Winter temperatures above 35C in South America leave climatologists in disbelief

"Fennoscandian tree-ring anatomy shows a warmer modern than medieval climate"

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06176-4

I can tell you one of the best ways to fight climate change is not to spend 0 time reading someone's source to see what's going on with their numbers and accusing them of purposefully exaggerating instead. That's just using the guise of Wikipedia expertise to be lazy and stop a conversation before it starts

From their article, the "2.x" clearly comes from the fahrenheit number given. They likely meant 1.2 degrees C, measured from the preindustrial era.

(and you're clearly willing to speculate based on nothing but your feelings[1], so I'm not sure you have much of a leg to stand on criticizing like that)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37002288

I am strongly in favor of moving to renewable sources just because they seem like the obvious next technical evolution (And all the CO2 reduction benefits, for sure). I'm also completely trusting that climatologists are doing their thing and that the models we have only keep getting better. I have nearly zero issues with the science or the scientific process as I understand it.

But can we just admit that communicating about warming the earth by 2 degrees always has, and will always be a major failure in getting through to the population? Whenever I see another article talking about "2 degrees by 2035" or something similar, I roll my eyes now because that is such heavy jargon that is meaningful to such a small amount of people. How can we better communicate exactly what that means on a day to day basis? Or connect that to solutions?

We have to find a better way to communicate this both at the macro level and at the micro level.

At the macro level, even someone like me who is fully onboard with the science and the phenomenon, has a hard time getting worked up about chatter about 2 degrees, 0.9 degrees, and measuring tons of carbon. As humans we just can't process this in a meaningful way.

And at a micro level, I'm also sick of us looking at the weather around us on individual days saying "look at this hot day, climate change" and ignoring other factors. But then when people joke about frigid winters, we are quick to correct them and say that it's still due to climate change (we seem to understand that systems are interrelated, cold fronts, warming water evaporating more and resulting in more snow for example), but in hot weather, we just use the "climate change!" sledgehammer and forget about undersea volcanoes, El Ninos, the intensity of the sun (all small factors but factors nonetheless).

The whole thing to me has long been a failure in public communication of science. And I think that should be given as much attention as all the other technical solutions.

Not to say the heat is not real ofc. Where I am the summer is super hot, in July it came within less than 1 degree of all time maximum on record for the month, though I don't think it broke the record after all... and this with up to 70% humidity, I nearly passed out walking. I guess almost the limit of my endurance.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-low-sulphur-shippin...