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We're Creating a Perfect Storm of Unprecedented Global Warming (popsci.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: If we do nothing to reduce our carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, by the end of this century the Earth will be as hot as it was 50 million years ago in the early Eocene, according to a new study out today in the journal Nature Communications. This period -- roughly 15 million years after dinosaurs went extinct and 49.8 million years before modern humans appeared on the scene -- was 16F to 25F warmer than the modern norm. [...] During the Eocene, it took more atmospheric CO2 to influence temperatures than it does today. In fact, if we don't change our behavior, 2100 will be as hot as the Eocene with much less atmospheric CO2 than was present at the time. A hotter sun means we get more bang for our CO2 buck. "Climate change denialists often mention that CO2 was high in the past, that it was warm in the past, so this means there's nothing to worry about," said lead study author Gavin Foster, a researcher in isotope geochemistry and paleoceanography at the United Kingdom's University of Southampton. "It's certainly true, that the CO2 was high in the past and that it was warm in the past. But because the sun was dimmer, the climate wasn't being forced as much [as it will be] in the future if we carry on as we are."
Some people say the sun rises in the East.
Other people say the sun rises in the West.
Which is right?
Or maybe the truth lies somewhere in between?
Teach the controversy!
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
the ones that say east are right. the ones that say west are drooling morons and need to be told so loudly and in public for all to hear.
We need to STOP letting the low IQ spout their stupidity. Point at them yell "STUPID" and do it in public and in groups.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Short of completely wrecking the global economy or starting a major nuclear war, no government policy is going to have an appreciable effect on climate.
Good climate for primates and mammals, and generally life on the planet. Milder, wetter conditions everywhere. More arable land, fewer deserts. We should be so lucky. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen, if not for any other reason, than that it will take a couple of thousand years for the polar ice caps to melt.
Yes, before the earth plunged into the current cycle of glaciation periods, which makes large parts of the northern hemisphere uninhabitable for more than half of every 100000 years. (Not so) great times!
Ah, the joys of science based on "alternative facts".
The US and many western countries have been curbing CO2 emissions. China, India, Russia, and others have been increasing. The US can control it's own policies, but not those of foreign States. Hell, we can't stop the DPRK from developing nuclear weapons and missile technology, which has a far bigger impact on the environment than global warming. We can't stop China from creating man made islands in the South China Sea, which again has far bigger impact on the climate (loss of ocean habitat, destruction of ecosystems, etc..)
So what is _your_ magic plan exactly? Tell China to give some entity money so that they can ignore your request? Tell Russia to stop industrial work so that they can laugh at you? How about having some invisible entity with no plans either selling you "Carbon Credits" so that you simply lose money yourself?
In case you haven't noticed, the latter question is the only one that has been proposed. Al Gore, supra genius, flying around in his private jet with his entourage renting massive bullet proof SUVs is proof that people in power don't give a rats behind about fixing any Climate problems. They want power, which includes your money and livelihood.
Until you come up with a solution, there is no possible way to deal with this issue with any immediacy. You are on par with demanding world peace and harmony, in that it sounds good but won't work because "human nature".
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
For example, just look at all of the colleges that still teach UML, despite industry having tried it and rejected it almost two decades ago now.
Two points:
The defense industry actually uses UML. Of course, the defense industry has paid $400 billion for a crappy fighter jet that can't dogfight...
"Industry" came up with the Windows 8/10 "Metro" UI, and the current flat-UI fad, with frameworks upon frameworks and web pages that take forever to load because they're loading many megabytes of crap so they can display a little bit of text. The computer industry these days is a complete disaster on the software side.
" But all my experiences with academia and academics have been very disappointing. " Yeah, you're a climate change denialist, so that makes perfect sense that you'd have no academic success.
His point was that the government need not be the primary driver in this change.
Who else is going to pay for this change? Industry will not if they can get away with doing business as usual. For example, the civilian electrical grid is vulnerable to EMP attacks. A well-known problem that no one industry wants to fix much less pay for.
If solar/wind are viable, then private industry, driven by concerned environmentalists, are absolutely free to go out and change the way we generate power.
Has the oil industry given up their tax subsidies?
Our electric companies aren't owned and run by the government.
No, but they're regulated by the government. If the government says, "coal bad, natural gas good," as it has been for decades, the industry will move towards liquid gas generators. One of the reason why coal is dying as an industry, and will continue to do so not matter what the Trump Administration does, is that natural gas is inexpensive and natural gas plants are replacing coal plants.
Yeah, yeah. Red herring 4, straight out of the deniers handbook. Ok, my turn to debunk.
Nobody disputes that nature could cause this kind of global warming or the later cooling. What science rejects is that for this particular global warming there is any other plausible explanation than human activity. Especially because of the remarkable speed with which it happens, the synchronicity with the industrial revolution, and just plain simple physics.
I never understood this argument (the one you are replying to, not yours). Even if it is natural, do they think that it is somehow not going to affect us? I mean, we know it's happening. The cause won't make a difference to people in a hundred years or so who are having to deal with the fallout of it if it keeps on the course we are on now. We (well future humans, not most of us) are fucked if it's natural or man made. At least if it's man-made we have some options to prevent it. If it's natural, then maybe we can at least slow it down or reduce the effects somewhat by curbing our own contributions to it. So either way, isn't it kind of a good idea to go that route? I realize it comes at a cost but isn't it worth it either way?
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
"The #rightwingnuts refuse to fix it".
The problem is the left wing nuts' plan is...pay lots of taxes to be redistributed to other countries while the political elite scrape trillions off the top, and we exempt China and India so the planet gets cooked anyway.
Vote for the right wing nuts and we all die. Vote for the left wing nuts and we all die poor. Tough choice.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Strongly disagree. We have the technology, money, and the bit of willpower needed to fix it. I don't like to believe "the future will solve it" but there's a chance that the prices of renewable vs. fossil energy may even fix global warming for us. The only things standing in the way of victory are denialists, their fossil fuel company puppetmasters, and defeatists like you.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The first problem can be summed up with the old saying, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, research.".
That's not the old saying. You just made it up.
Really? We're going to mark an evidence-less rant against researchers as +5, Interesting?
Look around your life. How many people do you know? How many of them would stab you in the back for a buck? I hope that number would be very small. If it isn't, you're in the wrong place.
I went to a school focused on science. Of the number of folks I hung out with, extremely few (less than 10%) struck me as idiots, cheats, or liars. The rest I'd trust with my life. I find it extremely hard to believe I went to the only university where the majority of students were honest, dependable folks.
I'm sure as heck not going to trust the trillion dollar fossil fuel industry whose entire existence is on the line.
Ooh, can you do me a favour? Can you just quickly remind me of the last time that it was much hotter than this and there were 7bn humans on the planet and a civilisation I'm really quite attached to? Cos I really couldn't give two fucks if dinosaurs or voles or tree ferns or sharks can survive, or if humans can survive but only in apocalyptic conditions. I'd like our civilisation to survive too.
Acid Rain and Ozone Depletion have been avoided SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE the flappy heads were flapping and we listened to their flapping and made changes to negate the damage we were doing. As opposed to these days...
And the real problem is that the averages of what scientists are saying are longer term than people's attention span. Regular people don't think a few inches of ocean rising or a few degrees of average temperature are a big deal, but they can't comprehend that it's because of how QUICKLY the changes are happening, not how MUCH it's changing. Unfortunately, the only way to get people to pay attention to humanity-ending long-term (for humans aka short term for nature) problems is to be alarmist about them.
And we REALLY need to stop talking about "saving the Earth". The Earth will be fine, we couldn't destroy it if we tried. It'll be spinning along around the sun way after we're gone. It's HUMANS and lots of animals / plants that will be wiped off the planet if we don't drastically change how we interact with nature.
That's a very serious accusation. Do you have any evidence to support it? Climategate tried but failed to find any scientific misconduct, but if you know something the investigators didn't, please speak up.
If claims of "doom and gloom" are all it takes to convince you that something is false, then please be aware that you are an easily manipulated person. You should learn to become more skeptical.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.