3 ms·

What's the reason it started to skyrocket after 1980 and not before? What made it stagnant or even slightly drop between 1940 and 1980?

notamy 3y ago
> What made it stagnant or even slightly drop between 1940 and 1980? Well, there was that one really big war in the 1940s...
- jonhohle 3y ago
  Doesn’t that suggest sea transportation may be a bigger contributor than greenhouse gasses? Industrial production was at its limits during that period, but I would imagine cross ocean cargo was down significantly. It would be interesting to see what pandemic years looked like with thousands of ships sitting for months off shore. Edit: there might be something to that idea - https://arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2022/ArtMID/8054/ArticleID/988/Sea-Surface-Temperature#:~:text=Highlights,observed%20in%20the%20Chukchi%20Sea https://arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2022/ArtMID/.... maybe globalism is the issue. One more edit: container ships are effectively giant heat sinks with a ton (literally tons) of surface area (corrugated containers), sucking heat from the air and dumping it into the ocean. If that hypothesis has merit, I would expect the LA ports to have an increase in temperature during that same period.
  - f6v 3y ago
    Or there’s a complex interaction between Earth’s natural climate change and greenhouse gas emissions.
    - jonhohle 3y ago
      That’s definitely possible, but complexity makes errors more likely. According to Google^TM, it takes 20-200 years for CO2 in the air to dissolve in the oceans and yet there are immediate effects during WW2 and COVID.
sixbrx 3y ago
That mirrors global average temperature in general for that time period. Apparently it was because we were pumping sulfates into the atmosphere at an amazing rate from the 1940's until the EPA was born. Sulfates block sunlight and so mask the overall warming, at the cost of polluting the atmosphere. See for example: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/50-years-ago-scientists-puzzled-over-slight-global-cooling https://www.sciencenews.org/article/50-years-ago-scientists-...
- gary_0 3y ago
  It has been proposed to intentionally resume injecting sulfates into the upper atmosphere in order to mitigate global warming[0]. (This is a horrible idea, but the jury's still out on whether it's better than the alternative.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_geoengineering#Stratospheric_aerosol_injection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_geoengineering#Stratosph...
ezconnect 3y ago
We probably are getting better at measuring things and crunching the numbers as years pass by.
philjohn 3y ago
Aerosols from pollution could be a culprit?
legulere 3y ago
CO2-Emissions have been growing at an accelerating speed. Cumulative emissions double every 20-30 years. Half of CO2-emissions since 1750 have happened just since 1993. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co-emissions?country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co-emissions?c...

notamy 3y ago

> What made it stagnant or even slightly drop between 1940 and 1980? Well, there was that one really big war in the 1940s...

jonhohle 3y ago
Doesn’t that suggest sea transportation may be a bigger contributor than greenhouse gasses? Industrial production was at its limits during that period, but I would imagine cross ocean cargo was down significantly. It would be interesting to see what pandemic years looked like with thousands of ships sitting for months off shore. Edit: there might be something to that idea - https://arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2022/ArtMID/8054/ArticleID/988/Sea-Surface-Temperature#:~:text=Highlights,observed%20in%20the%20Chukchi%20Sea https://arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2022/ArtMID/.... maybe globalism is the issue. One more edit: container ships are effectively giant heat sinks with a ton (literally tons) of surface area (corrugated containers), sucking heat from the air and dumping it into the ocean. If that hypothesis has merit, I would expect the LA ports to have an increase in temperature during that same period.
- f6v 3y ago
  Or there’s a complex interaction between Earth’s natural climate change and greenhouse gas emissions.
  - jonhohle 3y ago
    That’s definitely possible, but complexity makes errors more likely. According to Google^TM, it takes 20-200 years for CO2 in the air to dissolve in the oceans and yet there are immediate effects during WW2 and COVID.

sixbrx 3y ago

That mirrors global average temperature in general for that time period. Apparently it was because we were pumping sulfates into the atmosphere at an amazing rate from the 1940's until the EPA was born. Sulfates block sunlight and so mask the overall warming, at the cost of polluting the atmosphere. See for example: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/50-years-ago-scientists-puzzled-over-slight-global-cooling https://www.sciencenews.org/article/50-years-ago-scientists-...

gary_0 3y ago
It has been proposed to intentionally resume injecting sulfates into the upper atmosphere in order to mitigate global warming[0]. (This is a horrible idea, but the jury's still out on whether it's better than the alternative.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_geoengineering#Stratospheric_aerosol_injection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_geoengineering#Stratosph...

ezconnect 3y ago

We probably are getting better at measuring things and crunching the numbers as years pass by.

philjohn 3y ago

Aerosols from pollution could be a culprit?

legulere 3y ago

CO2-Emissions have been growing at an accelerating speed. Cumulative emissions double every 20-30 years. Half of CO2-emissions since 1750 have happened just since 1993. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co-emissions?country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co-emissions?c...