2 ms·
Suppose a similar rate of change in similar conditions happened 10,000 times in the past. Is that useful? Alternately what if we've never seen a rate of change
by osigurdson 3y ago
Suppose a similar rate of change in similar conditions happened 10,000 times in the past. Is that useful? Alternately what if we've never seen a rate of change like this in the history of the earth. Is that useful?
- jncfhnb 3y agoIt’s not really useful. Anything taking place in a fundamentally different climate and context is basically irrelevant. If you want to suppose that our understanding of sea ice and it’s relationship to temperature is fundamentally wrong to the extent that we are missing a rapid drop in sea ice in the past thousand or so years… sure. But that seems unlikely. And suppose it were normal. Does that actually help? No not really.
- osigurdson 3y agoIf it were normal, you would have to reject the “alarming” / “mind blowing” statements in the article. If it were abnormal, on the other hand, it would support such claims. This is what the article is about.
- jncfhnb 3y agoNo. That’s my whole point. “Normal” on a geological time scale is completely irrelevant to humans, whose society is built on a tiny stable slice of that timeframe. Geological time scale “normal” includes many states that are not survivable for our societies. What we care about is normal relative to our cozy state that we have now.
- osigurdson 3y agoSo then it is just a regional cosiness thing. If your region benefits from climate change, you should be in support of it and wish to accelerate it.