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For 110 years, climate change has been in the news

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Re: For 110 years, climate change has been in the news

#2
Considering the period of concern over global cooling (from last century), claims of "we've known this, but have pretended not to for a hundred years" are just historical revisionism. When you lie about facts in favor of pushing a "more important truth" you don't convince people. You just give people more reason to doubt other things you're claiming.

Re: For 110 years, climate change has been in the news

#3

Considering the period of concern over global cooling (from last century), claims of "we've known this, but have pretended not to for a hundred years" are just historical revisionism. When you lie about facts in favor of pushing a "more important truth" you don't convince people. You just give people more reason to doubt other things you're claiming.

Combined with the apocalyptic histrionics of "we've only got ten more years before it's too late forever, we have to do something now!"

And that something being banning lawn mowers...

Re: For 110 years, climate change has been in the news

#6
"Arrhenius estimated doubling CO₂ would produce a world 5℃ hotter. This, thankfully, is higher than modern calculations but not too far off, considering he wasn’t using a sophisticated computer model!"

This is talking about the variable called "equilibrium climate sensitivity". Climate sensitivity is a key question in any fact-based discussion of climate change. There are three problems with this statement:

1. ECS calculations based on empirical measurement come in far, far lower than 5 degrees, more like 1.7-2.5 degrees and this has been falling over time, e.g. measurement based estimates of ECS in 2001 were higher than they are today.

2. ECS calculations based on models (which scientists should consider weaker evidence than observational data, but don't) are extremely uncertain, with estimates ranging from 2 to 4 degrees.

3. The range of values models use for ECS are getting wider over time, not narrower as you'd expect.

So it's really tough to say that Arrhenius was close given that modern climatologists have no idea what the correct value for ECS is even though they've been studying it intensively for 40 years, that their "sophisticated computer models" disagree very deeply about the right value and this is getting worse with time, and that all those values are still too high when compared to studies that aren't modelling based.

It's also worth noting that even the headline is totally misleading. Today climate change is used as a synonym for global warming but for long periods scientists were telling the world that "climate change" meant a new ice age. As late as 1975 (when the switch from cooling to warming was well underway) Newsweek was telling readers that "To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the Earth's climate seems to be cooling down".

http://www.denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf

So the article is trying to make it seem like scientists have been talking about global warming for over a century, but that isn't true. We could call it misinformation, perhaps. The physics of CO2 were understood for a long time but there's so much more to the climate than just CO2 that this isn't enough to be able to make accurate predictions.

Re: For 110 years, climate change has been in the news

#7
It’s striking to me that Hacker News has a significant audience of flat earthers. Don’t look up, right? Let’s be clear, human caused climate change is very real. Rigorous science confirms this and CO2 + methane levels are now driving very visible and catastrophic weather all over the world.

Re: For 110 years, climate change has been in the news

#8
What is not being posted in news often enough are the options that we have to mitigate the effects. the only thing i read is that we need yo drive down co2. fact is: we are not gonna reach the targets in a reasonable timeframe. hence, we must start preparing to mitigate effects. instead we are caught by climate catastrophies like the current draught in europe, us and china and we are running around like headless chicken.

let us setup multi generational projects on international scale to develop mitigations.

this os mot being covered well enough in media. the only thing i see in 80% of the articles is status quo reporting of climate change effects (fires, draughts, rain) and YET ANOTHER climate change warning... and ofc some aggressive climate terrorists that are getting too much coverage, too.

Re: For 110 years, climate change has been in the news

#9
It was very eye opening to see how many groups and individuals who "just want to have a debate" on the reality of climate change are funded by fossil fuel companies[1][2][3][4]. We are being lied to, and it's working. Just see the first few comments in reply to this article.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/mar/30/us-oil-d...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climate-skeptic-idUST...

[3] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/climate-skeptic-pat-micha_b_6...

[4] https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/global-warming-skeptic-orga...

Re: For 110 years, climate change has been in the news

#10

I heard the latest ice age was rough too

Oh, for sure. A sudden ice age would definitely ruin global civilization. But that's not the issue, and the opposite of an ice age, a rapid period of warming with huge disruptions to ecosystems, is not good either. It's almost like huge disruptions to ecosystems is the problem and independent from the red team/blue team political polarization culture-war horseshit.
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