4 ms·

Very cool visualization! What are the causes of the rapid acceleration starting in the 80s, I assume globalization had something to do with it?

• dgb23 4y ago
  Climate effects are typically delayed by decades.
  • turtledove 4y ago
    The post war era saw a huge jump in resource usage, and the discovery of the Haber process resulted in huge agricultural returns, enabling a massive population spike.
    • LoveGracePeace 4y ago
      The post war era led to the massive population spike, not improved farming. Anyone apart from their honey for more than a week knows that.
      • turtledove 4y ago
        It's not so simple. Haber's process increased the population the globe could support by billions. So yes, baby boomers came from post war era, but global availability of food meant that the generations following didn't starve or cap out.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
• netsharc 4y ago
  Probably what sibling comment said, and the economic boom after WW2. This op-ed[1][2] says: > For a few years, I’ve startled people by pointing out that over half of all of the emissions from the burning of fossil fuels that have ever been produced in the history of humanity have been produced in the past 30 years — since Al Gore published his first book on warming; since the U.N. established its climate-change body, the I.P.C.C.; since the premiere of “Friends.” Which is fucking shocking. Later on he says "At the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, the global promise was to avoid “dangerous” warming.", if I were the editor I'd point out that's 30 years ago and that he should add something like "the cutoff-year after which we've emitted in 30 years the same amount of fossil fuel emissions of the last several millennia until that point". Obviously this is "citation needed" territory, but I'm relying on the reputation of NYT to have hired a researcher that backs up what he's written with hard data. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/opinion/india-heat-wave-pakistan-climate-change.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/opinion/india-heat-wave-p... [2] https://archive.ph/GTtXP https://archive.ph/GTtXP
  • LoveGracePeace 4y ago
    • netsharc 4y ago
      Wowwwww, you found an article attacking him so now you feel justified to ignore anything he says about the environment... Here's a rebuttal for you to dismiss: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/al-gores-energy-use/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/al-gores-energy-use/ Good luck with dying on the overheated planet, even if you think it's all a hoax, it's still real.
• photochemsyn 4y ago
  Well, the Keeling Curve (the record of CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere since the late 1950s) shows pretty steady accumulation, though it's not quite a linear line, it's slightly exponential. https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ If you compare that to the global temperature data presented in the same kind of graph, there's this relatively flat period from the 1950s through the 1970s, before the steady climb begins: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ CO2 is best understood as having its most potent effect at about ~12 km up in the atmosphere, this is where under pre-industrial conditions there was a large 'escape window' for infrared radiation (due to colder temps and lower pressures). That warming in turn drives water vapor feedback at lower levels in the atmosphere, with the water vapor accounting for 2/3 or so of the actual radiative trapping and the CO2 accounting for about 1/3 (then there's methane, a compounding factor but IIRC it's about 1/20th overall). If we take the Milankovitch cycle of glacial ages into account, the world without fossil CO2 should have been steadily sliding into another ice age (with the warm peak about 10K years ago). So the flattening out period represents perhaps the end of that trend (driven by orbital parameters, and associated feedbacks w/ ice sheets and CO2). Now the CO2, thanks to steady increase, is the dominant factor controlling global temperature trends, and the global temperature is basically just tracking the global atmospheric CO2, with a lag time of at least several decades (I think it's more like 100 years for the global temperature to catch up with the global atmospheric CO2, but that's a matter of debate). Conclusion: even if we take dramatic action to curb fossil fuel use (which is a good idea), we're going to be stuck with a steadily rising global temperature for at least 100 years before leveling off (and this ignores issues like permafrost outgassing of additional CO2 and methane destabilization in shallow marine sediments). Hence humans are going to have to plan for adaptation to these new climatic conditions. The point has been well tipped, and we're in for it.
• YashdharaC 4y ago
  The reason for the acceleration is because most of the greeh house gas emissions (CO2, CH4 etc) once emitted will stay in the atmosphere for a very long time (100s of years, they accumulate). PLus we are emitting these at a much faster pace than they can be removed from the atmosphere by natural processes (we rely on nature because currently, we do not have technologies to remove GHGs from the atmosphere at scale economically). So it has a compounding effect in terms of temperature response over time... Have tried to share some thoughts on this here, have a look if you like https://ycmusings.com/1-5-its-not-a-big-deal/ https://ycmusings.com/1-5-its-not-a-big-deal/