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Comment by hdkenhd | Hacker News Reader

Is climate change the most consequential effect of global warming? What does a 1C increase in temperature on a global / astronomical scale mean in terms of thermodynamics? How do we experience it at human scale?

I have a basic undergraduate understanding of physics (at best), and it seems to me that the planet should be experiencing a significant increase in entropy - meaning that everything (i.e. reality itself) is becoming less predictable — at least in our tiny local neighborhood. Is this interpretation totally wrong?

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Weather is so complex that a nearly chaotic system, the butterfly effect comes from the idea that the flapping of a butterfly in south africa could be the thing that start a tropical storm in the caribbean a couple of weeks later.

It is so complex because the amount of things that play a role there. Some of the components you have are i.e. sea currents (like the Gulf Stream, making England warmer than it should be) or the polar vortex, a more or less stable cyclone that runs in the upper atmosphere. Global warming affect those components, and in particular was the polar vortex what caused the cold weather in the US the last months.

But when you talk about climate in the context of global warming, you are talking about yearly global temperature averages, not what happen in only one region or in a few days/months.

I think an increase in entropy is a great way to put it. More energy from the sun is being kept in the atmosphere (and the oceans), more energy is going to effect a complex system like the Earth's atmosphere in complex ways. More energy means changes in air currents and ocean currents that could have a significant impact on local weather patterns. More energy means larger more powerful storms. More energy means more moisture in the atmosphere which means potentially more rainfall/snowfall in some areas.

The temperature difference from the last ice age is only 5°C. Most of northern Europe was under a glacier all year long.

Forecasts are telling us a 2°C increase before the end of the centuary is already inevitable. If we do not change anything, a 4°C increase is really probable.

It is easy to imagine that a lot of place will become not be suitable to human life.

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