For changes to be useful, they must be averaged so that the signal is not masked by large seasonal and daily fluctuations. The critical item is the relative consequence of the change in global averages, not the absolute values of the changes themselves since biodiversity is not uniformly distributed nor does it respond uniformly to each absolute degree of temperature difference. Likewise, the specific temperature in any particular year is not particularly relevant since there is wide variability between years as well as seasons. However, we do know one thing:
If one does compare the average rate of change during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum with the AVERAGE rate that can be computed OVER THE PAST 150 years, we observe that the current rate is about 36 times faster. This implies that we shouldn't expect faunal changes in more recent future times to be less than what has historically occurred in the past, since there is no evidence whatsoever that somehow magically evolution that altered the mammal fauna then is acting differently now than it did 55 million years ago. Indeed, we might instead expect that extinction rates will likely be higher, particularly since there are many human induced land use changes that affect species diversity IN ADDITION TO those induced (explained by) solely climate change. Likewise, observations concerning the rate at which tropical species are now invading temperate environments are likewise consistent with those predicted based on the relative difference in average rate of warming, as well as those observed by looking at faunal changes in the past. The consequences are significant because of the disruption of ecosystems associated with such invasions, particularly when such invasions involve disease. For example, ten years ago cases of West Nile Virus in the US, were extremely rare, now they are becoming increasingly common.
If we look at previous geological periods that have exhibited temperature changes of similar magnitude associated with very rapid warming, ALL show tremendous extinction rates. Consequently, there is considerable evidence to suggest that the current rate of warming will induce similar rates of extinction.
Instead of terrestrial biodiversity, one could look at sea level rise and glacial and ice shield melting as another area of active interest since the consequences are particularly important. In both cases the averages of temperature change now being experienced unequivocally demonstrate that as the glaciers retreat, and they are retreating at record rates, and as ice sheets melt (both Greenland and the Antarctic are loosing ice volume), sea levels will rise faster than at any time in recent geological history. Although the averages are based on only about 150 years of accumulated data for temperature records using thermometers of various kinds, there is simply no reason to believe that sea levels won't rise rapidly or that the consequence of this rise will be anything less than extraordinarily expensive to humans. Within 200 years, it is likely that every port in the world will have to be rebuilt and unless checked, humanity had better get used to the idea of rebuilding all its ports every couple of hundred years. If one, computes this cost alone, it becomes clear that getting off fossil fuels will be incredibly more economical than continuing to burn them.
You ask about the temperatures since 1975 and those before 1945. One can presently only say that whatever has been occurring in the last 20 years or so is significantly different from what has gone on before because it is virtually certain that the last 20 years has been significantly hotter than the previous several hundred thousand. However, it also should be emphasized that this observation is completely consistent with an exponential nature of the curve and probably the next 20 years will likely better define what we can expect in subsequent decades. If you want to argue that things will be different than what the long term averages suggest, however shake they m
What you are doing is cute sophism but not science.
Simply because many simple climate models are not entirely correct, does not mean that all climate models are incapable of being sufficiently accurate to be used to predict future climate. Many existing climate models have already proved extremely accurate at predicting specific consequences of climate change, enough so that most rational people need to start paying attention to the seriousness that global warming poses to human survival.
Did you just admit to accepting money to provide your opinions to readers of/.?
This appears to be the new meme among the deniers, to claim that all science is bogus because it cost money and hence someone got paid to do it and therefore the evidence is somehow tainted. As is typical with this kind of sophism, it fails once again to note the distinction between science and sophism. Scientific conclusions devolve regardless of who or how much was paid to produce them. They devolve from the nature of the evidence and the set of contradictions that arise if one chooses to accept or deny as a result of the application of the scientific method.
Rather than all scientists being crooks, frauds, with perverted morals, its far more parsimonious and reasonable instead to assume several things about those who make such claims: 1) they have no scientific evidence of their own to falsify statements made and conclusions reached by scientists, 2) they think that by tarnishing and personally vilifying scientists and destroying the infrastructure necessary to do science, it will somehow disprove a conclusion reached by scientists, 3) they consistently confuse science and sophism of the kind typically used in political and religious discussions, 4) they have incredibly unrealistic notions about how much money scientists make as an hourly wage and what motivates most scientists to actually do science.
Being a skeptic is irrelevant unless you have data to demonstrate the basis of your skepticism. While its great sophism to be skeptical about everything since it makes one APPEAR to be thinking critically. However, in the absence of evidence, it is NOT science nor part of the process of science. That skepticism might appear to be a substitute for critical thinking to those unfamiliar with how to actually do science, supposed critical thinking is irrelevant unless it is backed up by real, testable observations.
It is instructive to note that every single claim of skepticism in this entire thread is based on the appearance of critical thinking that sophism provides, all of which are entirely devoid of any actual substantive data that would contradict the now obvious fact that carbon dioxide global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels is real and getting more obvious all the time. So far, from the skeptics and the deniers all we have heard is their singular inability to distinguish between seasonal variation in temperature and climatic changes in temperature.
Skepticism without evidence is best called BS and we might as well be honest about the consequences of bearing false witness. Bearing false witness, no matter how much skepticism one couches it in, does not make false assertions true.
Really? If that is true, how do you explain why virtually every glacier on the planet is receding simultaneously?
(I encourage all/. readers to note that this question will not or ever be answered by the skiptic/denier community, which may give you a clue as to the truth of their claims).
What most who seek "theoretical" reasons not to worry fail to recognize is that even if there are negative feedbacks that might mitigate the known and increasingly predominating positive feedbacks, such as release of carbon from permafrost and peat soils and increase in heating due to loss of ice cover, these don't matter a wiff if the species upon which we depend for human survival are unable to reproduce in their natural environments. Sadly, climate forcing that results from carbon dioxide accumulation is now progressing at a rate that many species are going extinct rather than flourishing in the newly emerging climate.
There has been no pause in the record of marine temperatures, its been steadily upward without any reversal or pause.
Which leads to a more fundamental problem for those who want to appear to be scientific and yet totally wrong about the fact of global warming:
If its not getting hotter, why have 12 of the past 15 years produced all the record high global mean temperatures? The probability of this happening by chance is exceedingly small.
and one fundamental corollary that AWG skeptics and deniers avoid answering like the plague:
If its not getting hotter, why are virtually all the world's glaciers and ice sheets melting simultaneously?
Skepticism about climate change is useful only if one is right. If one is wrong, it is totally useless and since skepticism about carbon dioxide induced global warming is demonstrably wrong, your skepticism is totally useless and irrelevant.
Sadly for you, your progeny, and the rest of us, your skepticism will make little difference in a rapidly warming world.
If the effects of human induced climate changed were only restricted to warming, humans might have a better chance at survival. The 30% change in hydronium ion concentrations that have already taken place over the past 150 years are already causing die offs of pteropods in the NW Pacific, because it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to maintain the integrity of their calcium carbonate shells. Since pteropods form one of the single most important components of the marine food chain, their disappearance will cause the cascading loss of much of what we humans like to call seafood. This is a big deal for us humans, since we derive about 50% of our protein from seafood, which may disappear in as little as 200-300 years if present trends continue.
"Obviously we can handle much warmer temperatures."
The only thing that is obvious is that we weren't around when such temperatures existed.
It wouldn't take temperatures necessary to melt rock to cause human extinction, since our food and water supplies are far more susceptible to much smaller changes in temperature. Just a few degrees difference at the wrong time and entire crops and new progeny can be wiped out completely.
" Many scientists believe those didn't die off due to climate change, but because humans killed them all and ate them."
During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum more than half the species of mammals in North America went extinct and new species replaced them. Humans didn't eat them, because humans didn't evolve for another 50 million years and thus they couldn't possibly have eaten them. The amount of fauna change during this 10-30,000 year period was quite astonishing, as it also brought palm trees to Wyoming, replacing the redwood forests there. However, the truly amazing thing is that as fast as this carbon dioxide induced global heat spike (about 5.7 deg C increase in global mean temperature) was in terms of changes in biodiversity, the rate of change in temperature was 36-37 times slower than what human-induced carbon dioxide pollution is causing right now.
Perhaps as equally astounding is how little the average human knows about either the geological record or the origins and biology of the species that live on planet Earth with us. This may ultimately be the single greatest threat to human survival and sadly an indication that Albert Allen Bartlett may have been far more prescient than he realized when he noted that "The extinction of the human race will come from its inability to emotionally comprehend the exponential function." A corollary to the inconvenient truth of burning of fossil fuels is that because the effect is cumulative, it is an exponential function.
The sky isn't falling but the pH of the oceans are falling and already putting the 50% of human protein most like to think of as seafood in jeopardy. At the present rates of carbon dioxide pollution, I would be surprised if pteropods, which form the basis of much of the food chain in many marine environments will survive a few hundred years from now. While some may call that entertainment, it will definitely put a crimp on human diets, as will the dramatic loss of pollinators as the mismatch between when they are present and when the plants they pollinate are in flower increerases and as it rapidly gets warmer and warmer and more and more tropical diseases spread into higher latitudes.
By chance were any of those species that died out capable of farming? Or have access to our level of technology?
You seem to think that because we have technology, we will be able to adapt to dramatic abrupt changes to the ecosystems that support us.
Humans get about 50% of protein they consume from the oceans, yet in the past 150 years, because of the rise in carbon dioxide concentrations Hydronium ion concentrations in seawater have increased by about 30%. We can expect an additional 30% in the next 50-100 years as a result of the carbon dioxide that will accumulate on top of that already there. We are already observing the collapse of pteropods in the Pacific NW, which form one of the most important components of food for those creatures we like to call seafood, because they are having increasing difficulty in maintaining the integrity of their shells because of increased acidity. At the current rate of increase, pteropod populations worldwide will be a tiny fraction of what they are today in just 200 years. No technology will bring them back.
Unfortunately, the fate of many insects we rely upon for survival to pollinate our food crops are also in increasing peril. Because of the rapidity at which climate change is occurring, for many species the mismatch between when plants flower and when pollinators are present is increasing. It is already causing dramatic drop in crop yields for many fruits and vegetables. Sadly, people like to think that a warmer world will mean more high latitude regions to grow food crops, but fail to recognize that soils in these latitudes are extremely poor and such environments are remarkably hostile to pollinators, not to mention the plants themselves, during the winter. Worse, they don't realize the size of the reservoir of carbon dioxide and methane that permafrost and peat environments will release independent of the 33,000,000,000 metric tons human produce annually as they warm and dry out.
As amazing as the technology of the International Space Station is, humans can't survive there unless they are constantly supplied with food from planet Earth. With the nearest Earth-like planets about 10-30 light-years away, even if we speed up our rockets thousands of times faster than they are now, such places will still take hundreds and thousands of years to reach, if they are even reachable by humans at all. While people like to fantasize about transporter beams, they seldom spend any time considering the fact that acceleration of the human body at speeds that would make interstellar transportation feasible even if we doubled or tripled human life times, who produce shear forces so great that cells holding tissues together would be torn apart.
A good place to start improving our technology is to recognize its very severe limitations, which makes taking extraordinary care to maintain spaceship Earth in a livable condition, while we still have time. Just to do that means understanding life on the planet far, far better than we do now. Presently, we just take it for granted, but now that there are so many of us and now that we have generated so much pollution, particularly carbon dioxide pollution, and dramatically altered habitats through land use changes, we no longer have that luxury. Its not a question of political or religious ideology. Its a question of survival.
This is the big problem for humans. Yes, we are transitioning from fossil fuels to solar but the change is occurring only very slowly. In the meantime we face a future climate and future ecosystems that are now just responding to the enormous amount of carbon dioxide we have already introduced into the atmosphere and the oceans. The critical thing for ecosystem integrity is the rate at which the change occurs, since all organisms have only a small window of tolerance between limits beyond which physiological optima decline dramatically and no adaption or more importantly evolution is possible, the later being particularly constrained by generation time, with failure at any one generation time dramatically increasing the probability of extinction.
During the last major spike in global mean temperature, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, the Earth heated by about 5.6 C in about 10,000-30,000 years. This was a rather profound change during which most of the North American mammal fauna was replaced with new species and places like Wyoming went from having predominantly redwood forests to having palm forests. Currently, the Earth is now heating at about 36 times this rate and all indications are that this will soon speed up, since carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and oceans will dramatically increase as permafrost and peat carbon sinks release their carbon now that temperature has increased in the past 150 years and the soon to be ice free Arctic ocean will be ice free over much of the year and will absorb rather than reflect incoming solar radiation. The impacts of each of these affects are already being observed in ecosystems worldwide. This is particularly bad news since this will force sublimation of massive stores of methane from marine clathrates in the relatively shallow Arctic seas. The problem we face is not how much carbon dioxide which humans will release in the near future, but the unstoppable climate change that will be produced by the carbon dioxide that is already there and that fact that humans reside at the top of the food chain and are particularly vulnerable to dramatic changes at the bottom of the food chain.
Just out of curiosity, if its not getting hotter how do you explain why of 10 of the hottest years on record have occurred in the past 15 years?
Its basically the same question as why if its not getting hotter, how do you account for the fact that virtually every single glacier on the planet is melting away faster than ever previously recorded?
The odds that it is not getting are by any credible estimate one may care to take, incredibly small, so small that no one needs any longer to take such assertions seriously.
However, the AWG deniers are free to answer the above two questions. The fact that 1) they have not done so and 2) the fact that they can not do so pretty much demonstrates its getting hotter to anyone who is able to think clearly. In fact, it is now getting hotter at a rate of about 36 times the rate that it got hotter during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, the fastest climate induced heating spike in Earth's planetary history.
The inconvenient truth is that the reason it is getting hotter is the accumulation of carbon dioxide generated predominantly by humans burning fossil fuels. This is particularly inconvenient since most of the carbon dioxide enters the oceans and is causing an extraordinary lowering of the pH of seawater. In as little as 200-300 years most of what we now think of as the marine food chain will be gone, because many of those creatures at the bottom of the food chain will be unable to produce their calcium carbonate skeletons. A rather big deal for humans, who derive about 50% of their protein from the oceans. Its already beginning to happen over big swaths of the NW Pacific Ocean.
Yes you are missing something extremely important. This rate is about 36 times faster than ever recorded in the history of the planet, probably with the exception of local conditions associated with asteroid or large meteor impacts. The last major spike in global temperatures occurred in during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum that occurred about 55 million years ago. In a very brief period of time, geologically speaking, the Earth warmed about 5.6 C in a period as short as 10,000 years. During this brief period over half of the species of North American mammals went extinct and places like Wyoming, not exactly known for hot weather, went from having redwood forests to having palm forests. Today with far more discontinuous habitats extinction rates of plants and animals will be very much higher.
Keep in mind that in that roughly 150 year period we are talking about because of increased carbon dioxide concentrations, the world oceans are now 30% more acidic than they were then. The next 100 years will see a another 30% decrease in Hydronium ion concentrations even if humans don't add a single extra molecule of carbon dioxide themselves as the amount already in the atmosphere will take some time to reach equilibrium with that already there. However, the reality is that although the baseline of annual carbon dioxide production by all the volcanoes in the world is about 250,000,000 metric tons, the amount humans now produce annually is 33,000,000,000 tons, so it is highly unlikely that humans will turn this around soon. Considering that humans obtain about 50% of its protein from seafood, in all likelihood, humans face the prospect of loosing half their protein supply in as little as 300 years based on present trends as many areas in the world oceans are already reaching pH levels that are killing off pteropods, one of the primary links in marine food chains.
Solution is pretty simple. Just impound the vehicles. It won't be long before there will be no willing drivers, many of them probably rapists looking for another opportunity.
You sound like one of those Uber drivers who picks up women rapes them and then goes back for seconds. Anarchy always sounds like a great idea until its instituted to its full potential.
Slashdot Mirror
For changes to be useful, they must be averaged so that the signal is not masked by large seasonal and daily fluctuations. The critical item is the relative consequence of the change in global averages, not the absolute values of the changes themselves since biodiversity is not uniformly distributed nor does it respond uniformly to each absolute degree of temperature difference. Likewise, the specific temperature in any particular year is not particularly relevant since there is wide variability between years as well as seasons. However, we do know one thing:
If one does compare the average rate of change during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum with the AVERAGE rate that can be computed OVER THE PAST 150 years, we observe that the current rate is about 36 times faster. This implies that we shouldn't expect faunal changes in more recent future times to be less than what has historically occurred in the past, since there is no evidence whatsoever that somehow magically evolution that altered the mammal fauna then is acting differently now than it did 55 million years ago. Indeed, we might instead expect that extinction rates will likely be higher, particularly since there are many human induced land use changes that affect species diversity IN ADDITION TO those induced (explained by) solely climate change. Likewise, observations concerning the rate at which tropical species are now invading temperate environments are likewise consistent with those predicted based on the relative difference in average rate of warming, as well as those observed by looking at faunal changes in the past. The consequences are significant because of the disruption of ecosystems associated with such invasions, particularly when such invasions involve disease. For example, ten years ago cases of West Nile Virus in the US, were extremely rare, now they are becoming increasingly common.
If we look at previous geological periods that have exhibited temperature changes of similar magnitude associated with very rapid warming, ALL show tremendous extinction rates. Consequently, there is considerable evidence to suggest that the current rate of warming will induce similar rates of extinction.
Instead of terrestrial biodiversity, one could look at sea level rise and glacial and ice shield melting as another area of active interest since the consequences are particularly important. In both cases the averages of temperature change now being experienced unequivocally demonstrate that as the glaciers retreat, and they are retreating at record rates, and as ice sheets melt (both Greenland and the Antarctic are loosing ice volume), sea levels will rise faster than at any time in recent geological history. Although the averages are based on only about 150 years of accumulated data for temperature records using thermometers of various kinds, there is simply no reason to believe that sea levels won't rise rapidly or that the consequence of this rise will be anything less than extraordinarily expensive to humans. Within 200 years, it is likely that every port in the world will have to be rebuilt and unless checked, humanity had better get used to the idea of rebuilding all its ports every couple of hundred years. If one, computes this cost alone, it becomes clear that getting off fossil fuels will be incredibly more economical than continuing to burn them.
You ask about the temperatures since 1975 and those before 1945. One can presently only say that whatever has been occurring in the last 20 years or so is significantly different from what has gone on before because it is virtually certain that the last 20 years has been significantly hotter than the previous several hundred thousand. However, it also should be emphasized that this observation is completely consistent with an exponential nature of the curve and probably the next 20 years will likely better define what we can expect in subsequent decades. If you want to argue that things will be different than what the long term averages suggest, however shake they m
Mis-characterizing articles in Nature hardly passes as critical thinking.
What you are doing is cute sophism but not science.
Simply because many simple climate models are not entirely correct, does not mean that all climate models are incapable of being sufficiently accurate to be used to predict future climate. Many existing climate models have already proved extremely accurate at predicting specific consequences of climate change, enough so that most rational people need to start paying attention to the seriousness that global warming poses to human survival.
Did you just admit to accepting money to provide your opinions to readers of /.?
This appears to be the new meme among the deniers, to claim that all science is bogus because it cost money and hence someone got paid to do it and therefore the evidence is somehow tainted. As is typical with this kind of sophism, it fails once again to note the distinction between science and sophism. Scientific conclusions devolve regardless of who or how much was paid to produce them. They devolve from the nature of the evidence and the set of contradictions that arise if one chooses to accept or deny as a result of the application of the scientific method.
Rather than all scientists being crooks, frauds, with perverted morals, its far more parsimonious and reasonable instead to assume several things about those who make such claims: 1) they have no scientific evidence of their own to falsify statements made and conclusions reached by scientists, 2) they think that by tarnishing and personally vilifying scientists and destroying the infrastructure necessary to do science, it will somehow disprove a conclusion reached by scientists, 3) they consistently confuse science and sophism of the kind typically used in political and religious discussions, 4) they have incredibly unrealistic notions about how much money scientists make as an hourly wage and what motivates most scientists to actually do science.
Being a skeptic is irrelevant unless you have data to demonstrate the basis of your skepticism. While its great sophism to be skeptical about everything since it makes one APPEAR to be thinking critically. However, in the absence of evidence, it is NOT science nor part of the process of science. That skepticism might appear to be a substitute for critical thinking to those unfamiliar with how to actually do science, supposed critical thinking is irrelevant unless it is backed up by real, testable observations.
It is instructive to note that every single claim of skepticism in this entire thread is based on the appearance of critical thinking that sophism provides, all of which are entirely devoid of any actual substantive data that would contradict the now obvious fact that carbon dioxide global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels is real and getting more obvious all the time. So far, from the skeptics and the deniers all we have heard is their singular inability to distinguish between seasonal variation in temperature and climatic changes in temperature.
Skepticism without evidence is best called BS and we might as well be honest about the consequences of bearing false witness. Bearing false witness, no matter how much skepticism one couches it in, does not make false assertions true.
No warming?
Really? If that is true, how do you explain why virtually every glacier on the planet is receding simultaneously?
(I encourage all /. readers to note that this question will not or ever be answered by the skiptic/denier community, which may give you a clue as to the truth of their claims).
What most who seek "theoretical" reasons not to worry fail to recognize is that even if there are negative feedbacks that might mitigate the known and increasingly predominating positive feedbacks, such as release of carbon from permafrost and peat soils and increase in heating due to loss of ice cover, these don't matter a wiff if the species upon which we depend for human survival are unable to reproduce in their natural environments. Sadly, climate forcing that results from carbon dioxide accumulation is now progressing at a rate that many species are going extinct rather than flourishing in the newly emerging climate.
There has been no pause in the record of marine temperatures, its been steadily upward without any reversal or pause.
Which leads to a more fundamental problem for those who want to appear to be scientific and yet totally wrong about the fact of global warming:
If its not getting hotter, why have 12 of the past 15 years produced all the record high global mean temperatures? The probability of this happening by chance is exceedingly small.
and one fundamental corollary that AWG skeptics and deniers avoid answering like the plague:
If its not getting hotter, why are virtually all the world's glaciers and ice sheets melting simultaneously?
Speaking of questions, I have one for those skeptics.
If its not getting hotter, why is virtually every single glacier on the planet melting?
The interesting and extraordinarily revealing thing about this question as all will be able to soon see is that
1) skeptics and deniers never have an answer to this question and avoid answering like the plague,
and
2) skeptics and deniers of carbon dioxide induced global warming are unable to provide a credible answer of any kind.
Skepticism about climate change is useful only if one is right. If one is wrong, it is totally useless and since skepticism about carbon dioxide induced global warming is demonstrably wrong, your skepticism is totally useless and irrelevant.
Sadly for you, your progeny, and the rest of us, your skepticism will make little difference in a rapidly warming world.
If the effects of human induced climate changed were only restricted to warming, humans might have a better chance at survival. The 30% change in hydronium ion concentrations that have already taken place over the past 150 years are already causing die offs of pteropods in the NW Pacific, because it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to maintain the integrity of their calcium carbonate shells. Since pteropods form one of the single most important components of the marine food chain, their disappearance will cause the cascading loss of much of what we humans like to call seafood. This is a big deal for us humans, since we derive about 50% of our protein from seafood, which may disappear in as little as 200-300 years if present trends continue.
Sadly, human opinions don't alter the biological consequences of a rapidly warming world.
"Obviously we can handle much warmer temperatures."
The only thing that is obvious is that we weren't around when such temperatures existed.
It wouldn't take temperatures necessary to melt rock to cause human extinction, since our food and water supplies are far more susceptible to much smaller changes in temperature. Just a few degrees difference at the wrong time and entire crops and new progeny can be wiped out completely.
Why focus on those in Bangladesh, when those in New York City faces a similar threat as many recent victims of Tropical Storm Sandy will attest?
An interesting but totally useless thought, since it provides no practical solution to the imminent threat of human extinction.
" Many scientists believe those didn't die off due to climate change, but because humans killed them all and ate them."
During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum more than half the species of mammals in North America went extinct and new species replaced them. Humans didn't eat them, because humans didn't evolve for another 50 million years and thus they couldn't possibly have eaten them. The amount of fauna change during this 10-30,000 year period was quite astonishing, as it also brought palm trees to Wyoming, replacing the redwood forests there. However, the truly amazing thing is that as fast as this carbon dioxide induced global heat spike (about 5.7 deg C increase in global mean temperature) was in terms of changes in biodiversity, the rate of change in temperature was 36-37 times slower than what human-induced carbon dioxide pollution is causing right now.
Perhaps as equally astounding is how little the average human knows about either the geological record or the origins and biology of the species that live on planet Earth with us. This may ultimately be the single greatest threat to human survival and sadly an indication that Albert Allen Bartlett may have been far more prescient than he realized when he noted that "The extinction of the human race will come from its inability to emotionally comprehend the exponential function." A corollary to the inconvenient truth of burning of fossil fuels is that because the effect is cumulative, it is an exponential function.
You obviously aren't a marine biologists are you.
The sky isn't falling but the pH of the oceans are falling and already putting the 50% of human protein most like to think of as seafood in jeopardy. At the present rates of carbon dioxide pollution, I would be surprised if pteropods, which form the basis of much of the food chain in many marine environments will survive a few hundred years from now. While some may call that entertainment, it will definitely put a crimp on human diets, as will the dramatic loss of pollinators as the mismatch between when they are present and when the plants they pollinate are in flower increerases and as it rapidly gets warmer and warmer and more and more tropical diseases spread into higher latitudes.
By chance were any of those species that died out capable of farming? Or have access to our level of technology?
You seem to think that because we have technology, we will be able to adapt to dramatic abrupt changes to the ecosystems that support us.
Humans get about 50% of protein they consume from the oceans, yet in the past 150 years, because of the rise in carbon dioxide concentrations Hydronium ion concentrations in seawater have increased by about 30%. We can expect an additional 30% in the next 50-100 years as a result of the carbon dioxide that will accumulate on top of that already there. We are already observing the collapse of pteropods in the Pacific NW, which form one of the most important components of food for those creatures we like to call seafood, because they are having increasing difficulty in maintaining the integrity of their shells because of increased acidity. At the current rate of increase, pteropod populations worldwide will be a tiny fraction of what they are today in just 200 years. No technology will bring them back.
Unfortunately, the fate of many insects we rely upon for survival to pollinate our food crops are also in increasing peril. Because of the rapidity at which climate change is occurring, for many species the mismatch between when plants flower and when pollinators are present is increasing. It is already causing dramatic drop in crop yields for many fruits and vegetables. Sadly, people like to think that a warmer world will mean more high latitude regions to grow food crops, but fail to recognize that soils in these latitudes are extremely poor and such environments are remarkably hostile to pollinators, not to mention the plants themselves, during the winter. Worse, they don't realize the size of the reservoir of carbon dioxide and methane that permafrost and peat environments will release independent of the 33,000,000,000 metric tons human produce annually as they warm and dry out.
As amazing as the technology of the International Space Station is, humans can't survive there unless they are constantly supplied with food from planet Earth. With the nearest Earth-like planets about 10-30 light-years away, even if we speed up our rockets thousands of times faster than they are now, such places will still take hundreds and thousands of years to reach, if they are even reachable by humans at all. While people like to fantasize about transporter beams, they seldom spend any time considering the fact that acceleration of the human body at speeds that would make interstellar transportation feasible even if we doubled or tripled human life times, who produce shear forces so great that cells holding tissues together would be torn apart.
A good place to start improving our technology is to recognize its very severe limitations, which makes taking extraordinary care to maintain spaceship Earth in a livable condition, while we still have time. Just to do that means understanding life on the planet far, far better than we do now. Presently, we just take it for granted, but now that there are so many of us and now that we have generated so much pollution, particularly carbon dioxide pollution, and dramatically altered habitats through land use changes, we no longer have that luxury. Its not a question of political or religious ideology. Its a question of survival.
This is the big problem for humans. Yes, we are transitioning from fossil fuels to solar but the change is occurring only very slowly. In the meantime we face a future climate and future ecosystems that are now just responding to the enormous amount of carbon dioxide we have already introduced into the atmosphere and the oceans. The critical thing for ecosystem integrity is the rate at which the change occurs, since all organisms have only a small window of tolerance between limits beyond which physiological optima decline dramatically and no adaption or more importantly evolution is possible, the later being particularly constrained by generation time, with failure at any one generation time dramatically increasing the probability of extinction.
During the last major spike in global mean temperature, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, the Earth heated by about 5.6 C in about 10,000-30,000 years. This was a rather profound change during which most of the North American mammal fauna was replaced with new species and places like Wyoming went from having predominantly redwood forests to having palm forests. Currently, the Earth is now heating at about 36 times this rate and all indications are that this will soon speed up, since carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and oceans will dramatically increase as permafrost and peat carbon sinks release their carbon now that temperature has increased in the past 150 years and the soon to be ice free Arctic ocean will be ice free over much of the year and will absorb rather than reflect incoming solar radiation. The impacts of each of these affects are already being observed in ecosystems worldwide. This is particularly bad news since this will force sublimation of massive stores of methane from marine clathrates in the relatively shallow Arctic seas. The problem we face is not how much carbon dioxide which humans will release in the near future, but the unstoppable climate change that will be produced by the carbon dioxide that is already there and that fact that humans reside at the top of the food chain and are particularly vulnerable to dramatic changes at the bottom of the food chain.
Just out of curiosity, if its not getting hotter how do you explain why of 10 of the hottest years on record have occurred in the past 15 years?
Its basically the same question as why if its not getting hotter, how do you account for the fact that virtually every single glacier on the planet is melting away faster than ever previously recorded?
The odds that it is not getting are by any credible estimate one may care to take, incredibly small, so small that no one needs any longer to take such assertions seriously.
However, the AWG deniers are free to answer the above two questions. The fact that 1) they have not done so and 2) the fact that they can not do so pretty much demonstrates its getting hotter to anyone who is able to think clearly. In fact, it is now getting hotter at a rate of about 36 times the rate that it got hotter during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, the fastest climate induced heating spike in Earth's planetary history.
The inconvenient truth is that the reason it is getting hotter is the accumulation of carbon dioxide generated predominantly by humans burning fossil fuels. This is particularly inconvenient since most of the carbon dioxide enters the oceans and is causing an extraordinary lowering of the pH of seawater. In as little as 200-300 years most of what we now think of as the marine food chain will be gone, because many of those creatures at the bottom of the food chain will be unable to produce their calcium carbonate skeletons. A rather big deal for humans, who derive about 50% of their protein from the oceans. Its already beginning to happen over big swaths of the NW Pacific Ocean.
I doubt they will be lynched. With food becoming ever scarcer in the 22nd century, its more likely they will be eaten.
Yes you are missing something extremely important. This rate is about 36 times faster than ever recorded in the history of the planet, probably with the exception of local conditions associated with asteroid or large meteor impacts. The last major spike in global temperatures occurred in during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum that occurred about 55 million years ago. In a very brief period of time, geologically speaking, the Earth warmed about 5.6 C in a period as short as 10,000 years. During this brief period over half of the species of North American mammals went extinct and places like Wyoming, not exactly known for hot weather, went from having redwood forests to having palm forests. Today with far more discontinuous habitats extinction rates of plants and animals will be very much higher.
Keep in mind that in that roughly 150 year period we are talking about because of increased carbon dioxide concentrations, the world oceans are now 30% more acidic than they were then. The next 100 years will see a another 30% decrease in Hydronium ion concentrations even if humans don't add a single extra molecule of carbon dioxide themselves as the amount already in the atmosphere will take some time to reach equilibrium with that already there. However, the reality is that although the baseline of annual carbon dioxide production by all the volcanoes in the world is about 250,000,000 metric tons, the amount humans now produce annually is 33,000,000,000 tons, so it is highly unlikely that humans will turn this around soon. Considering that humans obtain about 50% of its protein from seafood, in all likelihood, humans face the prospect of loosing half their protein supply in as little as 300 years based on present trends as many areas in the world oceans are already reaching pH levels that are killing off pteropods, one of the primary links in marine food chains.
Solution is pretty simple. Just impound the vehicles. It won't be long before there will be no willing drivers, many of them probably rapists looking for another opportunity.
Scores of women have now be raped by Uber drivers, who don't need to show any credentials, but just pretend to be someone providing a ride.
You sound like one of those Uber drivers who picks up women rapes them and then goes back for seconds. Anarchy always sounds like a great idea until its instituted to its full potential.