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What happened last time it was as warm as it’s going to get later this century?

arstechnica.com

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Re: What happened last time it was as warm as it’s going to get later this century?

#21

Post by Cthulhu_ »

macinjosh wrote: post #8

Global warming is real and humans contribute to it. Just stating that so I am not called a 'denier' as I have been before. That being said, the computer models predicting what the consequences of global warming will be, have greatly over estimated (at least the timeline of) real world impacts. Since I was a kid I've heard in the news that in the next 5 years or 10 years there will be all these catastrophes linked to…

As another commenter noted, you're just lucky. There's been once-in-a-x-hundred-year weather events left and right in the past years. We'll see parts of the Carribean become uninhabitable in this generation - especially if the US keeps ignoring e.g. Puerto Rico and Haiti. The big storms will keep hitting those and part of the mainland to a point where the rebuild will not have been finished before the next one hits, forcing people to emigrate inland.

In my situation, temperatures have gone up, with heat records being broken left and right. Used to be we only got like two or three weeks of >30 weather, now it's a multiple of that. You can see it in the sales of AC units and such.

Re: What happened last time it was as warm as it’s going to get later this century?

#22

Post by yosito »

xoa wrote: post #19
JTbane wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As my ECON 101 teacher said many times, the way to handle negative externalities is to tax them. The free market cannot handle this. Look at it this way- say you can make a ton of money manufacturing widgets, but you also make a ton of CO2. There is no law against this discharge, so you do it anyway. Climate change might cause you many problems, but it's 50 years or more until you start to personally feel the heat. T…

>As my ECON 101 teacher said many times, the way to handle negative externalities is to tax them. The free market cannot handle this. To take your second part first, taxing is part of the free market. The free market is a creation of and tool for use of government. Regulation to ensure cost internalization, information symmetry, contractual enforcement, and so forth are all basics for it to work at all. And a market…

I think this is where "liquid democracy" projects like Democracy Earth may be into something. In a way they're seeking to turn government decision making into a market. https://www.democracy.earth

Re: What happened last time it was as warm as it’s going to get later this century?

#23

Post by xoa »

macinjosh wrote: post #8

Global warming is real and humans contribute to it. Just stating that so I am not called a 'denier' as I have been before. That being said, the computer models predicting what the consequences of global warming will be, have greatly over estimated (at least the timeline of) real world impacts. Since I was a kid I've heard in the news that in the next 5 years or 10 years there will be all these catastrophes linked to…

>That being said, the computer models predicting what the consequences of global warming will be, have greatly over estimated (at least the timeline of) real world impacts.

Eh? Models have consistently underestimated the timeline. What exactly random individual articles in the bait-crazy science-ignorant general media may exclaim isn't particularly relevant to the actual state of the science. I mean, you don't read about computer science or bio or whatever stories there, see them get something hilariously wrong, then immediately flip to the next page and take their expertise on some other technical subject as gospel do you? The IPCC reports have been very conservative and used significant error bars. They've even consistently indulged in the fiction that somehow the world would come together and suddenly deal with emissions rather then just letting it run. Interest backed media constantly have played down any possible consequences or flat out asserted it'd be a net positive, that there'd be lots of new farmland say. The old lie of "back in the 70s they said we'd see a new ice age!!" still gets trotted out.

The picture you paint seems the pretty much the polar opposite of the media reality over the last few decades.

Re: What happened last time it was as warm as it’s going to get later this century?

#24

Post by danielmg »

Jill_the_Pill wrote: post #20
macinjosh wrote: post #8

Global warming is real and humans contribute to it. Just stating that so I am not called a 'denier' as I have been before. That being said, the computer models predicting what the consequences of global warming will be, have greatly over estimated (at least the timeline of) real world impacts. Since I was a kid I've heard in the news that in the next 5 years or 10 years there will be all these catastrophes linked to…

The numerous one-in-a-thousand-year floods don't get you? The super-typhoons and unprecedented hurricanes? Drought and the human migration motivated by drought and flood? Species extinction? Wildfires? Loss of islands? I think it was the photos of disinterred coffins floating through the flooded streets of New Orleans that first really hit me: it's here.

I don't think you read all of his comment.

Picking a single event like New Orleans isn't great evidence. I lived through a once in 300 years hurricane in southern England in '87 - that tells us nothing.

But the increasing frequency of adverse events and once in a x years events is starting to nod its head in the direction of the impacts of global warming starting to manifest.

The point he made is a good one - media sensationalism, supported by people who should know better; it does more harm than good.

The future looks bleak as we, in the west, can go 100% nuke, zero carbon etc but it's like a fart in a jacuzzi compared to what China will bring as its economy scales to western per-capita size.

Re: What happened last time it was as warm as it’s going to get later this century?

#25

Post by jefurii »

macinjosh wrote: post #8

Global warming is real and humans contribute to it. Just stating that so I am not called a 'denier' as I have been before. That being said, the computer models predicting what the consequences of global warming will be, have greatly over estimated (at least the timeline of) real world impacts. Since I was a kid I've heard in the news that in the next 5 years or 10 years there will be all these catastrophes linked to…

What I'm hearing from scientists is that we're already seeing unusual weather patterns that are due to global warming. For the past decade or so nearly every year has been warmer than the year before, and nearly every year is a record-breaking warm temperature. We're seeing more and more "exceptional" or 1000-year events happening every year. This is what you'd expect from global warming.

Global warming is a slow-moving problem, which humans are terrible at dealing with. It's unfolding over a time span that it hard for humans to perceive in their lifetimes unless they're personally keeping track, and large segments of our population have been trained to distrust scientific reporting.

Re: What happened last time it was as warm as it’s going to get later this century?

#26

Post by pyk »

Jill_the_Pill wrote: post #20
macinjosh wrote: post #8

Global warming is real and humans contribute to it. Just stating that so I am not called a 'denier' as I have been before. That being said, the computer models predicting what the consequences of global warming will be, have greatly over estimated (at least the timeline of) real world impacts. Since I was a kid I've heard in the news that in the next 5 years or 10 years there will be all these catastrophes linked to…

The numerous one-in-a-thousand-year floods don't get you? The super-typhoons and unprecedented hurricanes? Drought and the human migration motivated by drought and flood? Species extinction? Wildfires? Loss of islands? I think it was the photos of disinterred coffins floating through the flooded streets of New Orleans that first really hit me: it's here.

To piggyback the above comment, the recent Nature[1] article about centuries-old baobab trees mysteriously dying over the past decade of warmer-then-even-warmer temperatures is what hit me. A potential litmus test for our future as a species.

I suspect we will see more and more accumulation of research on impacts rather than just predicted impacts as we continue to experience increased temperatures. Although you do not have to touch a flame to know it will burn, more and more real world instances of getting "burned" are harder and harder to ignore.

"The researchers found no signs of an epidemic or disease, leading them to suggest that changing climates in southern Africa could be to blame — but they stress that more research is needed to confirm this idea."

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05411-7

Re: What happened last time it was as warm as it’s going to get later this century?

#27

Post by blixt »

xoa wrote: post #23
macinjosh wrote: post #8

Global warming is real and humans contribute to it. Just stating that so I am not called a 'denier' as I have been before. That being said, the computer models predicting what the consequences of global warming will be, have greatly over estimated (at least the timeline of) real world impacts. Since I was a kid I've heard in the news that in the next 5 years or 10 years there will be all these catastrophes linked to…

> That being said, the computer models predicting what the consequences of global warming will be, have greatly over estimated (at least the timeline of) real world impacts. Eh? Models have consistently underestimated the timeline. What exactly random individual articles in the bait-crazy science-ignorant general media may exclaim isn't particularly relevant to the actual state of the science. I mean, you don't read…

As you two have somewhat opposite memories/knowledge on the historical actions of media and science, maybe it'd be good to get some sources out in terms of old reports and articles?

Re: What happened last time it was as warm as it’s going to get later this century?

#28

Post by tonyedgecombe »

macinjosh wrote: post #8

Global warming is real and humans contribute to it. Just stating that so I am not called a 'denier' as I have been before. That being said, the computer models predicting what the consequences of global warming will be, have greatly over estimated (at least the timeline of) real world impacts. Since I was a kid I've heard in the news that in the next 5 years or 10 years there will be all these catastrophes linked to…

I'm not a denier but ...

Re: What happened last time it was as warm as it’s going to get later this century?

#29

Post by dbingham »

macinjosh wrote: post #8

Global warming is real and humans contribute to it. Just stating that so I am not called a 'denier' as I have been before. That being said, the computer models predicting what the consequences of global warming will be, have greatly over estimated (at least the timeline of) real world impacts. Since I was a kid I've heard in the news that in the next 5 years or 10 years there will be all these catastrophes linked to…

The over-sensationalization is purely the media. It's not coming from the models or the scientists running them. Please don't over generalize your anecdotal experience to an entire field. Especially not with something this important.

The models have consistently undershot the mark: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-science-p...

As for climate disasters, we've had Katrina (2005) - 3rd most intense landfalling storm in the US in 100 years [1], Irma (2017) - the strongest observed in the Atlantic in terms of maximum sustained winds since Wilma [2], Wilma (2005) - the second-most intense tropical cyclone recorded in the Western Hemisphere, after Hurricane Patricia in 2015 [3], Patricia (2015) - the second-most intense tropical cyclone on record worldwide [4], Harvey (2017) - tied with Hurricane Katrina as the costliest tropical cyclone on record[5] - which also caused "500 year floods" (3rd time in 3 years [6]). And that's just a sampling.

For a while now, we've gotten a new "hottest month on record" every few months. And we've pretty consistently gotten "hottest year" on record every few years (increasingly every year or every other year). If you go look at Wunderground's calendar view, you can see the historic temperature records for each day - lows and highs. With few exceptions, the records have all been set in the past few decades. With those records have come any number of record breaking heatwaves, many of which have been very deadly. One of the most recent occurred in Pakistan and saw a temperature of 50.2C (122F) in the city of Nawabshah. [7] Seriously, just google the term "record breaking heatwave" and do some reading.

You may not have experienced the extreme effects over-exaggerating TV anchors talked about in your childhood, but the world is experiencing climate effects as bad as the models predicted, or worse. Please don't use your personal anecdotal experience to undercut the validity of climate models.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Irma [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Wilma [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Patricia [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Harvey [6] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/08/29/houst... [7] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/02/pakistani-city...

Re: What happened last time it was as warm as it’s going to get later this century?

#30

Post by jchook »

collyw wrote: post #5
xoa wrote: post #4

Does anyone know if there is any party or even organization anywhere right now pushing proper utilization of the free market to at least internalize the current cost of CO2 emissions (though that by itself could not solve the historical lack). It seems like this would actually be one of the few places where a free market should work extremely well: simply set the price of emitting a ton of CO2 at the ratcheted price…

So far the free market has failed spectacularly at addressing global warming.

The US Government subsidizes our oil addiction. If the costs were apparent at the gas tank, a “free market” would correct in a blink.
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