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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.
https://xkcd.com/1732/
Yes, it has been changing. But if you can look at that and aren't the least bit alarmed, I'm not sure anything is going to ever get through.
Many businesses don't care about the environment, unless there is a direct cost. They are either to busy trying to survive or serve the demands of the shareholders. Add to that, when a business is not looking beyond a 5 year schedule, then the impact of climate is also not a direct impact.
Now, tell them their customers are going elsewhere because the environmental image of a company is important, then they will wake up. Of course this only works when said corporation is not in a monopoly position.
In the US a number of companies have been pushing back amount trying to play nice in terms of the environment, which in the end will give the benefit to foreign corporations that have already adapted to the reality that being energy efficient for the customer is important. Short term US companies don't have to play nice, because the government has been helping keeping energy artificially cheap, so the end-user has no interest to buy appliances that consumer less resources. In most of the world people are paying the real cost for resources, so they have had to adapt.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
The increase of forest fires is due to humans moving into forested areas and starting fires (inadvertently or on purpose). Yes, it really is THAT simple. If you start building in forested areas and bring more humans into forested areas then the number of forest fires will increase. This is another example how LOCAL environmental destruction has a huge impact. The same goes with flooding: the reason flooding seems to be getting worse is due to the destruction of marshlands and buffer areas and building hardscape surfaces on coastal areas. It has nothing to do with "rising sea levels" or anything else. You can't destroy the local environment and expect things to remain the same.
intensity of forest fires are the result of decades of misguided policy of preventing all forest fires
Locally, yes, it certainly doesn't help. When fires are up in isolated arctic wildernesses, that's something else.
sudo ergo sum
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, which we know to be occurring.
Denialists have now shifted from "there is no climate change" to "it's not our fault and anyway it's not causing any problems", and are now moving into "well even if it is our fault there's nothing we can do about it". You are behind even for a denialist.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Actually its the opposite. California stopped most logging and forest management activities decades ago at he behest of environmentalists. These fires are a result of that lack of management.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/20...
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
Throw in entire forested areas where the mature trees have been killed by invasive beetles & turned into bone-dry kindling, a century of forest-fire prevention policy of fighting every forest fire, thus stopping nature from doing it's own 'controlled burns' to burn up small areas of old dry growth, and large-scale clear-cutting that dries out nearby forested areas, well of course forest fires will become more common.
Even though I work with scientists, and one of my co-workers is an actual climate scientist(we discuss weather and climate a lot) I don't need scientists or science or empirical evidence. I've seen first hand how quickly the climate has changed.
A small town in the mountain west I grew up in was known for having very cold winters. Starting about 10-15 years ago, when I would visit in the winter I noticed it wasn't as cold. Anytime I mentioned this to my friends and relatives that lived there, they would say, "yea, isn't it great!". A few times I was there in January it rained, and not a little. Raining in January in a town that historically had brutally cold winters(avg high temp would be below 32 F, avg low temps between 0 and 10 F). This town used to have avg summer temps of around 85 F, now the last few years the avg summer temps in the 90s.
I've seen all kinds of new plants showing up, new weeds, just in the past few years. I've been landscaping and gardening for a long time and I take note of the weeds I have to deal with. I've noticed how bird migrations are changing, and different birds are showing up in my town.
If you live in the western US you've noticed that in the last 10-15 years the climate has markedly heated up and dried up. What used to be arid or semi-arid is now turning into full on desert.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
The same goes with flooding: the reason flooding seems to be getting worse is due to the destruction of marshlands and buffer areas and building hardscape surfaces on coastal areas. It has nothing to do with "rising sea levels" or anything else. You can't destroy the local environment and expect things to remain the same.
Whereas flooding IS made much worse nowadays compared to the past by the reasons you state above there is no reason to put "rising sea levels" in quotes. This is a known phenomenon. Even if you don't believe in global warming for whatever reason, sea levels are very accurately measured by satellites and unless all the global space agencies are conspiring to lie about sea levels*; sea level rising is a fact.
Coupled with sea level rising though, and perhaps a much bigger problem in most places is the fact that many coastal cities are sinking. With ground water being pumped out it causes subsidence- many cities are sinking at a much faster rate than sea level is rising.
* Which probably is more believable than believing global warming is fake- but still absurd.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
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.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
"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?
I don't respond to AC's.
Everyone knows that. Question is, who really cares among the powerful? Does a 72 year old business man, mired in scandals and in lobbies commitments, eager to succeed politically at all costs, having a single (short-term) objective in mind to that end: 'improve his economy'... don't expect this man to care about something likely happening in the future to the planet, even if the proof was as clear as 1+1 = 2.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
How can it be taken seriously when they are constantly changing the historical temperature data to match their hypothesis?
"They" are not "changing the historical temperature data to match their hypothesis". That is a made-up alternate-fact being promulgated by the deniers.
You are referring, I assume to the Goddard Institute for Space Studies historical temperature record. The analysis of the data is exhaustively documented , including a FAQ giving an overview for popular audiences that are too bored to read the actual documentation. And the original data set, and all of previous historical analyses, are available on the web, showing that the changes in analysis technique don't alter the conclusion that the climate is warming. Here, for example, are the graphs showing the results of every different correction to the analysis, dating back to 1981.
In any case, you do know that several other groups, such at BEST, also analyze historical climate data, and come out with rates of warming that are essentially the same. So your conspiracy theory that scientists are altering their data in order to hoax the public is going to be a conspiracy of hundreds, and probably thousands, of scientists in independent groups on three different continents.
Nuclear instead of coal.
Have gnu, will travel.
Yeah, you're right!! Pumping enormous quantities of green house gases into the atmosphere couldn't possible cause any climate changes. I don't know why they call them green house gases in the first place...might have something to with causing extra warming. Please ignore the Arctic melting, the fire in Norway, the heat wave in Europe, the Sahara marching south, etc. Nothing to see here, move along.
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???
What's happening? Jack shit is happening. A bunch of people finally woke up and noticed that we're fucked. But hey, since we're fucked, why bother trying to do anything? It's just so simple, no matter where you are in the realization chain, you can simply continue as usual with no reason to change your behaviour.
At first it's "there is no climate change" so there is no reason to do anything.
Then, when it's no longer possible to deny it, it's "well, climate has always changed", and since that's still nothing that I could possibly be blamed for, no reason to change anything.
Then we get to "well, we do affect it, but it's not gonna have any impact" which again gives you no reason to change anything,
only to finally arrive at "well, we did fuck up, but now it's too late anyway", which again is no reason to do anything since you can't do anything anyway anymore.
Ain't it great? No matter where we are in the climate change timeline, we have no reason to stop fucking the planet.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The threat of stone-age living is a common strawman employed by climate denialists and climate policy obstructionists. The idea is that stone-age living would be less carbon-intensive than modern living, therefore it could be a solution to climate change, therefore it's what imaginary environmentalists are proposing.
Of course the actual solutions to climate change involve greater technology and greater access to the products of energy use through better efficiency.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The question is, which one is the alternative fact? Is it their's or your's?
I'd go with the scientists, the ones with massive amounts of data and observations and well-verified models that have been vetted and analyzed and compared to observations for over fifty years, as the ones likely to be correct, rather than the ones that say "I don't trust science, I'm sure they're wrong, and we don't need any actual data or analysis or alternate hypotheses."
Science has a pretty good record that way.
The rate of change is important, and it can be seen that since industrial age the rate is increasing. Of course, population is a factor as well, because more people consume more ruminant products (meat, cowmilk, ...), and the animals produce methane which is a factor for global warming. We better use the handbrake now, after living in ignorance for so long. It is not really important if humans are guilty for global warming, we have to to ehatever we can to stop it. This is possible without living in caves. For example, one can use a bike instead of a car, or stop eating meat. We need incentives for that, for example a carbon tax. Most people only look at money, so they need to feel an expense for inappropriate behavior. We only have this earth, it is too much to ask for care of our living space?
The GISS temperature history, with the graphs showing the results of every to their analysis dating back to 1981, is here.
In terms of personal change, you can do a lot. You can eat less meat; meat consumption is a major driver of CO2 production and methane in the atmosphere https://skepticalscience.com/animal-agriculture-meat-global-warming.htm. You can also drive less, walk places or use public transit. If you need to buy a new car, try to buy a hybrid or an electric car. If you own a house, make sure it is well insulated; don't put the air conditioner on to any colder than you need to in the hot months, and don't heat it more than you need to during the winter. Consider buying solar panels for your house. All of these are things which not only help the environment, they save you money.
Politically, the primary thing you can do is either donate to or vote for candidates who support dealing with climate change. Much of Europe is doing the right things already regarding this (with the exception of Germany's really bad decision to turn off their nuclear plants). But both the US and Australia currently have governments who are substantially not helping matters. In the US, this means generally one should be voting for Democrats. While there are some Republicans who take climate change seriously like Christie Todd Whitman and Arnold Schwarzenegger they are a functional minority which has been pushed out of the party to a large extent.
The third thing you can do is directly donate to charitable causes which help with renewable energy or otherwise help with climate issues. Everybody Solar https://www.everybodysolar.org/ buys solar panels for non-profits like homeless shelters and science museums. The Solar Electric Light Fund https://www.self.org/ gets solar panels for parts of the developing world; this not only helps the very poorest in the world, it also helps make sure that when Africa's economy comes more online they do so in a way that doesn't immediately involve massive CO2 production. For wind power, I recommend the New England Wind Fund https://www.massenergy.org/the-wind-fund which builds wind in the North East of the US (which currently has very little wind power and can definitely use more). Finally, in terms of immediate effects of CO2 offset per a dollar spent, Cool Earth is by many measures the most efficient way to do so https://www.coolearth.org/. Remember, every little bit helps.
It's certainly more likely to be science than the bletherings of 100,000 non-scientist fuckwits with financial and psychological interests in the status quo.
I want to believe this headline and I'll go ahead and accept it for sake of argument -- but is it too little too late? Or are we going to become a living (dying?) example of why we haven't been able to detect signs of alien civilizations out there among the stars?
Actually its the opposite. California stopped most logging and forest management activities decades ago at he behest of environmentalists. These fires are a result of that lack of management.
I understand that black and white/0-1 answers are easier to deal with. However I would encourage you to try to have a more nuanced and well researched view of the situation.
I agree that part of the issue is the lack of management, another important factor is that fires haven't been allowed to burn in many of these areas because there are now lots of people, and lots of homes in those forests.
Another major factor is that in the western US the climate is heating up and drying up. This negatively impacts the health of the forests, and when fires do start, they are worse, and the forests are primed for burning.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
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!
Nuclear power.
When I see new nuclear power plants getting built then I will believe that politicians and the public are taking global warming seriously. I have read some encouraging news recently that US federal regulators are making real investments in the future of nuclear power. There's already been a shift in how nuclear power is viewed, and people are starting to embrace it again. One real reason people are embracing it is very self serving, a lot of nuclear power plants are reaching end of life and will be shut down soon and without a new reactor in its place a lot of jobs will be lost as well as a large source of electrical generation capacity in that region.
I don't much care why people are embracing nuclear power, only that people embrace it. Nuclear power is safe, low carbon, domestically sourced, and inexpensive.
Say what you will about past accidents with nuclear power, like Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island, all of them are irrelevant to embracing third and fourth generation nuclear power. All of those past accidents were with second generation nuclear, and as safe as second generation nuclear power has been on the aggregate we will see even safer power with third generation nuclear that is being built now. Fourth generation nuclear, such as molten salt reactors, will be safer still.
I've seen the numbers and models on a national grid based on wind, water, and sun. This is not a future with inexpensive, reliable, and safe electricity. It's quite likely not low in CO2 either. There is no future with inexpensive, plentiful, safe, clean, and "green", electricity that does not include nuclear power.
Here's a couple websites that do the numbers:
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...
http://withouthotair.com/
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
You're welcome to hire commercial loggers to come in and clear out the underbrush and small trees. You won't get anyone to do it, because they want to haul out the tallest, largest diameter wood that they can get their hands on, and leave that nuisance non-commercial crap behind, but you're welcome to try.
Of course, just like the wood that you throw in your fireplace, the big stuff doesn't burn without a lot of kindling around it. The small stuff burns like gangbusters. So there's no reason to take out the tallest, largest diameter wood absent the nuisance non-commercial crap, and there's nobody who wants to deal with the nuisance non-commercial crap to begin with, much less without the big stuff.
"Lack of management" my ass.
well-verified models that have been vetted and analyzed
The models have consistently over-predicted temperatures.
to the contrary, the models have fit the data to well within confidence limits, and continue to do so.
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/startswithabang/2017/03/15/the-first-climate-model-turns-50-and-predicted-global-warming-almost-perfectly/
And here are graphs, showing that the prediction from fifty years ago (red line) fits the data (blue line) almost exactly. https://climategraphs.wordpres...
Later models have refined Manabe and Wetherald 1967, incorporating other effects than simply carbon dioxide and water vapor, but haven't changed the answer. Here is the Berkeley Earth page comparing climate models used in the IPCC report against data: http://berkeleyearth.org/graph...
The problem with the deniers, on the other hand, is that they don't have a prediction. They don't have an alternative model, they don't have anything.
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?
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
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...
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...