's the boy who cried wolf.
We are pretty close to complete certainty that Bad Stuff will happen, but we grossly overstate the certainty of which specific bad things will happen and when.
> Those that demand certainty wrt small details fail to understand the physics of the big picture.
All I'm demanding is that
* we say "climate change" instead of "global warming;"
* include error bars;
* talk about impacts in terms of something other than degrees temperature rise; and
* stop fixating on degrees C as the sole metric.
Seriously. Watch Tucker Carlson at some point on the topic, or any similar commentator. 90% of what they say is correct, which is part of the reason it works so well. It's based on people on the left exaggerating for impact, simplifying, or using imprecise language. Al Gore sat us back 20 years with "An Inconvenient Truth."
That's the root of the communications problem. What we know, to your analogy, is that a train wheel is incorrectly attached and will fall off at some point.
What predictions are stating -- in media communicated to the general public from (and not just trash journalism; popular science journals, figures like Al Gore) -- is where the vase will land, when we don't even know where the train will derail.
Climate change deniers cite failed prediction after failed prediction. They couldn't do that if the predictions had error bars.
People can handle uncertainty just fine. However, if you tell someone a train is crashing in 100 meters over and over, they'll start to ignore you after a kilometer or two of failed predictions. If it derails 5 kilometers out, it's the boy who cried wolf.
We are pretty close to complete certainty that Bad Stuff will happen, but we grossly overstate the certainty of which specific bad things will happen and when.
> Those that demand certainty wrt small details fail to understand the physics of the big picture.
All I'm demanding is that
* we say "climate change" instead of "global warming;"
* include error bars;
* talk about impacts in terms of something other than degrees temperature rise; and
* stop fixating on degrees C as the sole metric.
Seriously. Watch Tucker Carlson at some point on the topic, or any similar commentator. 90% of what they say is correct, which is part of the reason it works so well. It's based on people on the left exaggerating for impact, simplifying, or using imprecise language. Al Gore sat us back 20 years with "An Inconvenient Truth."
> Watch Tucker Carlson at some point on the topic, or any similar commentator. 90% of what they say is correct
What are your specific arguments for assuming that Tucker Carlson, previously Fox News commentator, who has no academic degree, has a better understanding of climate science and error bars than the IPCC?
What are your specific arguments for assuming that Tucker Carlson, previously Fox News commentator, who has no academic degree, has a better understanding of climate science and error bars than the IPCC?
Temperature increases will be much larger over land. The values are for global averages, and most heat capacity is in the ocean. Not only that but some places will warm far more than others. Yes, all the other stuff is bad too, including ocean acidification. But they're intimately connected, and the rate of temperature change might be one of the largest changes in habitats worldwide.
Agreed. Many more people will die of heart disease And cancer than from global warming. Too many chemicals in our environment and food chain.
[deleted]
What about this hockey-stick shaped curve ?
https://revistapesquisa.fapesp.br/wp-content/uploads/2019/07...
https://revistapesquisa.fapesp.br/wp-content/uploads/2019/07...
That appears to show the position of the magnetic north pole over the years. Does the location of magnetic pole affect local weather conditions?
What about it?
See for yourself:
The ‘Sterno-Etrussia’ Geomagnetic Excursion Around 2700 BP and Changes of Solar Activity, Cosmic Ray Intensity, and Climate
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/radiocarbon/article/...
>The Sterno-Etrussia excursion may have amplified the climate shift, which, in the first place, was the effect of a decline of solar activity. During excursions and inversions, the magnetic moment decreases, which leads to an increased intensity of cosmic rays penetrating the upper atmosphere. Global changes in the electromagnetic field of the earth result in sharp changes in the climate-determining factors in the atmosphere, such as temperatures, total pressure field, moisture circulation, intensity of air flows, and thunderstorm activity. In addition, significant changes in the ocean circulation patterns and temperature regimes of oceans will have taken place.
Global climate change during the 13,500-b.p. Gothenburg geomagnetic excursion
https://www.nature.com/articles/265430a0
>ROBERTS and Olsen1 suggested that high latitude atmospheric ionisation has an important role in nucleating cirrus clouds. And Harrison and Prospero2 deduce that, if this is correct, severe drops of the Earth's magnetic field strength, such as are believed to accompany reversals, would lead to increased upper atmospheric cloudiness at all latitudes and correspondingly to major climatic events. There is likely to be warming at high latitudes but considerable cooling in the middle latitudes, in a way analogous to the aerosols3.
Are there connections between the Earth's magnetic field and climate?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00128...
>Understanding climate change is an active topic of research. Much of the observed increase in global surface temperature over the past 150 years occurred prior to the 1940s and after the 1980s. The main causes invoked are solar variability, changes in atmospheric greenhouse gas content or sulfur due to natural or anthropogenic action, or internal variability of the coupled ocean–atmosphere system. Magnetism has seldom been invoked, and evidence for connections between climate and magnetic field variations have received little attention. We review evidence for correlations which could suggest such (causal or non-causal) connections at various time scales (recent secular variation ∼ 10–100 yr, historical and archeomagnetic change ∼ 100–5000 yr, and excursions and reversals ∼ 103–106 yr), and attempt to suggest mechanisms. Evidence for correlations, which invoke Milankovic forcing in the core, either directly or through changes in ice distribution and moments of inertia of the Earth, is still tenuous. Correlation between decadal changes in amplitude of geomagnetic variations of external origin, solar irradiance and global temperature is stronger. It suggests that solar irradiance could have been a major forcing function of climate until the mid-1980s, when “anomalous” warming becomes apparent.
Book on the subject: The Hidden Link Between Earth’s Magnetic Field and Climate
https://books.google.fr/books?hl=fr&lr=&id=MeXEDwAAQBAJ&oi=f...
The Role of Geomagnetic Field Intensity in Late Quaternary Evolution of Humans and Large Mammals
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/201...
>It has long been speculated that biological evolution was influenced by ultraviolet radiation (UVR) reaching the Earth's surface, despite imprecise knowledge of the timing of both UVR flux and evolutionary events. The past strength of Earth's dipole field provides a proxy for UVR flux because of its role in maintaining stratospheric ozone. The timing of Quaternary evolutionary events has become better constrained by fossil finds, improved radiometric dating, use of dung fungi as proxies for herbivore populations, and improved ages for nodes in human phylogeny from human mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosomes. The demise of Neanderthals at ~41 ka can now be closely tied to the intensity minimum associated with the Laschamp magnetic excursion, and the survival of anatomically modern humans can be attributed to differences in the aryl hydrocarbon receptor that has a key role in the evolutionary response to UVR flux. Fossil occurrences and dung-fungal proxies in Australia indicate that episodes of Late Quaternary extinction of mammalian megafauna occurred close to the Laschamp and Blake magnetic excursions. Fossil and dung fungal evidence for the age of the Late Quaternary extinction in North America (and Europe) coincide with a prominent decline in geomagnetic field intensity at ~13 ka.
Latest Permian and earliest Triassic geomagnetic polarity timescale: A polarity reversal marks the greatest mass extinction
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09218...
The ‘Sterno-Etrussia’ Geomagnetic Excursion Around 2700 BP and Changes of Solar Activity, Cosmic Ray Intensity, and Climate
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/radiocarbon/article/...
>The Sterno-Etrussia excursion may have amplified the climate shift, which, in the first place, was the effect of a decline of solar activity. During excursions and inversions, the magnetic moment decreases, which leads to an increased intensity of cosmic rays penetrating the upper atmosphere. Global changes in the electromagnetic field of the earth result in sharp changes in the climate-determining factors in the atmosphere, such as temperatures, total pressure field, moisture circulation, intensity of air flows, and thunderstorm activity. In addition, significant changes in the ocean circulation patterns and temperature regimes of oceans will have taken place.
Global climate change during the 13,500-b.p. Gothenburg geomagnetic excursion
https://www.nature.com/articles/265430a0
>ROBERTS and Olsen1 suggested that high latitude atmospheric ionisation has an important role in nucleating cirrus clouds. And Harrison and Prospero2 deduce that, if this is correct, severe drops of the Earth's magnetic field strength, such as are believed to accompany reversals, would lead to increased upper atmospheric cloudiness at all latitudes and correspondingly to major climatic events. There is likely to be warming at high latitudes but considerable cooling in the middle latitudes, in a way analogous to the aerosols3.
Are there connections between the Earth's magnetic field and climate?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00128...
>Understanding climate change is an active topic of research. Much of the observed increase in global surface temperature over the past 150 years occurred prior to the 1940s and after the 1980s. The main causes invoked are solar variability, changes in atmospheric greenhouse gas content or sulfur due to natural or anthropogenic action, or internal variability of the coupled ocean–atmosphere system. Magnetism has seldom been invoked, and evidence for connections between climate and magnetic field variations have received little attention. We review evidence for correlations which could suggest such (causal or non-causal) connections at various time scales (recent secular variation ∼ 10–100 yr, historical and archeomagnetic change ∼ 100–5000 yr, and excursions and reversals ∼ 103–106 yr), and attempt to suggest mechanisms. Evidence for correlations, which invoke Milankovic forcing in the core, either directly or through changes in ice distribution and moments of inertia of the Earth, is still tenuous. Correlation between decadal changes in amplitude of geomagnetic variations of external origin, solar irradiance and global temperature is stronger. It suggests that solar irradiance could have been a major forcing function of climate until the mid-1980s, when “anomalous” warming becomes apparent.
Book on the subject: The Hidden Link Between Earth’s Magnetic Field and Climate
https://books.google.fr/books?hl=fr&lr=&id=MeXEDwAAQBAJ&oi=f...
The Role of Geomagnetic Field Intensity in Late Quaternary Evolution of Humans and Large Mammals
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/201...
>It has long been speculated that biological evolution was influenced by ultraviolet radiation (UVR) reaching the Earth's surface, despite imprecise knowledge of the timing of both UVR flux and evolutionary events. The past strength of Earth's dipole field provides a proxy for UVR flux because of its role in maintaining stratospheric ozone. The timing of Quaternary evolutionary events has become better constrained by fossil finds, improved radiometric dating, use of dung fungi as proxies for herbivore populations, and improved ages for nodes in human phylogeny from human mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosomes. The demise of Neanderthals at ~41 ka can now be closely tied to the intensity minimum associated with the Laschamp magnetic excursion, and the survival of anatomically modern humans can be attributed to differences in the aryl hydrocarbon receptor that has a key role in the evolutionary response to UVR flux. Fossil occurrences and dung-fungal proxies in Australia indicate that episodes of Late Quaternary extinction of mammalian megafauna occurred close to the Laschamp and Blake magnetic excursions. Fossil and dung fungal evidence for the age of the Late Quaternary extinction in North America (and Europe) coincide with a prominent decline in geomagnetic field intensity at ~13 ka.
Latest Permian and earliest Triassic geomagnetic polarity timescale: A polarity reversal marks the greatest mass extinction
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09218...