Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 59 posts

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

#31

Post by radlad »

dbingham wrote: post #29
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 lan…

I agree with most of what you stated however...

> 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.

How long have we been tracking these records?

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

#32

Post by ska »

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…

Media representation is very different from the science.

I fully believe you heard some fantastical reporting when you were a child, but that is a reflection on the journalism, not the science. Overall the modeling has been quite conservative, and has had good accuracy for such domains.

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

#33

Post by bdcravens »

xoa wrote: post #17
bdcravens wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone who could meet a minimum volume level (the whole point is massive industrial scale removal) Just shard your operation so that no one "company" exceeds that level.

I don't understand what you're saying here, could you clarify? Why would an operation want to be prevented from bidding on collecting the money from carbon removal?

My mistake - I thought that statement was tied to "emitters would pay in units at the existing price, so a pool of credits per ton would collect"

My thought was that you'd have to be over N volume of CO2 emissions to have a mandated payment.

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

#34

Post by kojon99 »

danielmg wrote: post #24
Jill_the_Pill wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Tough sanctions are the solution to that.

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

#35

Post by oldcynic »

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…

Hmm. Yet snow is becoming rare in UK winters compared to the norm even 30 or 40 years ago, and we've had a succession of warmest November, December, etc on record reports over recent years.

What are you expecting?

Course if the Gulf Stream gets shut down we'll start getting similar snow amounts to Norway

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

#36

Post by throwaway5752 »

I thought this was going to be about the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Therm...) or (and?) the clathrate gun hypothesis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis). Sobering stuff, particularly heartbreaking for parents of young children.

edit: this is getting downvoted, so perhaps it's a miscommunication. I am most worried about heat waves and disrupted weather patterns causing more common crop failures and the geopolitical stress/conflict that will lead to. You can see the beginnings of this in Syria, Yemen, and various N. African countries where climate change induced drought was the underlying cause for the civic unrest. Look at the migrant populations fleeing these areas. I don't mean anything melodramatic, just that this will be a period of hardship and suffering greater than what we've become accustomed to in recent history.

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

#37

Post by mrfusion »

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…

Along a similar vein the rain forests were supposed to have disappeared 10 years ago and I think we were all supposed to suffocate. That’s what I remember hearing as a kid in the 90s.

I wonder what went wrong with those predictions? Did we end up taking enough action to stop that?

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

#38

Post by dbingham »

radlad wrote: post #31
dbingham wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lan…

I agree with most of what you stated however... > 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. How long have we been tracking these records?

Since 1850s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record

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

#39

Post by pitaj »

ChristianBundy wrote: post #10
collyw wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> So far the free market has failed spectacularly. FTFY

1. We haven't had anything close to a free market for many years.

2. The market pulling billions of people out of poverty is probably the opposite of failure.

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

#40

Post by dbingham »

blixt wrote: post #27
xoa wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Climate predictions, the accepted scientific ones, have consistently been more conservative than what has actually happened: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-science-p...
Post reply on HN