30 ms·

I hope we are not on an exponential curve with this too. Covid reminded us how exponential are surprising.

by kuon 7y ago

eloff 7y ago
It's not a linear trend, but probably not exponential (polynomial?) Still all the large and scary effects are at the end when everyone alive today is dead. Our descendants will have plenty of reason to curse our lack of foresight and stealing from future generations. However, stating an unpopular but still possibly true opinion: If our human caused global warming disrupts the repeated glaciation cycles known as ice ages, maybe tens of thousands of years from now people will have missed a terrible natural disaster. Not much consolation to the people who live through the next couple centuries.
- perfunctory 7y ago
  Depends what you mean by "large and scary". Some say it's already happening. See Australian fires, people killed in European heat waves, etc.
  - eloff 7y ago
    It is already happening, but this is just the opening act. The show doesn't start in earnest for another 50-100 years at least.
    - mraudiobook_com 7y ago
      When it comes to global warming, even the educated prefer to remain uninformed. The shit show begins now. Micronesia is being lost at an astounding rate. Sandy level hurricanes are happening faster than we can rebuild.
    - labawi 7y ago
      That depends on how soon we get scared enough to act. Or is it too late with anthropomorphic effects of deeds already done hitting their peak after decades?
      - eloff 7y ago
        It's late to act, but it's never too late to stop making things worse. The problem is the worst effects are far in the future and stopping the burning of fossil fuels is a gargantuan problem spanning all countries around the world. There are no palatable solutions - but doing nothing is even worse in the long term. People are generally awful in dealing with situations like that, and politicians even worse.
- imtringued 7y ago
  This idea that we are doing ourselves a favor by skipping the next ice age is bizarre. It took less than 300 years to prevent it and the next one was thousands of years ago before it would happen. Also, the large and scary effects aren't coming when everyone is dead. They will be there by the time current college graduates retire.
  - eloff 7y ago
    I can't make sense out of your argument, grammatically. Can you rephrase it? To be clear there are large and scary effects coming sooner, but those will pale by comparison with what comes later. Because the majority of warming, sea level rise, ocean effects will take place near the end of the century and into the next.
  - eloff 7y ago
    I did a little searching to see if there's anything to my guess that global warming could postpone the next ice age, and there's a lot of people suggesting that is in fact the case. One example: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/13/fossil-fuel-burning-postponing-next-ice-age https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/13/fossil-f... Ice ages are actually scarier to me than global warming, so I think that's a good thing on the whole. It's just we have to deal with the negative consequences now, whereas an ice age is a much further future concern. One reason ice ages are so scary, is it would cause much larger mass migrations of people than global warming, and it would devastate our ability to grow crops in the northern hemisphere, where we currently produce most of our food. Global warming may actually enhance our ability to grow crops in the northern latitudes - with longer growing seasons, for example.
perfunctory 7y ago
FWIW "Scientists have long recognized that carbon dioxide emissions and their resulting effects have been increasing exponentially." https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/26/what-the-coronavirus-curve-teaches-us-about-climate-change-148318 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/26/what-the-c...
- usaar333 7y ago
  That claim doesn't match reality. Ppm growth by year is sub-exponential even if above linear (looks like quadratic is a better first order approximation): https://datahub.io/core/co2-ppm https://datahub.io/core/co2-ppm Actual temperature rise is actually a logarithmic function of co2 ppm, literally the opposite of exponential: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_Concentration_Pathway https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_Concentration...
  - perfunctory 7y ago
    The claim is about emissions, not ppm. And it says nothing about the temperature (there exist other effects).
    - usaar333 7y ago
      Emissions at most were exponential until 2010 or so. The growth rate since then has been drastically lower, in part because developed countries are reducing: https://www.iea.org/articles/global-co2-emissions-in-2019 https://www.iea.org/articles/global-co2-emissions-in-2019
      - perfunctory 7y ago
        This link concerns only energy-related emissions.

I hope we are not on an exponential curve with this too. Covid reminded us how exponential are surprising.

by kuon 7y ago

I hope we are not on an exponential curve with this too. Covid reminded us how exponential are surprising.

It's not a linear trend, but probably not exponential (polynomial?) Still all the large and scary effects are at the end when everyone alive today is dead. Our descendants will have plenty of reason to curse our lack of foresight and stealing from future generations. However, stating an unpopular but still possibly true opinion: If our human caused global warming disrupts the repeated glaciation cycles known as ice ages, maybe tens of thousands of years from now people will have missed a terrible natural disaster. Not much consolation to the people who live through the next couple centuries.

perfunctory 7y ago
Depends what you mean by "large and scary". Some say it's already happening. See Australian fires, people killed in European heat waves, etc.
- eloff 7y ago
  It is already happening, but this is just the opening act. The show doesn't start in earnest for another 50-100 years at least.
  - mraudiobook_com 7y ago
    When it comes to global warming, even the educated prefer to remain uninformed. The shit show begins now. Micronesia is being lost at an astounding rate. Sandy level hurricanes are happening faster than we can rebuild.
  - labawi 7y ago
    That depends on how soon we get scared enough to act. Or is it too late with anthropomorphic effects of deeds already done hitting their peak after decades?
    - eloff 7y ago
      It's late to act, but it's never too late to stop making things worse. The problem is the worst effects are far in the future and stopping the burning of fossil fuels is a gargantuan problem spanning all countries around the world. There are no palatable solutions - but doing nothing is even worse in the long term. People are generally awful in dealing with situations like that, and politicians even worse.
imtringued 7y ago
This idea that we are doing ourselves a favor by skipping the next ice age is bizarre. It took less than 300 years to prevent it and the next one was thousands of years ago before it would happen. Also, the large and scary effects aren't coming when everyone is dead. They will be there by the time current college graduates retire.
- eloff 7y ago
  I can't make sense out of your argument, grammatically. Can you rephrase it? To be clear there are large and scary effects coming sooner, but those will pale by comparison with what comes later. Because the majority of warming, sea level rise, ocean effects will take place near the end of the century and into the next.
- eloff 7y ago
  I did a little searching to see if there's anything to my guess that global warming could postpone the next ice age, and there's a lot of people suggesting that is in fact the case. One example: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/13/fossil-fuel-burning-postponing-next-ice-age https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/13/fossil-f... Ice ages are actually scarier to me than global warming, so I think that's a good thing on the whole. It's just we have to deal with the negative consequences now, whereas an ice age is a much further future concern. One reason ice ages are so scary, is it would cause much larger mass migrations of people than global warming, and it would devastate our ability to grow crops in the northern hemisphere, where we currently produce most of our food. Global warming may actually enhance our ability to grow crops in the northern latitudes - with longer growing seasons, for example.

perfunctory 7y ago

FWIW "Scientists have long recognized that carbon dioxide emissions and their resulting effects have been increasing exponentially." https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/26/what-the-coronavirus-curve-teaches-us-about-climate-change-148318 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/26/what-the-c...

usaar333 7y ago
That claim doesn't match reality. Ppm growth by year is sub-exponential even if above linear (looks like quadratic is a better first order approximation): https://datahub.io/core/co2-ppm https://datahub.io/core/co2-ppm Actual temperature rise is actually a logarithmic function of co2 ppm, literally the opposite of exponential: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_Concentration_Pathway https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_Concentration...
- perfunctory 7y ago
  The claim is about emissions, not ppm. And it says nothing about the temperature (there exist other effects).
  - usaar333 7y ago
    Emissions at most were exponential until 2010 or so. The growth rate since then has been drastically lower, in part because developed countries are reducing: https://www.iea.org/articles/global-co2-emissions-in-2019 https://www.iea.org/articles/global-co2-emissions-in-2019
    - perfunctory 7y ago
      This link concerns only energy-related emissions.