A temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius impacts billions
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And our civilization is built upon more or less mild and predictable weather. That kinds of events will compromise agricultural productions, make from cities to smaller settlements risky to live on, disrupt supply chains, air/sea travel, and so on. We are having right now a small hint on how destructive this kind of change, and it only will get worse from now on.
Another thing that will do that in a slower way is to raise enough average temperatures to trigger tipping points and activate or make stronger positive feedback loops that will make global average temperature to rise even more, so it won't be the end of the change. The 1.5ºC mark by the end of the century was to avoid reaching those thresholds or slow down the process as much as possible, but if we reach that mark this decade I don't think things will hold below 2ºC by 2050, much less 2100.
Joe and Jill Average don't think about how 4,4,5,6,6 and 1,1,5,9,9 have the same average, and certainly have little understanding for how the changes in average temperature manifests in changes to the weather.
That said, humans in general are reactionary and adaptive, and don't plan that far ahead. We'll burn through our lottery winnings or inheritance and end up broke having to go back to work. I expect we'll do the same with our climate.
The climate cult seems to like that conflation because while their models might predict some very small trend in the mean temperatures, I've yet to see any model predict a change to the variance of temperatures. Which is quite expected as the variance of temperatures, even over a single day, are orders of magnitudes higher than the small trend over decades.
I don't think anyone predicts any measurable change in the variance. That would be like noticing a little pebble out of a huge mountain.
The climate cult do love to confuse people about it. After predicting the mean turned to be easily falsifiable by the average person paying attention, they turned into a narrative that tells you about greater variance without telling you that no, variance isn't actually expected to meaningfully change and using narrative instead of just saying variance (because then everyone would immediately call their bluff).
Apropos misleading narratives, greenhouses actually don't warm because of anything similar to the greenhouse effect, but just because of lack of convection. Yet another misleading narrative point.
They do love to bend and fabricate intricate stories using misguided intuition.
Either the temperatures are increasing or they're not. Either CO2 is retaining heat and increasing temperatures or it's not.
But ocean surface temperatures are 0.9°C warmer whereas temperatures over land are 1.9°C warmer.
And the Arctic is warming at least three times faster than the globe as a whole since the mid-1990s primarily due to the "ice-albedo feedback" where the melting of sun-reflecting ice results in more heat absorption.
(per "The Climate Book" {Greta Thunberg} pp 78 and 62)
So greenhouse is like staying in a closed room with closed windows but when sunlight gets in. It gets warm and you want to open the window to let the warm air go out.
Minewhile, the greenhouse effect is a misnomer. The way that works is that CO2 absorbs thermal radiation. Most objects in room temperature radiate heat in the infra red. (Much hotter objects, like hot metals, radiate in the red wavelength, which is why hot metals look red). Even without any contact with the environment, like an object in vacuum, still radiate thermal radiation. Since earth is in vacuum, the only way for earth to cool is to radiate. And CO2 absorbs thermal radiation more than other components of the air. It also emits thermal radiation, just like everything else. The greenhouse effect is the prevention of cooling by radiation.
And this description is quite simplistic. Because actually, CO2 isn't reflective of CO2, and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirchhoff%27s_law_of_thermal... means that at the same temperature, CO2 absorbs and emits the same amounts of radiation.
There's also the fact that CO2 cools with convection faster because it has higher heat capacity. So the whole narrative isn't as clear cut and obvious as it is presented. And remember that CO2 is just 0.025% of the atmosphere so you're measuring a very small effect to begin with.
You could try to do detailed calculations, but the climate models are incredibly complicated and still oversimplify by treating kilometers of earth as uniform material. Anyone presenting you with a picture where the results of CO2 should be "obvious" is intentionally misleading and skimming all the points that would contradict it.
You're taking it too literally. Greenhouses get warm because there's a barrier that reduces the amount of energy escaping from the inside of the greenhouse to the outside.
The greenhouse effect is similar in this way in that the CO2 in the atmosphere acts like a barrier that reduces the infrared energy escaping from the surface into space, as you mention.
Sure it's not really the same. But people like short catchy names and phrases, even if they're somewhat inaccurate. Note how many say they Googled something when they didn't actually use Google.
Don't tell the HVAC industry.
And its not an acceptable amount of internet noise... It feels like 30-40%. And it seems much higher than the past.
The so called literature tells nothing about a disaster. It tells us there are climate models, these are incredibly chaotic things, their fluctuations several order of magnitudes larger than a supposed trend averaged over many runs. Now you're extrapolating these trends to project a disaster but there are many leaps in that logic.
By the way, the same is true for sea levels. The daily fluctuations of tides are order of magnitude of meters and the sea level rises projected are centimeters over decades.
We're living with naturally higher fluctuations than the worst case projections.
And that's ignoring all the question marks all over the place about the accuracy of these projections, and the fact the supposed cure is several times worst than the disease.
Apropos disease, look at the scientific consensus around COVID. The disaster projections were extremely far off.
Same with climate, I see a very widely held consensus on climate by the scientific community, and so far the climate changes line up with the predictions. I’ve seen first hand extreme weather events on a scale we’ve never experienced in many places that are already having catastrophic consequences. Maybe proposed solutions are wrong, but not trying anything or just putting your head in the sand based on a belief rather than evidence is clearly far worse.
Clouds will die? Where are you getting your nonsense from? Plankton dying also makes no sense, and in fact, there are significantly more plants thanks to CO2.
The only real problem with humanity is that the media can get humanity to jump off a cliff if they wanted to, or even with an honest mistake.
But is there not a consensus from the scientists, the people in the best position to know? Does CO2 not come from combusting fossil fuels, remain in the atmosphere for long periods, and retain heat?
But this is an issue - whether in denial or in reasonable doubt, many are unconvinced.
1. Anyone old enough, remembers that Florida and New York are suppose to be under water now. Going outside should be hazardous, requiring that I cover every inch of my body or be instantly burned by the sun. My incredibly "green" 5th grade teacher told me that by about 20 years ago, water would be so scarce that we would all wash our bodies with wash cloths instead of showers.
2. It's undeniable that there is a natural component to climate change. You literally would have to be anti-science to ignore what we know about climate change throughout the planet's history, and even just within the Holocene.[1] You'd have to be a science denialist to ignore the non-human factors of climate change: solar acvitiy (which we cannot model), volcanic eruption (which we cannot stop), and sometimes we aren't even sure what caused drastic climate changes.
3. Climate change is the only constant. We know that even if there are no human emissions the climate does change drastically from little ice ages, to warming periods, all within a single human lifespan. Our current focus seems to be in denial of this. Instead of accepting that this is a natural process that we must prepare for, we seem to be hyper-focused on what can be described as real-time terraforming.
What I've had most luck with is being more accurate. Instead of "humans are causing climate change", use "climate change is a natural process, but human activity seems to be destabilizing it and making it more extreme". Don't use average temperature like this article did, because most people think a constant +2 degrees year-round. It's all about volatility: a winter that's 10 degrees colder, followed by a summer that's 14 degrees warmer.
From then though, it becomes a bit harder because you're in the policy side of things. The UN SDG and WEF are honestly not helping anyone with their messaging. The focus should be on things like building resilient food supply chains so that food can be plentiful an affordable, even when natural disasters hit. Everyone would be in favour of that. Instead we get a moronic "Meat will be a special treat", and by the way "you will own nothing and be happy".[2] Good luck with anyone but a Davos Elite being on board for that.
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_periods_and_events_in_...
All the handwaving when talking about tipping points is awfully suspicious too, given that history.
I wouldn't say those are the three reasons though. Lots of comments seem to be from young people, and don't make it to the point of discussing Earth’s meteorological history.
This is a terrible sentence that encrypts their intended point.
“Current emissions” do not have the agency implied by “condemn”. One might get the impression that the “1.2 average US citizens” are doing the condemning, but the average US citizen does not have enough agency to move the needle one way or the other.
The government (supposedly, a sovereign power concerned with its own continued existence) ought to regulate the corporations (supposedly, rational agents concerned with their own continued existence) that are contributing almost all US emissions. Those two are the ones doing the condemning.
s/corporations/elected-officials/
either individuals stop using corporations or individuals influence gov't members to enact changes to force corporations, the corporations are not going to do anything that might negatively impact their bottom lines
How does that make sense if there are just as many opposed to using it?
In most countries this 'mechanism' is only relevant if a sizable majority of the electorate wants it, and there are no sufficiently motivated blocking interests.
key part of my comment
Pigouvian taxes do just this. All you have to do is price carbon at the cost of removing it from the atmosphere and watch substitution effects take effect.
I do know that letting government solve the problem through regulation will be massively more expensive than solving it via the market.
Regulation is what needs to be done in order to shape the market in such a way it can solve the problem.
"The market" does not incorporate socialized costs when left to its own devices, quite the contrary. That's what got us here in the first place.
If your local utility burns coal or natural gas, there's not really any amount of shaming of the consumers that will change the carbon output of those utilities. If concrete and steel manufacturers are emitting carbon at hugely high rates, there's no amount of individual shaming of occupants of buildings made with that concrete and steel that will change that.
But regulations at the governmental level to direct those industries into emitting less carbon, that has a realistic path to actually making a different.
Wrong. This is what we NEED to do. People need to change their actions. Young people are doing this already.
We can't just have people driving everywhere.
It is of utmost importance that whatever those regulations would be, you shouldn't be able to buy your way out of them. Things like a personal consuming limit for "bad thing" X that is absolute and there is no way around to buy yourself more. Dystopian, sure, and in general I'm not even a fan of big government.
What could happen is governments could invest in making cities walkable, bikable, transit-able by default and people would naturally follow. Even that is a big ask at this point due to extreme sprawl, but it's the only way it's going to happen.
> In a decade or two, most of world's electorate, in terms of energy production and manufacturing capacity, will be people from China, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Brazil and the like. Iran, Uzbekistan and Tunisia. Maybe Nigeria or Congo. We will have to start climate change debate afresh because post-Christian flagellation is starting on a seriously wrong foot when talking to these people (to whom I am not a complete stranger). The audience who is now receptive to climate change talks (First World middle class) will be largely irrelevant by then.
So, get a better plan, get a durable and realistic solution and quote a price. No CO² pipelines, please.
I was fortunate to do some work in the past related to countering democracy-poisoning propaganda at scale (for the US State Department.) Propaganda and chaos-sowing tactics which have been routinely deployed by Putin's Russia, in particular (then adopted, laundered and tuned by the GOP.) And lately I've put time into building a new game/sim [SB: see below] intended to both entertain and educate on these topics (on climate & democracy threats.) To ideally influence and provide further nudges to act.
Because like most of us I cannot simply wave a wand and unilaterally fix the carbon climate crisis. Yet I cannot sit by, saying and doing nothing. The stress and sheer cognitive dissonance would be slowly self-crippling. But I can try to help alert, inform, persuade and motivate others to take action and make better choices too.
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- being "hard" on companies to have them clean after themselves and make actual significant improvement to ecology
- being "soft" on people who are not pulling their weight but also have little to no impact on the big picture
It's kinda fun to see how to navigate the mixed messaging. We should basically be advocating for regular people to wholeheartedly put all the blame on corporations and pursue them to the bitter end for behaviors we as consumer should be allowed to pull off.
As consumers let's be egoistic and hypocrites, with completely valid reasons this time.
edit: I see people don't believe this which is surprising since it is overwhelmingly true, like not even close: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150520193831.h...
The reality is that it isn't hot vs cold, it's all of the things climate change are affecting -- hotter weather, yes, but colder weather too, less predictable weather, more extreme/frequent storms and natural disasters, crop failures, the associated geopolitical fallout, loss of habitable land, water shortages, and the countless downstream effects of all of the above and more. And I'm pretty sure that all those things are deadly.
Also, putting literally all of that aside, hot weather kills people too, so if it even were as simple as "hot vs cold," more frequent and hotter hot weather would also kill more people too. Look up wet-bulb temperature if you'd like to find a new source of nightmares.
The fact that you apparently don't see any of this and just think "hot = better because more people die from cold weather than hot" is why you're getting downvoted to oblivion. It's a surprisingly braindead argument even by HN's all-too-frequent "can't see the forest for the trees" lapses in judgement.
A 2 degree temperature rise is not enough to cause widespread crop failures, significantly increased natural disasters, nor the other things you mention.
Everything in life has pros and cons, here a 2 degree temperature rise will result in 5 million humans saved, it's pretty disingenuous to not to at least mention that.
I even generally agree that a large temp increase 10-20+ degrees super risky and not something we should experiment with, but this fear mongering about 2 degrees is ridiculous and not based in science.
You are correct in pointing out that the headline is, at face value, incorrect.
The context is that the 2 degrees C is a global average temperature increase compared to some fixed baseline. As an average it doesn't say anything about the variance. To illustrate, the average value of 4, 4, 5, 6, 6 and 1, 1, 5, 9, 9 are the same, 5.
Our climate models however show that an increase in average temperature will most likely be accompanied by a fair increase in variance, meaning both much hotter and much colder weather. And it's this increase in variance that's the main issue.
As far as I know, climate change models and GCMs only predict a very small trend in the mean temperature. I haven't seen any research that shows that the variance of the weather should also increase or decrease as a result of CO2. It's not the same thing. GCMs are not even intricate enough to be able to predict these things.
The narrative that CO2 somehow makes the maximally chaotic weather even more chaotic is completely unbacked by data. It's not backed by anything. The daily variance in temperatures is as much as 10s degrees between day and night. Climate models are talking about barely a single degree over a decade, and the variance between models here is also very high.
By the way, for all we know, CO2 could increase the mean while decreasing the variance.
The "more chaotic weather" is pure speculation by the climate cult. It's a completely unfalsifiable conjecture. The GCMs can't predict extreme weather events. They are just incapable of that with their gross resolution. And I don't expect anyone to be able to predict it, it's extremely hard task. So stop repeating this nonsense, there's not a single number that quantifies this narrative with any confidence.
Let's be honest: Global warming/climate change will likely save human lives in the short term but could be quite bad in the long term if left unchecked. That however cannot be stated.
https://journals.lww.com/health-physics/Fulltext/2022/02000/...
[edit] Corrected because, well, accuracy matters!
It wasn't meant to hurt your feelings up it's a way of pushing back. Yes your correct but did you're not being very gracious about it.