We Stopped At Two Nuclear Bombs; We Can Stop At Two Degrees.

Lasrick writes Dawn Stover writes in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that climate change is irreversible but not unstoppable. She describes the changes that are happening already and also those likely to happen, and compares what is coming to the climate of the Pliocene: 'Even if countries reduce emissions enough to keep temperatures from rising much above the internationally agreed-upon "danger" threshold of 2 degrees Celsius (which seems increasingly unlikely), we can still look forward to conditions similar to those of the mid-Pliocene epoch of 3 million years ago. At that time, the continents were in much the same positions that they are today, carbon dioxide levels ranged between 350 and 400 ppm, the global average temperature was 2 to 3 degrees Celsius higher than it is today (but up to 20 degrees higher than today at the northernmost latitudes), the global sea level was about 25 meters higher, and most of today's North American forests were grasslands and savanna.' Stover agrees with two scientists published in Nature Geoscience that 'Future warming is therefore driven by socio-economic inertia," and points the way toward changing a Pliocene future.

Comments

Poor choice of example

[Ginger_Chris]

Considering there have been over 2000 nuclear tests

Re:Poor choice of example

[peragrin]

Even more so when you think no one else had a good reason to use nukes againist an enemy. Even today the estimates for bringing an end to world war two wa hundreds of thousands of lives, and another 1-2 years of fighting. Unlike Germany fire bombing Japanese cities wasn't having the desired effect.

No wars since then have been that desperate for those with nukes. Which is the only reason why north Korea is troubling. North Korea or Iran will feel desperate enough to use them.

But We Didn't

[Greyfox]

We didn't stop at 2 nuclear bombs. We exploded them and exploded them like they were goddamn tic-tacs. We didn't even do that safely -- we exploded them near our own civilian populations, telling the people that it was harmless and not to worry about that fallout. Judging from our track record with the things, some politician in Washington had read too many comic books and was hoping that some of the civilians would develop super powers. Instead, they just got lymphoma and birth defects. We made those goddamn things and put them in the hands of the least responsible people on the planet and stopped only after irreparable harm was done to thousands of lives. So yeah, you can draw that analogy if you want to but I don't think it points to as rosy a future as you might think it does.

Re:But We Didn't

[Eunuchswear]

Yup, sounds exactly like the way we're "dealing" with global warming.

Re:Let it happen

[Anonymous Coward]

"if it turns out the science was right."
Yes, there has been generous funding for decades for those claiming they can predict the effects (good or bad) of pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. When is it time to hold them to a prediction to prove their worth? Archimedes had to prove himself by pulling a ship from the water by himself, astronomers predicted the appearance of comets, climate researchers simply need to perform a similar feat. That is really all people ask, if you want everyone to change how they live, first prove in some simple way (not requiring all sorts of obscure jargon and background knowledge) that you know what you are talking about.

Climate change phobia

[Kokuyo]

Frankly, what are people so concerned about? Climate's gonna change, people gonna die or relocate, society will have to adapt, animals will die out... But nature will adapt qnd so will we. It's gonna suck a lot but it's not gonna be a tangible end to anything.

Re:Climate change phobia

[mystuff]

I'm no expert on the matter either. But I can imagine that a sea level rise of a few meters (at the turn of the century) will results in tremendous economic damage (relocation of hundreds of million of people *and* real estate, as most of the population on Earth is housed in large cities in coastal regions), famine (due to loss of agricultural land), and territorial conflicts.

In any case, I think we have now arrived at the point where anyone that has children born after 2010 finds oneself in the situation where ones children, and grandchildren are going to be seriously affected by climate change and overpopulation. Those have to ask themselves what they are going to tell their grandchildren, 50 years from now, about how they had the ability to make a difference but couldn't agree on how bad it was going to be and therefore decided inaction was the best course of action.

Anyways what's the worst that can happen? and what is the real cost of climate change?

Re:Climate change phobia

[TremulousUK]

The further back into the past you go, the lower the resolution of the data. There's no way you can assign any confidence to judgements about the speed of natural variation today compared to that 3,000,000 years ago. You simply cannot have the statistical confidence. But that doesn't usually stop scientists (but mostly environmentalists with political agendas) attempting to do so.

Re:Actually, we've already stopped...

[NoOneInParticular]

You're right, temperatures have not gone up. The ten warmest years since 1901 are not all in the last two decades, and the last 38 years have not all been above the 20th century average. It's all a hoax, North-East America is experiencing harsh winters so there can be no global warming.

seriously fucking tired of "climate change"

[Anonymous Coward]

Go take your conspiracy nonsense somewhere else.

Re: Extinction event

[Opportunist]

Look around yourself. I don't know about you, but I can't say that losing this failed system we call civilization sounds more like a chance for a reboot than anything else.

It's funny

[Opportunist]

Really. I can't help but laugh every time there's a climate change bickering here on /.

It's absolutely stunningly awesome. You have two sides, zealous in their quest to convince everyone and their dog that they're right. Both sides have various "studies", produced more likely than not in a dark, rather warm but also quite smelly place and pulled out of there with little ceremony. Both sides accusing the other side of shilling, resorting to name calling and whatnot.

And neither side has any idea what to DO if they're right.

That's the actual joke here. Let's say, just for argument's sake, that there is global warming and that the whole sky-is-falling scenario will happen (which, I will freely admit, I think actually will happen). What now? Does anyone where really think there will be anything REMOTELY close to global consent on laws to lower the impact? Seriously? Fuck, we can't even get international consensus on stuff that presents an immediate and direct danger rather than a maybe-kinda-could-be-sorta danger in half a century. Even if we DID know for a fact, no doubt about it, 100% sure, proven FACT, that in 50 years life on earth as we know it would be impossible, you would NOT get any kind of international law going. No chance, no way.

But hey, keep talking. If nothing else, it's entertaining.

Re:It's funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Both sides are not flouting their studies, only one side is. The other is looking at those studies and laughing that anyone took them seriously. Remember all the predictions about how rare snow would be and how clidren born after 2000 would grow up in a world where they never got to see snow? Remember Boston this year? Perhaps if one side didn't lie so blatently and often it wouldn't be ridiculed so much, but instead of stopping they just double down and make themselves look stupider. story

Just earlier this year I saw postings everywhere about how 2014 was the hottest year on record and that was absolute proof of global warming (18 years of cooling is weather, but 1 year of warming is climate according to them too). A week later it came out that NASA had only 38% certanity that 2014 was hotter by 0.024 degrees. How can they be only 38% sure? I thought this was settled science. Then I read another story about people researching past records that have been horribly manipulated to show global warming, blatenly fraudlently. But you guys are still quoting the liars, so I have to assume you stand to make money off the proposed regulation or you are just a stupid twit if you support them.

I can't really understand how things like what Phil Jones did can be ignored by people who shout "TRUE SCIENCE", when you have people deleting data to prevent peer review. Its just amazing how much the AGW supporters have to ignore now to keep thier views intact.

Re:It's funny

[itzly]

NASA had only 38% certanity that 2014 was hotter by 0.024 degrees. How can they be only 38% sure?

Never heard of measurement error bars ? Other years have them too. If you sort all the years by probability they were the hottest, then 2014 remains at the top.

Then I read another story about people researching past records that have been horribly manipulated

And you liked that story so much that you decided to believe it ?

Re:Who did the study?

[Applehu Akbar]

You have your grimy, bridge-girder-mangled finger on the reason why climate activists are doomed, I say, doomed.

When scientists render their final verdict on the carbon warming hypothesis, it will be one of these alternatives:

1. Manmade warming is somewhere in the range of nonexistent to exaggerated. Activists' heads explode.
2. Manmade warning is some value of significant to apocalyptic. If we need to immediately stop emitting carbon, we will have to nuclear. If there is already too much carbon in the atmosphere, we will have to geoengineer. The activists' heads explode.

Re: Who did the study?

[rs79]

Who is NASA shilling for when they say "there has been no warming this century" ?

Who was NASA shilling for when the pointed out in 2010 the IPCC model was indeed broken in the exact same way Freeman Dyson said it was?

Who was James "Gaia theory" Lovelock shilling for when he said "I was wrong, and being alarmist . CO2 has gone up but the temperature hasn't risen this century. But them I'm not getting a climate grant so I can say that".

Who is the national snow and ice center shilling for when they point out the arctic ice as grown steadily for three years?

If you're so sure it's warming, how much warmer has it been each year compare to the previous? Why don't you know this? Why have all the graphs in the press shtoped showing up?

Because the temperature had flatlined that's why. Only the Daily Mail got this right. Imagine a world where out of all the newspaper only the Daily Mail had data that aligned with NASA and CERN, the rest misinterpreted it.

Don' t give me that "hottest year" crap, the 2014 data won't be qualified until march 2015. Not that one year indicated a trend.

At some point the math will run out. "Truthout" printed this:

"The last time we had this discussion was 2013, remember? Before that it was 2010. Before that it was 2005, and everything started with the Super El Nino in 1998. Statistically, saying that 2014 was the hottest year ever is a very valid thing, and if you understand statistics, I am envious of you."

Maybe if you hadn't skipped grade 10 stats you wouldn't be so confuzzled.

"But the global average temperature for these years, and every year since 1998 except 1999 and 2000, have all been virtually tied, if one is a casual civilian statistician watching or reading reporting on television or other media. But a few things have been overlooked in this and the periodic media outbursts that have preceded this event."

Look, I'm no math major... oh wait, yes, yes I am a math major. Not that that matters, "stats for the humanities" will also learn 'ya that when a record is tied for sixteen years that sorta mean it's NOT GOING UP. How many math classes do you have to skip to write something that fucking stupid? All of them?

http://www.truth-out.org/news/...

When did the US become such a fact free zone?

The fact that The Guardian just got popped for publishing ghostwritten climate article as stories when they're ads may not help.

As a liberal I'm just revolted at this dumbing down. What the hell kind of world has a Comedian pretend to be a "science guy" with no science degree but who contradicts the guy that took over Einstein's job? And secretly influences media because of his "fame". Blinky the science clown strikes again.

Facts used to matter it he US.