Because I can already hear the anti-man-made-climate-change crowd shrieking… how do we go about determining global temperatures thousands of years ago?
Edit: Stopped being lazy and googled it: https://gizmodo.com/how-do-scientists-know-what-the-temperature-was-thousan-1714597561
Very informative but you see, science doesn’t convince the anti-science crowd, pretty much by definition.
Yup, but if I’m talking to someone who doesn’t believe in man-made climate change and I show them the xkcd and answer their obvious follow-up question about how we know past temperature, and they STILL don’t want to listen to me… well then I know I can never talk to that person again. :)
anti-science crowd
Too bad the anti-science crowd are our elected officials. ༎ຶ‿༎ຶ
I can already hear the anti-man-made-climate-change crowd shrieking…
Generally a good source for this use case. You can sort by popular arguments or arguments by type, and for many answers choose from different detail levels, sometimes even languages.
I didn’t find your specific question in their catalogue of answers, but they have a blog post about that topic: https://skepticalscience.com/two-centuries-climate-science-3.html
There is also that group that says it will get warmer naturally, by whatever solar flare etc bullshit ever. So business as usual, can’t change the course anyway so I will buy a second SUV
It’s good to ask the question.
The problem is when they refuse to accept the answer.
Centuries of applied critical thinking.
One slight correction: evidence indicates that the americas were colonized before the ice age corridor opened. It is now thought that the americas were colonized via short excursions near shore via boats resulting in the coastal areas being inhabitated in only ~500 years from alaska all the way down to the tip of south america. This is thought to be the same way that australia was inhabited 60,000 years ago. The oldest settlement sites are now underwater.
Isn’t that more of a recent discovery though? I only mention it cos this comic is from 2016, which, as much as I don’t want to acknowledge the passing of time, is 7yrs ago.
It was understood by the early 2010s that the timeline was off. Scientific American ran an article about it at the end of 2012 but it does not surprise me that Monroe would still go by the old timeline in 2016. I only knew about it years ago because I was an undergrad and one of my professors worked extensively in Alaska and neighboring areas during his PhD.
Direct image link for those who can’t see it well: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/earth_temperature_timeline.png
Well that certainly puts things into a horrifying perspective!
I will continue doing what I can to help. But it’s over.
It’s really not. It’s just getting started. The worst predictions, of 4-6 degrees of warming, are more or less off the table. Current trajectory is ~3 degrees of warming which… is civilisationally devastating admittedly, but we have pathways to reduce that. Even the 1.5c target isn’t over yet.
There is a broad range of potential future climates, and this generation decides which one we end up with. It’s not over by a long shot.
I appreciate the optimism, I really do. I hope things basically work out for my kid’s sake.
But even this summer was seemingly hotter than it should have been. I think the cascading issues are here.
I’ll continue voting and doing small peasant actions but unless governments actually treat it like it’s a global emergency, then there’s no chance.
It’s not a matter of optimism, it’s a matter of not repeating our parents’ mistakes. Whatever the inevitability of warming, we should fight for every 0.1°C, because there’s a big difference for our kids if the average is 2 or 5 or 6 degrees higher.
You can be as pessimistic as you feel the need to, as long as that doesn’t stop you from acting.
Hannah Ritchie on Keeping Hope for the Planet Alive - Sean Carroll’s Mindscape podcast
This episode just came out. There is still plenty that can be done it seems.
I’m glad you’re optimistic but warming has a roughly 40 year delayed effect and we’re already seeing changes. Even if by some magic we halted all emissions, and I mean ALL, we’d still be warming into the 2060s.
The only way to make the 1.5c target would be a massive investment in carbon capture and huge reduction in carbon emissions.
I just don’t see it happening. I don’t see the world even trying until it’s too late.
Some of this delayed effect has been debated, but we ought to consider the cascading effects as well.
It’s true that there is huge inertia (transfer of heat and carbon from surface to deep ocean, and melting ice), also ‘cascading events’, but after decades of research these are mostly baked into the model projections. Below 1.5C seems very hard now, but well below 2C is certainly doable. What’s not so baked in, is society inertia - ‘not even trying until …’, that we have to change.
It’s been nice knowing you guys. If we get through this I hope the scientist say to every one of the nay stays I told you so!. they should write it on 100ft high obelisk in marble and granite.
I’ve always liked this plot. Quick note: at least for me, the embedded image isn’t readable due to low resolution.
Looks fine for me in Lemmy Connect. How are you using Lemmy? App? Website?
I’m using Eternity. When I clicked to open the image by itself the resolution looks fine - it’s just the preview that’s low res. Probably a client issue.
I had to open it in a new tab to see it anyways, looks fine there
That’s a shame. I just noticed it on my phone as well.
I opened it on Sync for Lemmy, my experience has been superb. It opened the full res img in an image viewer, zoomed in to the width of the image and I just casually had to continuously scroll down.
This is from 2016. Randall should do a new one. I wonder how bad it is now…
Likely exactly the same, considering a seven year difference would be barely noticeable on it.
We were discussing similar in 1998, ‘warmest year for a millenia’, detail has improved but implication already clear then. Quarter century later, curves start to bend, still trying. Plan how your life can help, don’t panic then burn out.
Randal never struck me as a young earth creationist, but there you go!
What are you smoking? The graph goes back 14,000 years beyond what the young earth folks accept. And it’s obviously not intended to be a full history of Earth.
“There were probably nobody around before 14,000 years ago to draw the before part of the graph.”
- Philomena Cunk
Yes! Philomena, go! :-D
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Reaching all those low-IQ climate deniers that read xkcd should really help.
Time for geo engineering, people are stupid.
Edit. Most people have an IQ range of 85-115, add the below 85 = the majority of people. Democracy is decided by the majority.
People are stupid. Let’s keep our hands off geo engineering.
And do what?
Step one: invest in nuclear power and renewables
Step two: stop taking carbon from outside the carbon cycle and putting it into the carbon cycle
Step three: use the abundance of energy from self-heating rocks to take carbon out of the carbon cycle
Your “step three” is geoengineering.
I guess when I think of “geoengineering,” what comes to mind is cloud seeding and albedo modification
Yeah, let’s do some light geoengineering after we’ve solved the energy issue
Let’s just allow humanity to go extinct, and prevent this shitshow from establishing a permanent presence among the stars.
Imagine the amount of abuse and suffering and stress we can prevent by just not saving humanity? By not letting our numbers climb to the trillions?
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Yep, this argument again. And like everyone who’s ever seen this argument has already said, renewables are not currently at a point where they can fully take the load off of fossil fuels. Every nuclear power plant accident put together doesn’t even come close to the damage that safe fossil fuels have done to the planet. We need to ditch fossils ASAFP, and nuclear, even if it’s funded and ran by capitalists, is better than fossils, which are already funded and ran by capitalists.
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I will weep for your family when they’re killed by an ever-destabilizing climate.
Let’s be honest, renewables are already geoengineering (changing water flow, air flow, albedo, etc.), just done in an uncontrolled fashion. Nuclear energy or renewables do not solve the long term problem unless coupled with large scale geoengineering. Granted all of the above are vast improvements over fossil fuels.
Thermodynamics is a bitch. If you make a nuclear reactor, you make heat. You add additional heat to the system, either at the source (energy production isn’t 100% efficient), or at the point of consumption (the waste product of using energy is always heat). So, if you switch everything to nuclear, you’re still adding heat to the system that wasn’t there before (in addition to whatever the sun is blasting us with). If energy use goes up, and it always does, it just means we add more heat faster.
Literally the only way we can have our cake and eat it too is geoengineering. Solar shields in the earth-sun Lagrange point are my preference and least disruptive to other natural processes.
If we reach a point where such enormous space installations are possible with multi national budgets and technological progeess, we still have to live with the largest mass extinction, Destroyed soils, disequilibrated ecosystems.
Then what? Life will be possible. But not as worthwhile as it was.
Whether life is “worthwhile” is a subjective and personal decision. Different people will have different considerations of what makes life “worthwhile.”
I think not having meteorological anomalies on a yearly basis, growing crops in a climate where humanity evolved, and having no dead zones on the planet is on a little bit different step of the hierarchy of needs than what people have different consideration on.
Use the renewable and nuclear energy to remove the IR shield in the atmosphere (store atmospheric carbon in the ground), rather than put a shield in space. A space shield doesn’t address CO2 levels in the atmosphere or oceans.
It’s just a question of scale and thermodynamics. Using the renewables to do carbon capture is probably a good idea, because anything is better than the giant greenhouse gas. But that really is geoengineering too. And it’ll only work for a period. As energy use increases, you will modify the planet more and more simply due to collecting and distributing the energy. Energy must flow from concentrated forms to dispersed forms. That dispersed form is usually heat.
Put paper bags over our heads and lie down.
Reduce emissions. That’s cheaper, more effective and safer than any other method.
Geo engineering commonly only tries to fix temperature. While that would be a big achievement, it does not change the CO2 ppm. And that translates to ocean acidification. Which translates to mass extinctions. Which is still an existential threat also for land living species, and us.
There is only one solution to fix both (and many other, related / caused problems): Fix the source.
We cannot engineer our way out of all the individual symptoms. Just leave fossil fuels in the ground.
I don’t think we can reduce emissions fast enough though. 2050 seems a long way away.
There are ways to capture carbon in seawater, kelp is the fastest growing I know of.
We need many solutions, not one.
There are ways to capture carbon in seawater, kelp is the fastest growing I know of.
Okay, that type of geo engineering is a good counter argument against my previous comment. It comes with other issues and does not solve all issues, but still, good point.
Thanks, good chat!
Rock dust is another promising option
I wrote a similar conclusion back in 1996, not so much changed in that discussion, it’s a distraction.
IQ tests are designed relative to the population so the median is always (or should always be) 100. The point is that is measures people against one another in the present. If we all got 10% smarter, our individual IQ scores would stay the same.
This timeline starts at about the coldest point in the last 66 million years. Definitely not biased.
The point of the graph isn’t to show the warming amount its to show how much faster the rate of warming is now compared to previous warming events.
I don’t see how this is biased. Showing that the Earth did warm up over time before major human climate change started would be, very weakly, supporting that climate change isn’t real. If they wanted to be biased they would start at a warm point, and when the Earth is cooling down they’d be like “see! Earth cools naturally, so it must get warm because of climate change!”
To make my stance crystal clear, I believe in and am deeply concerned by climate change
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You explained how YOU think it’s biased, and you’re still wrong. We should be scared shirtless about climate change right now. Instead, you’re pointing out incorrectly how this is biased.
It is objectively biased for the reason stated. Being intentionally dense about that fact to push a certain narrative is not a good look.
Except it isn’t biased. It showed how warming slowly happened over a roughly 20,000 year period. Someone even gave you an example of something that would be biased and misleading and you just said no.
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Hey pal, you just blow in from stupid town?
Always appreciate being personally insulted. Notice, I never called you a moron, or stupid, or anything remotely close. The fact that you resorted to calling me names says more about you than it does me.
What conclusion would change if the graph started at an earlier, warmer period?
As far as I know, three crucial things would still hold true:
- Earth has not been as warm as today since humans existed, in the past 200’000 years. We don’t know if we can thrive in these conditions. Chances are, we can’t. We’re optimized for another climate. We have no precedent wether future Earth is habitable for us.
- Earth has never warmed this rapidly, never. Speed matters a lot, as lack of time makes the difference between adaption and extinction.
- Whatever the cause, and however normal it may be, the current development, and rate thereof, causes substantial issues on many fronts.
“My bank funds history chart starts at the lowest point my funds have been since opening the account. Definitely not biased.”
Tell me you’re a blithering idiot without telling me.
