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> only the milder scenarios were made visible to the general public. The public has been given all kind of predictions, some were quite extreme ( “Children jus

by kgwgk 7y ago

> only the milder scenarios were made visible to the general public. The public has been given all kind of predictions, some were quite extreme ( “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is”) and have failed to materialize.

missosoup 7y ago
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/19/iceland-holds-funeral-for-first-glacier-lost-to-climate-change https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/19/iceland-holds-... https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/4/graphic-dramatic-glacier-melt/ https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/4/graphic-dramati... Children aren't going to know what snow is. Permafrost is now melting. The perma means 'permanent'. The only question is whether it'll be your grandchildren or their children.
- kgwgk 7y ago
  > some climate change experts predict that the Scottish ski industry will cease to exist within 20 years. Five years to go... Is that a mild prediction? Last year was bad, but a few seasons in this decade have seen lots of snow (and of course global warming was also blamed for that). https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/feb/14/climatechange.scotland https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/feb/14/climatechange.sco...
  - missosoup 7y ago
    > and of course global warming was also blamed for that "Global warming" has been a poor choice of name because people lacking sufficient educational background expect there to literally be uniform warming. And then you get the 'we had an early cold snap, so much for global warming!' crowd. What global warming actually means is that additional energy is being added to the weather system, which will amplify both low and high temperature maxima as well as causing more frequent high-severity weather anomalies like hurricanes. But on average, the global mean temperature trend will continue to go up and eventually those local minima will cease to exist. Maybe this will help understand: https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/139/graphic-global-warming-from-1880-to-2018/ https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/139/graphic-globa...
    - kgwgk 7y ago
      > But on average, the global mean temperature trend will continue to go up The trend is up to now in the low end of the ranges published by the IPCC since 1990, isn’t it? What are you talking about precisely when you say that “the most pessimistic models have turned out to still fall short of the mark”?
      - MagnumOpus 7y ago
        > The trend is up to now in the low end of the ranges published by the IPCC since 1990 The 1990 IPPC 'that under a "business as usual" (BAU) scenario, global mean temperature will increase by about 0.3 °C per decade during the [21st] century' We saw a warming of 0.8°C in 30 years, and the warming is accelerating. Which means that the BAU base forecast (from 30 years ago!) was on the mark and you should lend credence to the IPCC.
        kgwgk 7y ago
        > We saw a warming of 0.8°C in 30 years Or 0.4°C, it depends on what particular years you pick for the calculation. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/... > you should lend credence to the IPCC Note that the one saying that IPCC forecasts are completely off the mark because even the more pessimistic scenarios have proved too mild is missosoup, not me. By the way, they also predicted the mean sea level to raise about 20cm by 2030. I think we are not even at 10cm after thirty years, sea level rise is tracking at the low end of the range they gave in 1990.
- larnmar 7y ago
  Permafrost is permanent on the timescale is years, not on the timescale of interglacial periods. Most of the permafrost we have at the moment thawed in the last interglacial period and refroze in the last ice age.
itcrowd 7y ago
There's a difference between scientific predictions and popular-press predictions. Your example (“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is”) is not a scientific one, but one spread by popular press with no scientific research to back it up. The difference is important, because inaccurate reporting by the popular press undermines science.
- kgwgk 7y ago
  The question then is why Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, was saying such things to newspapers twenty years ago.
- ThomPete 7y ago
  Very true, and its important to note that even the IPCC is nowhere near claiming the world is collapsing in 12, 30, 50 or 80 years.
imtringued 7y ago
>The public has been given all kind of predictions, some were quite extreme ( “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is”) and have failed to materialize. What? I remember when I was back in school it used to snow all the time. Nowadays we barely have a winter.
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
lol. That is exactly the direction headed for my children by comparison with my own childhood. When I grew up snow was an expected part of winter. It was rare to have a year without a snowfall of any kind. The rarity for my kids was to have snow at all. Now in their twenties they have experienced an order of magnitude fewer snowfalls throughout their lives than I did to reach similar age. They have never experienced a snowfall that was even a level I'd have simply called normal and expected as a child, let alone the couple of memorable heavy snows. Sure they have experienced snow, but of the most feeble kind... That's without invoking the record winters of 63 or 78 (79? I forget which).
- lazyjones 7y ago
  > When I grew up snow was an expected part of winter. It was rare to have a year without a snowfall of any kind. Same here, but some winters were without snow. The catch is, I grew up in the 70's, which were an unusually cold period. My grandparents grew up in the 20's and 30's and they'd had it much warmer in their childhoods.
larnmar 7y ago
Yep, I’m old enough to remember the global warming warnings of the 90s — one that has stuck in my head in particular was that New York City would be underwater by 2020. Now there’s still six weeks to go, but it must be said that this prediction isn’t looking so good right now.
- Beltiras 7y ago
  To be fair to those that made the prediction New York does flood in extreme weather and that's relatively new.

by kgwgk 7y ago

missosoup 7y ago

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/19/iceland-holds-funeral-for-first-glacier-lost-to-climate-change https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/19/iceland-holds-... https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/4/graphic-dramatic-glacier-melt/ https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/4/graphic-dramati... Children aren't going to know what snow is. Permafrost is now melting. The perma means 'permanent'. The only question is whether it'll be your grandchildren or their children.

kgwgk 7y ago
> some climate change experts predict that the Scottish ski industry will cease to exist within 20 years. Five years to go... Is that a mild prediction? Last year was bad, but a few seasons in this decade have seen lots of snow (and of course global warming was also blamed for that). https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/feb/14/climatechange.scotland https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/feb/14/climatechange.sco...
- missosoup 7y ago
  > and of course global warming was also blamed for that "Global warming" has been a poor choice of name because people lacking sufficient educational background expect there to literally be uniform warming. And then you get the 'we had an early cold snap, so much for global warming!' crowd. What global warming actually means is that additional energy is being added to the weather system, which will amplify both low and high temperature maxima as well as causing more frequent high-severity weather anomalies like hurricanes. But on average, the global mean temperature trend will continue to go up and eventually those local minima will cease to exist. Maybe this will help understand: https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/139/graphic-global-warming-from-1880-to-2018/ https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/139/graphic-globa...
  - kgwgk 7y ago
    > But on average, the global mean temperature trend will continue to go up The trend is up to now in the low end of the ranges published by the IPCC since 1990, isn’t it? What are you talking about precisely when you say that “the most pessimistic models have turned out to still fall short of the mark”?
    - MagnumOpus 7y ago
      > The trend is up to now in the low end of the ranges published by the IPCC since 1990 The 1990 IPPC 'that under a "business as usual" (BAU) scenario, global mean temperature will increase by about 0.3 °C per decade during the [21st] century' We saw a warming of 0.8°C in 30 years, and the warming is accelerating. Which means that the BAU base forecast (from 30 years ago!) was on the mark and you should lend credence to the IPCC.
      - kgwgk 7y ago
        > We saw a warming of 0.8°C in 30 years Or 0.4°C, it depends on what particular years you pick for the calculation. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/... > you should lend credence to the IPCC Note that the one saying that IPCC forecasts are completely off the mark because even the more pessimistic scenarios have proved too mild is missosoup, not me. By the way, they also predicted the mean sea level to raise about 20cm by 2030. I think we are not even at 10cm after thirty years, sea level rise is tracking at the low end of the range they gave in 1990.
larnmar 7y ago
Permafrost is permanent on the timescale is years, not on the timescale of interglacial periods. Most of the permafrost we have at the moment thawed in the last interglacial period and refroze in the last ice age.

itcrowd 7y ago

There's a difference between scientific predictions and popular-press predictions. Your example (“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is”) is not a scientific one, but one spread by popular press with no scientific research to back it up. The difference is important, because inaccurate reporting by the popular press undermines science.

kgwgk 7y ago
The question then is why Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, was saying such things to newspapers twenty years ago.
ThomPete 7y ago
Very true, and its important to note that even the IPCC is nowhere near claiming the world is collapsing in 12, 30, 50 or 80 years.

imtringued 7y ago

>The public has been given all kind of predictions, some were quite extreme ( “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is”) and have failed to materialize. What? I remember when I was back in school it used to snow all the time. Nowadays we barely have a winter.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

lol. That is exactly the direction headed for my children by comparison with my own childhood. When I grew up snow was an expected part of winter. It was rare to have a year without a snowfall of any kind. The rarity for my kids was to have snow at all. Now in their twenties they have experienced an order of magnitude fewer snowfalls throughout their lives than I did to reach similar age. They have never experienced a snowfall that was even a level I'd have simply called normal and expected as a child, let alone the couple of memorable heavy snows. Sure they have experienced snow, but of the most feeble kind... That's without invoking the record winters of 63 or 78 (79? I forget which).

lazyjones 7y ago
> When I grew up snow was an expected part of winter. It was rare to have a year without a snowfall of any kind. Same here, but some winters were without snow. The catch is, I grew up in the 70's, which were an unusually cold period. My grandparents grew up in the 20's and 30's and they'd had it much warmer in their childhoods.

larnmar 7y ago

Yep, I’m old enough to remember the global warming warnings of the 90s — one that has stuck in my head in particular was that New York City would be underwater by 2020. Now there’s still six weeks to go, but it must be said that this prediction isn’t looking so good right now.

Beltiras 7y ago
To be fair to those that made the prediction New York does flood in extreme weather and that's relatively new.