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World Is Finally Waking Up To Climate Change, Says 'Hothouse Earth' Author (theguardian.com)

The scorching temperatures and forest fires of this summer's heatwave have finally stirred the world to face the onrushing threat of global warming, claims the climate scientist behind the recent "hothouse Earth" report. Following an unprecedented 270,000 downloads of his study, Johan Rockstrom, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, said he had not seen such a surge of interest since 2007, the year the Nobel prize was awarded to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The Guardian: "I think that in future people will look back on 2018 as the year when climate reality hit," said the veteran scientist. "This is the moment when people start to realize that global warming is not a problem for future generations, but for us now." The heatwave has dominated headlines across the northern hemisphere this summer. New temperature records have been set in Africa and cities in Australia, Taiwan, Georgia and the west coast of US. Heat stroke or forest fires have killed at least 119 in Japan, 29 in South Korea, 91 in Greece and nine in California. There have even been freak blazes in Lapland and elsewhere in the Arctic circle, while holidaymakers and locals alike have sweltered in unusually hot weather in southern Europe. Coming amid this climate chaos, the "hothouse Earth" paper by Rockstrom and his co-authors struck a chord with the public by spelling out the huge and growing risk that emissions are pushing the planet's climate off the path it has been on for 2.5m years.

9 of 354 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by postbigbang · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Ummm, no.

    We can measure with modern tools, the changes. The "fluctuations" as you term them, are data. With data, you can predict with reasonable certainty.

    Over 100,000 scientists, WITH THAT DATA, have agreed on the outcome, given long history, and your "fluctuations".

    If you're not alarmed, you're either ignoring the data, or your stupid.

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    ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
  2. Re:Any solution will be technological by DogDude · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "Stone age living"? What the fuck are you talking about? You mean driving a Civic instead of a Land Rover? You mean like using glass instead of plastic? What, exactly, are you talking about?

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    I don't respond to AC's.
  3. Re:Really forest fires? by 110010001000 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Rising sea levels is a fact, but it isn't causing massive flooding. That doesn't make any sense. The seas are not "rising" 30 meters above flood barriers because of climate change. The flooding is caused by runoff from hardscapes and no where for the water to go. It is ridiculous to think that rising sea levels measured in millimeters can cause massive flooding. But if you get rid of all the swampland and marshes where do you think the water is going to go???

  4. Re:The link between science and the fires is money by BCGlorfindel · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Plenty of scientists are saying there is not a scientific link between the fires and climate change, even Vox ran a story with that.

    Maybe they should go talk to the experienced firefighters that say that fire is behaving in ways they have never seen before. Things are changing and barring ALIENS! the only reasonable explanation is climate change...

    Surprisingly, Aliens or climate change aren't the only possible explanations. I know, hard to believe but hear me out.

    It's beginning to be widely accepted that fighting forest fires has contributed to making the big ones worse. When we stop small forest fires, that means dead fall and dried planet matter continue to accumulate. It turns out, larger trees used to survive small forest fires, and the smaller fires cleared out the dead fall and dried material. With us stopping those fires though, enough tinder is accumulating that when a fire does hit, it's bigger, stronger and worse than ever before.

    I know, citation please, so here's a fire forest researcher from UBC from a region of Canada where we fight multiple forest fires every year saying the same thing.

    Before you get too sad though, there is a silver lining. The faculty member mentions that changing forest fire management might be opposed by standard logging industry practices, so we can still hate on corporate/industrial causes for the problem, hurray!

  5. Re:Science has a pretty good record by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why are you using two different sources for comparison of terminology?

    I mean you are just mixing units here and making you look like an idiot.

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    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  6. Re:People will accept nuclear power when... by blindseer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    People will accept nuclear power when everyone advocating it move to within a few kilometers of a nuclear reactor and settle there, along with their entire family.

    And yes, that includes you.

    I do in fact live near a nuclear power plant. Like many across the USA it is scheduled for being shutdown in the next 10 years or so. Given how long it takes for the federal government to issue a license for building a new reactor we'll need to start planning for a replacement now.

    I remember growing up during the Cold War and hearing people talk about how the local nuclear power plant was supposedly a secondary target for the Soviet nuclear missiles. Also nearby are vital dams for navigation and hydroelectric power, these were also secondary targets if not primary targets. In the local phone directories are evacuation plans in case of a meltdown at the power plant, and how the public would be notified of an emergency.

    After growing up in the shadow of a nuclear power plant I do not fear nuclear power. What I fear more is a future without nuclear power.

    Don't give me shit about "not in my backyard". I'd be quite pleased with a nuclear power plant in my back yard. Here's the problem I have, it's not the NIMBY crowd that bother me, it's the BANANA crowd. (That's "build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything" for the acronym impaired.) Every state in the USA has a nuclear energy commission of their own, let's put the states in charge of nuclear power instead of the federal government dictating this from afar. I don't want some "left coast" politician tell me that I can't have nuclear power in my backyard.

    I suspect that given enough feet dragging by federal regulators that the states will in fact start to issue nuclear power licenses on their own. Some DC politician from some other state doesn't like this? Well, it's not in their backyard, why should they care?

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    I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
  7. Anonymous coward by XXongo · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Anonymous coward posts a claim that there's a blog post somewhere that says predictions are wrong, but can't say when or where or post a link.

    I'm not sure why you bothered to respond. However, for predictions, I posted this to a different subthread:

    Here's an article from Forbes about the very first Global Climate Model, Manabe and Wetherald 1967, looking back at how well their predictions from fifty years ago compared to data: https://www.forbes.com/sites/s...

  8. Re:Really forest fires? by reg · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually, most forest management is driven by logging interests, even in California, because these are National Forest Service lands. Also, the areas that are burning are not logging forests, they are mostly Chaparral and Oak: https://www.researchgate.net/p...

  9. Re:Science has a pretty good record by morethanapapercert · · Score: 3, Interesting

    climate=average conditions over years or even decades. Weather=actual conditions over hourly, daily and weekly periods. And the whole point of TFA is that we are seeing large scale changes in the weather we experience BECAUSE of the massive changes in the underlying climate.

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