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IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’

theguardian.com

271–280 of 456 posts

Re: IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’

#271

Just in case it saves one person the effort to research this themselves ... for some reason I find the measurement of climate change in units of temperature a bit problematic (though entirely rational). It tends to suggest the old bugbear of "global warming", which of course gets translated by deniers (& skeptics) into "well it's colder here so that's wrong". I spent a while digging in to try to get some numbers on a…

Do you have a sense of what the % increase in total energy is? As in what is the denominator for the +300 terawatt hour figure?

Yeah this stat is a bit confusing to me.

Does this imply in preindustrial times the net energy was 0, or is this total energy and there’s some number not mentioned of loss?

Re: IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’

#272
post #266

Well, some weeks ago The Guardian wrote: Early forecasts suggest El Niño will return later in 2023, exacerbating extreme weather around the globe and making it “very likely” the world will exceed 1.5C of warming. The hottest year in recorded history, 2016, was driven by a major El Niño. 1.5°C is basically already locked in. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/16/return-o...

I'm confused as to how a part of the system can cause a change in the whole system. I understand it's changes based upon ocean temperatures, but it's not as though during an El Nino yeah our global temperature goes up and during a La Nina year it goes down, right? I can follow that El Nino will get worse and cause more local extremes across the global, but I don't know how it will cause or exacerbate the 1.5C global heating.

Re: IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you on this. And I am absolutely the furthest possible thing from a climate skeptic. If anything, it's just a recognition that this kind of communication from official sources is clearly ineffective. The climate crisis is never ever going to be solved by spontaneous collective action or by appeals to collective action. People will continue to do whatever it is they have to do to get their daily or yearly bas…

In a democracy, this means that people in aggregate need to care more about climate change consequences in the future than wealth/disposable income right now. That is simply a hard sell, always has been, and most of us are to blame for the consequences...

Specially hard to sell when those in power don't seem to treat is as existential crisis that will kill them. I do not see them following their own messaging to utmost care.

Re: IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’

#274

Just in case it saves one person the effort to research this themselves ... for some reason I find the measurement of climate change in units of temperature a bit problematic (though entirely rational). It tends to suggest the old bugbear of "global warming", which of course gets translated by deniers (& skeptics) into "well it's colder here so that's wrong". I spent a while digging in to try to get some numbers on a…

> anyone familiar with complex physical systems will understand that when you add energy to such a system, the effects are often hard to predict This is something that is very underappreciated. It's entirely possible that the climate becomes chaotic (in a mathematical sense) and there are sudden, drastic changes that cause economic and social devastation. It seems inevitable that people will be complacent until it's…

> It's entirely possible that the climate becomes chaotic

Ya think ? :)

(no insult intended)

Re: IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’

#275
post #267
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complex systems usually tend to equilibrium otherwise they would be in constant oscillation (positive feedback theory). As we look back in ice cores, there is variation, but not constant oscillations witch confirm a self stabilizing system. A few negative feedback we don’t often hear: increase of co2 have a huge effect on plant grow especially in hash deserted conditions. Increase in temperature increase humidity: cl…

Im sure the IPCC authors didn't forget their climate science 101 material. Moreover, we can tackle multiple problems concurrently, no need to make it appear we can only ever do one thing. And as it so happens, climate change tends to correlate extremely well with war and famine. It certainly appears a climate solution is going to help many other big problems along as well.

> climate change tends to correlate extremely well with war and famine

and migration.

Re: IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’

#276
post #260

Just in case it saves one person the effort to research this themselves ... for some reason I find the measurement of climate change in units of temperature a bit problematic (though entirely rational). It tends to suggest the old bugbear of "global warming", which of course gets translated by deniers (& skeptics) into "well it's colder here so that's wrong". I spent a while digging in to try to get some numbers on a…

Complex systems usually tend to equilibrium otherwise they would be in constant oscillation (positive feedback theory). As we look back in ice cores, there is variation, but not constant oscillations witch confirm a self stabilizing system. A few negative feedback we don’t often hear: increase of co2 have a huge effect on plant grow especially in hash deserted conditions. Increase in temperature increase humidity: cl…

> Increase in temperature increase humidity

Water vapor amplifies the effect of other greenhouse gases.

https://climate.nasa.gov/ask-nasa-climate/3143/steamy-relati...

Re: IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’

#277
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's of course not what her tweet said. Did you intentionally misread it or just get it through an incorrect grapevine?

Her tweet was, "A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years." Not that far off from, "We're all doomed in five years," because we definitely did not stop using fossil fuels, and in my opinion, wiping out all of humanity would count as doom.

So, what she is saying is that now we are all doomed anyway. So we can as well have fun while we can. So let's just stop this climate change nonsense and party until we all die.

Re: IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’

#278
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a sense of what the % increase in total energy is? As in what is the denominator for the +300 terawatt hour figure?

Yeah this stat is a bit confusing to me. Does this imply in preindustrial times the net energy was 0, or is this total energy and there’s some number not mentioned of loss?

My understanding (I'm not a climate scientist) is that yes, net energy was zero over the "right" period of time (i.e. incoming energy from the sun balanced energy lost by radiating to space).

The key technical term (IIUC) is "radiative forcing" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing

Re: IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’

#279
The problem is to a large part one of attack surface, if we don't have anything to talk about we talk about weather because weather effects everything and everyone. Thing is, all our systems are tuned to how the weather is right now, if climate and thus weather changes, problems can potentially pop up just about everywhere. Now we can talk about the systems we know are at a critical location, like coral reefs, but the actual problem is about unknown unknowns: Right now we are taking the bet that the worst problem connected to a changing climate that nobody has thought about is quite bearable, which to me doesn't look like a good bet.
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