9 ms·

I am not a "denier", I can recognize that anthropomorphic activities are changing the climate over time and we're not prepared to deal with that. But this sort

I am not a "denier", I can recognize that anthropomorphic activities are changing the climate over time and we're not prepared to deal with that. But this sort of article annoys me because "on record" represents a nanosecond of geologic time. There are mountains, and plant fossils[1] under the ice at Antartica, so at some point in the geologic record there was little to no ice at all! And no humans likely either, which can happen again, but the relentless effort to drive anxiety of extinction through the human race just feels so non-helpful to me. [1] https://oceanwide-expeditions.com/blog/the-ancient-fossil-forests-of-antarctica https://oceanwide-expeditions.com/blog/the-ancient-fossil-fo...

gameswithgo 5y ago
Do you want every article about climate change to include at 10 page essay about the geological history as we know it, how we know the current warming is caused by human activities, and what happened during past rapid warming events and what their causes were?
treeman79 5y ago
20,000 years the sea was 130 meters lower. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level
Gravityloss 5y ago
The scientists know this. Paleoclimatology is one big part of climatology. But the outcome is the opposite - you should be more scared, since it shows that climate can change massively. That affects things like agriculture or sea level. What would you assume the sea level was, when those plants were alive? For example, with very quick search: "In general, world oceans were about 100 to 200 metres (330 to 660 feet) higher in the Early Cretaceous and roughly 200 to 250 metres (660 to 820 feet) higher in the Late Cretaceous than at present." https://www.britannica.com/science/Cretaceous-Period https://www.britannica.com/science/Cretaceous-Period
- gnatman 5y ago
  I just went looking for a map to see how different coastlines would look with a 200m sea level rise. It's, unsurprisingly, significant!! https://www.floodmap.net/ https://www.floodmap.net/
  - arno_v 5y ago
    Surprisingly if you put it to 20 meters the effect globally seem insignificant. Although 80% of my own country would be flooded, so that's not great.
    - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
      On a global scale, sure, but as you pointed out for some spots it wouldn't be good. Both Miami and New York (to a lesser extent) would be having a bad time.
    - jazzyjackson 5y ago
      I guess you mean the shape of the countries doesn't change much? iirc the majority of Earth's population lives on coastlines, most major cities will be inundated
      - lijogdfljk 5y ago
        They'll have a _long_ time to migrate though, no?
        jazzyjackson 5y ago
        The rise in sea level is something of a misnomer, because the real damage comes in storm surges. Even a 1cm rise increases the amount of water that can pushed inland by *checks notes* a whole helluva lot. So while manhattan isn't going to be put underwater even after a whole foot of sea level rise (predicted by 2100), the storms it has to survive will be much worse. People won't move just from a little water in the roads (just look at Miami), I think even in the year 2099 you'll have a hard time getting new yorkers to move to ohio, but once a storm comes through and destroys their housing they will have to find somewhere else to live.
burkaman 5y ago
The article mentions that "on record" only covers the last ~40 years 5 separate times, including in the first sentence and visually in a graph. Is there any way it could be more clear? It also says in the subtitle and body that this change is probably not due to global warming. How are you reading it as an "effort to drive anxiety of extinction"? It's honestly hard to imagine a more mildly-framed climate-related story that is still accurate. Do you have an example of some climate-related coverage that you find acceptable?
- ejb999 5y ago
  I think the point is - its a non-story - there is no importance whatsoever to the article.
micromacrofoot 5y ago
do you have any other ideas about how we can slow the human influence on climate change? people have been trying alternatives to fear for quite some time… and well, here we are
jtsiskin 5y ago
Ah yes, the “Tens of millions of years ago, the climate was also different!” silly excuse. Modern humans have been around a minuscule fraction of that time. If we are affecting the climate in ways that normally take millions of years, “there’s some plants under the ice” is the non-helpful remark
- AutumnCurtain 5y ago
  My family member worked as a petroleum geologist for Exxon-Mobil for many years, and he is fond of talking about how the climate has changed dramatically throughout the earth's history as a sort of defense against any discussion of climate change. That those changes historically went very poorly for the organisms living in affected areas doesn't seem to faze him, as though we should be desirous of a new Permian extinction. I've come to the conclusion it's a defense mechanism for him psychologically, to avoid having to acknowledge that his life's work served to destroy the natural world and threaten the peaceful existence of his descendants.
  - Maursault 5y ago
    > it's a defense mechanism for him psychologically Maybe, but it's also a straw man.
  - oceanplexian 5y ago
    I’m not defending Exxon but I feel like no one asks the question “What if we never discovered fossil fuels”. Well, perhaps Earth would be in the middle of an ice age (And there is evidence to support it) which clearly isn’t good for all the species that would go extinct during such a period. If you look past the alarmism I don’t think we understand this complex system as well as we like to think we do. And that is completely ignoring the massive amount of good things that hydrocarbons do for our planet, help to feed the world, enable humanity to support huge cities and billions of humans, all the modern conveniences of life, and so on.
    - tambourine_man 5y ago
      > Well, perhaps Earth would be in the middle of an ice age It wouldn’t. > And there is evidence to support it There isn’t. Show us the link. Earth’s cycles are measured in the many thousands of years. The industrial revolution has 200-300 years and hasn’t really made a dent since the last 100 or so. The amount of denial in a supposedly well informed crowed such HN never ceases to surprise and depress me.
sacrosancty 5y ago
The climate was far more extreme in the past than what AGW is expected to do. It doesn't matter. Climate change is expected to be a problem because of changes that are faster than humans and other species can adapt. Having said that, nobody has any idea how much of a problem it'll be for humans or even if life will be better or worse than it already is. All we have is predictions of sea level, temperature, etc. that don't directly impact us.
- adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
  well it impacts is pretty directly if your house ends up under water which will happen to a ton of people.
  - sacrosancty 5y ago
    That says nothing about how bad it will be. Almost all houses get destroyed on a similar time frame anyway simply because people don't want to keep using old houses. They're often only designed to last 50 years.
NineStarPoint 5y ago
The general reason to worry has more to do with the rate of change than the change itself, illustrated the best by this xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/ Historically, life had a lot more time to adapt to changes in the atmosphere. Times we know of sudden changes, like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, are mass extinctions. On one hand, we're already a mass extinction event even without considering the temperature change, so maybe it's not that much of an additional reason to worry. On the other hand, stacking even more stress onto the habitats of creatures we rely on might be the straw the breaks the camel's back as well. And that's ignoring things like sea level rise for our coastal cities, and the effect temperature changes might have on agriculture. Much like the above, the rate we're affecting the climate will not give us much time to respond to issues.
melling 5y ago
The first sentence is explicit: “Antarctic sea ice shrank to below 2 million square kilometres this year, the lowest minimum extent since satellite records began 43 years ago”
lmilcin 5y ago
I think the main problem here is not necessarily the actual extent of the ice but rather rapid change and how we, people, are dependant on particular climate in particular parts of our planet. We are all dependant on very fragile balance of various mechanisms that we do not fully understand. For example, European climate depends very much on the mass of warm water transported by Gulfstream. Europe would be basically north Canada if not for all that warm water and precipitation that comes with it. But we also know that this stream itself depends on the water cooling up north and sinking to complete the cycle. If the water can't cool the cycle will be broken and Europe may suddenly change the climate dramatically at an astonishing rate. I am not worried about plant and animal life -- these will migrate or adapt. Nature has always found a way in the past. What I am worried is human toll, masses of people affected by rapid climate change that are unable to fend for themselves.
CalRobert 5y ago
That doesn't seem like the right comparison to make, though. The time when there was no ice was not a time conducive to humans (or civilisation, at the very least).
gmuslera 5y ago
Speed of change matters. Walking downstairs is not the same as falling thru a window. You can't adapt to very fast change. https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
klyrs 5y ago
Geology is a funny thing. Those fossils lived 100 million years ago, when Antarctica wasn't even located at the South pole. So, that's a pretty, um, cold comfort. Found a really neat site for that: https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth#105 https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth#105 Also, geological time scales are a bit of a curiosity. Humans are barely a blip. Folks sounding the alarm about climate change are speaking to humans. The Earth will keep turning, and even generalized life on Earth will probably be "fine" as long as we don't tip too far towards a Venus-level greenhouse. Humans might have a rougher go of it.
- zsz 5y ago
  That's a cool site! Now to find a continuous / animated -- maybe even 3D -- equivalent thereof. BTW Venus is outside the Sun's habitable zone (too close to the Sun for liquid water), e.g. https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/uploads/filer_public_thumbnails/filer_public/f0/3c/f03c6971-122e-43f0-996c-6be04999d90f/oosun_habitable_zones460.jpg__1240x510_q85_subject_location-312%2C220_subsampling-2.jpg https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/uploads/filer_public_thumbnail... From https://www.planetary.org/articles/what-is-the-habitable-zone#:~:text=Our%20solar%20system's%20habitable%20zone&text=Mercury%20and%20Venus%20are%20not,the%20liquid%20water%20to%20evaporate.https://www.planetary.org/articles/what-is-the-habitable-zone#:~:text=Our%20solar%20system's%20habitable%20zone&text=Mercury%20and%20Venus%20are%20not,the%20liquid%20water%20to%20evaporate https://www.planetary.org/articles/what-is-the-habitable-zon.... : "Mercury and Venus are not in the habitable zone because they are too close to the Sun to harbor liquid water. However, evidence suggests that the Sun used to be much dimmer. Venus may have once had oceans, but its proximity to the brightening Sun caused the liquid water to evaporate. The escape of liquid water from Venus’s surface may have directly led to the planet’s current inhospitable, dense atmosphere." P.S. Hey, that link you provided already /is/ 3D. You can page through the different eras using the left/right arrow keys, but the maps are projected onto a 3D sphere that can be rotated using the mouse.
layer8 5y ago
The graph also seems to show that the highest maximum on record wasn’t that long ago. If anything, the graph shows that the amplitude is getting larger.
photochemsyn 5y ago
The only solution to fossil-fueled global warming is the elimination of the combustion of fossil fuels. This creates problems for many interests. The United States is currently the world's #1 producer of fossil fuels. A plan to eliminate fossil fuel production within 30 years, i.e. a 3% per year program (meaning, building out that 3% per year as solar/wind/storage) is plausible. However, this would upend the current global economic order. Hence, there is a deliberate effort to not replace fossil fuels with renewables, even though it is now technologically feasible to do so. That's all there is to it really.
tambourine_man 5y ago
Sorry Chuck, but when a post starts with “I’m not an X, but…” it often ends up being X. If we did in 40 years what took thousands or millions of years to happen naturally, it’s worrisome.
- ChuckMcM 5y ago
  That's fair. When I'm being precise I try to be clear that I both understand and believe the science of climate change due to human activity is valid, and I believe and understand the science that says the climate changes due to non-human activity as well. I know people who take the position that climate has always changed and that humans are not a part of that (or I think even more perversely that humans are part of nature so any climate change they create is 'natural') which avoids the agency that humans have to be rational in the face of their own actions. If you can find posts of mine from 10 years ago you'll see that my position hasn't changed a whole lot. What I have never believed however is that it was possible to communicate the impacts humans are having to a large enough portion of the population that set priorities to change the eventuality that Al Gore warned of in "An Inconvenient Truth." I've talked about this sort of self denial in my own journey to getting my weight under control where it is easy to say, ""These calories aren't making me fat, it is all those other calories I've already eaten that made me fat. Not eating this tasty treat would just deny me a treat and not change my weight one bit." It is true, and it was what I wanted to believe, but within that truth was that my actions, my habits, and my choices led me to place where I was fat. It was hard work to get me to a point in the way I think about things to consciously change my day to day activities and change the way I thought about my "relationship" with food, to get to a reasonable weight. Do that for 7 billion people with regard to their cars/energy consumption? It is inconceivable![1] That said, it also annoys me that the science says seeding the oceans with iron [2] could potentially remove massive amount of CO2 from the air, and yet we don't even allow people to try. Either it is an existential threat (which I think it is) so everything is on the table, or it isn't. [1] And yes I do know what that word means :-) [2] https://edu.rsc.org/feature/iron-ocean-seeding/2020176.article https://edu.rsc.org/feature/iron-ocean-seeding/2020176.artic...
  - tambourine_man 5y ago
_0w8t 5y ago
I read an interview with a paleontologist and he pointed out two things. First, climate 9000 years ago was about 1- 1.5 degree warmer than today. Even 1000 years ago it was much milder in Arctic or Northern Atlantic/Pacific. Second, the next ice age should start within the next 1000-2000 years. And for humans an ice age is much worse than global warming even by 2 degrees. So it could be that we should continue to increase CO2 as a protection against the ice age…
wolverine876 5y ago
> because "on record" represents a nanosecond of geologic time We are concerned with human survival, not geological history, and human civilization has exsited within the current nanosecond. We don't want to be geological history.

gameswithgo 5y ago

Do you want every article about climate change to include at 10 page essay about the geological history as we know it, how we know the current warming is caused by human activities, and what happened during past rapid warming events and what their causes were?

treeman79 5y ago

20,000 years the sea was 130 meters lower. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level

Gravityloss 5y ago

The scientists know this. Paleoclimatology is one big part of climatology. But the outcome is the opposite - you should be more scared, since it shows that climate can change massively. That affects things like agriculture or sea level. What would you assume the sea level was, when those plants were alive? For example, with very quick search: "In general, world oceans were about 100 to 200 metres (330 to 660 feet) higher in the Early Cretaceous and roughly 200 to 250 metres (660 to 820 feet) higher in the Late Cretaceous than at present." https://www.britannica.com/science/Cretaceous-Period https://www.britannica.com/science/Cretaceous-Period

gnatman 5y ago
I just went looking for a map to see how different coastlines would look with a 200m sea level rise. It's, unsurprisingly, significant!! https://www.floodmap.net/ https://www.floodmap.net/
- arno_v 5y ago
  Surprisingly if you put it to 20 meters the effect globally seem insignificant. Although 80% of my own country would be flooded, so that's not great.
  - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
    On a global scale, sure, but as you pointed out for some spots it wouldn't be good. Both Miami and New York (to a lesser extent) would be having a bad time.
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    I guess you mean the shape of the countries doesn't change much? iirc the majority of Earth's population lives on coastlines, most major cities will be inundated
    - lijogdfljk 5y ago
      They'll have a _long_ time to migrate though, no?
      - jazzyjackson 5y ago
        The rise in sea level is something of a misnomer, because the real damage comes in storm surges. Even a 1cm rise increases the amount of water that can pushed inland by *checks notes* a whole helluva lot. So while manhattan isn't going to be put underwater even after a whole foot of sea level rise (predicted by 2100), the storms it has to survive will be much worse. People won't move just from a little water in the roads (just look at Miami), I think even in the year 2099 you'll have a hard time getting new yorkers to move to ohio, but once a storm comes through and destroys their housing they will have to find somewhere else to live.

burkaman 5y ago

The article mentions that "on record" only covers the last ~40 years 5 separate times, including in the first sentence and visually in a graph. Is there any way it could be more clear? It also says in the subtitle and body that this change is probably not due to global warming. How are you reading it as an "effort to drive anxiety of extinction"? It's honestly hard to imagine a more mildly-framed climate-related story that is still accurate. Do you have an example of some climate-related coverage that you find acceptable?

ejb999 5y ago
I think the point is - its a non-story - there is no importance whatsoever to the article.

micromacrofoot 5y ago

do you have any other ideas about how we can slow the human influence on climate change? people have been trying alternatives to fear for quite some time… and well, here we are

jtsiskin 5y ago

Ah yes, the “Tens of millions of years ago, the climate was also different!” silly excuse. Modern humans have been around a minuscule fraction of that time. If we are affecting the climate in ways that normally take millions of years, “there’s some plants under the ice” is the non-helpful remark

AutumnCurtain 5y ago
My family member worked as a petroleum geologist for Exxon-Mobil for many years, and he is fond of talking about how the climate has changed dramatically throughout the earth's history as a sort of defense against any discussion of climate change. That those changes historically went very poorly for the organisms living in affected areas doesn't seem to faze him, as though we should be desirous of a new Permian extinction. I've come to the conclusion it's a defense mechanism for him psychologically, to avoid having to acknowledge that his life's work served to destroy the natural world and threaten the peaceful existence of his descendants.
- Maursault 5y ago
  > it's a defense mechanism for him psychologically Maybe, but it's also a straw man.
- oceanplexian 5y ago
  I’m not defending Exxon but I feel like no one asks the question “What if we never discovered fossil fuels”. Well, perhaps Earth would be in the middle of an ice age (And there is evidence to support it) which clearly isn’t good for all the species that would go extinct during such a period. If you look past the alarmism I don’t think we understand this complex system as well as we like to think we do. And that is completely ignoring the massive amount of good things that hydrocarbons do for our planet, help to feed the world, enable humanity to support huge cities and billions of humans, all the modern conveniences of life, and so on.
  - tambourine_man 5y ago
    > Well, perhaps Earth would be in the middle of an ice age It wouldn’t. > And there is evidence to support it There isn’t. Show us the link. Earth’s cycles are measured in the many thousands of years. The industrial revolution has 200-300 years and hasn’t really made a dent since the last 100 or so. The amount of denial in a supposedly well informed crowed such HN never ceases to surprise and depress me.

sacrosancty 5y ago

The climate was far more extreme in the past than what AGW is expected to do. It doesn't matter. Climate change is expected to be a problem because of changes that are faster than humans and other species can adapt. Having said that, nobody has any idea how much of a problem it'll be for humans or even if life will be better or worse than it already is. All we have is predictions of sea level, temperature, etc. that don't directly impact us.

adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
well it impacts is pretty directly if your house ends up under water which will happen to a ton of people.
- sacrosancty 5y ago
  That says nothing about how bad it will be. Almost all houses get destroyed on a similar time frame anyway simply because people don't want to keep using old houses. They're often only designed to last 50 years.

NineStarPoint 5y ago

The general reason to worry has more to do with the rate of change than the change itself, illustrated the best by this xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/ Historically, life had a lot more time to adapt to changes in the atmosphere. Times we know of sudden changes, like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, are mass extinctions. On one hand, we're already a mass extinction event even without considering the temperature change, so maybe it's not that much of an additional reason to worry. On the other hand, stacking even more stress onto the habitats of creatures we rely on might be the straw the breaks the camel's back as well. And that's ignoring things like sea level rise for our coastal cities, and the effect temperature changes might have on agriculture. Much like the above, the rate we're affecting the climate will not give us much time to respond to issues.

melling 5y ago

The first sentence is explicit: “Antarctic sea ice shrank to below 2 million square kilometres this year, the lowest minimum extent since satellite records began 43 years ago”

lmilcin 5y ago

I think the main problem here is not necessarily the actual extent of the ice but rather rapid change and how we, people, are dependant on particular climate in particular parts of our planet. We are all dependant on very fragile balance of various mechanisms that we do not fully understand. For example, European climate depends very much on the mass of warm water transported by Gulfstream. Europe would be basically north Canada if not for all that warm water and precipitation that comes with it. But we also know that this stream itself depends on the water cooling up north and sinking to complete the cycle. If the water can't cool the cycle will be broken and Europe may suddenly change the climate dramatically at an astonishing rate. I am not worried about plant and animal life -- these will migrate or adapt. Nature has always found a way in the past. What I am worried is human toll, masses of people affected by rapid climate change that are unable to fend for themselves.

CalRobert 5y ago

That doesn't seem like the right comparison to make, though. The time when there was no ice was not a time conducive to humans (or civilisation, at the very least).

gmuslera 5y ago

Speed of change matters. Walking downstairs is not the same as falling thru a window. You can't adapt to very fast change. https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/

klyrs 5y ago

Geology is a funny thing. Those fossils lived 100 million years ago, when Antarctica wasn't even located at the South pole. So, that's a pretty, um, cold comfort. Found a really neat site for that: https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth#105 https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth#105 Also, geological time scales are a bit of a curiosity. Humans are barely a blip. Folks sounding the alarm about climate change are speaking to humans. The Earth will keep turning, and even generalized life on Earth will probably be "fine" as long as we don't tip too far towards a Venus-level greenhouse. Humans might have a rougher go of it.

zsz 5y ago
That's a cool site! Now to find a continuous / animated -- maybe even 3D -- equivalent thereof. BTW Venus is outside the Sun's habitable zone (too close to the Sun for liquid water), e.g. https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/uploads/filer_public_thumbnails/filer_public/f0/3c/f03c6971-122e-43f0-996c-6be04999d90f/oosun_habitable_zones460.jpg__1240x510_q85_subject_location-312%2C220_subsampling-2.jpg https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/uploads/filer_public_thumbnail... From https://www.planetary.org/articles/what-is-the-habitable-zone#:~:text=Our%20solar%20system's%20habitable%20zone&text=Mercury%20and%20Venus%20are%20not,the%20liquid%20water%20to%20evaporate.https://www.planetary.org/articles/what-is-the-habitable-zone#:~:text=Our%20solar%20system's%20habitable%20zone&text=Mercury%20and%20Venus%20are%20not,the%20liquid%20water%20to%20evaporate https://www.planetary.org/articles/what-is-the-habitable-zon.... : "Mercury and Venus are not in the habitable zone because they are too close to the Sun to harbor liquid water. However, evidence suggests that the Sun used to be much dimmer. Venus may have once had oceans, but its proximity to the brightening Sun caused the liquid water to evaporate. The escape of liquid water from Venus’s surface may have directly led to the planet’s current inhospitable, dense atmosphere." P.S. Hey, that link you provided already /is/ 3D. You can page through the different eras using the left/right arrow keys, but the maps are projected onto a 3D sphere that can be rotated using the mouse.

layer8 5y ago

The graph also seems to show that the highest maximum on record wasn’t that long ago. If anything, the graph shows that the amplitude is getting larger.

photochemsyn 5y ago

The only solution to fossil-fueled global warming is the elimination of the combustion of fossil fuels. This creates problems for many interests. The United States is currently the world's #1 producer of fossil fuels. A plan to eliminate fossil fuel production within 30 years, i.e. a 3% per year program (meaning, building out that 3% per year as solar/wind/storage) is plausible. However, this would upend the current global economic order. Hence, there is a deliberate effort to not replace fossil fuels with renewables, even though it is now technologically feasible to do so. That's all there is to it really.

tambourine_man 5y ago

Sorry Chuck, but when a post starts with “I’m not an X, but…” it often ends up being X. If we did in 40 years what took thousands or millions of years to happen naturally, it’s worrisome.

ChuckMcM 5y ago
That's fair. When I'm being precise I try to be clear that I both understand and believe the science of climate change due to human activity is valid, and I believe and understand the science that says the climate changes due to non-human activity as well. I know people who take the position that climate has always changed and that humans are not a part of that (or I think even more perversely that humans are part of nature so any climate change they create is 'natural') which avoids the agency that humans have to be rational in the face of their own actions. If you can find posts of mine from 10 years ago you'll see that my position hasn't changed a whole lot. What I have never believed however is that it was possible to communicate the impacts humans are having to a large enough portion of the population that set priorities to change the eventuality that Al Gore warned of in "An Inconvenient Truth." I've talked about this sort of self denial in my own journey to getting my weight under control where it is easy to say, ""These calories aren't making me fat, it is all those other calories I've already eaten that made me fat. Not eating this tasty treat would just deny me a treat and not change my weight one bit." It is true, and it was what I wanted to believe, but within that truth was that my actions, my habits, and my choices led me to place where I was fat. It was hard work to get me to a point in the way I think about things to consciously change my day to day activities and change the way I thought about my "relationship" with food, to get to a reasonable weight. Do that for 7 billion people with regard to their cars/energy consumption? It is inconceivable![1] That said, it also annoys me that the science says seeding the oceans with iron [2] could potentially remove massive amount of CO2 from the air, and yet we don't even allow people to try. Either it is an existential threat (which I think it is) so everything is on the table, or it isn't. [1] And yes I do know what that word means :-) [2] https://edu.rsc.org/feature/iron-ocean-seeding/2020176.article https://edu.rsc.org/feature/iron-ocean-seeding/2020176.artic...
- tambourine_man 5y ago

_0w8t 5y ago

I read an interview with a paleontologist and he pointed out two things. First, climate 9000 years ago was about 1- 1.5 degree warmer than today. Even 1000 years ago it was much milder in Arctic or Northern Atlantic/Pacific. Second, the next ice age should start within the next 1000-2000 years. And for humans an ice age is much worse than global warming even by 2 degrees. So it could be that we should continue to increase CO2 as a protection against the ice age…

wolverine876 5y ago

> because "on record" represents a nanosecond of geologic time We are concerned with human survival, not geological history, and human civilization has exsited within the current nanosecond. We don't want to be geological history.