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What’s the hottest the Earth’s ever been?

climate.gov

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Re: What’s the hottest the Earth’s ever been?

#31

Post by eloff »

CJefferson wrote: post #30
Helmut10001 wrote: post #10

It is strange why many politicians and countries (Germany included) appear to close their eyes and still promote or work on the 1.5 °C goal, which seems pretty unrealistic at this stage. Maybe it is to calm the public, besides knowing better. Instead, there is a need for more realistic plans to model and prepare for 3°C or 5°C increase of average temperature by 2060 (or 2100). Looking at these bigger swings in temper…

I can't imagine anything most countries could reasonably do to prepare for 5c, what type of things would you suggest?

If you're Bangladesh, give up on being a country and join India so your people at least have somewhere to migrate to.

If you're New Orleans, time to give up on being a city. Start preventing new construction. Incentivize people to leave.

Things like that really if we're going to get honest with ourselves about where things are headed.

Re: What’s the hottest the Earth’s ever been?

#32

Post by goodguyamericun »

Helmut10001 wrote: post #10

It is strange why many politicians and countries (Germany included) appear to close their eyes and still promote or work on the 1.5 °C goal, which seems pretty unrealistic at this stage. Maybe it is to calm the public, besides knowing better. Instead, there is a need for more realistic plans to model and prepare for 3°C or 5°C increase of average temperature by 2060 (or 2100). Looking at these bigger swings in temper…

Except Biden has stationed troops halfway across the world and if the MIC gets its way, we might get to pre 1800 levels of temperature, so, thanks Biden I guess. Let's go Biden

Re: What’s the hottest the Earth’s ever been?

#33

Post by adriand »

samwillis wrote: post #12
Helmut10001 wrote: post #10

It is strange why many politicians and countries (Germany included) appear to close their eyes and still promote or work on the 1.5 °C goal, which seems pretty unrealistic at this stage. Maybe it is to calm the public, besides knowing better. Instead, there is a need for more realistic plans to model and prepare for 3°C or 5°C increase of average temperature by 2060 (or 2100). Looking at these bigger swings in temper…

Trouble is most politicians are incentivised to think in the short term and are increasing just in a perpetual campaigning mode. They are thinking about their careers and re-election. They cannot except and talk about bad news, and a 3-5degC increase is bad news. On top of that you have had climate activists pushing for very large change to happen incredibly quickly (arguably needed). But it’s an incredibly hard sell…

> But it’s an incredibly hard sell to the public who won’t except a negative impact on their quality of life.

The idea that solving the climate crisis would have a negative impact on people's quality of life is one that has been successfully promoted by the fossil fuel industry. But it's not true. We could get to a net zero economy AND deliver improvements to (most) people's quality of life.

A few quick thoughts:

* I read that the richest 1% of Americans are responsible for 30% of American carbon emissions, although I'm struggling to find the source of that. It was easy, however, to find stats that indicate the richest 1% of people across the globe are responsible for 15% of global carbon emissions, which is nearly twice as much as the poorest 50%. The vast majority of us can keep on living our lives as normal. The 1% need to stop jet-setting and ripping around in lambos. That's not going to harm my quality of life. [1]

* Investments in green energy and related technologies are creating a job boom and plenty of wealth for the people participating in the green revolution. There are lots of direct economic benefits. [2]

* Air pollution from burning fossil fuels is responsible for ~1 in 5 deaths worldwide. Imagine the increase in quality of life for everyone with far cleaner air. [3]

* Millions of people, myself included, suffer from (entirely rational) feelings of anxiety, worry and depression related to climate change. The knowledge that we are destroying the planet, killing off animal and plant species by the thousands, and ruining the future of my children and grandchildren is a daily drag on my happiness and sense of well-being. I would feel so much better knowing that we were actually doing what we needed to do to solve this crisis. That would be a huge benefit to my quality of life! [4]

1: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20211025-climate-how-to-m...

2: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/renewable-energy-jo...

3: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/fossil-fuel-air-p...

4: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/06/health/climate-anxiety-th...

Re: What’s the hottest the Earth’s ever been?

#34

Post by roenxi »

throwaway3b03 wrote: post #21
samwillis wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trouble is most politicians are incentivised to think in the short term and are increasing just in a perpetual campaigning mode. They are thinking about their careers and re-election. They cannot except and talk about bad news, and a 3-5degC increase is bad news. On top of that you have had climate activists pushing for very large change to happen incredibly quickly (arguably needed). But it’s an incredibly hard sell…

> 1. People are unwilling to make changes that they perceive as being a net negative to their quality of life. I don't think that's the case. It's a coordination problem. People don't want to reduce their quality of life if they don't know for sure that others won't do that as well. Most things in life and in human psychology are relative, in constant comparison to our peers.

I'm going out on a limb and say that people are more worried about the quality of their own life than the quality of other people's life. Even if I was confident that the entire globe would impoverish themselves with me, I would still not want to be impoverished.

Besides, we don't have to scupper our quality of life. Nuclear remains on the table, for example. And it turns out thumb-twiddling for long enough has made wind & solar competitive and they're getting better. The biggest win would be cutting down population sizes and that seems to be happening naturally because it enables people to live more comfortable lives.

Re: What’s the hottest the Earth’s ever been?

#35

Post by tomaskafka »

egberts1 wrote: post #6

I often wonder about terraforming (on places like Mars planet). Earth obviously had the leg up on water accumulation during its accretation stage (Hadean period). Perhaps we can start generating oxygen early over there on Mars using a one-step CO2->O2+C catalyst. This comes to mind: https://www.pnas.org/content/109/39/15606

Perhaps we'd better make sure we try to terraform Earth, as it's much closer to being liveable, than Mars.

Colonizing Mars is like the whole 'I can't bother to learn Bash, so let's rewrite our whole app to Kubernetes in next 5 years' thing. A procrastination.

Re: What’s the hottest the Earth’s ever been?

#36

Post by WithinReason »

dalmo3 wrote: post #26
gorpovitch wrote: post #23

It is interesting to keep these numbers in mind, but these facts are not sufficient to think correctly about climate. The earth is a dynamic system, and the rate of temperature growth is as much, if not more, important than temperature average here. A car going from 100 to 0 kmph in 15 seconds is definitely not the same as a car going from 100 to 0 kmph in 0.1 seconds in terms of damage. the temperature rises describ…

Without any knowledge in the field I wonder if the timescale difference could be attributed to the measurement methods used for the last centuries vs literal ages ago. I.e. if we (or someone a million years from now) tried to estimate the 21th century's temperatures using the same techniques used to estimate temperatures a million years ago, would we be able to detect that 4 degree change? Conversely, can scientists…

This is a great question, and it seems that our methods can't detect temperature variation in past data that's similar to the recent rise. See the bottom answer:

https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/8746/is-thi...

Re: What’s the hottest the Earth’s ever been?

#37

Post by parkingrift »

CJefferson wrote: post #30
Helmut10001 wrote: post #10

It is strange why many politicians and countries (Germany included) appear to close their eyes and still promote or work on the 1.5 °C goal, which seems pretty unrealistic at this stage. Maybe it is to calm the public, besides knowing better. Instead, there is a need for more realistic plans to model and prepare for 3°C or 5°C increase of average temperature by 2060 (or 2100). Looking at these bigger swings in temper…

I can't imagine anything most countries could reasonably do to prepare for 5c, what type of things would you suggest?

Blast sulfur into the stratosphere. No, I’m not joking.

Re: What’s the hottest the Earth’s ever been?

#38

Post by mlac »

WithinReason wrote: post #36
dalmo3 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without any knowledge in the field I wonder if the timescale difference could be attributed to the measurement methods used for the last centuries vs literal ages ago. I.e. if we (or someone a million years from now) tried to estimate the 21th century's temperatures using the same techniques used to estimate temperatures a million years ago, would we be able to detect that 4 degree change? Conversely, can scientists…

This is a great question, and it seems that our methods can't detect temperature variation in past data that's similar to the recent rise. See the bottom answer: https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/8746/is-thi...

To clarify, the method is not sufficient to detect a temperature variation within 100 years - current methods aren’t that specific with dates.

One could read your comment as “we haven’t detected temperature variation in past data that’s similar to the recent rise”, but what you are trying to say (and what the link says) is that we’ve seen the variation before, we just can’t tell exactly how quickly it happened.

Re: What’s the hottest the Earth’s ever been?

#39

Post by moralestapia »

Helmut10001 wrote: post #10

It is strange why many politicians and countries (Germany included) appear to close their eyes and still promote or work on the 1.5 °C goal, which seems pretty unrealistic at this stage. Maybe it is to calm the public, besides knowing better. Instead, there is a need for more realistic plans to model and prepare for 3°C or 5°C increase of average temperature by 2060 (or 2100). Looking at these bigger swings in temper…

The thing is that, for businesses and governments, complying with the 1.5ºC goals/projections is already a monumental task. If it does happen, even though it won't be enough, we should at least get an A for effort ... too bad nature is not forgiving.

Anyway, what is still nice is that it should be easier to adapt to 3-5ºC once we're all doing something for 1.5ºC than if we were doing nothing at all, i.e. static friction is always higher than kinetic friction. I think the true covert goal at the moment is to at least get things moving and have everyone jump on it asap.

Source: I build/code software related to sustainability.

Re: What’s the hottest the Earth’s ever been?

#40

Post by jessaustin »

roenxi wrote: post #34
throwaway3b03 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. People are unwilling to make changes that they perceive as being a net negative to their quality of life. I don't think that's the case. It's a coordination problem. People don't want to reduce their quality of life if they don't know for sure that others won't do that as well. Most things in life and in human psychology are relative, in constant comparison to our peers.

I'm going out on a limb and say that people are more worried about the quality of their own life than the quality of other people's life. Even if I was confident that the entire globe would impoverish themselves with me, I would still not want to be impoverished. Besides, we don't have to scupper our quality of life. Nuclear remains on the table, for example. And it turns out thumb-twiddling for long enough has made…

The biggest win would be cutting down population sizes and that seems to be happening naturally because it enables people to live more comfortable lives.

The cloud of massive inequality and diminished opportunities for people of childbearing age has a silver lining after all...

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