5 ms·

IOW climate change is even worse than scientists anticipated.

• yiyus 10y ago
  While this is true, I think that what the article is trying to point out is not that climate change is worse, but that the models we have do not work in the current conditions. This is scary, because scientists have been anticipating climate change for decades, but now we know that what they anticipated was not as accurate as we thought. If predictions from 10 years ago, let's say, had been replaced by worse predictions one or two years ago, we would still know with some certainty what will happen next. But what the article says is that everything we know is that things are getting worse than expected and we have no way to know how worse. Scary.
  • NumberCruncher 10y ago
    >> scientists have been anticipating climate change for decades, but now we know that what they anticipated was not as accurate as we thought. It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future
    • chx 10y ago
      Aye but predictions are necessary. If there's a 4C global temperature rise that displaces 760M people. To put this into perspective, about 1M migrants in a year almost collapsed Europe's political system. We need to know how quick that happens so we can begin to do something. Dam, evacuate etc.
      • vkou 10y ago
        More likely, we will cover the borders with barbed wire, and machineguns.
        • chx 10y ago
          The borders of what? Omaha? New York, DC, Los Angeles, Seattle and 'Frisco are (at least partially) gone.
  • adrianN 10y ago
    That's the problem with modelling nonlinear systems. Your approximations work OK for small changes, but might diverge dramatically for larger deviations from the starting point. This is why we need to completely stop producing GHGs as soon as possible. The longer we wait the further we slip into unknown territory.
• mnw21cam 10y ago
  You cannot make any conclusions about climate change from the temperature over such a short time span. Only a couple of years ago, people were saying that this climate change fad was a load of rubbish because the temperature had stabilised for a year or two. That's not how it works. Hot years and cool years will always exist. What climate scientists are very sure of now is that the long term average trend is upwards. Yes, these record temperatures are supporting evidence of the upwards trend in temperatures, but they are not in themselves a sudden change in what we understand of the climate.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]