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A 3°C world has no safe place

economist.com

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Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#11

Post by nnamtr »

mulmen wrote: post #4
chana_masala wrote: post #2

Maybe it wouldn't have mattered, but I wish that the Fahrenheit increase would have been more prominently used over these years. I think that most Americans don't realize that 1°C is more than 1°F so it doesn't sound as bad when it's "only a few degrees"

Ok but even 1°C is pretty bad? Even 1°F is bad. If we were going for emotional effect shouldn't it be expressed in Kelvin, or a temperature scale that is designed specifically to scare the public? Something where 3°C is 20°Scare? E: Kelvin doesn't work for scaring the public unless it is reported as an absolute temperature. TIL.

FWIW Celsius and Kelvin have the same scale, they're just shifted.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#12

Post by jasonbourne1901 »

chana_masala wrote: post #2

Maybe it wouldn't have mattered, but I wish that the Fahrenheit increase would have been more prominently used over these years. I think that most Americans don't realize that 1°C is more than 1°F so it doesn't sound as bad when it's "only a few degrees"

Shoulda used microkelvins!

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#13

Post by ceejayoz »

lettergram wrote: post #7

What are they talking about? In the US this will mean more rain in many regions and longer growing seasons. A lot of plants will quickly adapt. Historically, our planet for most of its history was warmer. It’s all going to be fine, while we will need to adjust the world will continue on. Note: I’m not saying it won’t be hard, but this will be a gradual change and will actually assist some places, while others get mor…

The geopolitical reality of, say, a billion people in India becoming climate refugees is likely to have worldwide implications.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#14

Post by dataflow »

chana_masala wrote: post #2

Maybe it wouldn't have mattered, but I wish that the Fahrenheit increase would have been more prominently used over these years. I think that most Americans don't realize that 1°C is more than 1°F so it doesn't sound as bad when it's "only a few degrees"

Honestly both of them are small, and I think citing the degrees is just terrible messaging altogether. I think people would gladly accept & adapt to even a 5°F increase; I know I would. The problem is that doesn't capture anything about the local variation (and impacts like hurricanes, fires, etc.), and that even beyond that, we're absolutely destroying everything about our planet as we know it, and a single-degree change in average temperatures is just icing on the cake.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#16

Post by paulcole »

chana_masala wrote: post #2

Maybe it wouldn't have mattered, but I wish that the Fahrenheit increase would have been more prominently used over these years. I think that most Americans don't realize that 1°C is more than 1°F so it doesn't sound as bad when it's "only a few degrees"

OK 3C is 5.4F for anyone who is wondering.

I don’t think that’s the straw that would’ve broken the climate change camel’s back in America.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#17

Post by titzer »

lettergram wrote: post #7

What are they talking about? In the US this will mean more rain in many regions and longer growing seasons. A lot of plants will quickly adapt. Historically, our planet for most of its history was warmer. It’s all going to be fine, while we will need to adjust the world will continue on. Note: I’m not saying it won’t be hard, but this will be a gradual change and will actually assist some places, while others get mor…

Will they adapt to the raging wildfires that ~1.2C has already induced across much of the west coast? That's some adaptin'!

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#18

Post by azalemeth »

chana_masala wrote: post #2

Maybe it wouldn't have mattered, but I wish that the Fahrenheit increase would have been more prominently used over these years. I think that most Americans don't realize that 1°C is more than 1°F so it doesn't sound as bad when it's "only a few degrees"

I equally wish that more Americans used SI -- Farenheit is about as familiar to me as Rankine; I have been bitten by the US use of 'mil' to mean thousandths of an inch whilst remaining how some en-gb engineers use it as inaccurate slang for mm. But this is a big distraction. Alas, I know that the whole reason we're in this pickle is that scientific literacy is low, and most people prefer short term gains over longer ones. In many ways the increased rate of increase in temperature might be a good thing, as it makes more people intuitively get that something is very, very wrong.

As an aside, most professional oceanographers or climate scientists I know are depressed, furious, or grant writing -- or a linear superposition of all three.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#19

Post by pengaru »

chana_masala wrote: post #2

Maybe it wouldn't have mattered, but I wish that the Fahrenheit increase would have been more prominently used over these years. I think that most Americans don't realize that 1°C is more than 1°F so it doesn't sound as bad when it's "only a few degrees"

Different units of measurement will not make it any less of a hoax or inconvenient truth preferably ignored.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#20

Post by xupybd »

chana_masala wrote: post #2

Maybe it wouldn't have mattered, but I wish that the Fahrenheit increase would have been more prominently used over these years. I think that most Americans don't realize that 1°C is more than 1°F so it doesn't sound as bad when it's "only a few degrees"

Humans have trouble detecting less than a 2°C change in temperature. The truth is changes on global averages seem tiny because we use temperature as the metric. The temperature change is tiny. The heat energy is huge. We should use energy as the metric.
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