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This is fascinating! We've always blamed climate change/warming on man-made activities, but this study is saying Arctic Atlantification predates the industrial

This is fascinating! We've always blamed climate change/warming on man-made activities, but this study is saying Arctic Atlantification predates the industrial revolution (or at least occurs at the same time). Not that I want to see continued use of fossil fuels in place of more sustainable options like nuclear and solar/wind. But what if scientists have been wrong about the causes of global warming?

draw_down 5y ago
> But what if scientists have been wrong about the causes of global warming? I’m not sure we can realistically go down that road, politically speaking. Look at everything that’s happened with covid- what we said wasn’t wrong, you just misheard us. If anything, climate change is even more entrenched politically.
Klarios 5y ago
It potentially explains more/better/more fine-grained how our future will look like.this will not suddenly revert our assumptions on CO2 being the fundamental factor of man made global warming. We are not that uncertain about climate change.
9oliYQjP 5y ago
The article makes no mention of the warming predating the industrial revolution. Rather, the quote below indicates a marked change in temperature at the beginning of the 20th century. When we looked at the whole 800-year timescale, our temperature and salinity records look pretty constant,” said co-lead author Dr Tesi Tommaso from the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council in Bologna. “But all of a sudden at the start of the 20th century, you get this marked change in temperature and salinity – it really sticks out.
time_to_smile 5y ago
In William Ruddiman's Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum [0] he argues that even human agriculture has been enough to tip the CO2 scales in favor of not entering a new ice age. > But what if scientists have been wrong about the causes of global warming? This would require several, distinct and unrelated fields of science being wrong about the way CO2 and other GHG have in the past and currently regulate the Earth's temperature. There is no question that CO2 in the atmosphere has been rapidly rising. There is no question that humans have been the cause of this rise, it's just basic math given the wild amount of hydrocarbons we combust every year. So while it's possible that scientists are wrong in the big picture sense it would require a sea-change in our understanding of climate from every perspective as well as being a remarkable coincidence that we are seeing the impact we are in correlation to our own CO2 emissions. A far, far more likely explanation is that the Earth's climate is even more sensitive to small changes in CO2 on a small time scale than we have previously thought. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plows,_Plagues_and_Petroleum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plows,_Plagues_and_Petroleum
mathieubordere 5y ago
This article does not say global climate warming is not man-made, it just states that "Atlantification" is a process that warms the Arctic Ocean even more.
goohle 5y ago
OMG. Do you know meaning of "acceleration" word in "acceleration of warming"?
- sjwalter 5y ago
  What if the rate of change commonly accepted by mainstream climate scientists is off by 10%? 50%? More? What if the alarmism and depression-inspiring shrill shrieking is doing more harm than good?
  - revolvingocelot 5y ago
    What if you're just asking questions, y'know?
    - time_to_smile 5y ago
      A bit terrifying that your other comment which was pointing out this "just asking questions" behavior[0] was immediately flagged and removed. It's wild to me that a group of people that tends to be educated, intellectual, and curious about complex systems instantly starts to lose it's collective mind when faced with an existential risk. It feels like living in a Lovecraft story where the only response to horror is madness. [0] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions
tomtomistaken 5y ago
> All of the world’s oceans are warming due to climate change, but the Arctic Ocean, the smallest and shallowest of the world’s oceans, is warming fastest of all. The article talks about the Arctic Ocean. It is not denying the warming of the world's ocean due to climate change.
refurb 5y ago
Exactly! The article mentions it’s been warming since 1900 which is a scant decade after industrialization began. It seems to suggest other factors are contributing to global warming!
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > The article mentions it’s been warming since 1900 which is a scant decade after industrialization began The industrial revolution is generally dated from 1760, which is...somewhat more than a decade before 1900.
  - refurb 5y ago
    See other reply that shows CO2 emissions were negligible until 1900? How are we driving mass warming in 1900 when CO2 emissions were barely 1% of what they are today?
    - option_greek 5y ago
      Just grasping at straws. Without taking into consideration, the magnitude of co2 getting emitted, we can even blame cavemen with their cook fires for global warming.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > See other reply that shows CO2 emissions were negligible until 1900? Literally, no, where? Even if I did see one claiming that, I’ve also seen the charts of net atmospheric CO2 from human activity that show a sharp rise already in progress by 1800.
      - refurb 5y ago
        https://skepticalscience.com/EmmissionsAcceleration.html https://skepticalscience.com/EmmissionsAcceleration.html
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  for context, greenhouse effect was first described in 1824 and a good approximation of the warning effect of doubling of atmospheric CO2 was made in 1896 (+2.5~4 C) [0] From 1800 to 1900, CO2 ppm rose from 280 to 300 Of course, from 1900 til today it has risen to over 400ppm My point is, we were burning a significant amount of coal throughout 1800s - Acid rain was happening in the 1850s [1] [0] http://interactive.fusion.net/200-years-of-climate-science-and-policy/ http://interactive.fusion.net/200-years-of-climate-science-a... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain
dragonwriter 5y ago
> but this study is saying Arctic Atlantification predates the industrial revolution (or at least occurs at the same time). No, it isn't. It says it starts at the beginning of the 20th century, the industrial revolution usually dated as mid-18th to mid-19th century. The former is neither before nor at the same time as the latter. > Not that I want to see continued use of fossil fuels in place of more sustainable options like nuclear and solar/wind. But what if scientists have been wrong about the causes of global warming? There is no good reason to think that they have, and this study does not at all contravene, or even call into question, the consensus on the causes of warming.
- yessirwhatever 5y ago
  > There is no good reason to think that they have, and this study does not at all contravene, or even call into question, the consensus on the causes of warming. From the article: > “Climate simulations generally do not reproduce this kind of warming in the Arctic Ocean, meaning there’s an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms driving Atlantification,” said Tommaso. “We rely on these simulations to project future climate change, but the lack of any signs of an early warming in the Arctic Ocean is a missing piece of the puzzle.” I'd generally encourage people to be skeptical of everything, but I'd call this a really good reason to be skeptical.
  - dtech 5y ago
    It can just as well be an explanation why climate models have been pretty consistently under-estimating warming of time though.
    - yessirwhatever 5y ago
      Could be. If you're willing to admit that it might go the other way as well then I'm fine with being skeptical on either side (In fact I encourage it).
- hinkley 5y ago
  James Watt's first heat engine went online the same year as the American Revolutionary War. We might recall also that one of the uses of his machines was to keep coal mines from filling up with water (ie, increase coal production). This has been going on for a long time, and steel production was a major factor long before Watt.
tzs 5y ago
> But what if scientists have been wrong about the causes of global warming? That is extremely unlikely. We can measure the spectrum and intensity of incoming solar energy and of outgoing radiation from Earth, and see that we are gaining. We can see that much of that gain is due to incoming energy heating things which re-radiate that energy in infrared which we can see gets trapped by CO2. We can tell by looking at the isotope distribution of the C in the CO2 where it comes from. CO2 from still living or recently living (say dead for only a few hundred years) has a different isotope distribution than CO2 from long dead or never living sources. This lets us tell that most of the CO2 increase over the last couple hundred years is from burning fossil fuels or an increase in geological processes that release long trapped CO2 such as volcanic activity. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere that we can tell from that did not come from living or recently living things matches fairly well with what we know of volcanic activity and how much fossil fuels we burn, giving us enough data to conclude that most of the warming due to CO2 is due to human emitted CO2. For that to be wrong would require that we have massively overestimated how much fossil fuels we use and massively overlooked a large amount of volcanic activity.
- mythrwy 5y ago
  Ok, but more heat means more water vapor which means more cloud cover which means less heat. More CO2 means more plant growth which means less CO2 as the carbon is tied up. It's not one factor you can examine cleanly in isolation. There are many many interacting factors.

draw_down 5y ago

> But what if scientists have been wrong about the causes of global warming? I’m not sure we can realistically go down that road, politically speaking. Look at everything that’s happened with covid- what we said wasn’t wrong, you just misheard us. If anything, climate change is even more entrenched politically.

Klarios 5y ago

It potentially explains more/better/more fine-grained how our future will look like.this will not suddenly revert our assumptions on CO2 being the fundamental factor of man made global warming. We are not that uncertain about climate change.

9oliYQjP 5y ago

The article makes no mention of the warming predating the industrial revolution. Rather, the quote below indicates a marked change in temperature at the beginning of the 20th century. When we looked at the whole 800-year timescale, our temperature and salinity records look pretty constant,” said co-lead author Dr Tesi Tommaso from the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council in Bologna. “But all of a sudden at the start of the 20th century, you get this marked change in temperature and salinity – it really sticks out.

time_to_smile 5y ago

In William Ruddiman's Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum [0] he argues that even human agriculture has been enough to tip the CO2 scales in favor of not entering a new ice age. > But what if scientists have been wrong about the causes of global warming? This would require several, distinct and unrelated fields of science being wrong about the way CO2 and other GHG have in the past and currently regulate the Earth's temperature. There is no question that CO2 in the atmosphere has been rapidly rising. There is no question that humans have been the cause of this rise, it's just basic math given the wild amount of hydrocarbons we combust every year. So while it's possible that scientists are wrong in the big picture sense it would require a sea-change in our understanding of climate from every perspective as well as being a remarkable coincidence that we are seeing the impact we are in correlation to our own CO2 emissions. A far, far more likely explanation is that the Earth's climate is even more sensitive to small changes in CO2 on a small time scale than we have previously thought. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plows,_Plagues_and_Petroleum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plows,_Plagues_and_Petroleum

mathieubordere 5y ago

This article does not say global climate warming is not man-made, it just states that "Atlantification" is a process that warms the Arctic Ocean even more.

goohle 5y ago

OMG. Do you know meaning of "acceleration" word in "acceleration of warming"?

sjwalter 5y ago
What if the rate of change commonly accepted by mainstream climate scientists is off by 10%? 50%? More? What if the alarmism and depression-inspiring shrill shrieking is doing more harm than good?
- revolvingocelot 5y ago
  What if you're just asking questions, y'know?
  - time_to_smile 5y ago
    A bit terrifying that your other comment which was pointing out this "just asking questions" behavior[0] was immediately flagged and removed. It's wild to me that a group of people that tends to be educated, intellectual, and curious about complex systems instantly starts to lose it's collective mind when faced with an existential risk. It feels like living in a Lovecraft story where the only response to horror is madness. [0] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions

tomtomistaken 5y ago

> All of the world’s oceans are warming due to climate change, but the Arctic Ocean, the smallest and shallowest of the world’s oceans, is warming fastest of all. The article talks about the Arctic Ocean. It is not denying the warming of the world's ocean due to climate change.

refurb 5y ago

Exactly! The article mentions it’s been warming since 1900 which is a scant decade after industrialization began. It seems to suggest other factors are contributing to global warming!

dragonwriter 5y ago
> The article mentions it’s been warming since 1900 which is a scant decade after industrialization began The industrial revolution is generally dated from 1760, which is...somewhat more than a decade before 1900.
- refurb 5y ago
  See other reply that shows CO2 emissions were negligible until 1900? How are we driving mass warming in 1900 when CO2 emissions were barely 1% of what they are today?
  - option_greek 5y ago
    Just grasping at straws. Without taking into consideration, the magnitude of co2 getting emitted, we can even blame cavemen with their cook fires for global warming.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > See other reply that shows CO2 emissions were negligible until 1900? Literally, no, where? Even if I did see one claiming that, I’ve also seen the charts of net atmospheric CO2 from human activity that show a sharp rise already in progress by 1800.
    - refurb 5y ago
      https://skepticalscience.com/EmmissionsAcceleration.html https://skepticalscience.com/EmmissionsAcceleration.html
jazzyjackson 5y ago
for context, greenhouse effect was first described in 1824 and a good approximation of the warning effect of doubling of atmospheric CO2 was made in 1896 (+2.5~4 C) [0] From 1800 to 1900, CO2 ppm rose from 280 to 300 Of course, from 1900 til today it has risen to over 400ppm My point is, we were burning a significant amount of coal throughout 1800s - Acid rain was happening in the 1850s [1] [0] http://interactive.fusion.net/200-years-of-climate-science-and-policy/ http://interactive.fusion.net/200-years-of-climate-science-a... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain

dragonwriter 5y ago

> but this study is saying Arctic Atlantification predates the industrial revolution (or at least occurs at the same time). No, it isn't. It says it starts at the beginning of the 20th century, the industrial revolution usually dated as mid-18th to mid-19th century. The former is neither before nor at the same time as the latter. > Not that I want to see continued use of fossil fuels in place of more sustainable options like nuclear and solar/wind. But what if scientists have been wrong about the causes of global warming? There is no good reason to think that they have, and this study does not at all contravene, or even call into question, the consensus on the causes of warming.

yessirwhatever 5y ago
> There is no good reason to think that they have, and this study does not at all contravene, or even call into question, the consensus on the causes of warming. From the article: > “Climate simulations generally do not reproduce this kind of warming in the Arctic Ocean, meaning there’s an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms driving Atlantification,” said Tommaso. “We rely on these simulations to project future climate change, but the lack of any signs of an early warming in the Arctic Ocean is a missing piece of the puzzle.” I'd generally encourage people to be skeptical of everything, but I'd call this a really good reason to be skeptical.
- dtech 5y ago
  It can just as well be an explanation why climate models have been pretty consistently under-estimating warming of time though.
  - yessirwhatever 5y ago
    Could be. If you're willing to admit that it might go the other way as well then I'm fine with being skeptical on either side (In fact I encourage it).
hinkley 5y ago
James Watt's first heat engine went online the same year as the American Revolutionary War. We might recall also that one of the uses of his machines was to keep coal mines from filling up with water (ie, increase coal production). This has been going on for a long time, and steel production was a major factor long before Watt.

tzs 5y ago

> But what if scientists have been wrong about the causes of global warming? That is extremely unlikely. We can measure the spectrum and intensity of incoming solar energy and of outgoing radiation from Earth, and see that we are gaining. We can see that much of that gain is due to incoming energy heating things which re-radiate that energy in infrared which we can see gets trapped by CO2. We can tell by looking at the isotope distribution of the C in the CO2 where it comes from. CO2 from still living or recently living (say dead for only a few hundred years) has a different isotope distribution than CO2 from long dead or never living sources. This lets us tell that most of the CO2 increase over the last couple hundred years is from burning fossil fuels or an increase in geological processes that release long trapped CO2 such as volcanic activity. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere that we can tell from that did not come from living or recently living things matches fairly well with what we know of volcanic activity and how much fossil fuels we burn, giving us enough data to conclude that most of the warming due to CO2 is due to human emitted CO2. For that to be wrong would require that we have massively overestimated how much fossil fuels we use and massively overlooked a large amount of volcanic activity.

mythrwy 5y ago
Ok, but more heat means more water vapor which means more cloud cover which means less heat. More CO2 means more plant growth which means less CO2 as the carbon is tied up. It's not one factor you can examine cleanly in isolation. There are many many interacting factors.