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> Existential means existence, yet not a single scientist believes global warming threatens human existence. If you're going to argue this pedantically, perhap

> Existential means existence, yet not a single scientist believes global warming threatens human existence. If you're going to argue this pedantically, perhaps don't start by claiming you know the opinions of every scientist, because if we're being pedantic, that's obviously not true. Less pedantically, I think we agree that probably humans will survive global warming. But I think that we can agree that there's a temperature that's not survivable, even if we don't know what temperature that is. There's no long-term upper bound on how hot earth can get, and we're modeling uncharted territory: earth has never been as hot as it's going to get, while life has been on earth. So we really don't know how bad it will get. There is some chance that global warming will literally wipe out humanity, and given the stakes, I think that's a significant risk we need to be addressing.

mcguire 7y ago
Is there any science to back that up? By that reasoning, literally everything is an existential threat to humanity.
ars 7y ago
Is this some kind of satire modeled after climate deniers? I mean that's even less scientific than what climate deniers say. Is this what the world has come to? You have two camps: climate deniers, and climate alarmists, neither party caring in the slightest about science?
Isinlor 7y ago
> There's no long-term upper bound on how hot earth can get, and we're modeling uncharted territory: earth has never been as hot as it's going to get, while life has been on earth. So we really don't know how bad it will get. Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum [0] The associated period of massive carbon release into the atmosphere has been estimated to have lasted from 20,000 to 50,000 years. The entire warm period lasted for about 200,000 years. Global temperatures increased by 5–8 °C. Paired δ13C, δ11B, and δ18O data suggest that ~12000 Gt of carbon (at least 44000 Gt CO 2e) were released over 50,000 years, averaging 0.24 Gt per year. Since at least 1997, the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum has been investigated in geoscience as an analog to understand the effects of global warming and of massive carbon inputs to the ocean and atmosphere, including ocean acidification. Humans today emit about 10 Gt of carbon per year, and will have released a comparable amount in about 1,000 years at that rate. Take a look also at "Abrupt climate change" article [1]: Timescales of events described as 'abrupt' may vary dramatically. Changes recorded in the climate of Greenland at the end of the Younger Dryas, as measured by ice-cores, imply a sudden warming of +10 °C (+18 °F) within a timescale of a few years. Other abrupt changes are the +4 °C (+7.2 °F) on Greenland 11,270 years ago or the abrupt +6 °C (11 °F) warming 22,000 years ago on Antarctica. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Therm... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrupt_climate_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrupt_climate_change

mcguire 7y ago

Is there any science to back that up? By that reasoning, literally everything is an existential threat to humanity.

ars 7y ago

Is this some kind of satire modeled after climate deniers? I mean that's even less scientific than what climate deniers say. Is this what the world has come to? You have two camps: climate deniers, and climate alarmists, neither party caring in the slightest about science?

Isinlor 7y ago

> There's no long-term upper bound on how hot earth can get, and we're modeling uncharted territory: earth has never been as hot as it's going to get, while life has been on earth. So we really don't know how bad it will get. Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum [0] The associated period of massive carbon release into the atmosphere has been estimated to have lasted from 20,000 to 50,000 years. The entire warm period lasted for about 200,000 years. Global temperatures increased by 5–8 °C. Paired δ13C, δ11B, and δ18O data suggest that ~12000 Gt of carbon (at least 44000 Gt CO 2e) were released over 50,000 years, averaging 0.24 Gt per year. Since at least 1997, the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum has been investigated in geoscience as an analog to understand the effects of global warming and of massive carbon inputs to the ocean and atmosphere, including ocean acidification. Humans today emit about 10 Gt of carbon per year, and will have released a comparable amount in about 1,000 years at that rate. Take a look also at "Abrupt climate change" article [1]: Timescales of events described as 'abrupt' may vary dramatically. Changes recorded in the climate of Greenland at the end of the Younger Dryas, as measured by ice-cores, imply a sudden warming of +10 °C (+18 °F) within a timescale of a few years. Other abrupt changes are the +4 °C (+7.2 °F) on Greenland 11,270 years ago or the abrupt +6 °C (11 °F) warming 22,000 years ago on Antarctica. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Therm... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrupt_climate_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrupt_climate_change