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> but it is very blind to the real impact global warming is already having. Can you be specific? Like, I get that every time there is a natural disaster, the

by timmg 3y ago

> but it is very blind to the real impact global warming is already having. Can you be specific? Like, I get that every time there is a natural disaster, the media blares about climate change. But, for example, there's been no trend in hurricanes. Political leaders love to blame climate change for their poor policies (water management, forrest management, etc). And certainly some of the small sea-level rise we have seen is definitely from climate change. But we've also seen "global greening". Productivity of crops keep going up: maybe in spite of climate change -- but maybe partially due to CO2 increases.

piva00 3y ago
> Can you be specific? Warming of the arctic and sub-polar regions is probably the most visible in-your-face trend we can look at. It's been warming, it's getting faster, it's breaking records of temperature. Another point we can look at is oceans warming, which is definitely happening and we don't have a complete picture of all the cascading effects such warming might trigger. The issue of being specific is that you need to look at a diverse dataset, point out trends, while still being prepared and ready with arguments for the counterpoint of "but these are tiny timeframes in geological scale". It's a very slow moving phenomenon, if there's a small increase right now in forest fires it'd require to plot it over 30-50 years to show someone "look, this is definitely the result of what we've done 100 years ago". It might be alarmist to link every atmospherical natural disaster to global warming, at the same time it's hard to ignore an uptick of droughts, massive flooding events, if we need to wait until we gather enough empirical data to absolutely conclude it is directly caused by global warming we will be too late. Could there be a failure of water management, forest management and so on affecting us? Yes, I agree, those need to properly address a changing environment, we just don't know how fast that environment will change and how drastic our changes need to happen. > But we've also seen "global greening". Productivity of crops keep going up: maybe in spite of climate change -- but maybe partially due to CO2 increases. Global greening will not keep up with all the energy we're making the atmosphere retain as a result of CO2, just thinking in pure thermodynamics terms: if there's more energy being contained in the system, everything subsystem has more energy to use: winds, currents, rain, etc. It won't help either with ecosystems that don't depend on greenery, like the Arctic.

by timmg 3y ago

piva00 3y ago

> Can you be specific? Warming of the arctic and sub-polar regions is probably the most visible in-your-face trend we can look at. It's been warming, it's getting faster, it's breaking records of temperature. Another point we can look at is oceans warming, which is definitely happening and we don't have a complete picture of all the cascading effects such warming might trigger. The issue of being specific is that you need to look at a diverse dataset, point out trends, while still being prepared and ready with arguments for the counterpoint of "but these are tiny timeframes in geological scale". It's a very slow moving phenomenon, if there's a small increase right now in forest fires it'd require to plot it over 30-50 years to show someone "look, this is definitely the result of what we've done 100 years ago". It might be alarmist to link every atmospherical natural disaster to global warming, at the same time it's hard to ignore an uptick of droughts, massive flooding events, if we need to wait until we gather enough empirical data to absolutely conclude it is directly caused by global warming we will be too late. Could there be a failure of water management, forest management and so on affecting us? Yes, I agree, those need to properly address a changing environment, we just don't know how fast that environment will change and how drastic our changes need to happen. > But we've also seen "global greening". Productivity of crops keep going up: maybe in spite of climate change -- but maybe partially due to CO2 increases. Global greening will not keep up with all the energy we're making the atmosphere retain as a result of CO2, just thinking in pure thermodynamics terms: if there's more energy being contained in the system, everything subsystem has more energy to use: winds, currents, rain, etc. It won't help either with ecosystems that don't depend on greenery, like the Arctic.