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> I find it far easier to believe that the consistent global drop in insect populations has far more to do with deforestation and chemical disbursement rather t

> I find it far easier to believe that the consistent global drop in insect populations has far more to do with deforestation and chemical disbursement rather than fractions of degrees of warming that we've seen so far. You might find it easier to believe, but that doesn't make it so. Ecosystems are interconnected. A degree of warming might not do much to a loan insect in a cage, but a degree can contribute a lot to the spread and range of bacterial and fungal pathogens of insects. It can change how plants behave (they can't get up and move, so have to respond physiologically to survive in the same location), and that change impacts insects. Competitors for the same resources may respond better to temperature rise or other climate related changes. Climate change also changes farmers' behaviour - more pests due to warmer conditions can mean more sprays, which have unintended consequences.

ouid 7y ago
we've seen about 1.5 degrees fahrenheit of warming so far.
- tunesmith 7y ago
  Is that true? I thought we were still below a degree, but had just reached the point where 1.5 was inevitable later due to delayed effects. That was depressing when I figured out that even if the world became carbon-neutral tomorrow we'd still be getting warmer for a while.
  - cstejerean 7y ago
    We are below 1 degree Celsius. 1.5F is about 0.9C.
- jdnenej 7y ago
  It seems that people seriously struggle to understand how significant a single degree change in average temperature is.
  - FooHentai 7y ago
    We're wired for short-term thinking and this is a good example of it. When someone hears '4 degrees of warming' they think of what 4 degrees change feels like to them in the context of a day. Which is to say, not much. Sounds kinda nice. Same thing with sea level rises. We think of a shoreline we are familiar with, and consider a future for that place where the water level is a few feet higher. Chances are what's being pictured looks like no big deal. A person would have to make the choice to actively investigate further the marginal effects of such a change, the impact from the rate of change, and points that are less obvious such as global temperature averages incorporating the 70%-of-the-surface heatsink that is the world's oceans. That kind of prompting for further thinking is for sure already happening in classrooms worldwide, and is one of the reasons there's such a stark difference in opinions on the issue as you look across the age brackets. One way to tackle this might be better messaging, but looking back over the attempts to pivot on that front (global warming -> Climate change) and how much of an easy target that became for criticism, I'm not hopeful. I wonder if there would be a greater impact on the way people think about climate change if the messaging was more specific to the places in which the audience lived? For sure a big challenge here will be accuracy, even if it's possible to bring the conversation down to that level.
  - fragmede 7y ago
    I know I do, and part of the problem is that everyone deals with temperature every day, so it is an uphill battle trying to get across just how dramatic a 1 degree change is. It's one degree (Celsius or 1.8°F) but my house's temperature differs by more than that from room to room, and I don't normally notice that difference. Nor does a 1 degree difference in the weather materially change how hot/cold I feel. I feel freezing cold at -1, 0, or 1°C, even though pure water won't technically freeze until it hits 0°. Another difficulty because it's an average over time, is there's nothing I can look at to see where we are right now - the average temperature of the world right this second isn't particularly meaningful compared against the 1 degree line that we're measuring against. When the question of why 1 degree is so significant comes up, we can sidebar to explain just how catastrophic one degree is, but the layperson isn't always up for rigorous scientific discourse. Hell, we renamed "global warming" to be "global climate change" because of the 'joke' that global warming can't be real because it's still cold in winter (and it's still not gone away). I am unconvinced that having to explain why 1 degree is catastrophic is doing us any favors, especially considering that the average temperature rise is usually presented with one or two significant figures. What then? Short of changing human nature, which we've been trying to do for years, one possibility is to pick a different measurement, or to give additional numbers for effect. In this case, the reason the one degree change is due to how much has to be heated for that single degree change. The entire atmosphere, the water, and surface all have to warm by one degree. How much is that, actually? Is there a standard "Earth" surface area to get the right order of magnitude for just how much extra energy 1 degree is? How much energy would it take to heat this entire Earth 1 degree? We're talking on the order of zettajoules, at least. In imperial units we're talking gigatons of TNT, or petaBTUs.
kortilla 7y ago
Those second and third order effects might be easier for you to believe, but until there is evidence pointing to that being the cause, shouldn’t pesticides be pretty suspect?
- gravelc 7y ago
  I didn't state otherwise.
awayfromhomenow 7y ago
All of this would raise more alarm if the climate had been steady for millions of years before this. As it stands, the Earth's climate has always been changing: geologically speaking, the last Ice Age wasn't that long ago, so of course the temperatures are going to get higher...

ouid 7y ago

we've seen about 1.5 degrees fahrenheit of warming so far.

tunesmith 7y ago
Is that true? I thought we were still below a degree, but had just reached the point where 1.5 was inevitable later due to delayed effects. That was depressing when I figured out that even if the world became carbon-neutral tomorrow we'd still be getting warmer for a while.
- cstejerean 7y ago
  We are below 1 degree Celsius. 1.5F is about 0.9C.
jdnenej 7y ago
It seems that people seriously struggle to understand how significant a single degree change in average temperature is.
- FooHentai 7y ago
  We're wired for short-term thinking and this is a good example of it. When someone hears '4 degrees of warming' they think of what 4 degrees change feels like to them in the context of a day. Which is to say, not much. Sounds kinda nice. Same thing with sea level rises. We think of a shoreline we are familiar with, and consider a future for that place where the water level is a few feet higher. Chances are what's being pictured looks like no big deal. A person would have to make the choice to actively investigate further the marginal effects of such a change, the impact from the rate of change, and points that are less obvious such as global temperature averages incorporating the 70%-of-the-surface heatsink that is the world's oceans. That kind of prompting for further thinking is for sure already happening in classrooms worldwide, and is one of the reasons there's such a stark difference in opinions on the issue as you look across the age brackets. One way to tackle this might be better messaging, but looking back over the attempts to pivot on that front (global warming -> Climate change) and how much of an easy target that became for criticism, I'm not hopeful. I wonder if there would be a greater impact on the way people think about climate change if the messaging was more specific to the places in which the audience lived? For sure a big challenge here will be accuracy, even if it's possible to bring the conversation down to that level.
- fragmede 7y ago
  I know I do, and part of the problem is that everyone deals with temperature every day, so it is an uphill battle trying to get across just how dramatic a 1 degree change is. It's one degree (Celsius or 1.8°F) but my house's temperature differs by more than that from room to room, and I don't normally notice that difference. Nor does a 1 degree difference in the weather materially change how hot/cold I feel. I feel freezing cold at -1, 0, or 1°C, even though pure water won't technically freeze until it hits 0°. Another difficulty because it's an average over time, is there's nothing I can look at to see where we are right now - the average temperature of the world right this second isn't particularly meaningful compared against the 1 degree line that we're measuring against. When the question of why 1 degree is so significant comes up, we can sidebar to explain just how catastrophic one degree is, but the layperson isn't always up for rigorous scientific discourse. Hell, we renamed "global warming" to be "global climate change" because of the 'joke' that global warming can't be real because it's still cold in winter (and it's still not gone away). I am unconvinced that having to explain why 1 degree is catastrophic is doing us any favors, especially considering that the average temperature rise is usually presented with one or two significant figures. What then? Short of changing human nature, which we've been trying to do for years, one possibility is to pick a different measurement, or to give additional numbers for effect. In this case, the reason the one degree change is due to how much has to be heated for that single degree change. The entire atmosphere, the water, and surface all have to warm by one degree. How much is that, actually? Is there a standard "Earth" surface area to get the right order of magnitude for just how much extra energy 1 degree is? How much energy would it take to heat this entire Earth 1 degree? We're talking on the order of zettajoules, at least. In imperial units we're talking gigatons of TNT, or petaBTUs.

kortilla 7y ago

Those second and third order effects might be easier for you to believe, but until there is evidence pointing to that being the cause, shouldn’t pesticides be pretty suspect?

gravelc 7y ago
I didn't state otherwise.

awayfromhomenow 7y ago

All of this would raise more alarm if the climate had been steady for millions of years before this. As it stands, the Earth's climate has always been changing: geologically speaking, the last Ice Age wasn't that long ago, so of course the temperatures are going to get higher...