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Earth at risk of becoming 'hothouse' if tipping point reached, report warns

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Re: Earth at risk of becoming 'hothouse' if tipping point reached, report warns

#71

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Pre-industrial levels when we were still coming out of significant cooling period. In every other period of human history, increased average temperatures have coincided with golden ages. Depending on where you peg your baseline for what "normal" temperatures are, the projections can look more or less scary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Warm_Period https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period I'm suspicio…

You realize what the current development looks like on a chart right? https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

Thank you for this site the collection of data here is amazing!

Re: Earth at risk of becoming 'hothouse' if tipping point reached, report warns

#72

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Wasn't 100 Fahrenheit the temperature of a chicken on tuesday in the sunshine? Can't quite remember how that scale was created.

I always heard it was the rectal temperature of a cow, but that's not what wikipedia tells me, so someone probably made that up. One advantage of the Fahrenheit scale is that the range from 0 to 100 roughly corresponds to temperatures people normally deal with.

The second point is 96, human body temperature.

Re: Earth at risk of becoming 'hothouse' if tipping point reached, report warns

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't 100 Fahrenheit the temperature of a chicken on tuesday in the sunshine? Can't quite remember how that scale was created.

I always heard it was the rectal temperature of a cow, but that's not what wikipedia tells me, so someone probably made that up. One advantage of the Fahrenheit scale is that the range from 0 to 100 roughly corresponds to temperatures people normally deal with.

After moving to Europe I am completely on board with the simplicity of the metric system, however I do prefer the Fahrenheit scale for exactly the reason you described above.

A human will face winter weather conditions from 0-32F which converts to negative values on the Celsius scale (not practical).

On the other end of the spectrum for summer time conditions, there is a wider range of values to ascribe to changes in temperature from 60F-100F or approx 16-38C.

Re: Earth at risk of becoming 'hothouse' if tipping point reached, report warns

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always heard it was the rectal temperature of a cow, but that's not what wikipedia tells me, so someone probably made that up. One advantage of the Fahrenheit scale is that the range from 0 to 100 roughly corresponds to temperatures people normally deal with.

After moving to Europe I am completely on board with the simplicity of the metric system, however I do prefer the Fahrenheit scale for exactly the reason you described above. A human will face winter weather conditions from 0-32F which converts to negative values on the Celsius scale (not practical). On the other end of the spectrum for summer time conditions, there is a wider range of values to ascribe to changes in…

Negative numbers may be less practical in your eyes but they sound more dramatic and thus make complaining about the cold much more satisfying. ;)

Re: Earth at risk of becoming 'hothouse' if tipping point reached, report warns

#75
post #3

I'm absolutely certain with governments moving this slow right now, making small goals for 2050, getting courted by lobbies to not push through massive restrictions, probably most of these very dark predictions will come true. I, as a concerned citizen can do nothing against the corporations ruling our society, overruling politicians or outright controlling them directly. We are probably beyond any point of return. T…

> I, as a concerned citizen can do nothing against the corporations ruling our society Defenestrations, torches and pitchforks have been traditional solutions to rulers not acting in the interest of the populace. Of course more peaceful means are preferable but the option needs to be kept on the table to remember why we have and want democratic solutions in the first place.

This will happen. It's actually already happening in developing countries.

The disruption of food supplies has been causing annual riots all over the world. The US has remained insulated from these effects by virtue of being relatively rich and relying on over-priced, highly processed foods that have enough margin to buffer against price shocks. But this is clearly an untenable situation.

Shit goes south really fast when people can't afford to eat. And the difference between Mexican or Middle Eastern food riots and American ones is that Americans will come with lots of guns.

Re: Earth at risk of becoming 'hothouse' if tipping point reached, report warns

#76

I'm worried that this could be just 'the tip of the iceberg' [1]. I have a suspicion that even J. Hansen is still underestimating the issue. Just looking at [2] the variability of current estimates of stored methane is enormous - going from 10E2 to 5x10E4 Gigatonnes! Methane does greenhouse forcing 20-25x as strong as CO2 over 100 years, or as much as ~160x if you only count 10 years. Depending on how fast methane ge…

This is indeed worrisome, but the evidence I've heard suggests that it won't be as bad as +12C. Also the Earth was at +14C with respect to today at it's hottest point during the PETM, which was very bad for the earth, but life survived.

The earth will one day reach a true runaway greenhouse when the sun brightens by 10% in about 1.1 billion years. But according to J. Hansen in 2013 a complete greenhouse runaway can't happen unless the high temperatures are maintained for several million years, long enough for all the oceans to evaporate, and our own forcing will only(!) last a few tens of thousands. So my understanding is that we won't cause all life to go extinct, if that makes you feel any better.

Re: Earth at risk of becoming 'hothouse' if tipping point reached, report warns

#77

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People know their personal largest impact is cars and meat. But personal convenience has always beaten doing the right thing.

The anti-meat crusade is really strong these days on here, but that is not a concern that even registers in most peoples' heads. Very few people have the luxury of considering anything outside their immediate circle of concern.

It's also exaggerated from a climate issue.

The vast majority of the benefit comes from cutting beef (and lamb), which I don't think is that hard of an ask. Other meat reduction has much less benefit.. and it is harder for most people to do.

Source: https://www.skepticalscience.com/how-much-meat-contribute-to...

Re: Earth at risk of becoming 'hothouse' if tipping point reached, report warns

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People know their personal largest impact is cars and meat. But personal convenience has always beaten doing the right thing.

The vast majority of people I know (Texas) couldn't live a productive life without a car. Some people certainly could but not most. Meat, though, they could definitely do without—and for most of them it'd be healthier.

Strange, I'd heard it was refined carbs and sugar giving America diabetes and heart disease. Are you saying it's meat now?

Re: Earth at risk of becoming 'hothouse' if tipping point reached, report warns

#79

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Everyone who said during the 1970s that we should be afraid of global cooling are the same people who now demand that we believe them on global warming. Oceanic thermocline: explain the data we have and the mathematical model we have to cover this phenomenon. You can't, because you don't actually know. You just blindly believe it, don't you?

There is a gigantic mountain of evidence in favor of climate change, and you're listening to industry propaganda produced by the very people who have a clear monetary interest in doing nothing! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling#/media/File:Pee... https://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970...

"Oceanic thermocline" never fails to trigger people.

As soon as they actually do in fact research it, they realize that:

a) we don't have the data

b) we don't have an accurate/sane mathematical model for it.

We can't use satellites to measure anything other than surface temperature of the ocean; it would require an actual, physically located sensor network spread throughout the oceans of the world to get this information. Which we don't have now and never had in the past...

Re: Earth at risk of becoming 'hothouse' if tipping point reached, report warns

#80
post #13
post #9

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https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/global-an... > According to different observational records of global average annual near-surface (land and ocean) temperature, the last decade (2008–2017) was 0.89 °C to 0.93 °C warmer than the pre-industrial average, which makes it the warmest decade on record. Of the 17 warmest years on record, 16 have occurred since 2000. The year 2017 was one of the world’s thre…

But 100-200 years is very little time for comparison isn't it? Is there any presumed data on what it was before that?

100-200 years is pretty fast when compared to how slowly climate moves in one direction or the other. Also those 100-200 years are the same in which human instrialization took place. Measuring temperature in a global scale is a very daunting task and it is open to interpretations by negationists and reactionaries, but you can look for pictures of the last 30 years in the North Pole. The Arctic is going to be open to navigation soon. You can also ask the climate experts, we have to rely on them, and the vast majority of them are predicting a similar effect.
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