If you don't think climate change is happening, you're on the same level as people who think the Earth is flat.

Oh dear. I knew you were halfway around the world! I am starting that slide into death called being over 65 and I am forgetting all sorts of things now. (I had to stare at my slippers for a full 90 seconds before I could remember the word. I knew they went on my feet though. Not that far gone yet.)

So yeah. Summer. We do something similar in about six months -- except it is light at 5 am and the sun sets about 9:45 pm. And never gets to 111.

I have been reading about your climate crisis challenges. My heart is breaking for you all.

They had a range of topics. But this one was pretty much straight up science. Just about all of it is still very mainstream. The first ice core dude is talking about the Younger Dryas event, a very quick cooling event on the way out of the most recent glaciation. The second science dude in the room of core samples is talking about Milankovitch theory, still mainstream, but it was considerably newer then.

The spin direction is different, but the attempt to stir up climate fear is the same as today. It just didn't work quite as well back then, for some reason.

the O&G industry knew about climate change in the 60s and 70s and were initially concerned about it's effects on both the planet and their business. i don't know why you think either al gore or spock or whoever are the only choices for understanding the phenomena.

Carefully

None of the endothermic reactions in this video have been suggested as methods to regulate global temperature, because even if they could be scaled up enough to make a global difference they don't address the systems which regulate the earth's temperature.

Some things which have affected global temperatures either up or down are:

• Volcanic eruptions can cause global cooling, for example the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption released around 20 million tons of sulphur dioxide causing global cooling of approx 0.5°C over the following three years (ref: https://earthdata.nasa.gov/learn/sensing-our-planet/volcanoes-and-climate-change and https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs113-97/ )
  
• Increased rates of erosion of the right type of rocks can increase CO₂ absorption and reduce global temperatures that way, https://earth.stanford.edu/news/how-weathering-rocks-cooled-earth#gs.cmy3h0
  
• Cyanobacteria, https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/evolutionary-accident-probably-caused-worst-snowball-earth-episode-study-shows-1026
  

Well, not until the seas rise to cover the land due to climate change.

How do you solve something that's going apeshit in another country? For starters, in the case of Ukraine and Crimea, we keep our obligations we agreed to and support them with the U.S. military from day one when Russia invaded Crimea, and again in Ukraine proper. Had we done that as we specifically and unambiguously agreed to do when they gave up their nukes in return, the "civil war" (that's clearly a foreign invasion) wouldn't have occurred. That's an Obama administration failure, one that seriously harmed our international standing and trustworthiness, imo. If we had just put 100 Marines on the borders, Russia wouldn't have risked WW3 to invade either country.
My point is human political or boundary issues are nothing compared to intentionally reengineering the makeup of the atmosphere and getting enough cooperation to implement the desired (required) changes.

If she changes policy in the west, that will impact the East....and South. What America does is more often than not mirrored, especially when we're successful.
Her impact is more for the public than governments. Sway enough of the public, get them to vote on your issue, and politics will evolve at light speed.

Her delivery is exactly what's needed. An angry, educated young woman (they called me young man at 14, so don't balk), being unpleasant about having her future stolen makes exponentially more impact to the audience she targets than a thousand dry, factual, statistic rich talks by scientists. (Those are a dime a dozen today) Kids telling their parents that when the shit hits the fan, the kids are tossing them in the swollen river, not supporting them through their old age, is exactly the kick in the face many need. Kids of today will blame adults of today for the future they live in. Adults of today clearly don't consider that enough.

Something is better than nothing, she's demanding something. She's 16, do you expect her to have all the answers? (Some feasible solutions would be nice) She's well ahead of the curve just understanding the severity of the problem. I'm sure if we listened to all her speeches she gives some suggestions of action we could take to move in the right direction, but I doubt any one person has answers that solve every major effect of climate change, much less all the secondary and tertiary effects. I certainly don't expect her, at that age, to do more than demand those in power take it seriously and find solutions....and act. Chastising a major polluter who walked away from the weak, insufficient Paris agreement is a good start if it works, but I agree it's only barely a start.

You should consider it, she got millions to March for her cause worldwide. Even if she is a willing tool for some adults, it's clear more adults are tools for her. Consider, she isn't talking to kids, she's talking to adults, and some at least are listening to her, not her parents.

Personally it disturbs me that emotional delivery like this is required for many to even consider the issue beyond "what does my political party say on this issue, that's what I say too." I wish scientific issues like climate change were immune to politics, propaganda, and emotion, but they aren't. That's why we're hosed imo, humans are too willing to be deceived if the lie is more pleasant than reality, and denying there's a problem or need for change is quite pleasant to lazy Americans, far easier than facing facts and implementing difficult solutions....until it's not at least, by which time it's far too late.

@newtboy,

"Stupid to use all these differing sets, that only adds confusion to an already technical and confusing topic."

I'm just glad they stick to metric, with sea level rise you don't even get that .

"No matter what, it's incontrovertible that every iteration of the IPCC reports has drastically raised their damage estimates (temp, sea level) and sped up the timetable from the previous report."

At least temperature wise the AR1 report had higher temperatures, and definitely higher worst case projection scenarios for temp than the latest. I can't say I checked their sea level projections, though typically they're other projections have followed on using their temps as the baseline for the other stuff and thus they track together. That is to say, if you can point me a source that reliably claims otherwise I might go check, but currently what I have checked tells me otherwise.

"I'll take the less conservative NOAA estimates and go farther to assume they over estimate humanity and underestimate feedback loops and unknowns and believe we are bound to make it worse than they imagine."

Which is fine, I only object if that gets characterized as the factually scientific 'right' approach.

"The NOAA .83C number was compared to average annual global temperatures 1901-2000...and oddly enough is lower than 2017's measurements."

Which is yet another source and calibration period from what I found. The 1901-2000 very, very roughly speaking can be thought of as centered on 1950, so in that fuzzy feeling sense not surprising it's 0C is colder than the IPCC centered on the nineties.

The source on current instrumental I went against is below:
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/

As for 2018 being cooler than 2017, that's pretty normal. 1996/1997 were the hottest years on record for a pretty long time before things swung back up. It's entirely possible we stay below the recent high years for another bunch of years before continuing to creep up. Same as a particularly cold day isn't 'evidence', the decadal and even century averages are where the signal comes out of the noise.

Hmmmm. According to
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature
The NOAA .83C number was compared to average annual global temperatures 1901-2000...and oddly enough is lower than 2017's measurements.

@bcglorf Here's a tome for you....


It's certainly not (the only way). Converting to green energy sources stimulates the economy, it doesn't bankrupt it, and it makes it more efficient in the future thanks to lower energy costs. My solar system paid for itself in 8 years, giving me an expected 12 years of free electricity and hot water. Right wingers would tell you it will never pay for itself....utter bullshit.

Every gap in our knowledge I've ever seen that we have filled with data has made the estimates worse. Every one. Every IPCC report has raised the severity and shrunk the timeframe from the last report....but you stand on the last one that they admit was optimistic and incomplete by miles as if it's the final word and a gold standard. It just isn't. They themselves admit this.

The odds of catastrophic climate change is 100% in the next 0 years for many who have already died or been displaced by rising seas or famine or disease or lack of water or...... and that goes for all humanity in the next 50 because those who survive displacement will be refugees on the rest's doorsteps. Don't be ridiculous. If we found an asteroid guaranteed to hit in the next 50-100 years, and any possible solutions take a minimum of 50 years to implement with no surprises, and only then assuming we solve the myriad of technical issues we haven't solved in the last 100 years of trying and only if we can put the resources needed into a solution, not considering the constantly worsening barrage of smaller asteroids and the effects on resources and civilisation, we would put all our resources into solutions. That's where I think we are, except we still have many claiming there's no asteroid coming and those that already hit are fake news....including those in the highest offices making the decisions.

Every IPCC report has vastly underestimated their projections, they tell you they are doing it, only including data they are certain of, not new measurements or functions. They do not fill in the gaps, they leave them empty. Gaps like methane melt that could soon be more of a factor than human CO2, and 100% out of our control.

The AR5 report is so terrible, it was lambasted from day one as being incredibly naive and optimistic, and for not including what was then new data. Since its release, those complaints have been proven to be correct, in 5 years since its release ice melt rates have accelerated 60 years by their model. I wouldn't put a whit of confidence in it, it was terrible then, near criminally bad today. I'll take NOAA's estimates based on much newer science and guess that they, like nearly all others in the past, also don't know everything and are also likely underestimating wildly. Even the IPCC AR5 report includes the possibility of 3 ft rise by 2100 under their worst case (raised another 10% in this 2019 report, and expected to rise again by 2021, their next report), and their worst case models show less heat and melting than we are measuring already and doesn't include natural feedbacks because they can't model them accurately yet so just left them out (but noted they will have a large effect, but it's not quantitative yet so not included). Long and short, their worst case scenario is likely optimistic as reality already outpaces their worst case models.

Again, the economy benefits from new energy production in multiple ways. Exxon is not the global economy.

It took 100 years for the impact of our pollution to be felt by most (some still ignore it today). Even the short term features like methane take 25+ years to run their cycles, so what we do today takes that long to start working.

If people continue to drag their feet and challenge the science with supposition, insisting the best case scenario of optimistic studies are the worst we should plan for, we're doomed....and what they're doing is actually worse than that. The power plants built or under construction today put us much higher than 1.5 degree rise by 2100 with their expected emissions without ever building 1 more, and we're building more. Without fantastic scientific breakthroughs that may never come, breakthroughs your plan relies on for our survival, what we've already built puts us beyond the IPCC worst case in their operational lifetimes.

There's a problem with that...I'm good with using real science to identify them without political obstruction and confusion, the difference being we need to be prepared for decisive action once they're identified. So far, we have plans to develop those actions, but that's it. In the event of a "surprise" asteroid, we're done. We just hope they're rare.
This one, however, is an asteroid that is guaranteed to hit if we do nothing, some say hit in 30 years, some say 80. Only morons say it won't hit at all, do nothing.
Climate change is an asteroid/comet in our orbit that WILL hit earth. We are already being hit by ejecta from it's coma causing disasters for millions. You suggest we don't start building a defense until we are certain of it's exact tonnage and the date it will crash to earth because it's expensive and our data incomplete. That plan leaves us too late to change the trajectory. The IPCC said we need to deploy our system in 8-10 years to have a 30-60% chance of changing the trajectory under perfect conditions....you seem to say "wait, that's expensive, let's give it some time and ignore that deadline". I say even just a continent killer is bad enough to do whatever it takes to stop, because it's cheaper with less loss of life and infinitely less suffering than a 'wait and see exactly when it will kill us, we might have space elevators in 10 years so it might only kill 1/2 of us and the rest might survive that cometary winter in space (yes at exponentially higher cost and loss of life and ecology than developing the system today, but that won't be on my dime so Fuck it).' attitude.

@newtboy,

"bankrupting the global economy isn't the only way to plan for asteroids, now is it? What we have done is put some money towards developing solutions that could be implemented in time, with minor exceptions for super fast unknown asteroids we likely couldn't do much about if we did have a planetary defense system."

That's precisely my point though, bankrupting the global economy to reach negative net emissions tomorrow isn't the only way to plan for climate change either.

"the probability of disastrous climate change is near 100% if you take historic human behavior into account. For many it's already hit. It's only the severity and speed that are in question, and those estimates rise alarmingly with every bit of data we use to replace guesses in the equations.

And the odds of a catastrophic asteroid hit sometime in the future is near 100% too, it's just a question of how many millions of years Earth's luck holds out. Nor has every prediction or projection underestimated future warming so far, your flat wrong on that.

More to the point, the timing and severity of the changes we face is ABSOLUTELY relevant to the actions we need to take. Similarly, knowing the benefit of reducing our emissions by X% by a particular date is also extremely relevant to the actions we need to take. Unfortunately, it must be acknowledged that we have a lot of gaps and uncertainty in our knowledge on those points.

At minimum base level, we know changing global temperature on the whole will impact us negatively, that our CO2 emissions will make things warmer than they otherwise would be, and thus can easily conclude with certainty that the science dictates policies to reduce emissions are a good idea.

Now, you seem to be hell bent on demanding those policies take the shape of staring down the face of disaster 2-3 times worse than the IPCC AR5 reports absolute worst case scenario. I've got to tell you, that the uncertainties involved with that kind of prediction are too great to warrant an honest dictate that the facts support a need for economically devastating action being taken today. It's just not the case.

Even if green tech never takes over, if the next century sees us final solve fusion power and adoption of electric cars, we already get our emission outputs off the worst track scenario the IPCC projected in AR5. I honestly do believe that we will see non-fossil fuel electricity generation and electric cars as the norm in my lifetime, so I'm hopeful for a future that tracks better than the IPCC worst case. That doesn't mean we should do nothing, but it's more like we should take a similarly rational/practical approach to it like you see us doing with asteroids.

Ahhh....but bankrupting the global economy isn't the only way to plan for asteroids, now is it? What we have done is put some money towards developing solutions that could be implemented in time, with minor exceptions for super fast unknown asteroids we likely couldn't do much about if we did have a planetary defense system. What we haven't done is just say "It not certain we'll be hit, so wait until it's a certainty to make any preparations."

In this case, the probability of disastrous climate change is near 100% if you take historic human behavior into account. For many it's already hit. It's only the severity and speed that are in question, and those estimates rise alarmingly with every bit of data we use to replace guesses in the equations. We aren't just driving our Cadillac off the cliff, we're accelerating as if we hope to jump the canyon. Even Evil couldn't pull that off with a rocket.

@newtboy,
"Actually, I'm selling their audience short. When real scientists present the real data dispassionately, I think the average person gets quickly confused and tunes out."

I'd argue bored maybe more often than confused. Although if we want to say that most of the problems society faces have their root causes in human nature, I think we can agree.

"I had read the published summaries of the recent U.N. report saying we had 12 years to be carbon neutral to stay below 1.5degree rise, they were far from clear that this was only a 50% chance of achieving that minimal temperature rise"

Here is where I see healthy skepticism distinguishing itself from covering eyes, ears and yelling not listening.

Our understanding of the global climate system is NOT sufficient to make that kind of high confidence claim about specific future outcomes. As you read past the head line and into the supporting papers you find that is the truth underneath. The final summary line you are citing sits atop multiple layers of assumptions and unspecified uncertainties that culminate in a very ephemeral 50% likelyhood disclaimer. It is stating that if all of the cumulative errors and unknowns all more or less don't matter. then we have models that suggest this liklyhood of an outcome...

This however sits atop the following challenges that scientists from different fields and specialities are focusing on improving.
1.Direct measurements of the global energy imbalance and corroboration with Ocean heat content. Currently, the uncertainties in our direct measurements are greater than the actual energy imbalance caused by the CO2 we've emitted. The CERES team measuring this has this plain as day in all their results.
2.Climate models can't get global energy to balance because the unknown or poorly modeled processes in them have a greater impact on the energy imbalance than human CO2. We literally hand tune the poorly known factors to just balance out the energy correctly, regardless of whether that models the given process better or not because the greater run of the model is worthless without a decent energy imbalance. This sits atop the unknowns regarding the actual measured imbalance to hope to simulate. 100% of the modelling teams that discuss their tuning processes again all agree on this.
3. Meta-analysis like you cited usually sit atop both the above, and attempt to rely on the models to get a given 2100 temperature profile, and then make their predictions off of that.

The theme here, is cumulative error and an underlying assumption of 'all other things being equal' for all the cumulative unknowns and errors. You can NOT just come in from all of that, present the absolute worst possible case scenario you can squeeze into and then declare that as the gold standard scientific results which must dictate policy...

Edit:that's very nearly the definition of cherry picking the results you want.

*Heavy sigh*
No. They don't say that. The science has evolved in the last 5 years. (Edit: Might check how old and out of date that ipcc report is, btw. Please note you ignore all science done since the 2014 IPCC report you reference that used melting equations and extrapolated rather than measured data sets, data and models they admit are incomplete. They have not updated their sea level estimates since the fifth assessment, which itself raised them approximately 60% over the fourth, which raised them significantly from the third...... Other nonpolitical scientific groups have adjusted the findings to include up to 6.5' or higher rise by 2100 under worst case conditions, the path we're firmly on today.)

Even if you were correct, and I don't agree one bit you are, is just under a 3' rise not bad enough for you in the next 70 years? That's at least 140 million people and all coastal habitats displaced, with more to come. I and others expect worse, but surely that's disaster enough for you, isn't it? The world couldn't deal with one million Syrians, 140 million coastal refugees, and whatever number of non coastal climate refugees fleeing drought or flood sure seems an unavoidable planetary disaster. That doesn't consider the two billion people who rely on Himalayan glaciers for their water, glaciers in rapid retreat.

I guess you dismiss the science from NOAA based simply on it being presented in Forbes without reading it then....so I should just dismiss the IPCC, another non scientific economically focused group discussing science?

Here's some more science then. Edit: Seems most CURRENT projections using up to date data are more in line with my expectations than yours.

https://phys.org/news/2019-05-metre-sea-plausible.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48337629

https://time.com/5592583/sea-levels-rise-higher-study/

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5056

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/10/sea-level-in-the-5th-ipcc-report/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise
Note the updated chart near the top showing more current projections compared to ipcc predictions.

*my content?*

Ok...i should have said "all but guaranteed under all BUT the most wildly optimistic projections". Got me.

Since, time and time again, the UN "collaborative summary" has had to be revised upwards, and recent measurements show current melting rates it claimed won't be seen until 2075 in Greenland, yes, I have a low opinion of their political/scientific consensus...but the scenarios I mentioned are not the most extreme I can find, just the most likely if you look at data rather than projections based on the conglomeration of incomplete, cherry picked, and non peer reviewed science as well as full scientific studies.

The IPCC does not carry out original research, nor does it monitor climate or related phenomena itself. Rather, it assesses published literature including peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed sources. Thousands of scientists and other experts contribute on a voluntary basis to writing and reviewing reports, which are then reviewed by governments.
They are not the scientific community, they are an international political body chaired by an economist that makes suggestions hopefully based on real honest science, but not necessarily.


There is plenty of consensus that the IPCC estimates are low....NOAA gives up to a 2.5M rise estimate for RCP8.5...the no mitigation, business as usual model we are outpacing already. Based on their numerical system, we're looking at RCP 10+ because emissions are rising, not flatlined, certainly not lowering.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2018/06/15/is-the-ipcc-wrong-about-sea-level-rise/#712580f03ba0